CHAPTER XXIV.

THE LAUNDRY YARD

Larry paced the dormitory, sick with fear, terrified as he had never been before. He had searched the house from roof to cellar, had explored dusty and dark corners of which the occupants of Todd’s Home were unacquainted; but searchings and questionings produced nothing--nothing!

Within half an hour a cordon of plain-clothes men had been drawn round the house, and Larry had been relieved from the dormitory and set free to conduct his search elsewhere.

“There is no communication between this house and the next?” he had asked the clergyman.

“None whatever,” said John Dearborn without hesitation. “In fact, some years ago the noise from the laundry was so great and disturbing to my men that I compelled the proprietors of the building to put up a new wall, a sort of inner lining, to deaden the sound. It is no longer in the occupation of the company,” he said. “They went bankrupt, and the premises were taken over by a firm of provision merchants. I understand that they intended storing their goods in the laundry building.”

“That is the small building one can see over the gates at the end of the yard?” said Larry.

“That is so,” replied the superintendent.

Larry went up to the door of the empty house and examined it carefully; and a sergeant from Scotland Yard made a close inspection.

“I can tell you this, sir, that nobody has been in or out of this door for a very long time,” he said. Over the railings which enclosed a narrow area they could see through the dusty windows into a room which was the quintessence of dinginess. It was quite bare and innocent of furniture. Larry felt his heart sinking with every minute that passed. If he should lose her, if he should lose her!

Only then did he realize what this girl meant to him. She was a friend of less than a week, and yet all other matters and interests--friends, profession, success--none of these meant anything to him compared with that one slim girl. He would willingly have sacrificed every prospect he had in life to hold her hand once more, or to exchange with her a dozen words. In the power of Blind Jake! He reeled under the thought. It was maddening--grotesquely horrible!

He pulled himself together with a jerk. He would go mad if he allowed his mind to dwell upon that hideous possibility.

He had no time to think upon the Stuart case or its bearing on this disappearance. All his energy and agony of endeavour were concentrated upon one object, one discovery--Diana Ward.

He climbed over the wooden gates and explored the yard of the laundry; and here he found something which set his eyes on the trail again. There were wheel tracks, and they were comparatively new. The tracks of a motor-car, possibly two cars. He looked round the littered yard for a garage, and saw a black-looking door which had the appearance of closing some such building.

Sergeant Harvey, who had followed him over the gate, tried a pick-lock on the door, and after two attempts succeeded in forcing back the bolt of the lock. The doors were fixed on slides, and they went back easily and noiselessly, almost at a touch.

“They have been used recently,” said Larry.

There were two cars in the garage--a long-bonneted limousine and a small motor-van. Larry walked in, and there was light enough to see, for the day had not yet failed.

“Look!” cried Larry suddenly, pointing to the hood of the motor-van.

It had been newly painted; but clearly underneath the white paint which covered it was the faint impression of a word, badly and awkwardly painted by an amateur hand--the word “Laundry.”

“Do you remember, Harvey, Miss Ward telling us that there was a laundry van outside her flat the night they tried to abduct her? If she can identify this----” He stopped suddenly with a twinge of pain. If she were there to identify anything!

The limousine had recently been cleaned, and he took the precaution of jotting down the numbers of both cars. It might be, of course, that these machines were the legitimate property of the new owners of the building, and had been engaged only in perfectly innocent business. It might have been a coincidence that such a car was waiting in the Charing Cross Road the night Blind Jake tried to abduct the girl.

He closed the doors, and Harvey re-locked them.

“’Phone these numbers through to the Yard,” said Larry. “Ask the Registration Department to identify them!”

Harvey went off and Larry was left alone in the yard. He went again to the wheel-tracks. They had been made that morning, for a shower of rain had fallen in the night, and the newness of the markings was obvious.

He walked along to the laundry building proper--a new erection of brick, with ground-glass windows. Here, too, was a sliding door, and on the stone steps leading up was a foot-mark. He bent suddenly to look at the print.

Larry, in moments of excitement, was wont to act jerkily. And now his movements to an observer would seem sudden and unexpected. As he bent his head--

“Plok!”

It was a sound like a cork being discharged from a gaseous champagne bottle, only a little louder, a little more metallic. There was an answering crash near at hand, a splinter of wood fell upon Larry’s neck, and he jumped up with a start. A panel of the door was smashed as by a bullet. If he had not dropped his head at that moment to examine the footprint--Sunny would have stopped the morning papers! That, strangely enough, was the first thought that struck him.

Larry looked round quickly; he had recognized the sound as soon as he had heard it. There had been no report, but he had been fired at with a rifle or pistol fitted with a Maxim silencer. He had heard that “Plok!” before. His keen eyes ranged the windows of the building behind for a sign of smoke, but whatever there might have been must have been instantly dissipated. Then he noticed for the first time that the dormitory from whence the girl had disappeared commanded a view of the yard. He saw the open window, and with his exact sense of topography located the room. No other shot was fired, and he crossed the yard, keeping his eyes upon the backs of the two houses, ready to drop at the first flash of a rifle.

