“They’ve been attended to, Inspector—be easy on that point.” The four men crept forward and joined the elder O’Connor. And at last they reached the point they wanted. Anthony listened for a single tense moment—then beckoned to Goodall, who stole silently to his side. “Look through there,” he whispered. Goodall peered into the room. Two men were standing with their backs to the French doors, but the form of one of them was vaguely familiar to him. A woman was kneeling on the floor in front of two objects the exact shape of which her body hid from the watchers’ sight. Anthony caught at Goodall’s arm and pulled him away—then he whispered a few words into the Inspector’s ear.
“Good God!” muttered Goodall. Then he made a sign to Peter and the others, and with a sudden sharp movement of his hands pulled open the doors. The woman sprang to her feet with a scream that rang in Peter’s ears as he leveled his revolver. Goodall was at his side, and Peter could see a second automatic gleaming in the Inspector’s hand. The two men in the library pivoted round in amazement, and the smaller man’s hand dropped like lightning to his hip pocket.
“Put your hands up,” roared Goodall, “or, by God, I’ll let daylight through you.”
Four hands went sullenly up, while the woman sank quivering to the floor. Goodall walked to the man that was armed and quietly took the revolver from his hip pocket. “ ‘Snoop’ Mortimer and Alice Mortimer,” he said deliberately, “I arrest you on the charge of murdering James Mason at the Hanover Galleries on the morning of June 9th last.”
Sergeant Clegg came out of the circle of light by the doors and clicked the handcuffs on the man’s wrists. The woman lay prostrate on the floor. Goodall administered the usual caution. He then walked to the elder man who stood grey and ashen by the library table, completely paralyzed at the dramatic interruption. “I also arrest you, John Butterworth,” he said, “for the murder of your master, Laurence P. Stewart, on the night of June 8th!” Butterworth reeled and swayed like a tree shaken in the wind—then held out his hands mechanically for the handcuffs—the bracelets from which, for murderers, there is no escape.
CHAPTER XXIV.
The Secret of the Screens
The library door closed upon the three prisoners. Goodall’s mouth was set in lines that were grim and hard—the man-hunting game is no occupation for the squeamish. “Clegg and his men will have them in the cells in no time,” he declared. “And the papers will sell well to-morrow morning.”
But his remark evoked no response from the others—all eyes had gone to Charles Stewart. He had sunk into a chair—the very chair, as it happened, where his father had been sitting when he had met his death—thoroughly overcome by the events of the evening. “Butterworth,” he muttered incredulously in a broken voice—“Butterworth! A man that my father would have trusted with anything”—he put his head into his hands and his shoulders shook in his emotion.
“Come—come,” said Anthony, “you mustn’t break down like this—personally I was somewhat relieved to find that it was Butterworth whom we were trailing and not anybody else.”
Stewart lifted up his face and looked at Anthony searchingly. “You were relieved?” he queried. “Didn’t you know then till to-night?”