CHAPTER XI
THE BURNING EYES
For an instant, I did not grasp the full significance of that severed wire. Then I understood.
"Yes," said Godfrey drily, "that romance of mine is looking up again. Somebody was preparing for a quiet invasion of the house to-night —somebody, of course, interested in that cabinet."
"He wasn't losing any time," I ventured.
"He knew he hadn't any to lose. When you put those wooden shutters up, you warned him that you suspected his game. He knew, if the alarm was on, it would ring when he cut the wire, but he also knew that the chances were a hundred to one against the cut being discovered, or the alarm put in working order, before to-morrow."
"Why can't we ambush him?" I suggested.
"We might try, but it will be a mighty risky undertaking, Lester."
"One risky undertaking is enough for to-night," I said, with a sigh, for my belief in the existence of the secret drawer and the poison and all the rest of it had come back with a rush. I felt almost apologetic toward Godfrey for ever doubting him. "We'd better wait and see if we survive the first one before we arrange for any more."
"All right," Godfrey laughed. "But I'll fix this break."
He got out his pen-knife, loosened two or three of the staples which held the wire in place, drew it out, scraped back the insulation, and twisted the ends tightly together.
"There," he added, "that's done. If the invader tampers with the window again, he will set off the alarm. But I don't believe he'll touch it. I fancy he already knows his little game is discovered."
"How would he know it?" I demanded, incredulously.
"If he is keeping an eye on this window, as he naturally would do, he has seen my light. Perhaps he is watching us now."
I glanced at the dark square of the window with a little shiver. This business was getting on my nerves again. But Godfrey turned away with a shrug of the shoulders.
"Now for the cabinet," he said, and led the way back upstairs.
Rogers was still sitting dejectedly on the cot, and, looking at him more closely, I could see that he was white and shaken. His trouble, whatever its nature, plainly lay heavy on his mind.
"Have you anything to tell us, this evening, Rogers?" I asked, kindly, but he only shook his head.
"I've told you everything I know, sir," he answered, in a low voice.
"I'm not going to worry you, Rogers," I went on, "but I want you to think it over. You can rely upon me to help you, if I can."
He looked up quickly, but caught himself, and turned his eyes away.
"Thank you, sir," was all he said.
"And now," I added, briskly, "I'll have to ask you to get up. Move the cot away from the door, Parks."
Parks obeyed me with astonished face.
"You're not going in there, sir!" he protested, as I turned the knob.
"Yes, we are," I said, and opened the door. "Is—is…."
"No, sir," broke in Parks, understanding. "The undertakers brought the coffin and put him in it and moved him over to the drawing-room this afternoon, sir."
"I'm glad of that. I want all the lights lit, Parks, just as they were last night."
Parks reached inside the door and switched on the electrics. Then he went away, came back in a moment with a taper, and proceeded to light the gas-lights. A moment later, the lights in the inner room were also blazing.
"There you are, sir," said Parks, and retreated to the door. "Will you need me?"
"Not now. But wait in the hall outside. We may need you." I had a notion to tell him to have an axe handy, but I saw Godfrey smiling.
"Very good, sir," said Parks, evidently relieved, and went out and closed the door.
I led the way into the inner room.
"Well, there it is," I said, and nodded toward the Boule cabinet, standing in the full glare of the light, every inlay and incrustation glittering like the eyes of a basilisk. "It isn't too late to give it up, Godfrey."
"Oh, yes, it is," he said, coolly, removing his coat "It was too late the moment you told me that story. Why, Lester, if I gave it up, I should never sleep again!"
"And if you don't, you may never wake again," I pointed out.
He laughed lightly.
"What a dismal prophet you are! Draw up a chair and watch me."
He pulled back his shirt-sleeves, and placed his electric torch on the floor beside the cabinet. Then he paused with folded arms to contemplate this masterpiece of M. Boule.
"It is a beauty," he said, at last, and then drew out the little drawers, one after another, looked them over, and placed them carefully on a chair. "Now," he added, "let us see if there is any space that isn't accounted for."
He took from his pocket a folding rule of ivory, opened it, and began a series of measurements so searching and intricate that half an hour passed without a word being spoken. Then he pulled up another chair, and sat down beside me.
"I seem to be pretty much up against it," he said, "no doubt just as the designer of the cabinet would wish me to be. The whole bottom of the desk is inclosed, and those three little drawers take up only a small part of the space. Then the back of the cabinet seems to be double—at least, there's a space of three inches I can't account for. So there's room for a dozen secret drawers, if the Montespan required so many. And now to find the combination."
He adjusted the steel gauntlet carefully to his right hand and sat down on the floor before the cabinet.
"I'll begin at the bottom," he said. "If there is any spot I miss, tell me of it."
He ran his fingers up and down the graceful legs, carefully feeling every inequality of the elaborate bronze ornamentation. Particularly did his fingers linger on every boss and point, striving to push it in or move it up or down; but they were all immovable. Then he examined the bottom of the table minutely, using his torch to illumine every crevice; but again without result.
Another half hour passed so, and when at last he came out from under the table, his face was dripping with sweat.
"It's trying work," he said, sitting down again and mopping his face. "But isn't it a beauty, Lester? The more I look at it, the more wonderful it seems."
"I told Philip Vantine I wasn't up to it, and I'm not," I said.
"Nor I, but I can appreciate it to the extent of my capacity. It's the Louis Fourteenth ideal of beauty—splendour carried to the nth degree. Look at the arabesques along the front—can you imagine anything more graceful? And the engraving—nothing cut-and-dried about that. It was done by a burin in the hands of a master—perhaps by Boule himself. I don't wonder Vantine was rather mad about it. But we haven't found that drawer yet," and he drew his chair close to the cabinet.
