Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 33, No. 2, July 1973

The Vanished Billionaire by B. Fletcher Robinson

I stood with my back to the fire, smoking and puzzling over it. The story was worth all the headlines they have given it; there was no loophole to the mystery.

Both sides of the Atlantic knew Silas J. Ford. He had established a business reputation in America that had made him a celebrity in England from the day he stepped off the liner. Once in London his syndicates and companies and consolidations had startled the slow-moving British mind. The commercial sky of the United Kingdom was overshadowed by him and his schemes. The papers were full of praise and blame, of puffs and denunciations.

Mr. Ford was a billionaire; he was on the verge of a smash that would paralyze the markets of the world. He was an abstainer, a drunkard; a gambler, a most religious man. He was a confirmed bachelor, a woman hater; his engagement was to be announced shortly. So was the ball kept rolling with the limelight always centered upon the spot where Silas J. Ford happened to be standing.

And now he had disappeared.

On the night of December 18th, a Thursday, he had left London for Meudon Hall, the fine old Hampshire mansion that he had rented from Lord Beverley. The two most trusted men in his office accompanied him. Friday morning he had spent with them; but at three o’clock the pair had returned to London, leaving their chief behind. From four to seven he had been shut up with his secretaries. It was a hard time for every one, a time verging upon panic; and at such times Silas J. Ford was not an idle man.

At eight o’clock he had dined. His one recreation was music, and after the meal he had played the organ in the picture gallery for an hour. At a quarter after ten he retired to his bedroom, dismissing Jackson, his body servant, for the night. Three-quarters of an hour later, however, Harbord, his secretary, had been called to the private telephone that Mr. Ford had lately erected to the neighboring town of Camdon. It was a message so urgent that he decided to wake his chief.

There was no answer to his knock, and on entering the room he found that Mr. Ford was not in bed. He was surprised, but in no way suspicious, and started to search the house. He was joined by a footman and, a little later, by Jackson and the butler. Astonishment changed to alarm. Other servants were roused to aid in the quest. Finally a party provided with lanterns from the stables examined the grounds.

Snow had fallen early in the day, covering the great lawns in front of the entrance porch with a soft white blanket about an inch in thickness. It was the head groom who struck the trail. Apparently Mr. Ford had walked out of the porch and so over the drive and across the lawns toward the high wall that bounded the public road. This road, which led from Meudon village to the town of Camdon, crossed the front to Meudon Hall at a distance of some quarter of a mile.

There was no doubt as to the identity of the footprints for Silas Ford affected a broad, square-toed boot easily recognizable from its unusual impression.

They tracked him to within twenty feet of the wall, but there the footprints ended. The snow around them lay smooth and unbroken.

Apparently he had stepped into space!

A stable lad galloped to Camdon with the news while another went in search of the Meudon policeman. And there the message, which had been telegraphed to the London paper at 1:18 in the morning, came to its termination.

Paper in hand, I set off up the stairs to Inspector Hartley’s room. I should never be able to put brush to canvas all day with so disturbing a mystery running in my head. Perhaps the little detective had later news from Scotland Yard to give me.

I found him standing with his back to the fire and his hands behind him. A bag, neatly strapped, lay on the rug at his feet. He gave me a quick look and a nod like the peck of a bird.

“I expected you, Mr. Phillips,” he said, “and what do you think of it?”

“That the Camdon reporter has more imagination than accuracy.”

“Not at all. This morning’s details only confirm the statement he telegraphed last night.”

“But you don’t mean to tell me that—”

“I do. Twenty feet from the wall of the park the footsteps come to an abrupt end. And of Mr. Ford we have no further news.”

“In the name of sanity, how was it done?” I asked Inspector Hartley incredulously.

“It is rather ‘why’ than ‘how’ Mr. Phillips. Why did he go out alone last night? If he has run away — why? If he has been kidnapped — why? There is much that is instructive in that line of argument. However, as I am leaving for Paddington Station in fifteen minutes, I shall hope to have fuller information before night.”

“Hartley,” I asked him eagerly, “may I come with you?”

He glanced up at me with that odd smile of his that I knew so well.

“If you can be ready in time,” he said.

