CHAPTER XXXI.

FRED LENDS HIS KEYS

It had been Diana Ward who had called Larry’s attention to the great rusty boiler at one end of the house, the boiler which had supplied the steam and the power for the laundry. Larry tried the thick iron door which opened into the furnace, but it was fast. He tugged again and it did not move.

“Nobody could be here,” he said, shaking his head. “What do you think, Harvey?”

“They would suffocate anyway in there, sir,” replied Sergeant Harvey.

The girl was looking distressed.

“Is there nowhere else?” she asked. “I did hope----”

She did not finish her words.

“No, miss, we’ve searched the whole of the place now,” said the sergeant. “Would you like that door forced open, sir?” he asked. “It will take some hours.”

Larry shook his head.

“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “I am inclined to agree with you that if anybody was concealed in the boiler, supposing there were room enough, which is unlikely, they would die of suffocation.”

“Do you think,” asked the girl as they came away, “that Mr. Grogan was telling the truth? I know he was,” she added quickly. “I don’t know why I ask such stupid questions.”

“Oh, he was telling the truth, all right,” said Larry. “Fred isn’t a model of virtue, but in this case I believe him. It’s just the luck of the game,” he said bitterly. “Sometimes I feel that I’m never going to fathom this mystery.”

“It will be solved, and solved within a week,” she said, and she spoke with such assurance that he could only stare at her.

“Then you’re going to solve it,” he said, “for I have reached the point, and it is the most dangerous point that a detective can arrive at, when I am suspicious of everybody. Suspicious of Dr. Judd, of the innocent Mr. Dearborn, of Flash Fred, the Chief Commissioner, and you,” he added good-humouredly. But she did not smile.

“I wondered how long it would be before you suspected me,” she said gravely.

She went off with Harvey and he returned to the hospital, for he had a few more questions to ask the injured crook.

Flash Fred listened attentively, and when Larry had finished:

“God knows I have never trusted a policeman in my life,” he said piously, “but I think you’re different, Mr. Holt. In one of my pockets you will find the key of my safe deposit. The hospital people have the clothes. It’s the deposit in Chancery Lane, and I’m trusting you,” he said whimsically. “There are things in that box that I shouldn’t like anybody to see, but you will find what you are looking for without disturbing them. There’s a bundle of war stock,” he said uneasily, “which I bought by the sweat of my brow.”

“Somebody sweated, I’ll bet,” said Larry cheerfully. “You needn’t be afraid, Fred. I shan’t pry into your secrets, nor shall I use anything I find there to jail you.”

Fred was ill at ease.

“I knew I was taking a risk when I told you about this business,” he said, “because you were certain to go farther in it, and I was just as certain to help you. If I’d been out and about, it would have been easy, because I could have given you the keys.”

“What are the keys?” asked Larry.

“They’re duplicates that I had made,” said Fred without a blush. “Strauss got them from the doctor’s key-ring when he was asleep and took the impressions. Strauss ain’t a bad fellow, but he dopes; I never did hold with those evil practices,” said the virtuous Fred. “You want a clean eye and a clear brain to get on in life, don’t you, Mr. Holt?”

“And eight nimble fingers, plus two nippy thumbs,” said Larry.

He secured the keys without difficulty, and half an hour later he walked into Room 47, humming a tune and jingling Flash Fred’s nefarious possessions in his pocket.

Diana, after a great deal of persuasion, had been induced to take up her residence under Larry’s eye. The motherly nurse had become a permanent institution at Regent’s Gate Gardens, a circumstance which was not wholly to the liking of Mr. Patrick Sunny, who found himself forced to sleep on a camp bed in the kitchen.

“I am sorry to inconvenience you, Sunny,” said Larry Holt that night, “and it is an inconvenience, I suppose?”

“Yes, sir,” said Sunny. “It is an inconvenience.”

“Not a painful one, I hope?”

“No, sir,” said Sunny. “It is not a painful one.”

“The lady was in danger,” said Larry, and this Sunny knew because the matter had been discussed very freely in his presence, “and it was impossible to leave her in her apartment.”

