XXXVIII
THE SECRET TRAPS
Gaston Max, from his silken bed in the catacombs of Ho-Pin, watched thehand of his watch which lay upon the little table beside him. Already itwas past two o'clock, and no sign had come from Soames; a hundred timeshis imagination had almost tricked him into believing that the door wasopening; but always the idea had been illusory and due to the purpleshadow of the lamp-shade which overcast that side of the room and thedoor.
He had experienced no difficulty in arranging with Gianapolis to occupythe same room as formerly; and, close student of human nature though hewas, he had been unable to detect in the Greek's manner, when theyhad met that night, the slightest restraint, the slightest evidence ofuneasiness. His reception by Ho-Pin had varied scarce one iota from thataccorded him on his first visit to the cave of the golden dragon. Theimmobile Egyptian had brought him the opium, and had departed silentlyas before. On this occasion, the trap above the bed had not been opened.But hour after hour had passed, uneventfully, silently, in that still,suffocating room....
A key in the lock!--yes, a key was being inserted in the lock! Hemust take no unnecessary risks; it might be another than Soames. Hewaited--the faint sound of fumbling ceased. Still, he waited, listeningintently.
Half-past-two. If it had been Soames, why had he withdrawn? M. Max arosenoiselessly and looked about him. He was undecided what to do, when...
Two shots, followed by a most appalling shriek--the more frightfulbecause it was muffled; the shriek of a man in extremis, of one whostands upon the brink of Eternity, brought him up rigid, tense,with fists clenched, with eyes glaring; wrought within this fearlessinvestigator an emotion akin to terror.
Just that one gruesome cry there was and silence again.
What did it mean?
M. Max began hastily to dress. He discovered, in endeavoring to fastenhis collar, that his skin was wet with cold perspiration.
"Pardieu!" he said, twisting his mouth into that wry smile, "I know,now, the meaning of fright!"
He was ever glancing toward the door, not hopefully as hitherto, butapprehensively, fearfully.
That shriek in the night might portend merely the delirium of some otheroccupant of the catacombs; but the shots...
"It was SOAMES!" he whispered aloud; "I have risked too much; I am fastin the rat-trap!"
He looked about him for a possible weapon. The time for inactivity waspast. It would be horrible to die in that reeking place, whilst outside,it might be, immediately above his head, Dunbar and the others waitedand watched.
The construction of the metal bunk attracted his attention. As in thecase of steamer bunks one of the rails--that nearer to the door--wasdetachable in order to facilitate the making of the bed. Rapidly,nervously, he unscrewed it; but the hinges were riveted to the mainstructure, and after a brief examination he shrugged his shouldersdespairingly. Then, he recollected that in the adjoining bathroom therewas a metal towel rail, nickeled, and with a heavy knock at either end,attached by two brackets to the wall.
He ran into the inner room and eagerly examined these fastenings. Theywere attached by small steel screws. In an instant he was at work withthe blade of his pocket-knife. Six screws in all there were to be dealtwith, three at either end. The fifth snapped the blade and he uttered anexclamation of dismay. But the shortened implement proved to be an evenbetter screw-driver than the original blade, and half a minute later hefound himself in possession of a club such as would have delighted thesoul of Hercules.
He managed to unscrew one of the knobs, and thus to slide off from thebar the bracket attachments; then, replacing the knob, he weighed thebar in his hand, appreciatively. His mind now was wholly composed, andhis course determined. He crossed the little room and rapped loudly uponthe door.
The rapping sounded muffled and dim in that sound-proof place. Nothinghappened, and thrice he repeated the rapping with like negative results.But he had learnt something: the door was a very heavy one.
He made a note of the circumstance, although it did not interfere withthe plan which he had in mind. Wheeling the armchair up beside the bed,he mounted upon its two arms and, ONCE--TWICE--THRICE--crashed the knobof the iron bar against that part of the wall which concealed the trap.
Here the result was immediate. At every blow of the bar the trapbehind yielded. A fourth blow sent the knob crashing through the gauzematerial, and far out into some dark place beyond. There was a sound asof a number of books falling.
He had burst the trap.
