"Ah. I've heard that two strangers have been seen up and down here in the night time," continued the sergeant. "We've got their description from a constable who's been doing night-duty. He says he'd know 'em again. Once he saw a woman with 'em, and he believes it was the young lady now in the hospital."
"He saw them together—eh?"
"He says so."
Then I changed the conversation, and I followed him from room to room through the dirty, neglected house, which nevertheless, with slight signs here and there, showed marks of recent occupation.
Two of the beds in the upstairs rooms had been slept in, and there was other evidence in both kitchen and dining-room that, as I had surmised, it had been the secret hiding-place of the man who posed in Hatton Garden as a substantial and respectable dealer in precious stones.
No doubt he came there late at night, and if he remained during the day he never went out.
Surely the place was one where he might effectively conceal himself from the police; yet to live in such a house, and in that manner, certainly showed a daring and audacity unequalled. He, of course, never knew when a prospective tenant might come to visit it, or the agents in Hounslow might send to inspect its condition.
"You had a very narrow escape here, sir," said the sergeant as we descended the stairs. "Will you step outside? I want to show you something."
We all went out by the kitchen door into the weedy garden where, behind a low wall, lay a mound of newly-dug earth. By its side I saw a rough, yawning hole about five feet long by three broad.
"That's the grave they'd prepared for you, sir, without a doubt! By gum! It was lucky that taxi-driver got up here just in time, or they'd have flung you in and covered you up, dead or alive!"