It was past two o’clock when we arrived at the old town of Camdon. A carriage met us at the station. Five minutes more and we were clear of the narrow streets and climbing the first bare ridge of the downs. It was a desolate prospect enough, a bare expanse of windswept land that rose and fell with the sweeping regularity of the Pacific swell. Here and there a clump of ragged firs showed black against the snow. Under that soft carpet the crisp turf of the crests and the broad plow of the lower ground alike lay hidden. I shivered, drawing my coat more closely about me.

It was half an hour later that we topped a hillock and saw the gray towers of the ancient mansion beneath us. In the shelter of the valley, by the quiet river that now lay frozen into silence, the trees had grown into splendid woodlands, circling the hall on the farther side. From the broad front the white lawns crept down to the road on which we were driving. Dark masses of shrubberies and the tracery of scattered trees broke their silent curves. The park wall that fenced them from the road stood out like an ink-line ruled upon paper.

“It must have been there that he disappeared,” I cried, with a speculative finger.

“So I imagine,” said Hartley, “and if he spent the night on the Hampshire downs, he will be looking for a fire this morning. You have rather more than your fair share of the rug, Mr. Phillips, if you will excuse my mentioning it.”

A man was standing on the steps of the entrance porch as we drove up. As we unrolled ourselves he stepped forward to help us. He was a thin, pale-faced fellow with fair hair and indeterminate eyes.

“My name is Harbord,” he said. “You are Inspector Hartley, I believe.”

His hand shook as he stretched it out in a tremulous greeting. Plainly the secretary was afraid, visibly and anxiously afraid.

“Mr. Ransome, the manager of Mr. Ford’s London office is here,” he continued. “He caught the newspaper train from Paddington station at four this morning. He is waiting to see you in the library.”

We followed Harbord through a great hall, into a room lined with books from floor to ceiling. A stout, dark man who was pacing it stopped at the sight of us. His face as he turned it toward us looked pinched and gray in the morning light.

“Inspector Hartley, eh?” he said. “Well, Inspector, if you want a reward, name it. If you want to pull the house down, only say the word. But find him for us, or, by heaven, we’re done!”

“Is it as bad as that?”

“You can keep a secret, I suppose? Yes — it couldn’t well be worse. It was a tricky time; he hid half his schemes in his own head; he never trusted even me altogether. If he were dead I could plan something, but now—”

He thumped his hand on the table and turned away to the window.

“When you last saw Mr. Ford was he in good health? Did he stand the strain?”

“Ford had no nerves. He was never better in his life.”

“In these great transactions he would have his enemies. If his plans succeeded there would be many hard hit, perhaps ruined. Have you any suspicion of a man who, to save himself, might kidnap Mr. Ford?”

“No,” said the manager after a moment’s thought. “No, I cannot give you a single name. The players are all big men, Inspector. I don’t say that their consciences would stop them from trying such a trick: but it wouldn’t be worth their while. They hold off when the jail is the certain punishment.”

“Was this financial crisis in his own affairs generally known?”

“Certainly not.”

“Who would know of it?”

“There would be a dozen men on both sides of the Atlantic who might suspect the truth. But I don’t suppose that more than four people were actually in possession of the facts.”

“And who on earth would they be?”

“His two partners in America, myself and Mr. Harbord there.”

Hartley turned to the young man with a smile and a polite bow.

“Can you add any names to the list?” he asked.

“No,” said Harbord, staring at the detective with a puzzled look as if trying to catch the drift of his questions.

“Thank you,” said Hartley. “And now will you show me the place where this curious thing occurred.”

We crossed the drive, where the snow lay tom and trampled by the carriages, and so to the white, even surface of the lawn. We soon struck the trail, a confused path beaten by many footprints.

Hartley stooped for a moment and then turned on the secretary with an angry glance. “Were you with them?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Then why, in the name of common sense, didn’t you keep them off his tracks? You have simply trampled them out of existence between you!”

“We were in a hurry, Inspector,” said the secretary; “we didn’t think about it.”

We walked forward, following the broad trail of the searchers until we came to a circular patch of trodden snow. Evidently they had stopped and stood talking together. On the farther side I saw the footprints of a man clearly defined. There were some five or six clear impressions.