Harvey, on his way back, had opened a wicket in the bigger gate, and Larry stepped out into the street in a thoughtful frame of mind. He went straight back to the Home. The blind hawkers who used the Home were beginning to arrive. They came in ones and twos, tapping their way with their iron-shod sticks, and as they passed him on their way to the common room, a local officer identified them.

“They’re all decent citizens, eh?” said Larry. “None of them is on the crime-index?”

“None, sir,” said the man. “They’re all quite law-abiding people, and we’ve never had a complaint against any of them.”

Larry went up to the dormitory from whence he believed the shot had been fired. To his surprise, the door was locked and the officer was on duty outside.

“What is the meaning of this?” he asked sternly.

“The superintendent sent a message up, telling me that you wished to see me, sir,” said the detective. “I went down and found that he had sent no such message. When I came back, the door was locked.”

“From the inside?” asked Larry.

“Apparently, sir. There is no key in the lock.”

“Who brought the message?”

“The little fellow who opens the door of the place.”

“I know him,” nodded Larry. “What explanation did he give?”

“He said that somebody with the superintendent’s voice told him to go upstairs with the message.”

“Stand on one side,” said Larry, and with his foot kicked open the door.

The room was empty, but he sniffed.

“A rifle has been fired in here, probably when you were downstairs,” he said. “You understand that you are not to leave this room unless I personally or Sergeant Harvey come to you and bring a man to take your place.”

“Very good, sir,” said the crestfallen worker.

“But in the circumstances I’m not blaming you,” interrupted Larry with a faint smile. “We are dealing with an extraordinary gang, and they will use extraordinary methods--you cannot be expected to meet every move as it comes, let alone anticipate what their next will be.”

There was no doubt that the rifle had been fired in this room; he could smell the exploded cordite; the proof came when he found under the bed near the window the exploded shell of a cartridge. He descended to the superintendent’s office and found the Rev. John Dearborn a little perturbed.

“How long do you intend keeping your men here, Mr. Holt?” he asked. “Some of my fellows want to go to their dormitory to sleep.”

“I am keeping my men here until I get some proof that Miss Ward is not on the premises,” said Larry shortly, “and until I have found the gentleman who shot at me from the very dormitory in which she disappeared.”

“Shot at you?” said the other in surprise. “You don’t mean----”

“I mean just what I say,” said Larry. “Forgive me if I am brusque. Whilst you were talking to the detective who had been brought downstairs by a ruse I was shot at from that room and the door was locked.”

“It is most amazing,” said the Rev. John, shaking his head. “I cannot imagine a situation more trying to myself or more exciting for you.”

“Exciting!” repeated Larry, and laughed bitterly. “There will be excitement all right,” he said grimly, “but it will come later, when I have unravelled this tangle.”

And then his mordant humour asserted itself.

“You should put this situation into one of your plays, Mr. Dearborn,” he said, and he thought he saw the colour come to the man’s pale face.

“That is quite an idea,” replied the superintendent thoughtfully, “and I thank you for it. Have you ever seen any of my plays?”

“No, I have not seen them,” said Larry, “but I am going at the first opportunity to pay a visit to the Macready.”

The superintendent shook his head.

“I sometimes fear,” he said, “that they are not as good as some of my friends think they are, and I am disappointed that you have not seen one. But they go on producing them, and money comes in for the Home.”

“Who pays the cost of production?” asked Larry curiously. He welcomed any diversion from the overwhelming misery of his thoughts.

“A gentleman who is interested in my work,” replied Mr. Dearborn. “I have never met him, but he has never refused to produce a play of mine. Sometimes I think he does so because he wishes to help this Home.”

“He must have some good reason,” said Larry.

Conversation flagged after this. Once a telephone buzzed, and the superintendent took up a receiver from his table and listened.

“Yes, I think you had better,” he said, and hung up the receiver again. “A mundane question from the kitchen,” he smiled. “I have telephones fitted all over the house so far as our means allow us,” he added. “It saves so many journeys.”

Just then a deputation came from the common room with a grievance. The men of No. 1 Dormitory wish to go into their sleeping-places. Some of them made a practice of sleeping the clock round, and all of them, whether they wanted to retire at once or not, claimed their right to enter their dormitory.

“You hear?” said the superintendent. “It is rather difficult for me.”

Larry nodded.

“They can have beds at the nearest hotel,” he said, “and I will pay for them. Or they can sleep somewhere else. I don’t mind the beds being taken out. But nobody occupies that room until Miss Ward is found.”

He strolled out into the passage and walked to the common room. These poor men were entitled to an explanation, and he gave it, stating the case fairly and simply, and there was a chorus of approval even from the most obstreperous.

He had concluded his harangue and was standing in the passage with his back to the wall, his head on his breast, thinking, when he heard a commotion upstairs, and a cry, and leapt up the stairs two at a time. He got to the first landing and was turning, when he saw a sight that brought his heart into his mouth.

Walking slowly down the stairs toward him was Diana Ward. Her blouse hung in rags, so that the under-bodice and the snowy white of her shoulders were visible. She carried in one hand a compact Smith-Wesson revolver, and on her white face was a smile of triumph.

For a second Larry looked at her and then leapt up the remaining stairs to meet her, and caught her in his arms.

“My dear, my dear!” he said brokenly. “Thank God you have come back!”