mayes’s stronghold was taken, but mayes had escaped us once again; the cage was in our hands, but the bird had flown.
martin hewitt, however, had his plans, as he was soon to show. the recovery of the admiralty code was a good stroke, and was a satisfactory ending to an important case; but that, and even the capture of the curious premises behind the barbican, made but a halting-place in his pursuit of mayes, and as soon as i was in some degree recovered from my struggle, and the captured place had been hastily searched, the chase was resumed without a moment’s delay; and that adventure was entered upon which saw the end of the red triangle and its unholy doings — which came terribly near to seeing the end of hewitt himself, in fact.
i have not described the den near the barbican with any great particularity, but i have said that the office, accessible from the open street, was only connected with the hidden premises behind — premises, as was afterwards discovered, held under a separate tenancy — by an easily-shifted ladder. it was in these hidden premises, approached by the maze of courts and the stable-yard, that the main evidences of mayes’s way of life were observable. the passage where my wrist had been locked to the wall, and the room or cellar in which plummer had been confined, were the only parts of the lower premises fitted for the detention of prisoners, with the exception of one very low and wholly unlighted cellar, entered by a trapdoor and a very steep flight of brick steps. this place smelt horribly faint and stagnant; but it produced on my mind, both then and when i examined it later, an effect of horror and repulsion more than could be accounted for by the smell alone. of its history nothing was discovered, and perhaps the feeling (though others experienced it as well as myself) was the effect of mere fancy; but i have never got rid of a conviction that that black cellar, or rather pit — for it was very narrow — had been the instrument of crimes never to be told.
there were one or two rooms sparely furnished — one as a bedroom, a larger room, with a long table, a sofa, and several chairs; and in one of the smaller rooms was found a stove, ladles and crucibles for the melting down of metals — gold or silver. it was in this same room also that the table stood, in the drawers of which were found papers, letters and formul?— things giving more than a hint of the use to which mayes had put his friendship with mr. jacob mason, for of every possible manner and detail in which science — more particularly the science of chemistry — could aid in the commission of crime, there were notes in these same drawers.
but most of these things were observed in detail later. the thing that set us once more on the trail of mayes, that very night and that very hour, was found in the isolated office facing the street. it was a cheque-book, quite full of unused cheques.
“this cheque-book,” said hewitt to inspector plummer and myself, “was in the drawer below that in which we discovered the admiralty code. the eastern consolidated is the bank, as you see — upper holloway branch. now we must follow this at once, before waiting to search any further. there may be something more important as a clue, or there may not, but at any rate, while we are looking for it we are losing time. this may bring us to him at once.”
“you mean that he may have some address in holloway,” suggested plummer, “and we may get it from the bank?”
“there’s that possibility, and another,” hewitt answered. “he has had to bolt without warning or preparation, with nothing but the clothes he ran in — probably very little money. money he will want at once, and he would rather not wait till the morning to get it; if he can get it at once it will mean thirteen or fourteen hours’ start at least. more, he will know very well that this place will be searched, that this cheque-book will be discovered soon enough, and that consequently the bank will be watched. this is what he will do — what he is doing now, very likely. he will knock up the resident manager of that bank and try to get a cheque cashed to-night. i don’t think that can be done; in which case he will probably try to make some arrangement to have money sent him. either way, we must be at the upper holloway branch of the eastern consolidated bank as soon as a hansom can get us there.”
thus it was settled, and hewitt and plummer went off at once, leaving plummer’s men, with the city police, in charge of the raided premises; leaving some of them also to make inquiries in the neighbourhood. mr. victor peytral had shown himself anxious to accompany hewitt and plummer, but had been dissuaded by hewitt. i guessed that hewitt feared that some hasty indiscretion on the part of this terribly wronged man might endanger his plans. peytral, however, seemed tractable enough, and left immediately after them; he had business, he said, which he expected would occupy him for a day or two, and when it was completed he would see us again.
as for myself i only remained long enough to ascertain that the police could find no trace of the direction of mayes’s flight in the immediate neighbourhood. they had little to aid them. he had gone without a hat, and his dress was in some degree disordered by his struggle with me; but the latter defect he might easily have remedied in the courts as he ran, and they could gather no tidings of a hatless man. so i took my way to my office, my wrist growing stiffer and more painful as i went, so that i was not sorry to arrange for another member of the staff to take my duty for the night, and to get to bed a few hours earlier than usual, after the day’s fatigue and excitement.
