“In one moment I will enlighten you,” said Tom. He leaned forward and spoke slowly and impressively, so that every word might be heard by his three auditors. “If I find that the result of the trial is likely to be adverse to Lionel Daring, it is my fixed intention to assist him to escape from prison, and to hide him from pursuit in this very house!”
Mrs. Garside and Martha sat staring at Tom when he had done speaking as though they believed him to be mad. Edith’s heart gave a great sob in which hope, and joy, and fear were commingled.
“The first thing was to get you out of lodgings,” resumed Tom. “While you were there, it would have been impossible for you to hide anybody. Fortunately, this house was to let. It is secluded, and not overlooked from the windows of any other house, and consequently admirably adapted for the purpose I have in view. But in the house itself it was necessary to find some special hiding-place—some nook that would be safe from the prying eyes of the most acute and experienced police officer. Many were the hours I spent in cogitating over one scheme after another. The result was that I could think of no safer place in which to hide an escaped prisoner than my mahogany wardrobe.”
“Hide him in a wardrobe!” exclaimed Mrs. Garside, in dismay. “Why, that would be one of the first places a police officer would look into.”
“Precisely so,” said Tom. “He might look into it a dozen times if he liked, and still he should not see all that it held. But we will go upstairs again, and the mystery shall be elucidated.”
So they went upstairs again to Edith’s dressing-room, and Tom flung wide open the doors of the wardrobe. The ladies had seen similar articles of furniture scores of times before, and this one seemed in nowise different from any other. There was a shelf near the top; and below the shelf were the usual pegs on which to hang articles of clothing: and that was all. Disappointment was plainly visible on every face.
Tom smiled, and gave one of the brass pegs a downward pull. As he did so, they could hear the click of a little bolt as it shot back into its socket. Then the back of the wardrobe, from the shelf downwards, yielding to Tom’s hand, opened slowly outwards on hidden hinges, disclosing, as it did so, a space sufficiently large for a man to stand upright in between itself—when shut—and the real back.
In order to illustrate thoroughly the use to which it was intended to put it, Tom stepped into the recess, and pulling the false back towards him, shut himself in. Seeing the wardrobe thus, no one would ever have suspected that anything was hidden in it. By pulling a ring, the person inside could open the door of his temporary prison, so that any one could step in and out at will, and almost as easily as if were simply going out of one room into another. Tom then explained the mechanism of the wardrobe, so that there could be no possible mistake should the necessity for using it ever arise. The recess in which the wardrobe stood was a very deep one, and this it was which had first given him the idea of utilizing it in the way described.
“This is the place in which I intend to hide Lionel Dering,” said Tom, as he shut the wardrobe doors, “should his innocence not be proved at his trial, and should I succeed in effecting his escape from Duxley gaol.”
“But about his escape,” said Mrs. Garside. “May I ask——” and then she stopped.