“I am glad you and your friends left me something, Mr. Harbord,” snapped Hartley.

“When we saw that Mr. Ford’s footprints went no farther we stopped. I suggested that we should do so. It had evidently become a matter for the police.”

“I take it that those boot-nails to the right and left mark the subsequent investigations of the village constable.”

“Yes, that is so.”

About twenty feet before us was the high wall that separated the lawns from the road. An old oak rose on the farther side of it. One huge limb was thrust across the coping, spreading the extremities of its leafless twigs over our heads. Hartley stood glaring up at it in profound contemplation.

“I thought of the oak,” said the secretary presently, “but how did he get from the ground to a branch a good six feet above him?”

“Exactly, Mr. Harbord.”

“If he had used a ladder,” continued the secretary, “there would be marks upon the snow; if he had swarmed up a rope, surely he would have moved about while he prepared for his climb. A lasso from above could hardly have jerked him from the ground without a kick or two. The footprints end in two firm impressions as if he had stepped off the earth in his stride.”

“As you say, it is really remarkable — remarkable indeed,” said Hartley.

“Inexplicable,” murmured the secretary.

“There are not more than three solutions,” said Hartley. “And now, if you please, we will go back to the house.”

In the entrance hall the Inspector inquired after Jackson, the valet, and in a couple of minutes he appeared. He was a tall, hatchet-faced fellow, very neatly dressed in black. He made a little bow and then stood watching us in a respectful attitude.

“A queer business this, Jack-son,” said Hartley.

“Yes, sir.”

“And what is your opinion on it?”

“To be frank, sir, I thought, at first, that Mr. Ford had run away; but now I don’t know what to make of it.”

“And why should he run away?”

“I have no idea, sir; but he seemed to me rather strange in his manner yesterday.”

“Have you been with him long?”

“No, sir. I was valet to the Honorable John Dorn, Lord Beverley’s second son. Mr. Ford took me from Mr. Dorn at the time he rented the Hall.”

“I see. And now will you show me your master’s room. I shall see you again later, Mr. Harbord,” Hartley continued. “In the meanwhile I will leave my assistant with you.”

We sat and smoked in the secretary’s room. He was not much of a talker, consuming cigarette after cigarette in silence. Presently Ransome came in, banging the door behind him. I suspect he was a harsh, ill-tempered man at the best, but now he was about the most disagreeable companion imaginable. He could not sit still for two consecutive minutes, roaming about the room, pestering me with questions as to my opinion on the case, lighting cigars and throwing them into the fire unsmoked.

The winter duck had already fallen when the Inspector joined us, and a very ragged and disheveled figure he made, with a great tear down his trouser leg.

“I’m too old for it,” he said with a smile at our astonished faces. “I shall have to leave tree-climbing to younger men.”

“May I ask why you take this occasion to amuse yourself in so remarkable a way?” asked Ransome. The man’s anxiety was telling on him; that was plain enough.

“I should hardly describe it as amusement,” said the Inspector with a glance at his torn clothes. “And as it is close upon dinnertime I must ask you to excuse me while I borrow a needle and thread.”

The dinner dragged itself to an end and we left Ransome with a second decanter of port before him. Hartley slipped away again and I consoled myself with a book in the library until half past ten, when I walked off to bed. A servant was switching off the light in the hall when I mounted the great staircase.

My room was in the old wing at the farther side of the picture gallery, and I had some difficulty in steering my way through the dark corridors. The mystery that hung over the house had shaken my nerves, and I remember that I started at every creak of a board and peered into the shadows as I passed along with heaven knows what ghostly expectations. I was glad enough to close my door upon them and see the wood fire blazing cheerfully in the open hearth.

I woke with a start that left me sitting up in bed with my heart thumping in my ribs like a piston rod. I am not generally a light sleeper, but that night even while I snored my nerves were active. Some one had tapped at my door; that was my impression.

I listened with the uncertain fear that comes to the newly waked. Then I heard it again — on the wall near my head this time. A board creaked. Some one was groping his way down the dark corridor without. Presently he stopped and a faint line of illumination sprang out under my door. It winked and then grew still. He had lighted a candle.

