As that horrible, rustling sound behind the wainscot was heard, the two hardened men in the old passage shrank away to door and end, while a cold sweat bedewed Guest’s face, and his breath felt laboured. Then there was a reaction. Old memories flashed through his brain, and he seized Stratton’s arm.
“Old friends,” he muttered. “I can’t forsake him now.”
The arm he gripped felt rigid and cold, but Stratton made no movement, no sign, and at that moment they saw the sergeant flash the light down into the sarcophagus-like receptacle; for, thanks to the manufacturers, our baths are made as suggestive of a man’s last resting-place as they can be designed.
There was utter silence then for a moment. Then the sergeant uttered a low whistle and exclaimed:
“Well, I am blessed!”
“Ain’t he there?” said the workman, from the door.
“Come and look, Jem.”
Jem went in slowly, looked down in the bath, which was lit up by the rays from the lantern, and then uttered a low, chuckling sound, while Guest tried to make out the meaning of the strange expression, dimly seen, on his friend’s face.
For Stratton’s eyes showed white circles about the irises, as he now leaned forward to gaze into the bath.
Guest was the last to look into the white enamelled vessel, one-third full of what seemed to be water, but from the peculiar odour which rose from the surface, evidently was not.
Stratton was silent; and in the strange exultation he felt on seeing that all the horrors he had imagined were vain and empty, Guest shouted:
“Bah! What cock-and-bull stories you policemen hatch!”
The sergeant, who had been regularly taken aback, recovered himself at this.
“Come, sir,” he cried; “I like that. You come to us and say your friend’s missing, and you think that he is lying dead in his chambers. ‘All right,’ we say—”
“Wrong,” cried Guest with a laugh, which sounded strange and forced.
“So it is, sir—wrong,” said the sergeant. “We come and do our duty, and I follow up the scent as clear as clear, right up to this spot; and I put it to you gents, as gentlemen, oughtn’t your friend to have been murdered and a-lying there?”
“Well,” said Guest, with another forced laugh, as he glanced uneasily at Stratton; “it did look suspicious, and you worked it all up so theatrically that I was a little impressed.”
“Theatrical! Impressed, sir! Why, it was all as real to me; and I say again your friend ought to be lying there. What do you say, Jem?”
“Cert’nly.”
“But he is not,” said Guest sharply; “and it has all been a false alarm, you see, and I’m very, very glad.”
“Course you are, sir, and so are we,” said Jem huskily. “Don’t ’pologise. Don’t make a bit o’ diffrens to us. We’re paid all the same.”
“Of course,” cried Guest, keeping up the position of leader, for Stratton stood gazing down into the bath like one in a dream. “There, sergeant, we are very much obliged, and it’s all right; so your man had better screw down the bath lid again.”
“But it isn’t all right, sir,” said the sergeant testily, and he gave his ear a scratch. “I don’t like giving up just for a check.”
Guest shivered.
“I’ve got as far as here, and I put it to you; the gentleman ought to have been in that thing, and he isn’t.”
“That’s plain enough,” said Guest hurriedly.
“Then where is he?”
“In the country, I suppose, collecting.”
“That’s your opinion, sir. P’r’aps your friend’ll speak. What do you say, sir?”
“Nothing,” said Stratton, with an effort.
“There is nothing to say,” said Guest sharply.
“Queer for this place to have all been screwed up—both, the door and the bath.”
“Oh, no; I see why,” said Guest quickly. “Bad smells, perhaps, from the waste pipe—sewer gas.”
“Don’t smell like bad gas,” said Jem, sniffing about and ending by dipping a finger in the bath, and holding it to his nose, after which he gave a peculiar grunt.
“Well?”
“Sperrits.”
“Nonsense, man!” cried Guest. “What! That?”
“That’s sperrits, sure enough, sir,” said the man, dipping his finger in the bath again. “Open that there lantern, pardner.”
The sergeant obeyed, and his companion thrust in his finger............