“Yes, sir,” agreed Sunny. “What collar will you be wearing to-day, sir?”

“Any old collar,” said Larry with a smile. “Anyway, Sunny, the lady is safe sleeping in this flat.”

“No, sir,” said Sunny, and Larry was shocked, for it was the first time in his life that Sunny had ever disagreed with him.

“No?” he said incredulously. “Didn’t you hear what I said? I said the lady is safe here.”

“No, sir,” said Sunny. “I’m very sorry, sir, and I beg your pardon.”

“But no you mean, I suppose? Why isn’t she safe?”

“Because you’re not safe, sir,” said Sunny calmly, “and if you’re not safe, the lady’s not safe, sir.”

Larry laughed.

“All right, have your own way,” he said; “and, Sunny----”

“Yes, sir.”

“Will you close the kitchen door to-night? I could hear you turning around in your bed and it woke me up.”

“Very good, sir, I will close the kitchen door,” said Sunny, and in truth he did.

After Larry had gone to bed and the flat was in silence, Sunny carried his little camp-bedstead into the hall, placed it so that its foot was about fifteen inches from the door, balanced a broom, the head against the door, the end of the handle resting on the bed, and then he retired. But he shut the kitchen door.

At two o’clock in the morning a key was placed noiselessly in the lock and the door was pushed open a few inches, and the broom fell ruthlessly on Sunny’s head. It might have brained him, but, by a fortunate accident, didn’t.

Larry heard three shots fired in rapid succession and leapt out of bed and came into the passage, gun in hand. He saw an empty camp-bedstead, an open door, but Sunny was gone. He ran down the stairs and met that worthy man returning, leading by the collar a diminutive ruffian upon whose evil face was stamped a twisted grin of pain, for he had a bullet in the fleshy part of his leg.

“Bring him in,” said Larry, and closed the door.

Diana was standing in the passage when the man was marched through and hastily withdrew, to reappear again at the informal inquiry which Larry instituted.

It was an inquiry prefaced by a respectful apology on the part of Sunny.

“I beg your pardon, sir, for taking the loan of your pistol,” he said, “and as to my bed being in the passage and disturbing you----”

“Say no more about that, Sunny my lad,” said Larry with a grateful glance at his valet. “We’ll talk about that afterwards. Now, my boy, what have you to say for yourself?” He addressed the unpleasant-looking prisoner.

“He ain’t got no right to use firearms,” said the man hoarsely.

Larry thought his hoarseness was due to his emotion, but it would seem that it was his natural voice.

“I’m shot, I am! I was coming down the stairs as quiet and as peaceful as possible when this fellow came out and shot me.”

“Innocent child!” said Larry unpleasantly. He felt over the man’s pocket and took out a long-bladed knife, the edge of which he tested with his finger and thumb. It was razor-sharp.

Larry looked at the man again. He was about thirty-five, hollow-cheeked and sunken-eyed.

“Let me see your hands,” said Larry, and the man, with a scowl, put them out. “Have you any convictions?”

“No, sir,” said the man sullenly.

“Who sent you here?”

“Find out!”

“I am going to find out,” said Larry softly, “and you will be a little damaged in the finding. Who sent you here?”

“I’m not going to tell,” said the man.

“I think you will,” said Larry, and led him into the kitchen and shut the door.

When the police arrived ten minutes later they took charge of a very shaky man.

“He has told all he knows,” said Larry. “He was sent here to cover another man who escaped. He swears he does not know who the other man was, but it was evidently not Blind Jake.”

“How did you induce him to tell?” asked the girl, a little fearfully.

“I threatened to wash him,” said Larry, and he spoke no more than the truth. “It was not the threat of the washing, of course,” he explained, “it was the being in that room alone with me and the fact that I could strip off his coat without an effort, and the possibility that the washing was merely a preliminary to some form of horrible torture which I had invented which made him talk--his wound is nothing, by the way. It will probably be healed by the time he sees the divisional surgeon. And now I think we can all go to bed. I want to see you, Sunny, before you retire for the night.”

What he said to Sunny set that stolid man strutting for the rest of the week.