Assurance came with the streak of light. What was he doing, groping in the dark, if he had a candle with him? I crept over to the door, opened it and stared cautiously out.

About a dozen feet away a man was standing, a dark silhouette against the light he carried. His back was toward me; but I could see that his hand was shading the candle from his eyes while he stared into the shadows that clung about the farther end of the corridor.

Presently he began to move forward.

The picture gallery and the body of the house were behind us. The corridor in which he stood terminated in a window, set deep into the stone of the old walls. The man walked slowly, throwing the light to right and left. His attitude was of nervous expectation that of a man who looked for something that he feared to see.

At the window he stopped, staring about him and listening. He examined the fastenings and then tried a door on his right. It was locked against him. As he did so I caught his profile against the light. It was Harbord, the secretary. From where I stood he was not more than forty feet away. There was no possibility of a mistake.

As he turned to come back I retreated into my room, closing the door. The fellow was in a state of great agitation and I could hear him muttering to himself as he walked. When he had gone by I peeped out to see him and his light dwindle, reach the corner by the picture gallery and so fade into a reflection, a darkness.

I took care to turn the key before I got back into bed.

I woke again at seven and hurrying on my clothes set off to tell Hartley all about it. I took him to the place and together we examined the corridor. There were only two rooms beyond mine. The one on the left was occupied by Ransome; that on the right was a large store-room, the door of which was locked. The housekeeper kept the key, we learned upon inquiry. Whom had Harbord followed? The problem was beyond me. As for Inspector Hartley, he did not indulge in verbal speculations.

It was in the central hall that we met with the secretary on his way to the breakfast room. He looked nervous and depressed; he nodded to us and was passing on when Hartley stopped him.

“Good-morning, Mr. Harbord” he said. “Can I have a word with you?”

“Certainly, Inspector. What is it?”

“I have a favor to ask. My assistant and myself have our hands full here. If necessary could you help us by going to London and—”

“For the day?” he interrupted.

“No. It may be an affair of three or four days.”

“Then I must refuse. I am sorry, but—”

“Don’t apologize, Mr. Harbord,” said the little man cheerfully. “I shall have to find some one else — that is all!”

We walked into the breakfast room and a few minutes later Ransome appeared with a great bundle of letters and telegrams in his hand. He said not a word to any of us, but dropped into a chair tearing open the envelopes and glancing at their contents. His face grew darker as he read and once he thumped his hand upon the table with a crash that set the china jingling.

“Well, Inspector?” he said at last.

The little detective’s head shook out a negative.

“Perhaps it is a matter of reward,” said the manager.

“No, Mr. Ransome; but it is becoming one of my personal reputation.”

“Then, by thunder, you are in danger of losing it! Why don’t you and your friend there hustle instead of loitering around as if you were paid by the job. I tell you, man, there are thousands, hundreds of thousands melting, slipping through our fingers, every hour of the day.”

He sprang from his seat and started his walk again, up and down, up and down, as we had just seen him.

“Shall you be returning to London?”

At the question the manager halted in his stride, staring sharply down into Hartley’s face.

“No,” he said, “I shall stay here. Inspector, until such time as you have something definite to tell me.”

“I have an inquiry to make which I would rather place in the hands of some one who has personal knowledge of Mr. Ford. Neither Mr. Harbord nor yourself desires to leave Meudon. Is there any one else you can suggest?”

“There is Jackson, Ford’s valet.” said Ransome after a moment’s thought. “He can go if you think him bright enough. I’ll send for him.”

While the footman who answered the bell was gone upon his errand we waited in uneasy silence. There was the shadow of mystery upon us all. Jack-son, as he entered, was the only one who seemed at his ease. He stood there a tall figure of all the respectabilities.

“The Inspector here wishes you to go to London, Jackson,” said the manager. “He will explain the details. There is a train from Camdon at twelve.”

“Certainly, sir. Do I return to-night?”

“No, Jackson,” said Hartley; “it will take a day or two.”

The man took a couple of steps toward the door, hesitated and then returned to his former place.

“I beg your pardon, sir.” he began, addressing Ransome, “but I would rather remain at Meudon under present circumstances.”

“What the devil do you mean?” thundered the manager.

