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Southern Cross, Volume 8, Issue 31, 17 November 1900, Page 14

The young lady looked anxiously, almost timidly, at the bust. Hamilton eonld see that she even turned slightly pale. ‘ Who is the artist ?’ she asked, in a faltering tone of voice. ‘ Oaradlni Alphonso Caradini, replied the Greek, also speaking in Italian ; ‘ a young artist of very great promise. He does a good deal of work in this country now, and is often in London.’ When the name was spoken, Carlotta gave a little sigh of relief, and the colour returned to her cheeks. No one except Hamilton had noticed the extent of her momentary agitation, and he fancied that even now a look of perplexity lingered in her face. 4 It’ a chance resemblance,’ he said, partly to relieve the girl from embarrassment, and partly to put an end to a situation that might possibly result in complicating issues. Then, returning to English, and addressing Mrs Ravendale, he added —‘ Where do you the pedestal to stand ? Just here, where Mr Macropolo has placed it ?’ ‘ I think the position could not be improved.’ 1 Well, that is all, I think, Mr Maeropolo. lam much obliged to you for the care and trouble you have taken.’ The dealer made a polite gesture acknowledging the compliment, and prepared to depart. When I next see Signor Caradini,’ he said, bowing to Mrs Ravendale, ‘ I shall have pleasure in informing him that this trifle from his chisel has found a home with such an appreciative patron of art.’ When he had gone, Carlotta was still examining the marble figure. Hamilton approached her, and as Mrs Ravendale was giving instructions for the removal of the litter, the two young people found themselves for the moment alone. 4 It is curious,’ murmured Carlotta. 4 Henri Poiteau once insisted on modelling my hand. It is certainly the same shape as this child’s.’ She held one hand against its marble presentment. 4 They closely resemble each other,’ he answered.

‘ Bat look at this also,’ she continued, raising her other hand, and directing Hamilton’s attention to a ring she was wearing. It was of old and very carious workmanshiprecognisable among a hundred similar trinkets, for within an octagonal bezel was set a sardonyx with a Maltese cross carved in relief upon the stone, the hoop of the ring being edged with an elaborate and symmetrical scroll Delicately chiselled on the corresponding finger of the child’s band was a ring of identical pattern. ‘Hamilton’s eyes met those of Carlotta. He read her thoughts at a single glance. ‘lt may be,’ he said, speaking soft and low, ‘ that Alphonso Caradini is Henri Poiteau. But do not, I beg of you, Signorina, think of such things just now. Here comes Mrs ilavendale.’ ‘The man seem to haunt me,’ murmured Carlotta, as she turned aside.

Hamilton did nob care to accept Mrs Ravendale’s pressing invitation to remain for lunch. His part in the house had been played ; and even now he was beginning to feel the reaction from the excitement that bad carried him successfully through the ordeal. He was elated, however, by the consciousness that dust had certainly been thrown in the eyes of Macropolo. The dealer must have o-one away in the conviction that after all there was nothing mysterious in the purchase of this piece of statuary and its despatch to the very house where the daughter of Stephano Garcia had taken up her residence. He must have seen that the doctor had no wish to hide anything as to his acquaintance with the girl or as regards his own name and calling. Macropolo had come, as Hamilton knew from the conversation overheard from behind the balk of timber, deliberately to play the spy in this bouse : but he would have gone away with at least some of his suspicions lulled to rest. If

the flight of Cevanci yet remained undiscovered, the chances of a successful issue to the night’s adventure seemed assured. There was still, however, Ihe afternoon to put in.' After a chtfp in the grill room of one of the Northumberland Avenue Hotels, Hamilton resolved to take the detective chief’s advice, and go to a matinee. He tried to sit out the play, a three act farce, with outward enjoyment, laughing when those around him laughed, and applauding when others applauded. For he quite well knew that 4 the Angel’s ’ watchful eyes were almost for certain upon him, and he recognised that only a little more acting on his part was required to complete the process of blinding her vigilance, and setting to rest her fears lest some immediate surprise were in store for her and her confederates. At last the weary farce was over, and through the gathering darkness of evening he set out for home. There he ordered tea and toast, and while it was being served he gently broke the news to the surprised Mrs Brown that again that night he would require the key of the back gate, that his gas was to be left burning in his rooms as if he were there all the time, and that any caller was simply to be told that he was nngaged and could not be disturbed. He promptly smothered the landlady’s really justifiable curiosity by the assurance that in a day or two he would be able to tell her fully the reasons for bis strange procedure. The hours dragged towards eight o’clock. Hamilton was too nervous and excited to read. He paced his rooms with an eye almost continuously fixed on the clock. At last it was time to take his departure, and with a feeling of relief that the period of forced inaction was drawing to a close, he stole from the house by the back yard and the quiet, unlighted right-of-way. At the hotel, which had been fixed for his waiting, another long and anxious spell of uncertainty supervened. He dallied over a glass of ale, toyed with a cigar, and fooled over the last edition of the evening paper ; but be hardly knew what he drank, smoked, or read. At last, shortly before nine o’clock, the promised messenger put in an appearance.

