I must say, and I always have said, that there was something uncanny in the very look of that house. Its heavy, blackened shape seemed to rise up like the shape of a dead-house or a prison. Many of its lower windows were heavily barred with iron bars. The paved yard around it was reeking with filth and rubbish. No sound, no light came out of it. It was just a great mass of brick-work looming up in the darkness, and I could understand easily enough how all the wild tales about it had come to be told. Sitting there, astride on the wall, and peering at such casements as faced the back of the cabaret, I should not have been a bit surprised if I'd have seen some inhuman thing stalking the yard below me. My heart was in my mouth—my nerves twitched like a woman's. And Jim was not a whit better.
"Do you make any thing of it?" he whispered, after we'd been on the wall a minute or two.
"The devil a bit!" said I.
"It ain't exactly a palace of varieties, is it?" he continued presently; "but Grey's in there, right enough. It was through that mite of a window on your left that I got a sight of the place last night. There was a light there then. I don't fancy we'll do much to-night."
"Nor me neither," said I, for I was right down scared, and that's the fact of it.
"Shall we try again to-morrow night?" said he, and I could see he was in a hurry to be off.
"We might as well, for all the good we're doing," said I; and with that I turned to put my foot on the steps again. A moment later I saw a thing which fairly took my breath away.
The window which was dark had suddenly become light. A man with a lamp in his hand passed it, and following him with quick steps was no other than my master, Nicolas Steele.
"Good God!" said I, half aloud, in spite of myself. "What are you doing in there?" and then, as I'm a man, I began to tremble. But Jim had already turned on me.
"Bigg," cried he, "you're playing me double! What's Nicolas Steele doing in there?"
"Ask me another," said I. "It's a thing I can't tell you."
"But I can!" said he, and he was angry too. "He's gone to get Grey out and claim the money."
"Jim, shut your mouth," said I, "and don't make him out the biggest fool alive!"
"You're playing me false!" cried he, raising his voice sillily.
"No such thing," said I. "And look here—I'll prove it. I'm going in after him."
"You are!" exclaimed he. "Then I'll say 'Good-evening' to you."
"Jim," said I, "don't you see it may be a matter of life or death with him? Help me in this, and I'll give you another hundred."
"Help you—how can I help you?"
"I'll tell you in a word. Run into the beer-shop there, and bring all the men you can find to these leads. Promise them twenty francs apiece to shout when I call to them. They'll do it quick enough if you say the police are with us on the other side."
"But you, yourself?"
"I'm going to throw these steps across the gap there, and force that window. After that, I'm trusting to bluff."
"You take your life in your hands," said he.
"Don't you trouble about that. You get the men. Quick's the word for this job."
He didn't wait for any more, but tumbled down to the shed again, and when I had waited five minutes and had seen him come out with half a dozen loafers at his tail, I dragged the steps up to the top of the wall, and then used them to bridge the gap which lay between the little window and myself. Luckily, the sill was old and broad; and though the window itself was not more than three feet square, it was unbarred. At any other time, I might have been a bit giddy clambering across that gap, for there was a drop of near twenty feet below me, but there were too many things running in my head to let me think of that, and half a minute hadn't gone before I had forced the window with my pocket-knife and dropped into a narrow passage on the second floor of the Maison d'Or.
Ten seconds, perhaps, I stood to assure myself that I was all right. Then I drew my revolver, and putting it to the full cock, I began to look about me. It was plain in a minute that I was in a passage with doors opening down one side of it. The glimmer of a light showed at the far end; but elsewhere it was all dark, and, what was more, strangely silent. The air itself was heavy, like the air of a bakehouse. I had to gasp for my breath; there was a choking sensation in my throat which nearly made me faint. Stinking fumes, like the fumes of stale opium, filled all the corridor and seemed to exude from the rooms. I staggered under the power of them, and had to bite my lips to prevent myself coughing.
So far as furniture went, there was little that I could see in the passage. A heavy carpet was soft to the feet, and thick curtains, made of some soft stuff, were hung over the openings to the doors. Yet what appeared more curious than any thing was the queer silence in the place. While I stood there, half choking for my breath, and half hidden behind one of the thickest of the curtains, I didn't hear so much as a creak of a door or the fall of a foot. The house might have been a dead-house with spectres for tenants.
You may ask me, fairly enough, what I had meant to do when I crossed the gap and forced my way into this queer place. I can only answer that I know no more than the dead. What I did was done on impulse. It was only when I stood in the passage, and heard my heart beating like a machine, that I began to think what a fool I had made of myself. And I must have stood there five minutes, afraid to go on, afraid to go back, when all of a sudden some one else decided for me. A door opened not two yards away, and out walked Sir Nicolas Steele and a little Frenchman. They were talking together angrily; and they went straight down the passage and turned the corner where the light was.
Though the door of the room from which they had come had only been open for a moment, I had seen a sight strange enough to have upset a stronger man than me. In a great Eastern-like room, all lit up with queer-colored lanterns, and having a fountain of water splashing in the middle of it, some twenty men were lying on little beds. Most of them looked to me to be dead with sleep, but one was raving, with his face buried in his pillow, while another seemed to be crawling on his hands and knees to the water which bubbled under the dome. The door was only open a second, as I say, but the view behind it gave me a shiver, and the shiver was still on me when, treading like a cat, I followed my master down the passage and came within a yard of him at the corner of it.
I was now near by the light, but curtains, hung crosswise in the passage, hid me well enough. I could see from my place that Sir Nicolas was arguing with the Frenchman at the top of a little flight of iron stairs. When they had talked for about a minute the Frenchman pointed to a door at the bottom of the flight, and my master made a step downward as though to reach the door. But his foot was hardly on the stairs when something happened which sent me as stiff as a corpse, and drew from me a cry which might have come from a madman. The stairs which I had seen a minute before I saw no longer. They had swung away under my master's touch, and with another cry joined to mine, he went headlong down to the floor below.
What happened in the next few minutes I can hardly tell. I remember, perfectly, that the Frenchman stood for a minute glaring at me, and hissing words between his teeth. Then he pressed a knob on the railings at his side, and the staircase swung back into its place.
So astonished was I to see such a thing that I never thought of the danger to myself. All that I could do was to stand and stare like one bewitched, and I don't believe that I had moved foot or hand when the man closed with me, and we went rolling over and over on the floor together. Strong man as I am, I don't think that I have ever been so near to death as I was that night. Now up, now down, with the cold sweat on my forehead, and the devil's fingers tearing the flesh out of my neck, I halloed to Jim to help me, and fought the Frenchman