“Well, sir, I was the last to see Mr. Ford. There is, as it were, a suspicion upon me. I should like to be present while the search continues both for his sake — and my own.”

“Very kind of you, I’m sure,” growled Ransome, “but you either do what I tell you, Jackson, or you can look for another job. So be quick and make up your mind.”

“I think you are treating me most unfairly, sir. But I cannot be persuaded out of what I know to be my duty.”

“You impertinent rascal—” began the furious manager. But Hartley was already on his feet with a hand outstretched.

“Perhaps, after all, I can make other arrangements with Mr. Ransome,” he said. “It is natural that Jackson should consider his own reputation in this affair. That is all, Jackson; you may go now.”

It was half an hour afterward, when the end of breakfast had dispersed the party, that I spoke to Hartley about it, offering to go to London myself and to do my best to carry out his instructions.

“I had bad luck in my call for volunteers,” he said.

“I should have thought they would have been glad enough to get the chance of work. They can find no particular amusement in loafing about the place all day.”

“Doubtless they all had excellent reasons,” he said with a little smile. “But, anyway, you cannot be spared, Mr. Phillips.”

“You flatter me.”

“I want you to stay in your bedroom. Write, read, do what you like — but keep your door ajar. If any one passes down the corridor, see where he goes — only don’t let him know that you are watching him if you can help it. I will take my turn at half past one. I don’t mean to starve you.”

I obeyed. After all, it was in a manner promotion that Hartley had given me.

Yet it was a tedious, anxious time. No one came my way barring a sour-looking house-maid. I tried to argue out the case, but the deeper I got the more conflicting grew my theories. I was never more glad to see a friendly face than when the little man came in upon me.

The short winter’s afternoon crept on, the Inspector and I taking turn and turn about in our sentry duty. Dinner-time came and went. I had been off since nine and at ten thirty I poured out a whisky and soda and went back to join him. He was sitting in the middle of the room, smoking a pipe in great apparent satisfaction.

“Bedtime, isn’t it?” I grumbled, sniffing at the strong tobacco.

“Oh, no,” he said. “The fact is, we are going to sit up all night.”

I threw myself on a couch by the window without reply; perhaps I was not in the best of tempers; certainly I did not feel so.

“You insisted on coming down with me,” he suggested.

“I know all about that,” I told him; “I haven’t complained, have I? If you want me to shut myself up for a week I’ll do it; but I should prefer to have some idea of the reason why.”

“I don’t wish to create mysteries, Mr. Phillips,” he said kindly. “But, believe me, there is nothing to be gained and much that may be lost in vague discussions.”

I knew that settled it as far as he was concerned, so I nodded my head and filled a pipe. At eleven he walked across the room and switched off the light.

“If nothing happens you can take your time at the wheel in four hours from now,” he said. “In the meanwhile get to sleep. I will keep the first watch.”

I shut my eyes, but there was no rest in me that night. I lay listening to the silence of the old house with a dull speculation. Somewhere far down in the lower floor a great gong-like clock chimed the hours and quarters. I heard them every one, from twelve to one, from one to two. Hartley had stopped smoking and sat silent.

It must have been some fifteen minutes after two that I heard the faint creak of a board in the corridor outside. I sat up, every nerve strung to a tense alertness. Then there came a sound I knew well, the soft drawing touch of a hand groping in the darkness as some one felt his way along the paneled walls. It passed us and was gone. Yet Hartley never moved. Could he have fallen asleep? I whispered his name.

“Hush.”

The answer came to me like a gentle sigh.

One minute, two minutes more and the room sprang into sight under the steady glow of an electric hand-lamp. Inspector Hartley rose from his seat and slid through the door with me upon his heels. The light he carried searched the clustered shadows; but the corridor was empty. Nor was there any place where a man might hide.

“You waited too long,” I whispered impatiently.

“The man is no fool, Mr. Phillips. Do you imagine that he was not listening and staring like a hunted beast. A noisy board, a stumble or a flash of light and — we should have wasted a tiring day.”

“Nevertheless he has got clear away.”

“I think not.”

