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

I was now near by the light, but curtains, hung crosswise in the passage, hid me well enough. I could see from my place that Sir Nicolas was arguing with the Frenchman at the top of a little flight of iron stairs. When they had talked for about a minute the Frenchman pointed to a door at the bottom of the flight, and my master made a step downward as though to reach the door. But his foot was hardly on the stairs when something happened which sent me as stiff as a corpse, and drew from me a cry which might have come from a madman. The stairs which I had seen a minute before I saw no longer. They had swung away under my master's touch, and with another cry joined to mine, he went headlong down to the floor below.

What happened in the next few minutes I can hardly tell. I remember, perfectly, that the Frenchman stood for a minute glaring at me, and hissing words between his teeth. Then he pressed a knob on the railings at his side, and the staircase swung back into its place.

So astonished was I to see such a thing that I never thought of the danger to myself. All that I could do was to stand and stare like one bewitched, and I don't believe that I had moved foot or hand when the man closed with me, and we went rolling over and over on the floor together. Strong man as I am, I don't think that I have ever been so near to death as I was that night. Now up, now down, with the cold sweat on my forehead, and the devil's fingers tearing the flesh out of my neck, I halloed to Jim to help me, and fought the Frenchman through. When I had done with him at last, I was covered with blood—but it was Jim who pulled me to my feet, Jim and Michel Grey, who stood, half-dressed, in the passage.

The noise and din which followed this business is not to be described by any man like me. While I stood half-blinded, and with roaring sounds in my ears, gendarmes seemed to be filling all the Maison d'Or. But I had my wits about me, and I turned to Jim.

"Get Grey out," said I, "and take him in a cab to the Hôtel de Lille. We'll lose the reward if you don't. Tell him his father's there. I'm after Sir Nicolas."

"Is he here?" he asked, as he went to do what I bid him.

"God knows whether he is alive or dead," said I; and with that I called to the gendarmes and showed them the swinging staircase.

Five minutes after, we were down in a filthy cellar, standing over the motionless body of my master. But his groans told us that he lived, and when lights were brought we knew to what he owed his life. He had fallen on the dead body of another victim of the Maison d'Or.

* * * * *

Well, that's the story of the phantom staircase, though there are some things left you might like to know. How did Sir Nicolas Steele come to the shop, for instance? Why, it appeared that after they had got Grey in the house—which was one of the largest and one of the lowest dens in Paris—they'd kept him drunk with the drug, in the hope that he'd add more money to what they'd robbed him of. On the day Jim and I set out for the cabaret, Grey had sent a messenger down to the Hôtel de Lille to get some of his traps and things. Sir Nicolas came across this messenger, and bribed the whole tale out of him. After that, he didn't want to lose a minute tracing the man, and he went straight off to Montmartre, leaving word at the police-station of what he'd done. The police had long been watching the shop, and when they heard that an Englishman was going there, they sent gendarmes after him—and lucky, too, or this story would not have been written.

How Sir Nicolas was so foolish as to stand between us and the chance of a reward, I only learned when he came to consciousness, nine days after we took him off the dead man's body in the cellar.

"And didn't I begin to be afraid of the whole thing?" said he. "Sure, the police were watching me night and day just as if I was a murderer. Reward or no reward, I was glad to have done with it."

And that was the truth, though old Jonathan Grey, after he'd heard what the police had to say, paid over every shilling of the money he'd promised, and gave me a hundred more for myself. But he was out of Paris while my master lay unconscious, and though Dora Grey cried enough for three, her studies in painting closed on the spot.

The Maison d'Or is pulled down now. I've no doubt myself that many a good man walked down those steps to his death. A more cunning trap you couldn't find. The whole flight of steps swung on a hinge at the top, and was caught at the bottom by a bit of the landing which projected, and which a spring held in its place. And it was a better weapon for a rogue than any knife or pistol.

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Nicky did not forget his visit to the Maison d'Or for a very long time. He would have remembered it longer if I had not found something else for him to think about, and set him going on a job which I shall always look back upon as the boldest we ever undertook in all our years together. It was this job which carried me for the first time in my life to the city of Vienna; and I can recollect, as if it happened yesterday, the night when we arrived there, and played the first card in as big an undertaking as two men ever put their hands to.

They were just beginning to light up the shops in the Graben and the Kohlmarkt, when we found the place we wanted, and stood for a minute, bitter cold as it was, to look at all the pretty things in the windows. Such passers-by as we saw were mostly business folk hurrying home to their dinners. Trade was done for the day, and done early, as it always is in that queen of cities, Vienna. Yet Sir Nicolas and I were at the very start of the greatest venture of our lives.

It seemed odd to me, I will say, to stand there in that old-town street of pretty shops and pretty women, and to remember what an errand bad brought us from Paris to the far end of Europe. Nor, I make sure, did it come home any the less to Sir Nicolas Steele. He had been crying out, ever since we left the Northern station, that failure was dogging our footsteps. He had stopped already before the shops of three jewellers and had refused to go in. And now, when we had found Lobmeyr's, and had only to turn the handle of their door to set the thing in train, what must he do but begin to laugh like a schoolboy and declare he couldn't go on with it.

"Sure," said he, rocking on his heels before the great glass window, "’tis a queer errand, I'm thinking."

"If that's your idea, sir," said I, "it's a pity you didn't stop in Paris. We shall do no good gaping here like schoolboys."

"But what if they won't take my references?"

"Ask me that when they have declined them. Count Horowitz's letter should be good enough for any shopkeeper in Vienna."

"Faith, ye're right there! but you forget that they might wire to Rome to confirm it."

"And if they do, what then? How's he to know that you're calling yourself Count Laon, or that the real Count Laon is in Paris? He'll think he's come here sudden and wants a word."

"That's true," said he, becoming very serious and even a bit nervous, I thought—"that's true; and I may very well pass for a Frenchman. Would you be asking for the big diamonds at once?"

"Certainly I would, sir. There's nothing to be got by beating about the bush. Say it's a commission from London. That and your letter will be enough."

He heard me out, still hesitating.

"Don't you think we'd do better in the morning?" he whispered, with his hand on the door of the shop.

"Sir," said I, for I knew the time had come when it must be neck or nothing, "if you want to turn your back on ten thousand pounds, which you can have almost for the asking, my advice is that you take the next train back to Paris."

"Well," said he, turning the handle suddenly, "you're a bold man, and ye've got the devil's own head on your shoulders. Bedad! I'll go through with it, if it lands the pair of us in the town jail before the morning."