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Page 64
On a similar plane, it was in his personal experience that
weak-minded persons, possessed with a desire to do something out
of the common, had often planned and perpetrated apparent
physical phenomena, and created an appearance of supernatural
visitations, only exposed after great difficulty by professional
research. Along such lines, therefore, this man was prepared to
operate, and he believed it might be possible that a maniac, in
possession of some physical secret, would be found among the
inhabitants of the manor house. He did not, however, elaborate
this opinion, but kept it to himself. Indeed, the human element
of jealousy, so often responsible for the frustration of the
worthiest human ambitions, was not absent from the minds of the
four now concerned with this problem.
Each desired to solve it, and while no rivalry existed among them,
save in the case of the two older men, it was certain that the
eldest of the four would not lose his hold on his own theory, or
be at very vital pains to stultify it. All, however, were fully
conscious of the danger before them, and Frith, from the first,
directed that none was to work alone, either in the Grey Room or
elsewhere.
At noon a telegram arrived for Mr. Frith from Scotland Yard. It
recorded the fact that Peter Hardcastle was dead, and that
examination had revealed no cause for his end. The news reached
Sir Walter at once, and if ever he rejoiced in the death of a
fellow-creature, it was upon this occasion. It meant unspeakable
relief both for him and his daughter.
The detectives began their operations after a midday meal, and
having first carefully studied the Grey Room in every visible
particular, they emptied it of its contents, and placed the
pictures, furniture, and statuette outside in the corridor. They
asked for no assistance, and desired that none should visit the
scene of their labors. The apartment, empty to the walls, they
examined minutely; with the help of ladders, they investigated the
outer walls on the east and south side; and they probed the chimney
from above and below. They searched the adjoining room--Mary's
old nursery--to satisfy themselves that no communication existed,
and they drove an iron rod through the walls in various directions,
only to prove they were of solid stone, eighteen inches thick
within and two feet thick without. There was no apartment on the
other side of the chamber. It completed the eastern angle of the
house front, and behind it, inside, the corridor terminated at an
eastern window parallel with the Grey Room oriel, but flat and
undecorated--a modern window inserted by Sir Walter's grandfather
to lighten a dark corner. Not a foot of the walls they left
untested, and they examined and removed a portion of the paper upon
them also. Then, taking up the carpet, they broke into the
flooring and skirting boards, but discovered no indication that
the grime and dust of centuries had ever been disturbed. The
desiccated mummy of a rat alone rewarded their scrutiny. It lay
between great timbers under the planking--beams that supported
the elaborate stucco roof of a dwelling-room below.
To the ceiling of the Grey Room they next turned their attention,
fastened an electric wire to the nearest point, and, through a
trap-door in the roof of the passage, investigated the empty
space between the ceiling and the roof. Not an inch of the massive
oaken struts above did they fail to scrutinize, and they made
experiments with smoke and water, to learn if, at any point, so
much as a pin-hole existed in the face of the stucco. But it was
solid, and spread evenly to a considerable depth. They studied it,
then, from inside the room, to discover nothing but the
beautifully modeled surface, encrusted with successive layers of
whitewash. The workmanship belonged to a time when men knew not
to scamp their labors and art and craft went hand in hand. Such
enthusiasms perished with the improvement of education. They died
with the Guilds, and the Unions are not concerned to revive them.
The detectives had finished this examination when, at an hour in
the late afternoon, Henry Lennox and Dr. Mannering returned. The
authorities had been informed of the death of Septimus May, and
desired that no more than the ordinary formalities should be taken,
unless their representatives at Chadlands thought otherwise. But
they did not. They were now convinced that no communication
existed between the Grey Room and the outer world, and they
declared their determination to watch in it during the coming night.
As a preliminary to this course, however, they examined each piece
of furniture and every picture and other object that they had
removed from the room. These told them nothing, and presently they
restored the chamber in every particular, re-laid and nailed the
carpet, and placed each article as it had stood when they arrived.
They continued to decline assistance, and made it clear that nobody
was to approach the end of the corridor in which they worked.
Alive to the danger, but believing that, whatever its quality, four
men could hardly be simultaneously destroyed, they prepared for
their vigil. Nor did they manifest any fear of what awaited them.
Facts, indeed, may be stubborn things, but even facts will not
upset the convictions of a lifetime. Not one of the four for an
instant imagined that a supernatural explanation of the mystery
existed. Their minds were open, and their wits, long trained in
problems obscure and difficult, assured them that the problem was
capable of solution and within the power of their wits to solve.
They apprehended no discovery from the watch to be undertaken;
but, at Frith's orders, they set stolidly about it, as a
preliminary to the proceedings of the following day. Once proved
that the murderous force was powerless against men prepared and
armed against it, and the practical inquiry as to these strange
deaths would be entered upon.
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