As we crept forward I saw that a strip of the oak flooring along the walls was gray with dust. If it had been in such a neglected state in the afternoon I should surely have noticed it. In some curiosity I stooped to examine the phenomenon.

“Flour,” whispered the little man, touching my shoulder.

“Flour?”

“Yes. I sprinkled it myself. Look — there is the first result.” He steadied his light as he spoke, pointing with his other hand. On the powdery surface was the half-footprint of a man.

The flour did not extend more than a couple of feet from the walls, so that it was only here and there that we caught up the trail. We had passed the bedroom on the left — yet the footprints still went on; we were at the store-room door, yet they still were visible before us. There was no other egress from the corridor. The tall window at the end was, as I knew, a good twenty feet from the ground. Had this man also vanished off the earth like Silas Ford?

Suddenly the Inspector stopped, grasping my arm. The light he held fell upon two footprints close together. They were at right angles to the passages. Apparently the man had passed into the solid wall?

“Hartley, what does it mean?”

“Have you never heard of a ‘priest’s hole’?” he whispered. “In the days when Meudon Hall was built no country house was without its hiding-place. Protestants and priests, Royalists and Republicans — they all used the secret burrow at one time or another.”

“How did he get in?”

“That is what we are here to discover; and as I have no wish to destroy Mr. Ford’s old oak panels I think our simplest plan will be to wait until he comes back again.”

The shadows leaped upon us as Hartley extinguished the light he carried. The great window alone was luminous with the faint starlight that showed the tracery of its ancient stonework; for the rest, the darkness hedged us about in impenetrable barriers. Side by side we stood by the wall in which we knew the secret entrance must exist.

It may have been ten minutes or more, when from the distance — somewhere below our feet, or so it seemed to me — there came the faint echo of a closing door. It was only in such cold silence that we could have heard it. The time ticked on. Suddenly upon the black of the floor there sprang a thin reflection like the slash of a sword — a reflection that grew and broadened into a gush of light as the sliding panel in the wall, six feet from where we stood, rose to the full opening. There followed another pause, during which I could see Hartley draw himself together as if for some unusual exertion.

A shadow darkened the reflection on the floor and a head came peering out. The light but half displayed his face, but I could see that his teeth were bare and glistening like those of a man in some deadly expectation. The next moment he stepped across the threshold.

With a spring like the rush of a terrier Hartley was upon him, driving him off his balance with the impact of the blow. Before I could reach them, the little detective had him beat, though he still kicked viciously until I lent a hand. The click of the handcuffs on his wrists ended the matter.

It was Ford’s valet, the man Jackson.

We were not long by ourselves. I heard a key turned in the lock and Ransome burst out of his room into the corridor, like an angry bull. Almost at the same moment there sounded a quick patter of naked feet from behind us and Harbord came running up swinging a heavy stick in his hand.

They both stopped at the edge of the patch of light in which we were, staring from us to the gaping hole in the wall.

“What the deuce are you about?” cried Ransome.

“Finding an answer to your problem,” said the detective, getting to his feet.

Hartley stepped through the opening in the wall and lifted the candle which the valet had placed on the floor while he was raising the panel from within. By its light I could see the first steps of a flight that led down into darkness.

“We will take Jackson with us,” Hartley said. “Keep an eye on him, Mr. Phillips, if you please.”

It was a strange procession that we made. First Hartley with the candle, then Ransome with Jackson following, while Harbord and I brought up the rear. We descended some thirty steps, formed in the thickness of the wall, opened a heavy door and so found ourselves in a narrow chamber some twelve feet long by seven broad. Upon a mattress at the farther end lay a man, gagged and bound.

As the light fell upon his features, Ransome sprang forward, shouting his name. “Silas Ford, by thunder!”

With eager fingers we loosened the gag and cut the ropes that bound his wrists. He sat up, turning his long thin face from one to the other of us as he stretched the cramp from his limbs.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” said he. “Well, Ransome, how are things?”

“Bad, sir, but it’s not too late.” He nodded his head, passing his hands through his hair with a quick, nervous movement.

“You’ve caught my clever friend, I see. Kindly go through his pockets, will you? He has something I must ask him to return to me.”

