When Sims had complimented Ben on his brain, he had realised there was no danger in the compliment and that it could lead the said brain into no greater display of subtlety than Sims’s own brain was capable of. Once he had definitely placed Ben in the category of uneducated people who could nevertheless, when driven to extremity, do surprising things, he had increased his watchfulness; and he had subsequently read Ben like a book.
He was not surprised that Ben showed courage and kept his mouth closed despite the threat of Don Manuel’s knives. He was not surprised, as he counted five in the cellar, that Ben might guess the bluff and still keep his mouth closed. He was not surprised that Ben should go one farther and tell a wild story concerning Molly Smith. But he knew the story was a lie, and that it marked the limit of Ben’s brain. For, if the story were true, why should he have taken such pains previously to withhold it?
This evidence of Ben’s limitations and psychology had given Sims confidence that his last trick, which he had had up his sleeve before entering the cellar, would succeed. He had, of course, heard nothing to cause the hurried exit, and the exit had merely provided an excuse for leaving Miss Holbrooke and Ben together without arousing their suspicions. Alone, they would naturally exchange confidences. Sharp ears outside the door would overhear those confidences. ‘Yes, is it not time,’ reflected Sims complacently, as he began to ascend the stone staircase after having possessed himself of the confidences, ‘that I paid my own brain a little compliment?’
He wound up the stairs smiling, but all at once, just before he reached the top, the smile vanished. A breeze came towards him, as from an open front door, and voices. Sims realised, with a twinge of abrupt annoyance, that something was happening upstairs, after all!
Sims was a good linguist. Spanish was among seven languages he could speak fluently. He had no difficulty, therefore, in understanding what the voices were saying.
‘It’s no use protesting, Don Manuel,’ said a sharp official voice, ‘and I may remind you that to protest, in a case like this, is to raise suspicions.’
‘Suspicions!’ exclaimed Don Manuel piously. ‘What should the police suspect me of?’
‘The police might suspect you of many things,’ answered the official voice, ‘which makes it all the more important for you to avoid prevarication. There have been a couple of murders not so very far from here—’
‘Virgen Santa! Have I then committed two murders?’
‘Have you?’
‘Oh, yes! Now hang me like a dog!’
‘Perhaps I will one day, Don Manuel. We’re still looking for the fellow who killed a little boy in a wood eight months ago. But if you didn’t commit these two latest murders—’
‘Dios! Of course I did not!’
‘Then help us to catch the one who did.’
‘And who is that?’
‘Well, we’re not sure yet, but there are three suspects.’
‘Then why worry about me? Must you have four?’
‘Four have been concerned in one murder before now. Still, no one is accusing you of anything yet, Don Manuel, beyond your own attitude.’
‘My attitude? Ho! And what should that be?’
‘Helpful.’
‘Well—is it not?’
‘You seem anxious that I should not enter.’
‘Demonio! Who likes the police?’ muttered Don Manuel. ‘Why do you want to enter?’
Sims, on the stairs, cursed him for a fool.
‘To search for the people who are suspected,’ answered the officer.
‘Oh! And who are they?’
‘Three foreigners. Two of them English, and the third—well, he may be.’
‘But why do you think they are here?’
‘One of them mentioned your name.’
‘What is that?’ cried Don Manuel.
‘He was found exhausted in the road from the coast. He was taken to a house—the house of Pascual Cordova, who found him—and the only words he spoke that they could understand there were “Don Manuel, Villabanzos.”’
‘Which, of course, proved that he was a murderer?’
‘No. But he had a knife on him, and also a hammer, and I am assured that he acted in a very strange manner. Now, as he had evidently come over the mountains, from the district in which, these murders took place—well, Pascual Cordova naturally suspected him, and so did the doctor who was called in. They very properly sent for me.’
‘And then?’
‘I arrived to find that the fellow had escaped.’
‘So?’
‘He had got out of the window of the bedroom in which he had been locked.’
‘He jumped?’
‘No. He climbed down a rope. And here is the rope? Do you know it, Don Manuel?’
There was a pause. Then Don Manuel’s voice rang out indignantly.
‘What is this? I helped him to escape, did I? That is a good one! Why, I have not left my inn all the afternoon!’
‘Well, rope is very much alike. But, when I showed this rope to Garcia, he told me that you had been to his shop only two days ago, and had bought some very like it. You will note, the rope is new.’
‘Dios meo! I am to be hanged now for buying rope! Well, well, I have always said the world is mad! But what of the other two? Did Pascuel Cordova find them, also? You doubtless pay him so much a dozen. I have always thought he was too rich for his brains!’
‘No, Pascuel Cordova did not find the other two. In fact, all I know about the other two is that they passed through the village only a few moments after the first fellow escaped, and that they, also, showed an interest in Don Manuel, of Villabanzos.’
‘I interest the whole world, it seems!’ cried Don Manuel.
‘That is why you interest me, also,’ replied the officer, dryly.
‘Well, and how did these two others show their interest in me?’
‘By inquiring the way to you.’
‘Virgen Santa!’
‘They even had a piece of paper on which your name was written.’
‘What!’
‘“Don Manuel, Villabanzos.”’
‘Did you see the piece of paper?’
‘No.’
‘Well, then—’
‘The villager they inquired of saw it, and gave us the information afterwards. He could not understand their language, but when he asked, “Inglés,” they nodded. Then they disappeared.’