Up on the back of the chair he mounted, resting his bar against thewall, and began in feverish haste to tear away the gauze concealing therectangular opening.
An almost overpowering perfume of roses was wafted into his face. Infront of him was blackness.
Having torn away all the gauze, he learned that the opening was some twofeet long by one foot high. Resting the bar across the ledge heextended his head and shoulders forward through this opening into therose-scented place beyond, and without any great effort drew himself upwith his hands, so that, provided he could find some support uponthe other side, it would be a simple matter to draw himself throughentirely.
He felt about with his fingers, right and left, and in doing sodisturbed another row of books, which fell upon the floor beneath him.He had apparently come out in the middle of a large book-shelf. Tothe left of him projected the paper-covered door of the trap, at rightangles; above and below were book-laden shelves, and on the right therehad been other books, until his questing fingers had disturbed them.
M. Max, despite his weight, was an agile man. Clutching the shelfbeneath, he worked his way along to the right, gradually creepingfurther and further into the darkened room, until at last he could drawhis feet through the opening and crouch sideways upon the shelf.
He lowered his left foot, sought for and found another shelf beneath,and descended as by a ladder to the thickly carpeted floor. Grasping theend of the bar, he pulled that weapon down; then he twisted the buttonwhich converted his timepiece into an electric lantern, and, holding thebar in one tensely quivering hand, looked rapidly about him.
This was a library; a small library, with bowls of roses set upontables, shelves, in gaps between the books, and one lying overturnedupon the floor. Although it was almost drowned by their overpoweringperfume, he detected a faint smell of powder. In one corner stooda large writing-table with papers strewn carelessly upon it. Itsappointments were markedly Chinese in character, from the singular, goldinkwell to the jade paperweight; markedly Chinese--and--FEMININE. A veryhandsome screen lay upon the floor in front of this table, and the richcarpet he noted to be disordered as if a struggle had taken place uponit. But, most singular circumstance of all, and most disturbing... therewas no door to this room!
For a moment he failed to appreciate the entire significance of this.A secret room difficult to enter he could comprehend, but a secret roomdifficult to QUIT passed his comprehension completely. Moreover, he wasno better off for his exploit.
Three minutes sufficed him in which to examine the shelves covering thefour walls of the room from floor to ceiling. None of the books weredummies, and slowly the fact began to dawn upon his mind that what atfirst he had assumed to be a rather simple device, was, in truth, almostincomprehensible.
For how, in the name of Sanity, did the occupant of this room--andobviously it was occupied at times--enter and leave it?
"Ah!" he muttered, shining the light upon a row of yellow-bound volumesfrom which he had commenced his tour of inspection and to which thattour had now led him back, "it is uncanny--this!"
He glanced back at the rectangular patch of light which marked the trapwhereby he had entered this supernormal room. It was situated close toone corner of the library, and, acting upon an idea which came to him(any idea was better than none) he proceeded to throw down the booksoccupying the corresponding position at the other end of the shelf.
A second trap was revealed, identical with that through which he hadentered!
It was fastened with a neat brass bolt; and, standing upon one of thelittle Persian tables--from which he removed a silver bowl of roses--heopened this trap and looked into the lighted room beyond. He saw anapartment almost identical with that which he himself recently hadquitted; but in one particular it differed. It was occupied... AND BY AWOMAN!
Arrayed in a gossamer nightrobe she lay in the bed, beneath the trap,her sunken face matching the silken whiteness. Her thin arms droopedlistlessly over the rails of the bunk, and upon her left hand M. Maxperceived a wedding ring. Her hair, flaxen in the electric light, wasspread about in wildest disorder upon the pillow, and a breath of fetidair assailed his nostrils as he pressed his face close to the gauzemasking the opening in order to peer closely at this victim of thecatacombs.
He watched the silken covering of her bosom, intently, but failed todetect the slightest movement.
"Morbleu!" he muttered, "is she dead?"
He rent the gauze with a sweep of his left hand, and standing upon thebottom shelf of the case, craned forward into the room, looking allabout him. A purple shaded lamp burnt above the bed as in the adjoiningapartment which he himself had occupied. There were dainty femininetrifles littered in the big armchair, and a motor-coat hung upon thehook of the bathroom door. A small cabin-trunk in one corner of the roombore the initials: "M. L."
