CHAPTER XXXIX

Miles left the house in Merriton Street without any clear idea of what he was going to do. He was going back to Varley Street, because he was now quite sure that Kay was in Varley Street, but what he was going to do when he got there he had no idea. Useless to ring the bell again and question Mrs Green. He wondered what would happen if he were to pound on the front door till Nurse Long came down and then force his way in to look for Kay. He would probably get himself arrested, and then there would be no one to look for Kay. The phrase kept coming back—he’d got to look for Kay until he found her. But it was no use looking for her in No. 16. If he were to go there with a search warrant and a dozen police, it wouldn’t be any good, because Kay wouldn’t be there. They would have taken her through the hole in the wall into No. 18, and that was where he must look for her. At once. Before anything happened.… Nothing was going to happen except that he was going to find Kay.

It was when he was actually walking up Varley Street that he remembered Barnabas Row. Barnabas Row ran parallel with Varley Street. It was the lane that ran at the bottom of the Varley Street back-yards. The garage was there. He had been round to it with the police, and as he thought about the garage and about Barnabas Row, a picture began to form in his mind of a narrow, ill lighted lane, a place from which it might be possible to approach the back of those Varley Street houses. As soon as he had realized this picture he knew exactly what he was going to do. The phrase “breaking and entering” described it very appropriately. He was certainly going to enter, and if he couldn’t enter without breaking, he was going to break. It was extraordinary how the weight which had been upon him lifted as he turned out of the Square into Barnabas Row.

The picture in his mind had been surprisingly accurate. If there was a darker and more deserted-looking lane anywhere in London, he had yet to come across it. Not a light showed in any one of the ill-assorted jumble of buildings between which it ran, and the distant glimmer of the street-lamp at the corner soon ceased in any way to mitigate the gloom.

He knew that the garage was at the back of No. 18. Like everything else in the Row it was now dark and silent. Feeling along the wall, he found a narrow cut or passage which seemed to follow the side of the garage. It was very narrow indeed, and it ended in another wall. No, it didn’t end; it turned at right angles and went on behind the garage. After a few steps it opened out. He had to pick his way over odd bricks, tin cans, rubble heaps, and broken bottles. Then, right across his path, a railing. As far as he could make out, the garage must run back into at least part of what had been the yard or garden of 18 Varley Street. A railing had been run across the lot—and a nasty brute of a railing it was going to be to climb. There was barbed wire on it and a chevaux-de-frise of iron spikes, but in the end he got over it by dint of making a pad of his overcoat, which suffered a good deal in the process. He had still to get into the house, but any house can be burgled by a desperate young man who has ceased to care whether he lands himself in prison or not.

He was presently inside a stuffy, pitch-dark room on the basement floor. He took it to be the scullery or kitchen. Yes, the scullery, for it had the feel of a small, enclosed place. It was icy cold. The stuffy smell was not the smell of food. It was the smell of a damp unused place which had forgotten the kindly heat of a fire.

He went forward, groping for a way into the house. Bumping against a door-post, he came to the empty and deserted kitchen. The whole house had that same deserted feeling. It was curious that Miles’ reaction should have been, “Kay in this horrible place!” and not, “Then Kay isn’t here.”

He got out of the kitchen and found his way up a steep flight of steps to the ground-floor level. A door at the top of the steps brought him to the hall. Like both the other doors he had encountered it was open, and open in rather a curious way, as if a careless push had left it in a half-way position. He crossed the hall, came to the foot of the stairs, and stood there listening, one hand on the newel-post, the other stretched out before him. Up to that moment he had heard no sound in the house or been aware of any presence except his own. His certainty that Kay was there sprang from a deep inward conviction, and not from any sound or sense. But now, as he lifted his foot to the bottom step, for the first time sound, actual sound, reached his ears. It came from somewhere above him in the house, and it was of two kinds—one formless and blurred, and the other quite faint but unmistakeably nearer.

In straining to catch this second sound he lost the blur. He had to strain, because what he had heard puzzled him. He couldn’t place it. He thought something moved, stopped, and moved again draggingly. But what moved like that? An animal? A hurt animal? A dog? A dog would whine.… A cold horror pricked him, and he took the stairs three at a time in the dark. They ran up straight, turned at the half landing, and went by six steps more to the drawing-room floor. As he came round the corner, he saw a line of light under the drawing-room door, and as he jumped for the landing, the line widened suddenly and the door swung in. There was a man before him, holding to the door-post, swaying. He heard him groan, and beyond in the lighted room he heard Kay make a faint sound that would have been a scream if she had had enough breath to scream with.

The things that happened next were so mixed up that they all seemed to happen together. Kay saw the door swing in, and she saw Cal Morgan, ghastly, with a bandage round his head. She heard him groan, and she screamed, or tried to scream. And then Miles—Miles was in the room, and Mr Harris whipped round with a pistol in his hand. This time Kay really screamed. But she did something more than that. She sprang with all her strength at Mr Harris and hung upon his arm, and almost in the same moment Miles made a dive at his knees, the pistol went off, and they all came down together with a thud that shook the room.

“Attaboy!” gasped Mr Cal Morgan weakly. And slipped to the ground. And fainted.