CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE WOMAN IN THE GARAGE

“Wait!” said Larry. He was on the point of leaving the House of Death. “We may not get another opportunity of making a leisurely examination of these premises. I am curious about the side door.” He led the way to the secret door in the _salon_, closing it behind him, then down the steps he passed and paused opposite the engine-room.

“Here is the door to the yard, I think,” he said, and switched his flash-lamp over the wall.

The keyhole was difficult to find, but he discovered it after a while near the floor in the bottom right-hand corner. As he had expected, it opened on to a covered passageway from the road.

“Clever work,” he said in honest admiration.

He was in the yard looking at the wall through which he had come. Nothing like a door was visible. Instead he looked upon something which had the appearance of a window made up of four opaque panes. It stood out from the wall in the most natural fashion, a trim window-box filled with flowers on its ledge.

“Not much like a door!” said Larry, and added, “Clever work!”

He walked back to the gate and examined it closely. Then he returned to Harvey.

“The mystery of the automatic gate is solved,” he said. “As I suspected, it is possible to reach the house and enter the yard and garage without the servants knowing anything at all about it. The last time I was here, I noticed what looked to be two peep-holes placed at a distance of four feet apart and rather low. They couldn’t have been intended for purposes of observation because they were backed with iron. Did you notice anything about that car we saw in the laundry garage?”

“Yes, sir,” said Harvey, “there were two bars sticking out in front under the head-lamps,” and Larry nodded.

“I thought at first,” he said, “that it was some new kind of motor-car invention, but it is clear now just what they are intended for. A car is driven up to the gate, and those two bars fit in what I called the peep-holes; a lock is pressed back and the door opens, and presumably closes behind them, thus dispensing with the attendance of any servants and avoiding the inconvenience of their coming and going being noted by the people in the house. I think we will look at the garage, and then we will go,” he said.

The door of the garage was at the far end of the drive and extended across its whole width. Larry searched amongst his keys, and presently he found what he was looking for.

“I wondered what door this tumbler lock was on,” he said.

He slipped the key in the hole and turned it, and as he did so he heard a slight movement within the garage.

“Did you hear that?” he said in a whisper.

Harvey nodded, and drew his truncheon. Then suddenly Larry threw open the gates wide. He saw a car, but apparently the garage was empty of people. The wheels of the car were wet.

“That came in this morning,” said Larry.

There was no place where the smallest of men could conceal himself, he thought. And then he heard a scream, shrill and painful, the scream of someone in agony, and he sprang to the door of the big limousine and pulled it open. Then a tornado loosed itself at him--a great, gibbering shape leapt at the two men and by sheer weight flung them down, dropping his huge mass upon them.

Larry was stunned for a second, and then, as he struggled to his feet, he heard the door of the garage slammed and the click of the lock as the key was turned. The two men threw themselves at the door, but it did not give an inch.

“The woman!” cried Harvey suddenly, and pointed to the car.

There was an inert heap lying there, and Larry leapt on to the step and, lifting her out in his arms, carried her to where a ray of light penetrated from the small roof window.

It was a woman of fifty, gray and bedraggled. Her face had not known soap or water for weeks; her hands were almost black. But now through the grime her white face showed in a deathly grin, and the claw-marks of Blind Jake stood out in purple relief upon her lean throat.

“Get some water, Harvey; there’s a faucet there,” said Larry, loosening the woman’s blouse. “She’s alive,” he said. And then he realized. “My God!” he said in a low voice. “It is the charwoman!”

Whilst he attended to the poor wretched creature, Harvey had searched the garage and had discovered an axe. In five minutes the lock was smashed and the door was open.

“Take this gun,” said Larry, slipping his revolver from his pocket. “It hasn’t been much use to me, but if you see that swine, shoot him. Don’t argue with him or think you can stop him with your truncheon, Harvey.”

But Blind Jake had gone, as he knew. That blind man, with the most precious of his faculties destroyed, had again been a match for him.

The woman was showing some signs of a return to life. Larry had dragged her into the air and was sprinkling water on her neck and face. Her eyes fluttered and opened, and she looked up with a frown.

“Where is Miss Clarissa?” she asked thickly.

“That is what I am going to ask you,” said Larry.

The cab came soon after, and they carried the woman through the side door, up the steps, and through the beautiful _salon_. They paused to set her down in the reception room, and Larry looked round at the evidence of comfort and luxury, bought with the suffering and misery of God knows how many innocent souls who had died that this villainy should be gilded and scented and live in fragrance.

Then his eyes dropped upon the incongruous figure that lay on a thousand-pound Persian rug, who had done no harm but know and recognize Stuart, and must for that reason be condemned to hide in dark places under the care of a fiend like Blind Jake.

Strauss, the ex-convict butler, waited in the hall, nervously rubbing his hands.

“You’re not in this, are you?” asked Larry.

“No, sir,” said the man shakily. “I thought when you came that my gentleman had sent you, because I had--found a few things.”

“Like a black enamelled link, eh?” said Larry. “How many pairs did he have of those?”

“Two pairs, sir. I had to tell him when he asked me what had become of them, because really I did not steal them--he had half given them to me because three of the brilliants were missing.”

“Don’t worry, Strauss,” said Larry. “He has got them back now, though he had to burgle a pawnbroker’s to get them.”

A knot of idlers gathered on the pavement to watch the spectacle of two, apparently officials of a gas company, carry an unsavoury woman, who looked seventy, down the steps into the cab.

She had recovered consciousness before the cab had gone far, and was trembling violently, looking from one to the other of the men.

“You’re all right now, Emma,” said Larry kindly.

“Emma?” she repeated. “Do you know me, sir?”

“Yes, I know you,” said Larry.

“Then I’m safe?” she said eagerly. “Oh, thank God for that! You don’t know what I’ve been through! You don’t know what I’ve been through!”

“I can guess,” said Larry.

“Where are you taking her?” asked Harvey in a low voice. “I didn’t hear what you told the cabman.”

“I am taking her to my flat,” said Larry, and Sergeant Harvey looked his surprise. “I can’t afford to fill the hospitals with the witnesses for the crime,” said Larry with a faint smile. “And, besides, this woman is not ill; she’s just tired and hungry.”

“That’s right,” said Emma eagerly. “I know I must look terrible, but they never gave me a chance of washing myself. They dragged me from one hole to another. I’m not a common woman, sir, although I’ve done charwoman’s work. I was nursemaid and brought up a little girl, sir--the daughter of my missis. Brought her up like a lady, sir. Little Clarissa Stuart.”

“Clarissa Stuart?”

“I called her Clarissa, sir,” said Emma. “If I could only see her again!”

“You called her Clarissa,” said Larry slowly. “Was not that her name?”

“Yes, sir,” said the woman. “Clarissa Diana, but I used to call her Diana.”

Larry started back as though he had been shot.

“What is your name?” he asked in a husky voice.

“Emma Ward, sir. Diana Ward I called the young lady, but Diana Stuart is her real name, and her father is in London.”

“Diana Stuart!” repeated Larry slowly. “Then Diana Stuart is the heiress to whom Stuart left his money. Diana Stuart!” he repeated in a tone of wonder. “My Diana!”