The Chestermarke Instinct

He moved at last, feeling about in the darkness. His hands encountered smooth, blank walls, on each side of the door. He dared not step forward lest he should run against machinery or meet with some cavity in the flooring. And reflecting that the small, insignificant gleam which it would make could scarcely be noticed from outside, he struck a match, and carefully holding it within the flap of his outstretched jacket, looked around him. A first quick glance gave him a general idea of his surroundings. Immediately in front of him was the furnace; a little to its side was a lathe; on one side of the place a long table stood, covered with a multitude of tools, chemical apparatus, and the like; on the other was a blank wall. And in that blank wall, to which Neale chiefly directed his attention during the few seconds for which the match burned, was a door.

The match went out; he dropped it on the floor and moved forward in the darkness to the door which he had just seen. That, of course, must open into the inner room to the outer window of which Walford had drawn his attention. He went on until his outstretched fingers touched the door. Then he cautiously struck another match and looked the door up and down. What he saw added to the mystery of the whole adventure. Neale had seen doors of that sort before, more than once-but they were the doors of very big safes or of strong rooms. Before the second match burned through he knew that this particular door was of some metal-steel, most likely-that it was set into a framework of similar metal, and that the room to which it afforded entrance was probably sound-proof.

He struck a third match and a fourth. By their light he saw there was but one small keyhole to the door, and he judged from that that it was fitted with some patent mechanical lock. There was no way by which he could open it, of course, and though he stood for a long time listening with straining ears against it he could not detect the slightest sound from whatever chamber or recess lay behind it. If there really was a man in there, thought Neale, he must surely feel himself to be in a living tomb. And after a time, taking the risk of being heard from outside the laboratory, he beat heavily upon the door with his fist. No response came: the silence all around him was more oppressive, if possible, than before.

The expenditure of more matches enabled Neale to examine further into the conditions of what seemed likely to be his own prison for some hours. He was not sorry to see that in one corner stood an old settee, furnished with rugs and cushions-if he was obliged to remain locked up all night, he would, at any rate, be able to get some rest. But beyond this, the furnace, a tall three-fold screen, evidently used to assist in the manipulation of draughts, and the lathe, table, and apparatus which he had already seen, there was nothing in the place. There was no way of getting at the windows in the top of the high walls: even if he could have got at them they were too small for a man to squeeze through. And he was about to sit down on the settee and wait the probably slow and tedious course of events, when he caught sight of an object at the end of the table which startled him, and made him wonder more than anything he had seen up to that moment.

That object was a big loaf of bread. He struck yet another match and looked at it more narrowly. It was one of those large loaves which bakers make for the use of families. Close by it lay a knife: a nearer inspection showed Neale that a slice had recently been cut from the loaf: he knew that by the fact that the crumb was still soft and fresh on the surface, in spite of the great heat of the place. It was scarcely likely that Joseph Chestermarke would eat unbuttered bread during his experiments and labours-why, then, was the loaf there? Could it be that this bread was-that the slice which had just been cut was-the ration given to somebody behind that door?

This idea filled Neale with the first spice of fear which he had felt since entering the laboratory. The idea of a man being fastened up in a sound-proof chamber and fed on dry bread suggested possibilities which he did not and could not contemplate without a certain horror. And if there really was such a prisoner in that room, or cell, or whatever the place was, who could it be but John Horbury? And if it was John Horbury, how, under what circumstances, had he been brought there, why was he being kept there?

Neale sat down at last on the settee, and in the silence and darkness gave himself up to thoughts of a nature which he had never known in his life before. Here, at any rate, was adventure!-and of a decidedly unpleasant sort. He was not afraid for himself. He had a revolver in his hip-pocket, loaded-he had been carrying it since Tuesday, with some strange notion that it might be wanted. Certainly he might have to go without food for perhaps many hours-but he suddenly remembered that in the pocket of his Norfolk jacket he had a biggish box of first-rate chocolate, which he had bought on his way to the cricket club meeting, with a view of presenting it to Betty, later on. He could get through a day on that, he thought, if it were necessary-as for the loaf of bread, something seemed to nauseate him at the mere thought of trying to swallow a mouthful of it.

The rest of the evening went: the silence was never broken. Not a sound came from the mysterious chamber behind him. No step sounded on the gravel without: no hand unlocked the door from the garden. Now and then he heard the clock of the parish church strike the hours. At last he slept-at first fitfully; later soundly-and when he woke it was morning, and the sunlight was pouring in through the red-curtained windows high in the walls of his prison. CHAPTER XXIX

THE SPARROWS AND THE SPHERE

Neale was instantly awake and on the alert. He sprang to his feet, shivering a little in spite of the rugs which he had wrapped about him before settling down. A slight current of cold air struck him as he rose-looking in the direction from which it seemed to come, he saw that one of the circular windows in the high wall above him was open, and that a fresh north-east wind was blowing the curtain aside. The laboratory, hot and close enough when he had entered it the previous evening, was now cool; the morning breeze freshened and sharpened his wits. He pulled out his watch, which he had been careful to wind up before lying down. Seven o'clock!-in spite of his imprisonment and his unusual couch, he had slept to his accustomed hour of waking.

Knowing that Joseph Chestermarke might walk in upon him at any moment, Neale kept himself on the look out, in readiness to adopt a determined attitude whenever he was discovered. By that time he had come to the conclusion that whether force would be necessary or not in any meeting with Joseph, it would be no unwise thing to let that worthy see at once that he had to deal with an armed man. He accordingly saw to it that his revolver, already loaded, was easily get-at-able, and the flap of his hip-pocket unbuttoned: under the circumstances, he was not going to be slow in producing that revolver in suggestive, if not precisely menacing fashion. This done, he opened his box of chocolate, calculated its resources, and ate a modest quantity. And while he ate, he looked about him. In the morning light everything in his surroundings showed clearly that his cursory inspection of the night before had been productive of definite conclusions. There was no doubt whatever of the character of the mysterious door set so solidly and closely in its framework in the blank wall: the door of the strong room at Chestermarke's Bank was not more suggestive of security.

He went over to the outer door when he had eaten his chocolate, and examined that at his leisure. That, in lesser degree, was set into the wall as strongly as the inner one. He saw no means of opening it from the inside: it was evidently secured by a patent mechanical lock of which Joseph Chestermarke presumably carried the one key. He turned from it to look more closely at a shelf of books and papers which projected from the wall above the table. Papers and books were all of a scientific nature, most of them relating to experimental chemistry, some to mechanics. He noticed that there were several books on poisons; his glance fell from those books to various bottles and phials on the table, fashioned of dark-coloured glass and three-cornered in shape, which he supposed to contain poisonous solutions. So Joseph dabbled in toxicology, did he? thought Neale-in that case, perhaps, there was something in the theory which had been gaining ground during the last twenty-four hours-that Hollis had been poisoned first and thrown into the old lead-mine later on. And-what of the somebody, Horbury or whoever it was, that lay behind that grim-looking door? Neale had never heard a sound during the time which had elapsed before he dropped asleep, never a faintest rustle since he had been awake again. Was it possible that a dead man lay there-murdered?