‘Where to?’
‘I presume, to the inn of one Don Manuel, Villabanzos. And I, also, am at the inn of Don Manuel, Villabanzos, with, as you will see, half a dozen men. So let us now end this conversation and get to business. Have you seen anything of these three foreigners?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Do you know anything about them?’
‘What should I know?’
‘Very well. If you insist on prevarication! You have no objection if I search this place?’
‘I have a strong objection.’
‘Why?’
‘I do not like my word doubted.’
‘Yet you do not act in a way to invite confidence. Now, listen, Don Manuel. I speak for your good. If these men are not here, you will not suffer by my search—unless, of course, you are hiding anything else—’
‘What else should I hide?’ cried Don Manuel desperately.
‘You are behaving like a fool!’ retorted the officer, with contrasting calmness. ‘Are you hiding anything else?’
‘No!’
‘Then, if I do find any of the people I am after, it will not be with your knowledge that they have made your inn their sanctuary?’
‘No! No! Diablo, no!’
‘So I am nothing for you to worry about. These three foreigners were obviously making for this spot, and they appear to be desperate men who do not stop at murder. They may have slipped into one of your cellars, and they may be waiting till darkness to add you to their list. I expect you have money on the premises? If you woke up while they were taking it, your body would make a nice pin-cushion for their points. We search your inn, therefore, in your interests as well as in ours.’
The officer’s ironical voice paused for an instant. Then it rang out sharply, and gave a command. Don Manuel fell back a step or two, as unwelcome visitors began to fill his doorway.
‘Hey! Wait! Where is your authority?’ he shouted
‘Here!’ replied the officer, displaying his revolver. ‘And there are six other similar authorities behind me.’ Suddenly his voice cracked out like a revolver itself. ‘Out of our way! Sharp! Do you hear?’
Don Manuel fell back again, momentarily beaten.
‘Yes, but where are you going?’ he demanded helplessly.
‘The cellars first,’ answered the officer. ‘From there, if necessary, we’ll work upwards to the roof.’
Two men remained guarding the entrance to the inn. Four others followed the officer to the stone staircase that led down to the cellars. At the head of the stairs, the officer paused.
‘One moment,’ he said.
Don Manuel had also paused at a door on the entrance floor. The officer suddenly strode to it and, thrusting the innkeeper aside, threw the door open.
Five men immediately looked up. A sixth kept his eyes on a couple of dice on a drink-sodden table.
‘Three,’ he muttered disgustedly.
Then he, too, looked up.
The officer was equally interested in mathematics. ‘Seven all,’ he was thinking. ‘But my seven have discipline and revolvers. That’s equal to fourteen knives.’
He closed the door and returned to the stairs. He went down the stairs, with his four men behind him. No one obstructed him.
There were apparently four cellars, and the doors of three were open. He searched each, and found nothing. Then he turned to the fourth door. It was locked, and there was no key. He called to the innkeeper, who was hovering unhappily in the background.
‘Where is the key to this door?’ he demanded.
Don Manuel professed ignorance.
‘Come! Let me have it!’ the officer rapped out.
‘How can I let you have what I have not got?’ retorted Don Manuel, clinging to straws, and wondering why the key was no longer on the outside. The next instant a solution occurred to him. Perhaps it was on the inside!
The same thought occurred, evidently, to the officer who was peering through the keyhole. There was no key on the inside.
‘Do you want to go to prison, Don Manuel?’ asked the officer.
‘Is it the law that one goes to prison for losing a key?’ answered the innkeeper.
‘One can go to prison for lying.’
‘Very well. I am lying. Now take me to prison.’
‘When did you lose the key?’
‘It has been lost for over a month.’
‘Why have you not had a new one made?’
‘Because I have three other cellars, and they, as you have seen, are nearly empty. I do not need the fourth.’
‘Have you another key that will fit?’
‘If I had, why should I not already have used it?’
‘Because you say you have no use for the room. And if you have no use for the room, why did you trouble to lock it in the first instance?’
‘I did not lock it,’ replied Don Manuel, his mind working furiously. ‘It was a drunken man I had. One night he nearly turned the place topsy-turvy, and locking doors was a part of his humour. I kicked him out, and found afterwards that he had gone off with one of the keys. The key to that door. Now are you satisfied?’
On the point of replying, the officer changed his mind. He regarded the door for an instant, noting its massivity, and also the narrowness of the passage outside it. A difficult door to force, this. Then, with a shrug, he turned away from it.
‘Well, well, it may be as you say,’ he remarked; ‘but if it is not, there will be a pack of trouble coming to you, Don Manuel. Now, then. The rest of the house. And quickly! Do you think I can stay here all night?’
They left the passage, and ascended to the upper floors …
But Mr Sims, on the other side of the locked cellar door, did not take the muzzle of his revolver from Miss Holbrooke’s throat till the search had been completed, the front door had been slammed, and the officer and his six men had left.
Then, swiftly and silently, he slipped to the door of the cellar and unlocked it.
‘Congratulations on your wisdom, Ben,’ he whispered sardonically. ‘You knew that time, didn’t you, that Miss Holbrooke’s life really was in danger. A single squeak, and she would be lying dead at this moment.’
The door closed.
‘’E’s Satan!’ gulped Ben.