CHAPTER XXVI.

BACK AGAIN

That sense of security, of peace, and of deep happiness was inexpressibly sweet, she thought, as she lay in Larry Holt’s arms. Presently she released herself, and in a few hurried words had said enough to send a small battalion of detectives racing to the dormitory and through the brick door, which she had left ajar.

Larry handed the girl to the care of Harvey and followed his men. The room where Diana had been imprisoned was empty. He stopped long enough to switch off the current, then joined the searchers. There was no doubt that this place, for all its unoccupied appearance, had regular tenants. They found rooms that had been built within rooms, a thin wall being erected within a few feet of each window. This meant that the house might be occupied at night, and lights might blaze in every apartment without anybody outside being the wiser.

Blind Jake had said no more than the truth when he had told the girl that there were plenty of ways out of the house. They found one in the cellar that led to an old disused rain-water sewer, and here pursuit was abandoned. None of the party except Larry, who always carried a small flash lamp, was equipped for a chase through the darkness.

Another exit led directly into the yard where Larry had found the garage. A third communicated with the kitchen of Todd’s Home.

Larry, realizing that his quarry had escaped, went back to the girl. He found her sitting in the superintendent’s office, the watchful Harvey embarrassingly close to her side--an attitude which was explained when the laughing girl lifted one of her arms, for Harvey, who was taking no risks, had handcuffed their wrists together!

“And very wise, too,” said Larry with a smile as the detective unfastened the irons. “Now, Mr. Dearborn, I want to have some sort of explanation of the mysterious happenings in this house.”

“I don’t think anything mysterious has happened here,” said Mr. Dearborn quietly. “You cannot hold me responsible for villainy which may have been perpetrated next door. I am told that there are doors communicating between these two houses, but of that I had not the slightest knowledge. If there was a man living next door----”

“There were six men living next door,” said Larry. “We found their beds and some of their clothing. From the fact that there were books, some of them open, it is pretty clear that they are not blind.”

Mr. Dearborn shrugged his despair.

“What can I do?” he asked. “In this house we are dependent entirely upon the loyalty of our inmates; and though it is possible sometimes to detect the presence of a stranger by his unusual footfalls, his voice or his cough, it is quite possible that these men made the freest use of the Home for the purpose of carrying on their nefarious work without our having the slightest knowledge of such things.”

This argument was so logical that Larry did not contest its truth. These cunning men who formed the gang might use the Home with impunity, if they exercised care in their movements and maintained silence. Frankly, he acknowledged the reasonableness of Mr. Dearborn’s argument.

“I quite appreciate the possibility,” he said. “It is rather unfortunate for you as well as for me. It might have been a great deal more unfortunate,” he added with truth. Though how unfortunately this adventure might have ended he had to learn when the girl told her story on the way to Scotland Yard.

“Dreadful, dreadful!” he shuddered. “My poor, poor child!”

His own relief had been so great that he felt physically ill. But no such reaction was visible in the girl, who grew calmer and brighter as the taxi neared Scotland Yard. She wore his raincoat, and they had stopped in the Edgware Road to allow her to buy a blouse, for she insisted upon going to Scotland Yard first to make her statement.

“I’m rather sorry for Dearborn,” he said. “He is a pathetic figure. Men who devote their lives to this kind of work may be excused even their feeble dramatic efforts. Did you notice how eagerly he shook hands with you?”

She looked at him sharply.

“Yes, I noticed that,” she said in a strange tone.

“Why, Diana,” he said, “what do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said lightly. “I mean that he took my hand, that is all, and shook it very heartily.”

“Well, there’s nothing in that,” said Larry with a smile.

“There is a great deal in that,” said the girl, “a great deal more than you can realize.”

He leaned back in the cab and laughed softly.

“You’re going to mystify me. I can feel it coming on,” he said, and she squeezed his arm affectionately.

He sent her up to 47 alone, and she had changed her torn blouse for the new purchase by the time he discreetly knocked at the door.

“By the way,” he said, “I forgot to ask you. Where did you dig up that deadly-looking weapon I saw in your hand as you were coming down the stairs?”

