Pushing Flammario aside, I stood back from the door to within a stride of the staircase and then, shoulder down, hurled myself upon it.
A metallic rattle and a faint creak rewarded my first charge. Smith had attacked that immediately facing the staircase. He had had no greater success.
“Kick a panel out, Kerrigan!” he cried. “There may be a key inside.”
I tried, whilst the strange woman from The Passion Fruit Tree urged us on.
“Go to it, boys!” she screamed huskily. “Never weaken» We are here to kill!”
I did some damage to the door, which, although stout, was of unseasoned wood. Failing to break through I cursed under my breath, clenched my teeth and once more standing back hurled my weight upon it. So successful was the second attack that the door crashed open I pitched head first into darkness.
Staggering to my feet, breathing heavily, I groped my way back to the doorway to find the switch. As I turned up the light, a sound of banging and splintering came from the landing outside.
I was in an untidy office. The drawers of a roll-top desk had been broken open and the place showed other evidences of a hasty search. However, it was empty, and it seemed to possess no other door. I ran back on to the landing just as Smith had kicked his right heel through a panel.
Reaching in, he evidently found a key, for a moment later the door was thrown open. I followed him into what proved to be a small suite, sitting-room, bedroom and bathroom, fitted up in an effeminate and luxurious manner.
There were framed pictures of women, mostly cabaret artistes, upon the walls; a deep-cushioned divan; a shaded lamp held aloft by an ivory nymph in a niche behind it. Fine Persian carpets covered the floor: I saw leopard skins and exotic furniture. There was a faint perfume in the place.
“This is Lou’s new nest,” said Flammario breathlessly;“I know his tracks.” She ran into the bedroom. “Not a trace. No one has been here.”
“Where is Ardatha?” muttered Smith. “Come on; the third door.”
But outside we pulled up at a hissed injunction, .and stood a while silent.
“Do you hear it?” cried Flammario. “That rat, Lou, is hiding in the loft!”
“How do we get to the loft?” snapped Smith.
“Through this door. There are two other rooms beyond, and a back stair to the loft.”
Turn and turn about. Smith and I hurled ourselves against the third door until at last with a splintering crash it gave. We crowded into a short passage, rooms right and left: both doors were wide open. In one which had shuttered windows we found the evidence for which we sought.
It was a bedroom with a bathroom attached. The lock of the door had been smashed in. The bed was disordered but the coverlet had not been turned down: in other words, no one had slept in the bed. Smith ran eagerly from point to point like a hound keen on the scent.
“This is where he had her locked up!” he cried.
“Sure!” snarled Flammario. “These cigarettes in the tray were smoked by a woman.”
“You are right! And after the door was crashed in, the woman was dragged out. It is easy enough to reconstruct the scene. And, hello, what have we here?”
I saw something glittering at his feet as, stooping, he picked up a ring—a beautifully-cut scarab of lapis lazuli set in a dull gold band. At sight of it I knew—and what I knew chilled me. No further possibility of doubt remained.
It was Ardatha’s ring.
CHAPTER XXIV
FLAMMARIO’S CLOAK SLIPS
“She was conscious when they carried her off,” said Smith. “This ring was left as a clue. A consolation to know that they did not drug her.”
But Flammario was already out in the passage which, as I saw now, terminated on a landing leading up to a back staircase. The stair ended before a small door.
We ran up. The landing before the door was so narrow as to give little purchase for an attack, but: “There’s no metal surround to this keyhole,” said Smith. “The door is fast. I shall try to shoot the lock out . . . . Ssh Listen!”
He and I stood still for a moment, listening again. A subdued scrambling sound which might almost have been made by a rat came to my ears.
“Here goes!” snapped Smith.
It was as he fired once, twice, and muffled detonations echoed weirdly about the place that I thought of Flammario—turned and found she was not there!
“Smith!” I cried, “Flammario has gone!”
“Can’t help that!” he cried. “Those shots will have brought up the raid squad.”
I followed him into a store-room lighted by a single lamp suspended from rafters.It contained nothing more than the usual lumber of suburban households, representing, I suspected some of the effects of the former occupant. Then I saw something else.
There was one window, a low gable window. That part of it made to open was not wide enough to permit the passage of a man’s body, but the frame of the larger part beneath had been forced out of place; fragments of glass lay on the floor, suggesting that, leaning through the opening above, someone who had been in the attic had knocked the glass in from the outside and then forced the sash. As Smith craned out: “A balcony just below,” he reported, “running outside those rooms we have already seen. And, hello!—a stair up to it from the garden!”
He turned and ran to the door.
“You understand, Kerrigan?” he cried. “Fu Manchu’s thugs got here before us! The man Cabot, who had Ardatha locked in that room below, bolted up here to save himself. What he had planned to do he has done: forced a way through this window, dropped on to the balcony below and, unless the police catch him—made a clean get-away!”
We were running along the lower passage now, making for the staircase.
A theory to account for the remarkable behaviour of Flammario at the moment that Smith and I had entered the loft had just begun to form in my mind as we ran down the stairs, across, and out through the kitchen to the back porch. The balcony from which the fugitive had made his escape ran along this side of the house. As we came into the darkness there. Smith, a pace ahead of me, pulled suddenly and grasped my wrist with a grip that hurt.
A high, piercing shriek, followed by gurgling, sobbing sounds split the silence frightfully.
As that dreadful cry died away I heard a shout, a sound of running footsteps. The police were closing in. Two paces forward we moved hesitantly, and there, half in shadow and half silhouetted against a silver curtain of moonlight, I saw Flammario. She stood at the foot of the steps leading down from the balcony. Her cloak had slipped: she looked like a sculptured Fury.
Hearing us, she turned in our direction. I could see the glitter of her amber eyes. Then, stepping into the shadows at her feet she retrieved the sable cloak, and threw it about her shoulders.
“I reckon that balances our account, Lou,” she panted.
Captain Beecher raced up to join us, followed by two other police officers, as a ray from Smith’s torch shone fully down upon a man who lay there. He was prone, but in falling had twisted his head sideways, as if at the moment that death came he had looked swiftly behind him. Staring eyes held a question which had been horribly answered.
It was the man of Panama.
His fingers were embedded in the turf on which he lay, and the hilt of a dagger decorated with silver which glittered evilly in the light, protruded squarely from between his shoulder-blades.
Police Captain Beecher glanced from the dead man to the fur-wrapped figure of Flammario, whose tawny eyes regarded him contemptuously.
“So we have you on the books at last!”
“Forget it!” rapped Smith; “she won’t run away. The girl, the girl who was captive here, has been carried off. She must not be smuggled out of Colon. Advise the port. Hold all outgoing shipping till further orders. Spare no efforts.”