‘ Everything is ready,’ said the detective, sitting down at a little sidetable. ‘ But I wish to explain one or two things to you here. Yon don’t mind being one of a rather crowded party in a furnituie van ?’ ‘ What in all the world do you mean, Mr Scott ? ’ enquired Hamilton, thoroughly non-plussed by this extraordinary question. ‘ Just this,’ replied the officer, with a smile. ‘ Thirty constables are to drive from police station in a furniture van. They will not go too near to the Soho courtyard until the signal is given that the men we are after are assembled, and then we shall have the place surrounded in a jiffy. How come along. We 1 aveu’t too much time to lose. That’s right; button up your coat, and take no chances of being recognised by anyone.’

It was amidst a good deal of mild chaff and banter that, in the police station yard, the huge pantechnicon was packed with its human freight. Sitting on the floor down each side of the waggon, the thirty odd constables, some in uniform and others in plain clothes, were packed pretty nearly as tightly as sardines in a tin. Hamilton had a place at the far end, and when the doors were swung to, and darkness complete and" silence absolute prevailed, a strange, eerie feeling came over him. He seemed to be in a hearse with a crowd of dead men ; although the bodies to right and to left were warm and breathing. Then the jostling over the streets brought to his mind the great prison van, whose opaque panels his questioning eyes had many a time tried to pierce. Surely the load borne now by this ordinary-looking furniture wagon, was just as weird and curious as any that ‘ Black Maria ’ had ever carried. Next came a halt, and then waiting in dead silence for

a period of time which seemed to Hamilton like the eternity of the tomb. At last his quick and straining ears caught some harried words spoken to the driver, and at a sharp trot the van rolled on. Round just one corner, and then there was the flash of lights ; and the next minute Hamilton was scrambling to his feet amidst a crowd of helmeted figures. A quiet tall man was in command, and each one seemed to have been allotted beforehand, and to know, his place. In a moment a surging crowd had swarmed from tenements and public-houses, but they were kept back by the stalwart, uniformed barricade. Within this Hamilton stood, and for the first time he caught sight of the detective chief, Mr St. John. ‘ Come with me,’ said the latter, touching the doctor’s shoulder. And together they entered the courtyard. Everything ,was still there, but the gleam of a single bull’s-eye lantern showed a group of constables clustering around the doorway. ‘ Seven men passed in, just after ten o’clock,’ whispered Mr St. John, ‘ all close upon each other’s heels. We have every possible exit watched —back and front. There are some of our men even on the roof of the adjoining premises. They cannot escape us. I expect no resistance. These fellows never do fight when they see themselves hopelessly overpowered.’ ‘ What shall I do ?’ asked Hamilton. ‘Just you stick to me, and don’t be flurried.’ ‘ Rat, tat, tat,’ resounded a sharp knock on the door, and Hamilton’s heart almost stood still. No answer; no one seemed to move within. ‘ Rat, tat, tat,’ again. Again silence unbroken. ‘ Open in the name ot the Law,’ cried out a stentorian voice. There was no reply. ‘ Bang it in,’ came the curt order from the same speaker, and with a thud from some log op other heavy implement nsed as a battering ram the timbers of the door were shivered and splintered. Two more blows, and the entire framework came down with a crash. Everything was dark inside, but the flare of bull’s-eyes showed a clear entrance, and the constables rushed in. Lights were flashed all over the long gallery which, with thecurtainedoff sections, comprised the entire premises. The screens of tapestry were dragged aside, the scanty furniture was pushed here and there, every possible hiding-place behind marble groups and pedestals was explored. Except for the police themselves there was not a living being in tbe place. Hamilton remained rooted to the spot where he had taken bis stand. His mind was simply overwhelmed with dismay and shame —dismay at the complete failure of his plans, shame at the fiasco of which be felt he w'ould ever be remembered as tbe central figure. His feet tottered under him, and he reached out to tbe fable for support. In doing so he touched the chimney of the lamp, which he had noticed on the occasion of his daylight visit to the premises. A cry escaped him —not of pain, but of joy- “ Feel this glass, Mr St. John !’ he exclaimed. ‘lt is burning hot. These men cannot have left the place a couple of minutes.’ ‘ Ah ! then they haven’t escaped us yet,’ muttered the officer in grim reply. CHAPTER XIY. What the Meshes Heed. It was absolutely certain that the conspirators, when their meeting was disturbed by the summons of the police, had blown out the light and decamped. As Mr St. John had explained to Hamilton, the entry of seven men into the courtyard .just after ten o’clock had been noted by the detectives told off for this preliminary work of observation. These

