11: Mantrap Manor

THE car slowed down a few yards farther along the street, obstructed by the passage of a heavy wagon which emerged from a side lane, and Richard turned to a waiter who was clearing away his breakfast things.

“Whose car is that?” he asked. “That!---with the men in dark-green livery?”

The waiter glanced out of the window and his eyes lighted up as at some humorous thought.

“That, sir?” he answered readily. “Oh, that’s one of the cars from what we call Mantrap Manor, sir. Several of ’em there, sir.”

“Mantrap Manor?” said Richard. “Odd name, that, isn’t it?”

“Why, it is, sir,” replied the waiter. “Sort of nickname given to it by the townsfolk, you understand, sir. Real name, of course, is Malbourne Manor---just a little way outside the town, sir.”

“And why is it called Mantrap Manor, pray?” asked Richard. “Do they trap men there, or something? Anything to do with game-preserving?”

“No, sir---it’s just a nickname,” said the waiter. “Arose, I believe, from the fact that everything about it is---well, kept unusually close and private. Nobody allowed in, you understand, sir. Fine old place---very ancient, sir---ruins, and that sort of thing. Used to belong to Lord Nortongrave until a few years ago. His lordship sold it to the gentleman who lives there now, Mr. Vandelius. And after that everything was changed.”

“How?” inquired Richard.

The waiter smiled and shook his head; the gesture indicated that the subject was capable of wordy treatment.

“Changes were considerable, sir,” he answered. “There’s a very nice park, beautiful park, around the Manor. In Lord Nortongrave’s time---and it had been in that family some hundreds of years, so I’m told, sir---the townsfolk were allowed to go where they liked in that park, subject of course to reasonable limits, sir. But it was---well, what you might call free and open to the Malbourne people; used to be a deal of picnicking there in those days, sir. Mr. Vandelius, he stopped all that. He built a ten-foot wall all round the park! Two and a half miles long that wall is, sir. And there’s only one gateway in it, and that has a door that’s always locked---regular stronghold, sir, like one o’ those old castles you read about. And---I’ve never seen it---I’ve never known anybody that’s been inside the park since the wall was built---but they say there’s a forty-foot moat round the house, with a drawbridge over it! That’s an ancient thing, to be sure, that moat, but it wasn’t used in his lordship’s days---dried up, you understand, sir. This Mr. Vandelius, he had the water turned in again, and the drawbridge built, and now you can’t get to the house except over the bridge, and they say that’s one of those affairs that you raise and lower by machinery. Regular bastille that place, nowadays, sir, by all accounts!”

“What’s the reason of such a desire for privacy?” inquired Richard.

“That I can’t say, sir,” replied the waiter. “Eccentricity, some people think. But private it is, sir---to the last degree! The Manor, sir, has no sort of relations with the town. His lordship, he patronised all the leading tradesmen in the place---bought everything here in the town, sir, from his beef to his beer. But this Mr. Vandelius---he’s never spent one penny in Malbourne since he came here, except on the building of that wall and the gatehouses in it and over the moat; that job, to be sure, was done by a local firm. Everything’s got from London, sir; meat, groceries, everything; these big London stores, sir---do a deal of harm to local tradesmen, these stores, sir. Yes, sir, not a penny ever finds its way from the Manor into this place, sir!”

“Then I imagine its owner isn’t very popular?” suggested Richard.

“Quite right, sir---he isn’t!” said the waiter. “Highly unpopular! But then, it don’t matter to him. He’s never seen, and he never sees anybody. Something of what they call a recluse, sir---like them old hermits.”

“Who is he---what is he?” asked Richard.

“Well, sir, they do say he’s a big man in the City---what they term a high-finance gentleman,” replied the waiter. “Company-promoting, I believe, sir---but, of course, one only hears rumours. Something to do with money, anyway.”

“And his name is---what did you say?” inquired Richard.

“Vandelius, sir---Mr. Louis Vandelius; that’s the name painted on his carts,” answered the waiter. “Louis Vandelius, Esquire; Malbourne Manor---that’s it, sir.”

“Foreigner, eh?” suggested Richard.

“May have been that to begin with, sir, but I understand he’s a proper Englishman now---what they call naturalised, sir,” said the waiter. “To be sure, he looks like a foreigner---I’ve only seen him once, but I did notice that much. Quite the foreigner, he looks, sir---not at all English.”