We found it in Jackson’s pocket-book, a check antedated a week, for five thousand pounds, with a covering letter to the manager of the bank. Ford took the bit of stamped paper, twisting it to and fro in his supple fingers.

“It was smart of you, Jackson,” he said, addressing the bowed figure before him; “I give you credit for the idea. To kidnap a man just as he was bringing off a big thing — well, you would have earned the money.”

“But how did you get down here?” asked Ransome in bewilderment.

“He told me that he had discovered an old hiding-place — a ‘priest’s hole’ he called it, and I walked into the trap, like the best man may do sometimes. As we got to the bottom of that stairway he slipped a noose over my head and had me fixed in thirty seconds. He fed me himself twice a day, standing by to see I didn’t shout. When I paid up he was to have twenty-four hours’ start. Then he would let you know where I was. I held out a while, but I gave in to-night. The delay was getting too dangerous. Have you a cigarette, Harbord? Thank you. And who may you be?”

It was to the detective he spoke.

“My name is Hartley, Inspector Hartley from Scotland Yard.”

“And I owe my rescue to you?”

The little man from Scotland Yard bowed.

“You will have no reason to regret it.”

It was as we traveled up to town next day that Hartley told me his story. I will set it down as briefly as may be.

“Men do not vanish, Mr. Phillips,” he said, “even though they are billionaires — who can do most things. After I left you in the afternoon of our arrival, I examined the road that skirted the park wall. The traffic of the day added to a flock of sheep had cut and trodden the snow out of all practical uses. I managed to climb the trunk of the oak which, as you will remember, grew outside the wall, and so made my way along a great branch to the spot beneath which the footsteps disappeared.

“I could see that some one had been in the tree before me. The manner of Ford’s escape seemed plain.

“I dropped from the branch and again examined the footprints. The last two were remarkable. They were far more clearly defined than the rest. What accounted for this sudden increase in Ford’s weight? If he had dropped as I had done instead of starting to climb— That was how the truth occurred to me.

“But was it Ford at all? It would be easy enough for a man desiring to leave evidence of the financier’s escape behind him to have stolen a pair of Ford’s boots. I remembered the sudden telephone message and Harbord’s search for his chief. What if the man laying the false trail had seen the lights spring up in the house and had failed to complete his work, rushing back that his absence might not be noted? But the footsteps led away from the house. Might not the boots have been reversed?

“From what I have since discovered my reasoning was correct. Jackson intended to lay a trail across the snow to the park wall that it might be thought that his master had for his own purposes run away. But how could he return without laying a double track? To avoid this he tied on the boots in reverse fashion, intending to climb the wall from the road and return across the lawns to the house. To do this he swarmed up the oak as I had done and struggled along the branch. As he did so he saw the lights spring up in his master’s room. Without further thought of the strange evidence he had left behind him, he dropped to the ground and rushed back as fast as he could.

“But to continue my story: If these were not Ford’s footprints he had not run away. Either he had been carried off, had been murdered and his body concealed, or he was still in the house. Who would desire to kidnap or murder him? There lay the mystery. A kidnapper would have probably acted with some idea of ransom. This suggested a knowledge of his business complications, and the exceptional opportunity for blackmail. Who knew the truth? Ransome, Harbord certainly; Jackson possibly. That was all that I could learn from them.

“Your story of Harbord’s excursion supplies a clue. The secretary had evidently followed some man who had disappeared mysteriously. Could there be the entrance to a secret chamber in that corridor? That would explain the mystification of Harbord as well as the disappearance of Silas Ford. If so, Harbord was not involved — but who was?

“If Ford was held a prisoner, he must be fed. His jailer must of necessity remain in the house. But the trap I set in the suggested journey to London was an experiment singularly unsuccessful, for all the three men I desired to test refused. However, if I was right about the secret chamber I could checkmate the blackmailer by keeping a watch on him from your room, which commanded the line of communications. But Jackson was clever enough to leave his victualing to the night-time. I scattered flour to try the result of that ancient trick. It was successful. That is all. Do you follow me?”

“Yes,” said I, “but how did Jackson come to know of the hiding-place?”

“He was a servant in the house years before Silas Ford rented it, remember,” said Hartley.

“He is a clever fellow, that Jackson. It was a pleasure to meet him.”