Max dropped back into the incredible library with a stifled gasp.
"Pardieu!" he said. "It is Mrs. Leroux that I have found!"
A moment he stood looking from trap to trap; then turned and surveyedagain the impassable walls, the rows of works, few of which wereEuropean, some of them bound in vellum, some in pigskin, and one row ofhuge volumes, ten in number, on the bottom shelf, in crocodile hide.
"It is weird, this!" he muttered, "nightmare!"--turning the light fromrow to row. "How is this lamp lighted that swings here?"
He began to search for the switch, and, even before he found it, hadmade up his mind that, once discovered, it would not only enable himmore fully to illuminate the library, but would constitute a valuableclue.
At last he found it, situated at the back of one of the shelves, and setabove a row of four small books, so that it could readily be reached byinserting the hand.
He flooded the place with light; and perceived at a glance that a lengthof white flex crossing the ceiling enabled anyone seated at the tableto ignite the lamp from there also. Then, replacing his torch in hispocket, and assuring himself that the iron bar lay within easy reach, hebegan deliberately to remove all of the books from the shelves coveringthat side of the room upon which the switch was situated. His theorywas a sound one; he argued that the natural and proper place for such aswitch in such a room would be immediately inside the door, so that oneentering could ignite the lamp without having to grope in the darkness.He was encouraged, furthermore, by the fact that at a point some fourfeet to the left of this switch there was a gap in the bookcases,running from floor to ceiling; a gap no more than four inches across.
Having removed every book from its position, save three, which occupieda shelf on a level with his shoulder and adjoining the gap, he desistedwearily, for many of the volumes were weighty, and the heat of the roomwas almost insufferable. He dropped with a sigh upon a silk ottomanclose beside him....
A short, staccato, muffled report split the heavy silence... and alittle round hole appeared in the woodwork of the book-shelf beforewhich, an instant earlier, M. Max had been standing--in the woodwork ofthat shelf, which had been upon a level with his head.
In one giant leap he hurled himself across the room--... as a secondbullet pierced the yellow silk of the ottoman.
Close under the trap he crouched, staring up, fearful-eyed....
A yellow hand and arm--a hand and arm of great nervous strength and ofthe hue of old ivory, directed a pistol through the opening above him.As he leaped, the hand was depressed with a lightning movement, but,lunging suddenly upward, Max seized the barrel of the pistol, and witha powerful wrench, twisted it from the grasp of the yellow hand. It washis own Browning!
At the time--in that moment of intense nervous excitement--he ascribedhis sensations to his swift bout with Death--with Death who almosthad conquered; but later, even now, as he wrenched the weapon intohis grasp, he wondered if physical fear could wholly account for thesickening revulsion which held him back from that rectangular opening inthe bookcase. He thought that he recognized in this a kindred horror--asdistinct from terror--to that which had come to him with the odor ofroses through this very trap, upon the night of his first visit to thecatacombs of Ho-Pin.
It was not as the fear which one has of a dangerous wild beast, butas the loathing which is inspired by a thing diseased, leprous,contagious....
A mighty effort of will was called for, but he managed to achieve it.He drew himself upright, breathing very rapidly, and looked through intothe room--the room which he had occupied, and from which a moment agothe murderous yellow hand had protruded.
That room was empty... empty as he had left it!
"Mille tonnerres! he has escaped me!" he cried aloud, and the words didnot seem of his own choosing.
WHO had escaped? Someone--man or woman; rather some THING, which, yellowhanded, had sought to murder him!
Max ran across to the second trap and looked down at the woman whom heknew, beyond doubt, to be Mrs. Leroux. She lay in her death-like trance,unmoved.
Strung up to uttermost tension, he looked down at her andlistened--listened, intently.
Above the fumes of the apartment in which the woman lay, a stifling odorof roses was clearly perceptible. The whole place was tropically hot.Not a sound, save the creaking of the shelf beneath him, broke the heavystillness.