Leaving the second man to give us warning if we were noticed, Pickering and myself sauntered along to the house.

It was nearly eleven o'clock, and there were few pa.s.sers-by, yet we did not wish to be discovered, for our investigations were to be made strictly in secret, prior to the police taking action.

Was I acting judiciously, I wondered? Would the revelation I had made reflect upon Sybil herself? Would those men who used that house hurl against her a terrible and relentless vendetta?

Whether wisely or unwisely, however, I had inst.i.tuted the inquiry, and could not now draw back.

The inspector himself took the small bag containing a serviceable-looking housebreaker's jemmy and other tools, and as we came to the area handed it down to the man below. Then both of us scrambled over the locked gate and descended the steps to the bas.e.m.e.nt door by which it had been decided to enter.

The plain-clothes man was something of a mechanic, I could see, for he was soon at work upon the lock, yet although he tried for a full quarter of an hour to open the door, it resisted all his efforts.

"It's bolted," he declared at last, wiping the perspiration from his brow. "We must try the front door. That's no doubt only on the latch.

If we force this they'll know we've been here, while if we force the latch we can put that right again before we leave."

"Very well, Edwards," was the inspector's reply. "Go up alone and do it. It won't do for us both to be up with you. Force the latch, and let us trust to luck to be able to put it right again. We'll have to lay a trap here--of that I feel sure."

The man ascended to the door above us, but scarcely had he done so when we heard the hoa.r.s.e cry of "_Star_--extrar spe-shall!" from the further end of the street--the pre-arranged signal warning us of someone approaching.

Edwards therefore slipped down the steps and walked in the opposite direction until the two men who had entered the street had pa.s.sed. Then Edwards sprang up the steps again, and after trying the lock with a number of keys we suddenly heard a low crack, and then there was silence.

"All right," he whispered to us over the railings, and a minute later we were standing inside the dark hall of the house wherein I had so nearly lost my life. Edwards closed the door behind us noiselessly, and we were compelled to grope forward in the pitch darkness, for the inspector deemed it wise to draw down the blinds before lighting our lanterns, for fear our movements should attract notice from without.

Edwards entered the front room on the right, stumbling over some furniture, and pulled down the dark holland blind, while a moment later a rapping on the front door announced the arrival of the man who had been watching to cover our movements.

The policemen's lanterns, when lit, revealed an old-fashioned room furnished solidly in leather--a dining-room, though there were no evidences of it having been recently used. Behind it, entered by folding doors, was another sitting-room with heavy well-worn furniture covered with old-fashioned horsehair. In the room was a modern roll-top writing-table, the drawers of which Pickering reserved for future investigation.

"Be careful of the stairs," I said, as Edwards started to ascend them.

"The dangerous ones are nearly at the top of the second storey. There's no danger on the first floor."

"All right, sir," replied the man. "I'll be wary, you bet!" and we climbed to the first floor, the rooms of which, to our surprise, were all empty, devoid of any furniture save two or three broken chairs. In one room was a cupboard, which, however, was locked.

Again we turned to the stairs, Edwards and his companion ascending each stair slowly and trying the one higher with their hands. They were covered with new carpet of art green, different to the first flight, which were covered in red.

When a little more than half-way up to the top landing, Edwards suddenly exclaimed,--

"Here it is, sir!" and instantly we ascended to his side.

Kneeling on the stairs, he pressed his hands on the step above, whereupon that portion of the stairway up to the landing swung forward upon a hinge, disclosing a black abyss beneath.

I looked into it and shuddered. Even Pickering himself could not restrain an expression of surprise and horror when he realised how cunningly planned was that death-trap. The first six stairs from the top seemed to hang upon hinges from the landing. Therefore with the weight of a person upon them they would fall forward and pitch the unfortunate victim backwards before he could grasp the handrail, causing him to fall into the pit below.

"Well," remarked Pickering, amazed, as he pushed open the stairs and peered into the dark blackness below, "of all the devilish contrivances I've ever seen in my twenty-one years' experience in London, this is one of the most simple and yet the most ingenious and most fatal?"

"No doubt there's a secret way to render the stairs secure," I remarked.