“What’s he like, then?” asked Richard.

“Little dark-coloured man, sir---podgy in figure and swarthy-skinned,” replied the waiter. “Not unlike some of those Indian gentlemen that we see sometimes. Just once I saw him, in one of his cars. It’s very seldom anybody ever does see Mr. Vandelius, though,” he continued reflectively. “He never comes into the town, never uses the railway. And they say that when he goes up to London, which is only now and then, it’s always in a motor-brougham with the blinds drawn. Very retiring gentleman, sir!”

“How came you to see him?” asked Richard. He felt sure, by that time, that Mr. Louis Vandelius was not only the man who had called on Lansdale at his hotel on the evening of Henry Marchmont’s murder, but was also responsible for the ten thousand pounds reward offered through Crench, and feeling sure, he was greedy of any information he could get about his personality and habits.

“Accident, sir,” said the waiter. “I happened to be at the cross-roads just outside the town one day when his car broke down. The chauffeur couldn’t restart it anyhow, and finally they had to telephone to the Manor for another. And of course Mr. Vandelius had to get out of the broken-down car to get into the one they sent, and very angry he looked about it. I should say,” concluded the waiter, with a sage shake of his head, “I should certainly say, sir, that that was about the only occasion on which Mr. Vandelius ever has been seen by Malbourne people. He scowled frightful, sir, at those that did see him---as if he hated being looked at!”

“I should imagine he did, from all you tell me!” assented Richard, with a smile. He picked up his hat and stick and moved towards the door. “Pretty country round here, isn’t it?” he remarked.

“Oh, beautiful country, sir---beautiful!” said the waiter. “Some of the finest country in the South of England in our parts. Going to stay with us a bit, sir?”

“Very likely a day or two,” replied Richard. “To-night, at any rate.”

He went out into the hall of the hotel with the intention of booking a room at the office. But once outside the coffee-room he began to reflect on what he had just heard, and on the line of procedure he ought to take. He had no doubt that it was Vandelius in whose company Lansdale had left the Hotel Cecil; no doubt that some woman agent of his had trapped Angelita; no doubt that Angelita and Lansdale were prisoners in the mysterious house which the waiter had described. And he had no doubt either that he was going to make an attempt to get into that house, and as soon as possible, in the endeavour to find Angelita and secure her release. But---was it wise to attempt that unaided? He didn’t like what he had already heard of Vandelius; he was suspicious about the presence of Crench; there might be danger, serious danger, in a solitary undertaking. And now he was wondering to whom it would be best to turn for assistance. It was out of the question to go to the local police; he had not sufficient grounds for any application to them. If he wired to Liversedge, he would only bring down the collective weight of Scotland Yard on his venture, and officialism would thrust him aside. Yet he ought to have somebody---and suddenly he thought of the very man. Scarfe!---of course, Scarfe was the very man!---why hadn’t he thought of Scarfe at once?

Scarfe was Richard’s valet; an ex-service man, smart, reliable, quick-witted; he had been with his master for three years, and Richard had an implicit belief in him. To be sure, Scarfe was exactly what he wanted. He walked over to the office.

“Will you book a room for myself, and another for my valet, if you please?” he asked the clerk. “He will come down this afternoon with my things. I may want the rooms for a few days, but I’ll tell you about that more definitely to-morrow.”

Then, having signed the visitors’ book, he inquired the whereabouts of the post office, and going there, dispatched a telegram of instructions to the valet as to when and where to come that afternoon and what to bring. And that done, he set out to view the outer fortifications of what the waiter had called Mantrap Manor.

His recent dealings with Liversedge had taught Richard something of the methods of detective work. His first job now, it seemed to him, was to buy a map of the district and ascertain the exact whereabouts of the place he wanted. That was easy work; there was a stationer’s shop close by the hotel and he was fortunate enough to get an ordnance map there. One glance at it showed him that Malbourne Manor was reached by a road leading south-east out of the town in the direction of the hills; from the contours of the map it evidently lay in a deep valley amongst the hills. That was fortunate; he would be able to look down upon it and its surroundings from the hillside.