men had certainly not come out by the way they had gone ‘i Q i f° r > without a minute's unnecessary delay after the covey had been marked down, the van containing the load of constables had been brought up and the place surrounded. There was no means of exit by the back, a large three-storeyed warehouse effectively blocking escape in that direction. The courtyard itself had never ceased to be under the dose watch of the police, and none of the fugitives had left the statuary gallery on this side. The adjoining premises on the other side were under careful surveillance, and would be opened and searched should the necessity arise. Meanwhile, the chances were that the dash for freedom had been made by way of the upper floor and the roof. The premises above, with which those below had no communication, were used as a store for second-hand furniture by a dealer who had a shop a little distance further along the street. The gathering crowd, and the general excitement caused by the sudden appearance of a large force of police officers, bad quickly drawn this man to the spot, and, immediately that a systematic search for the fugitives came to be instituted, he threw open the big upper room in his tenancy for the inspection of the officers. There was a good deal of miscellaneous lumber in the place, but only a few minutes were required to show that no one was in hiding on this flat. One of the first steps when the raid had been made was to keep the roof of the building, and indeed of all adjoining buildings, under close observation. Men had been detailed beforehand for this duty, and had started off at once to take up their posts. The report brought to St. John was that most certainly no one had escaped, or tried to escape, in that direction.

All these avenues of exit being eliminated, it now became certain that there was some place of concealment beneath the statuary gallery. But close inspection failed to reveal any cellar door, .or any trap door indicating the existence of a regularly constructed chamber there. However, the fugitives could not have vanished into space, and the flooring would have to be torn up if necessary. Two constables were despatched to procure the requisite tools, and the search for any concealed opening was continued. In a little time these efforts were rewarded, one of the detectives drawing attention to the fact that a heavy block of statuary stood partly on a separate square of flooring, the deal boards being sawn right across at a distance of a few feet. Here might be a trap-door; but the apparently detachable portion of the floor seemed firm and unyielding. To raise the massive block of marble resting on the timbers would have required the united efforts of several men.

While examining the position, a thought occurred to Hamilton’s mind. When Macropolo had been exhibiting the statuary, he had revolved several of the groups on their pedestals, and the yonng doctor had been struck by the fine workmanship which had so delicately poised these heavy weights that the touch of a child’s hand almost could move them into any desired position. The remembrance suggested an experiment. He stretched out both hands, rested them on the marble mass that cumbered the supposed trap-door, and pushed firmly. There were signs of yielding, and be had only sightly to alter the position of his hands aiid press a second time, for the huge block to swing right round and clear, of the flooring. The marble group, with the porphyry plinth supporting it, was pivoted on one of the joists just beyond the square, and revolved freely at a height of only a fraction of an inch from the deal boards. When the officers returned with half-a-ddzen crowbars, these tools had not to be called into requisition ; for a small iron ring countersunk into the now fully exposed surface of the floor section showed it to be what the

I vigilant eyes of the detective had suspected—a skillfully contrived and carefully concealed trap door. To get the lid off this aperture was the work of an instant. A bull’s-eye, flashed into the darkness below, showed not a cellar or chamber of any considerable size but a vertical shaft of about eight feet in depth. When he saw this, St. John, who had concealed his elation over the discovery of the trap door, was again seriously disconcerted. He bit his underlip with vexation. Those fellows have had every provision made for a surprise,’ he whispered to Hamilton. ‘l’m afraid they’ve got clear away after all.’ ‘ How ? Where ?’ ‘ This looks like a regularly constructed subterranean passage. Where it leads to I don’t know. But that’s what I’ve got now to ascertain. Saying these words, the officer dropped into the cavity. ‘ I’m clear,’ he called out after a minute. ‘ Come down some one else, and then lower a light.’ The doctor was next in the hole in the floor, and without asking anyone’s leave be slipped over the edge, and releasing his hold disappeared into the shaft. (To be continued).