They all stood motionless for a few moments. That ceaseless drip-drip-drip alone broke the silence of Falling Waters—a haunting signature tune.
“Where is this kennelman quartered?” Nayland Smith asked jerkily.
He was unable to hide the fact that his nerves were strung to concert-violin pitch.
“Middle gate-cottage,” came promptly from Sam. “I’ll go call him. Name of Kelly. I can get the extension from out here.”
“Speak quietly,” Smith warned. “Order him to loose the dogs.”
Sam’s flashlamp operated for a moment. It cast fantastic moving shadows on the library walls, showed Nayland Smith gaunt, tense; painted Craig’s pale face as a mask of tragedy. Then—Sam was gone.
Craig could hear Nayland Smith moving, restless, in darkness. Obscurely Sam’s mumbling reached them. He had left the communicating doors open . . . Then, before words which might have relieved the tension came to either, the alarm cabinet glowed into greenish-blue life, muted buzzing began.
“What’s this?”
A shadow moved across the plan. It was followed by a second shadow.
“Someone crossing the tennis court!” Craig’s voice sounded hushed, unfamiliar. “Running!”
“Someone hot on his heels!”
“Into the rose garden now!”
“Second shadow gaining! First shadow doubling back!”
“That’s the path through the apple orchard. Leads to a stile on the lane—”
“But,” said Nayland Smith, “if my memory serves me, the dog track crosses before the stile?”
“Yes. One of the gates in the wire is there.”
And, as Craig spoke, came a remote baying.
The dogs were out.
“Listen.” Sam had joined them . . . “Say! What’s this?”
“Action!” rapped Smith. “Was Kelly awake?”
“Sure. But listen. Mrs. Frobisher called him some time tonight, and ordered him to see the dogs weren’t loosed! Can you beat it? But wait a minute. Mr. Frobisher gives him the same order half an hour earlier! . . . Oh, hell! Did you hear that?”
“He’s through the gate,” said Nayland Smith . . .
The first shadow showed on the chart at a point where a gate in the wire was marked. The second shadow moved swiftly back. A dim blur swept along the track. Baying increased in volume . . . A shot—a second. And then came a frenzied scream, all the more appalling because muted by distance.
“Merciful God!” Craig whispered. “The dogs have got him!
Nayland Smith already had the french windows open. A sting of damp, cold air pierced the library. There came another, faint scream. Baying merged into a dreadful growling . . .
“Lights!” Smith cried. “Where’s the man. Stein?”
As Sam switched the lights up. Stein was revealed standing in the arched opening which led to Michael Frobisher’s study. He was fully dressed, and chalky white.
“Here I am, sir.”
A sound of faraway shouting became audible. Stella Frobisher ran out onto the stairhead, a robe thrown over her nightdress.
“Please—oh, please tell me what has happened? That ghastly screaming! And where is Mike?”
She had begun to come down, when Camille appeared behind her. Camille had changed and wore a tweed suit.
“Mrs. Frobisher!” Craig looked up. “Isn’t the chief in his room?”
“No, he isn’t!”
Camille’s arm was around Stella’s shoulders now.
“Don’t go down, Mrs. Frobisher. Let’s go back. I think it would be better if you dressed.”
She spoke calmly. Camille had lived through other crises.
“Miss Navarre!” Nayland Smith called sharply.
“Yes, Sir Denis?”
“Go with Mrs. Frobisher to her room, and both of you stay there with the door locked. Understand?”
Camille hesitated for a moment, then: “Yes, Sir Denis,” she answered. “Please come along, Mrs. Frobisher.”
“But I want to know where Mike is—”
Her voice faded away, as Camille very gently steered her back to her room.
Nayland Smith faced Stein.
“Mr. Frobisher is not in his study?”
“No, sir.”
“How do you know?”
“I do not retire tonight. I am anxious. Just now, I am in there to look.”
“Was the window open?”
Stein’s crushed features became blank.
“Was the window open?” Nayland Smith repeated harshly.
“Yes. I closed it.”
“Come on, Craig! Sampson—follow!”
“Okay,chief.”
Craig and Nayland Smith ran out, Sam behind them.
Stein stood by the opening, and listened. Somewhere out in the misty night, an automatic spat angrily. There was a dim background of barking dogs, shouting men. He turned, in swift decision, and went back through that doorway which led to the kitchen quarters.
He took up the phone there, dialled a number, waited, and then began to speak rapidly—but not in English. He spoke in a language which evidently enlarged his vocabulary. His pallid features twitched as he poured out a torrent of passionate words . . .
Something hard was jammed into the ribs of his stocky body.
“Drop that phone, Feodor Stenovicz. I have a gun in your back and your family history in my pocket. Too late to tip off Sokolov. He’s in the bag. Put your hands right behind you. No, not up— behind!”
Stein dropped the receiver and put his hands back. There was sweat on his low forehead. Steel cuffs were snapped over his wrists.
“Now that’s settled, we can get together.”
Stein turned—and looked into the barrel of a heavy-calibre revolver which Sam favored. Sam’s grinning face was somewhere behind it, in a red cloud.
“Suppose,” Sam suggested, “we step into your room and sample some more of the boss’s bourbon? What you gave me this morning tasted good.”
They had gone when Camille came running along the corridor to the stairhead. And there was no one in the library.
“Please stay where you are.” she called back. “I will find out.”
A muffled cry came from Stella Frobisher: “Open the door! I can’t stay here’.”
Camille raced downstairs, wilfully deaf to a wild beating on wood panels.
“Let me 01^!”
But Camille ran on to the open windows.
“Morris! Morris! Where are you?”
She stood there clutching the wet frame, peering into chilly darkness. Cries reached her—the vicious yap of a revolver —the barking of dogs.
“Morris!”
She ran out onto the terrace. A long way off she could see moving lights.
Camille had already disappeared when Sam entered the library, having locked Stein in the wine cellar. Switching on his flash, he began hurrying in the direction of that distant melee.
* * *
The library remained empty for some time. With the exception of Stein, all the servants slept out. So that despairing calls of “Unlock the door, Mike! Mike!” won no response. And presently they ceased.
Then, subdued voices and a shuffling of feet on wet gravel heralded the entrance of an ominous cortege. Upon an extemporized stretcher carried by a half-dressed gardener and Kelly, the grizzled kennelman, Michael Frobisher was brought in. Sam came first, to hold the windows wide and to allow of its entrance. Nayland Smith followed. There were other men outside, but they remained there.
“Get a doctor,” Smith directed. “He’s in a bad way.”
They lifted Frobisher onto the settee. He still wore his dinner clothes, but they were torn to tatters. His face and his hands were bloody, his complexion was greyish-purple. He groaned and opened his eyes when they laid him down. But he seemed to be no more than semi-conscious, and almost immediately relapsed.