"I'd point out one thing to you, Godfrey," I said: "if you go on poking about with the fingers of both hands, as you've been doing, you are just as apt to get struck on the left hand as on the right."
"That's true," he agreed. "Stop me if I forget."
There were three little drawers in the front of the table, and these Godfrey had removed. He inserted his hand into the space from which he had taken them, and examined it carefully. Then, inch by inch, he ran his fingers over the bosses and arabesques with which the sides and top of the table were incrusted. It seemed to me that, if the secret drawer were anywhere, it must be somewhere in this part of the cabinet, and I watched him with breathless interest. Once I thought he had found the drawer, for a piece of inlay at the side of the table seemed to give a little under the pressure of his fingers; but no hidden spring was touched; no drawer sprang open; no poisoned fangs descended.
"Well," said Godfrey, sitting back in his chair at last, and wiping his face again, "there's so much done. If there is any secret drawer in the lower part of the cabinet, it is mighty cleverly concealed. Now we'll try the upper part."
The upper part of the cabinet consisted of a series of drawers, rising one above the other, and terminated by a triangular pediment, its tympanum ornamented with some beautiful little bronzes. The drawers themselves were concealed by two doors, opening in the centre, and covered with a most intricate design of arabesqued incrustations.
"If there is a secret drawer here," said Godfrey, "it is somewhere in the back, where there seems to be a hollow space. But to discover the combination…."
He ran his fingers over the inlay, and then, struck by a sudden thought, tested each of the little figures along the tympanum, but they were all set solidly in place.
"There's one thing sure," he said, "the combination, whatever it is, is of such a nature that it could not be discovered accidentally—by a person leaning on the cabinet, for instance. It isn't a question of merely touching a spring; it is probably a question of releasing a series of levers, which must be worked in a certain order, or the drawer won't open. I'm afraid we are up against it."
"I can't pretend I'm sorry," I said, with a sigh of relief. "As far as I am concerned, I'm perfectly willing that the drawer should go undiscovered."
"Well, I am not!" retorted Godfrey, curtly, and he sat regarding the cabinet with puckered brows. Then he rose and began tapping at the back.
I don't know what it was—for I was conscious of no noise—but some mysterious attraction drew my eyes to the window at the farther side of the room. Near the top of the wooden shutter, which Parks and I had put in place, was a small semi-circular opening, to allow the passage of a little light, perhaps, and peering through this opening were two eyes—two burning eyes….
They were fixed upon Godfrey with such feverish intentness that they did not see my glance, and I lowered my head instantly.
"Godfrey," I said, in a shaking voice, "don't look up; don't move your head; but there is some one peering through the hole in the shutter opposite us."
Godfrey did not answer for quite a minute, but kept calmly on with his examination of the cabinet.
"Did he see you look at him?" he asked, at last.
"No, he was looking at you, with his eyes almost starting out of his head. I never saw such eyes!"
"Did you see anything of his face?"
"No, the hole is too small. I fancy I saw the fingers of one hand, which he had thrust through to steady himself."
"How high is the hole?"
"Near the top of the window."
Godfrey came back to his chair a moment later, sat down in it, and passed his handkerchief slowly over his face. Then he leaned forward, apparently to examine the legs of the cabinet.
"I saw him," he said. "Or, rather, I saw his eyes. Rather fierce, aren't they?"
"They're a tiger's eyes," I said, with conviction.
"Well, there is no use going ahead with this while he is out there.
Even if we found the drawer, we'd both be dead an instant later."
"You mean he'd kill us?"
"He would shoot us instantly. Imagine what a sensation that would make, Lester. Parks hears two pistol shots, rushes in and finds us lying here dead. Grady would have a convulsion—and we should both be famous for a few days."
"I'll seek fame in some other way," I said drily. "What are you going to do about it?"
"We've got to try to capture him; and if we do—well, we shall have the fame all right! But it's a good deal like trying to pick up a scorpion—we're pretty sure to get hurt. If that fellow out there is who I think he is, he's about the most dangerous man on earth."
He went on tapping the surface of the cabinet. As for me, I would have given anything for another look at those gleaming eyes. They seemed to be burning into me; hot flashes were shooting up and down my back.
"Why can't I go out as though I were going after something," I suggested. "Then Parks and I could charge around the corner and get him."
"You wouldn't get him, he'd get you. You wouldn't have a chance on earth. If there is a window upstairs over that one, you might drop something out on him, or borrow Parks's pistol and shoot him—"
"That would be pretty cowardly, wouldn't it?" I suggested, mildly.
"My dear Lester," Godfrey protested, "when you attack a poisonous snake, you don't do it with bare hands, do you?"
I couldn't help it—I glanced again at the window….
"He's gone!" I cried.
Godfrey was at the window in two steps.
"Look at that!" he said, "and then tell me he isn't a genius!"
I followed the direction of his pointing finger and saw that, just opposite the opening in the shutter, a little hole had been cut in the window-pane.
"That fellow foresees everything," said Godfrey, with enthusiasm. "He probably cut that hole as soon as it was dark. He must have guessed we were going to examine the cabinet to-night—and he wanted not only to see, but to hear. He heard everything we said, Lester!"
"Let's go after him!" I cried, and, without waiting for an answer, I sprang across the ante-room and snatched open the door which led into the hall.
Parks and Rogers were sitting on the couch just outside and I never saw two men more thoroughly frightened.
"For God's sake, Mr. Lester!" gasped Rogers, and stopped, his hand at his throat.
"Is it Mr. Godfrey?" cried Parks.
"There's a man outside. Got your pistol, Parks?"
"Yes, sir," and he took it from his pocket.
I snatched it from him, opened the front door, leaped the railing, and stole along the house to the corner.
Then, taking my courage in both hands, I charged around it.
There was no one in sight; but from somewhere near at hand came a burst of mocking laughter.