"No doubt, but as we don't know it, Edwards, one of you had better go down and get something to lay over the stairs--a piece of board, a table--anything that's long enough. We don't want to be pitched down there ourselves."

"No, sir," remarked Edwards' companion, whose name was Marvin. "I wouldn't like to be, for one. But I daresay lots of 'em have gone down there at times."

"Most probably," snapped the inspector, dismissing the man at once to get the board.

"Bring up the jemmy as well," he added, over the banisters. "We may want it."

A few minutes later the two men brought up a long oak settle from the hall, and bridging the fatal gulf, held it in position, while we pa.s.sed over, not, however, without difficulty, as the incline was so great.

Then when we were over we held it while they also scrambled up.

To the left was a closed door--the room from which had come the sound of Eric's voice on that fatal night. I recognised it in a moment, for it was pale green, picked out in a darker shade.

I opened it, and Pickering shone his lamp within. The blinds were up, but Edwards rushed and pulled them down. Then, on glancing round, I saw it was a pretty well-furnished room, another sitting-room, quite different from those below, as it was decorated in modern taste, with furniture covered with pale yellow silk and comfortable easy chairs, as though its owner were fond of luxury. The odour of stale cigars still hung in the curtains. Perhaps it was the vampire's den, a place where he could at all events be safe from intrusion with those fatal stairs between him and the street.

I explained my theory to the inspector, and he was inclined to agree with me.

Upon the floor lay a copy of an evening paper nearly a month old, while the London dust over everything told us that at least it had not been occupied recently.

In that room poor Eric had defied his captors. I looked eagerly around for any traces of him. Yes. My eye fell upon one object--a silver cigarette-case that I had given him two years ago!

The tell-tale object was lying upon the mantelshelf unheeded, tossed there, perhaps, on the night of the crime.

I handed it to Pickering and told him the truth.

"A very valuable piece of evidence, sir," was the inspector's reply, placing it in his pocket. "We shall get at the bottom of the affair now, depend upon it. The only thing is, we mustn't act too eagerly. We must have them all--or none; that's my opinion."

Then, with his two men, he methodically searched the room, they carefully replacing everything as they found it in a manner which showed them to be expert investigators of crime. Indeed, while Pickering was an inspector of police, the two men were sergeants of the branch of the Criminal Investigation Department attached to the station. They examined quite a heterogeneous collection of things--the usual things one finds in a man's rooms. From a drawer in a kind of sideboard I took out a quant.i.ty of letters, beneath which I found a woman's necklace, a magnificent antique thing in diamonds and emeralds, which had apparently been hurriedly concealed there, and perhaps forgotten.

Pickering took it in his hand and examined it close to his lamp.

"Real, without a doubt, and a costly one, too! Been taken off some rich woman, perhaps. See! the snap has been broken. Perhaps they are afraid to get rid of it at once, so are keeping it. For the present let's put it back."

As I replaced it I saw in the corner of the drawer a ring--a gold one with an engraved amethyst. This I at once recognised as poor Eric's signet ring! Concealed among papers, pamphlets, string, medicine bottles and other odds and ends, were other articles of jewellery mostly costly, as well as several beautiful ropes of pearls.

Were they, we wondered, the spoils of the dead? What had been the fate of Eric Domville? Had he been entrapped there, despoiled, as others had been, and then allowed to descend those fatal stairs to his doom?

That was Pickering's opinion, just as it was mine.

I longed to be allowed time to inspect the few letters beneath which the emerald necklace had been concealed, but Pickering urged me on, saying that we had yet much to do before morning.

So we entered the other rooms leading from the landing, but all were disappointing--all save one.

The door was opposite that wherein Eric had faced his enemies, and when we opened it we saw that it was a dirty faded place which had once been a bedroom, but there was now neither bedstead nor bedding. Upon the floor was an old drab threadbare carpet, in the centre of which was a large dark stain.

"Look!" I cried, pointing to it and bending to examine it more closely.

"Yes, I see," remarked the inspector, directing his lamp full upon it.

"That's blood, sir--blood without the least doubt!"

"Blood!" I gasped. "Then Domville was probably invited in here and struck down by those fiends--the brutes!"

Edwards went on his knees, and by the aid of his lamp examined the stain more carefully, touching it with his fingers.