He had opened his mouth to speak and Fall had walked to the switchboard and was about to put the deadly apparatus out of gear, when a sharp voice made them both turn.
"Hands up!" it said.
The stone door, through which Poltavo had passed to his doom from the corridor without, was wide open, and in the doorway stood T. B. and a little behind him Ela, and in T. B.'s hand was a pistol.
CHAPTER XX
T. B. Smith's inspection of the Secret House had yielded nothing satisfactory; he had not expected that it would; he was perfectly satisfied that the keen, shrewd brains which dominated the menage would remove any trace there was of foul play.
"Where now?" asked Ela, as they turned out of the house.
"Back to Moor Cottage," said T. B., climbing into the car. "I am certain that we are on the verge of our big discovery. There is a way out of the cottage by some underground chamber, a way by which first Lady Constance and then Poltavo were smuggled, and if it is necessary I am going to smash every panel in those two ground floor rooms, but I will find the way in to Mr. Farrington's mystery house."
For half an hour the two men were engaged in the room from which Poltavo had been taken. They probed with centre bits and gimlets into every portion of the room.