Max Pemberton - Murder Mysteries Boxed-Set - 40+ Books in One Edition

"Now," said Jim, "we're the better for wanting her, though she's a wonderful woman when you take her right. The fact is, she's just as crazy as the others about that house yonder, and is half afeared of having any thing to do with us. But she's lent me the steps, and that's all I care a crack about."

It was raining cats and dogs now, and bitter cold, but we were both excited by what we'd come to do, and didn't feel it more than the touch of a feather. For my part, I'd thought little of the danger up to that time, but when I stood out in that dark yard and looked up to the black shape of a windowless and prison-like house, I must say that I got a shiver through me.

"Jim," said I, "two's not many for a job like this. Did you bring your pistol?"

"I did so," he whispered. "You don't find me going far without it in Paris. Will you go first, or shall I?"

"You go," said I, "since you know the way. I'm on your heels—though what you're to see through that wall I'd like to learn."

"There's windows on the lower story," cried he; "but keep your mouth shut, and tread light."

Saying this, he went up the steps, and I followed him. I have made it plain, I think, that the cabaret or beer-shop, or whatever you like to call it, stood back to back with the house we'd come to enquire about. There was only a yard and a high wall between them; but at the end of this yard, and jammed up against the wall, was a shed for lumber, so built that when you set the steps on its roof you could put your fingers on the top of the bricks above and haul yourself up. It didn't take Jim and I a minute to do this; and once astride the wall, we had our first view of the Maison d'Or.

I must say, and I always have said, that there was something uncanny in the very look of that house. Its heavy, blackened shape seemed to rise up like the shape of a dead-house or a prison. Many of its lower windows were heavily barred with iron bars. The paved yard around it was reeking with filth and rubbish. No sound, no light came out of it. It was just a great mass of brick-work looming up in the darkness, and I could understand easily enough how all the wild tales about it had come to be told. Sitting there, astride on the wall, and peering at such casements as faced the back of the cabaret, I should not have been a bit surprised if I'd have seen some inhuman thing stalking the yard below me. My heart was in my mouth—my nerves twitched like a woman's. And Jim was not a whit better.

"Do you make any thing of it?" he whispered, after we'd been on the wall a minute or two.

"The devil a bit!" said I.

"It ain't exactly a palace of varieties, is it?" he continued presently; "but Grey's in there, right enough. It was through that mite of a window on your left that I got a sight of the place last night. There was a light there then. I don't fancy we'll do much to-night."

"Nor me neither," said I, for I was right down scared, and that's the fact of it.

"Shall we try again to-morrow night?" said he, and I could see he was in a hurry to be off.

"We might as well, for all the good we're doing," said I; and with that I turned to put my foot on the steps again. A moment later I saw a thing which fairly took my breath away.

The window which was dark had suddenly become light. A man with a lamp in his hand passed it, and following him with quick steps was no other than my master, Nicolas Steele.

"Good God!" said I, half aloud, in spite of myself. "What are you doing in there?" and then, as I'm a man, I began to tremble. But Jim had already turned on me.

"Bigg," cried he, "you're playing me double! What's Nicolas Steele doing in there?"

"Ask me another," said I. "It's a thing I can't tell you."

"But I can!" said he, and he was angry too. "He's gone to get Grey out and claim the money."

"Jim, shut your mouth," said I, "and don't make him out the biggest fool alive!"

"You're playing me false!" cried he, raising his voice sillily.

"No such thing," said I. "And look here—I'll prove it. I'm going in after him."

"You are!" exclaimed he. "Then I'll say 'Good-evening' to you."

"Jim," said I, "don't you see it may be a matter of life or death with him? Help me in this, and I'll give you another hundred."

"Help you—how can I help you?"

"I'll tell you in a word. Run into the beer-shop there, and bring all the men you can find to these leads. Promise them twenty francs apiece to shout when I call to them. They'll do it quick enough if you say the police are with us on the other side."

"But you, yourself?"

"I'm going to throw these steps across the gap there, and force that window. After that, I'm trusting to bluff."

"You take your life in your hands," said he.

"Don't you trouble about that. You get the men. Quick's the word for this job."

He didn't wait for any more, but tumbled down to the shed again, and when I had waited five minutes and had seen him come out with half a dozen loafers at his tail, I dragged the steps up to the top of the wall, and then used them to bridge the gap which lay between the little window and myself. Luckily, the sill was old and broad; and though the window itself was not more than three feet square, it was unbarred. At any other time, I might have been a bit giddy clambering across that gap, for there was a drop of near twenty feet below me, but there were too many things running in my head to let me think of that, and half a minute hadn't gone before I had forced the window with my pocket-knife and dropped into a narrow passage on the second floor of the Maison d'Or.

Ten seconds, perhaps, I stood to assure myself that I was all right. Then I drew my revolver, and putting it to the full cock, I began to look about me. It was plain in a minute that I was in a passage with doors opening down one side of it. The glimmer of a light showed at the far end; but elsewhere it was all dark, and, what was more, strangely silent. The air itself was heavy, like the air of a bakehouse. I had to gasp for my breath; there was a choking sensation in my throat which nearly made me faint. Stinking fumes, like the fumes of stale opium, filled all the corridor and seemed to exude from the rooms. I staggered under the power of them, and had to bite my lips to prevent myself coughing.

So far as furniture went, there was little that I could see in the passage. A heavy carpet was soft to the feet, and thick curtains, made of some soft stuff, were hung over the openings to the doors. Yet what appeared more curious than any thing was the queer silence in the place. While I stood there, half choking for my breath, and half hidden behind one of the thickest of the curtains, I didn't hear so much as a creak of a door or the fall of a foot. The house might have been a dead-house with spectres for tenants.

You may ask me, fairly enough, what I had meant to do when I crossed the gap and forced my way into this queer place. I can only answer that I know no more than the dead. What I did was done on impulse. It was only when I stood in the passage, and heard my heart beating like a machine, that I began to think what a fool I had made of myself. And I must have stood there five minutes, afraid to go on, afraid to go back, when all of a sudden some one else decided for me. A door opened not two yards away, and out walked Sir Nicolas Steele and a little Frenchman. They were talking together angrily; and they went straight down the passage and turned the corner where the light was.

Though the door of the room from which they had come had only been open for a moment, I had seen a sight strange enough to have upset a stronger man than me. In a great Eastern-like room, all lit up with queer-colored lanterns, and having a fountain of water splashing in the middle of it, some twenty men were lying on little beds. Most of them looked to me to be dead with sleep, but one was raving, with his face buried in his pillow, while another seemed to be crawling on his hands and knees to the water which bubbled under the dome. The door was only open a second, as I say, but the view behind it gave me a shiver, and the shiver was still on me when, treading like a cat, I followed my master down the passage and came within a yard of him at the corner of it.