Half an hour later Richard found himself confronting the boundary wall of which the talkative waiter had told him. Practical young man though he was, he marvelled at the bad taste shown in building such a fence round a beautiful old park studded with fine plantations of elm and oak. For the wall was of the sort that one associates with convict prisons---a high, solid erection of cold grey stone, hideous and formal, without a relieving feature in its aggressive rawness. Presently he saw the gateway of which he had heard; that was even more formidable than the wall---a frowning structure built in imitation of the main entrance of a Norman castle, with arrow-slits in its flanking turrets and an oaken, iron-studded door in its midst that looked as if it would never open. There was not a sign of life about that entrance, but smoke came from the chimney in its roof, and Richard knew that in all probability sharp eyes kept watch from one of its back windows along the road by which he had approached it from the town. For that reason he carefully abstained from showing any particular interest in the place; he had already ascertained from his map that close by the gateway a footpath led from the road up to the top of an adjacent hill, and now catching sight of the stile by which access was had to it he turned off and went upward. And at the end of a quarter of an hour’s stiff climb he paused, and from beneath a sheltering grove of trees looked down on the scene of his lady-love’s supposed captivity.

This superior situation enabled Richard to see everything of Malbourne Manor. He could trace the continuous line of the boundary wall all round the undulating park. He could see the moat of which the waiter had spoken---a ribbon of placid water shining coldly in the autumn sunlight. And there was the house---a dark, evidently ancient mass of masonry, one wing of which appeared to be in ruins. He saw, too, a winding, freshly gravelled road that led from the entrance he had just seen to a sort of barbican and drawbridge over the moat; it was evidently the only way by which the house could be gained. That moat, he said to himself, was the very devil of a difficulty!---how, even supposing one could get into the park, was one to cross a ditch of water that was obviously fairly wide and probably pretty deep? But as he debated that question, moving about the hill-top and viewing the manor from various angles, he caught sight of what was evidently a rustic bridge, spanning the moat at a corner of the pleasure-grounds---that, at any rate, he thought, could be successfully crossed.

After making a complete circuit of the park by way of the surrounding hills, Richard went back to Malbourne. Just before reaching the hotel, and as he was considering the various points of his plan of campaign, a sudden notion in connection with his proposed venture sent him into a boot store, where he asked for a pair of rubber-soled tennis shoes. There was a man in there who was engaged in trying on a pair of new boots; Richard gave him a passing glance; had he noticed him more particularly, he could have seen that this man bestowed on him a sharp, inquiring look when he asked for rubber-soled goods at that time of the year, and subsequently viewed him over with what any observant person would have considered to be unusual interest. And when Richard went away, carrying his purchase under his arm, this man, making an excuse to the shopkeeper, followed him out on to the pavement, and thence watched him into his hotel. But Richard saw nothing of this; he was too much occupied with his own concerns to pay any attention to the doings of strangers.

Scarfe arrived before the end of the afternoon; Richard bade him get his evening meal early and be ready to go out with him at seven o’clock. By that time he himself had dined, put on his rubber-soled shoes, and was ready and impatient for action. He led Scarfe out of the town, and once on the way to Malbourne Manor told him what he was after. With Scarfe’s aid he could climb the boundary wall, and that done he must trust to luck. But---if he was not back at the hotel by eleven o’clock, then Scarfe was to seek out the local superintendent of police and tell him all about it.

Scarfe was upset. By what his master had told him, he said, he judged that the place harboured a gang of queer people who might be ugly to deal with. Wouldn’t it have been better to go armed?

“No!” said Richard. “I shall probably knock at the front door, and send in a polite request to see the master. No show of force, Scarfe! Don’t you get nervy---but do what I’ve said, if I’m not back by eleven.”

Scarfe observed that all the mischief might have been done by that time. But he was a man of obedience, and presently, in the darkness, he helped his master to scale the wall at a point which Richard had selected in the morning, and that done went away, shaking his head: Scarfe’s notion, as an old soldier, would have been to go with an automatic pistol in one hand and a bomb in the other.

Richard had no thought of bombs or pistols. He made his way across the park to the narrow rustic bridge. In a dead silence he got across it. He crept on towards a part of the house wherein were many lighted windows. And suddenly as he stepped into a winding path that ran through a thick shrubbery a flashlight was turned full on him and his surroundings, and he found himself confronted by a couple of stalwart men who covered him with unpleasantly steady revolvers.