“From Blind Jake’s pocket,” she said. “Ugh! It was horrid touching him, but I wanted to be quite sure that I had some kind of weapon.”

“Undoubtedly you have a big end of the story,” he said. “We know now that Blind Jake and the man Lew----”

“Have you left him there?” she asked quickly.

He smiled a little wryly.

“I’ve made too many mistakes in this case to add to them,” he said. “No, I have taken this man to another institution where he is being looked after. Lew and Jake were the two men who were employed, either before or after the murder of Gordon Stuart,” he went on. “The gang has probably got a hold on Lew, and he was anxious to escape from their clutches or to be avenged upon them for some treachery they have committed, and he wrote the message which we found--on the strip of paper with the Braille characters. That fines the search down to one man, because we can find means of inducing Lew to understand whose hands he is in.”

“And the greatest discovery of all you haven’t touched,” she said quietly.

Larry got up from his chair, laughing, and paced the room, a favourite occupation of his.

“You’re an extraordinary girl,” he said. “No sooner do I think I have got the case set, than you produce something new, something more important in the shape of clues, and something generally,” he added pensively, “that upsets all my previous theories.”

“I don’t think this will,” she said. “I am referring to the woman upstairs.”

“What woman upstairs?” he asked, astounded.

“Do you remember I told you that Jake pointed with his thumb to the ceiling, and said if I had a face like hers----” She stopped.

“I’m sorry,” he said gently. “I’m a brute and a forgetful brute; but things have happened to-day which have driven the Stuart case out of my mind. And that reminds me,” he said, “I want to telephone.”

He called a number, and she recognized it as the number of the Trafalgar Hospital.

“I want the matron’s office, please,” he said, and whilst she was wondering where his mind had led him, he said: “Is that you, matron? It is I, Larry Holt. Yes, how do you do? Are the nurses you send out to cases having a slack time? I mean, are there plenty to go round? There are? Well, will you send a nice motherly lady to my address at Regent’s Gate Gardens? You know where I live? No, I’m not ill,” he smiled, “but I have somebody with me who isn’t too well--yes, a lady.”

He hung up the receiver and turned to meet the girl’s astonished eyes.

“Have you a lady staying with you?” she asked.

“I haven’t, but I shall have,” said Larry. “You’re not going back to Charing Cross Road to-night except to get the things you require; you’re coming up to my flat, and there you’re going to stay, chaperoned by a very nice nurse, and you’ll greatly oblige me if you’ll pretend that you’re a little bit under the weather. I must save my face.”

“But I can’t, it’s impossible!” she said, scarlet of face. “I couldn’t----”

“Oh, yes, you could,” said Larry. “Now you’re going to do as I tell you. Otherwise, it means that I must sit outside your flat all night catching my death of cold.”

Finally she consented. They dined together, and he took her to see two acts of the Dearborn play. They came out at the end of the second act, bewildered.

“But how could anybody put such awful stuff on the stage?” asked the girl on their way to his flat.

“It is rather amazing, isn’t it?”

Then Larry began to chuckle.

“You’re easily amused to-day,” she said.

“I’m very happy to-night,” he corrected. “It just occurred to me that Sunny will have to meet the nurse when she comes.”

“Whatever will he say?” she gasped.

“Well,” drawled Larry, “if the nurse insists there’s a lady ill in the house, Sunny will say, ‘Yes, madam,’ and will do his best to produce one!”

It was past eleven when they got to the flat. The elevators had stopped running at half-past ten, and they had to walk up the stairs.

“Watch your step,” warned Larry. “They light these stairways abominably.”

He went first, and she saw him pause on the top step of the second flight.

“Great Scott! Who’s that?” he asked.

Against his door a man was lying, doubled up and still. Larry leant over him and rang the bell, and Sunny came to the door.

In the flood of light thrown by the hall lamp Larry saw the face of the prostrate figure. He was breathing stertorously, and his face and his head streamed with blood.

“Sunny, has the nurse arrived?”

“Yes, sir,” said Sunny, looking down at the figure.

“Then she’ll be wanted,” said Larry quietly.

“Who is it?” asked Diana, peering round behind him.

“Flash Fred,” said Larry, “and as near to dead as makes no difference.”