“You need have no fear for me,” replied Arnold. “I think I am sensible enough to be prudent, and I am quite sure that I am desperate enough to be fearless. Little worse can happen to me than the fate that I was contemplating last night.”
As he ceased speaking there was a knock at the door. It opened and the footman reappeared, saying in the most commonplace fashion —
“Mr. Smith will be happy to see you now, gentlemen. “Will you kindly walk this way?”
They followed him out into the hall, and then, somewhat to Arnold’s surprise, down the stairs at the back, which apparently led to the basement of the house.
The footman preceded them to the basement floor and halted before a door in a little passage that looked like the entrance to a coal cellar. On this he knocked in peculiar fashion with the knuckles of one hand, while with the other he pressed the button of an electric bell concealed under the paper on the wall. The bell sounded faintly as though some distance off, and as it rang the footman said abruptly to Colston —
“Das Wort ist Freiheit.”
Arnold knew German enough to know that this meant “The word is ‘Freedom,’” but why it should have been spoken in a foreign language mystified him not a little.
While he was thinking about this the door opened, as if by a released spring, and he saw before him a long, narrow passage, lit by four electric arcs, and closed at the other end by a door, guarded by a sentry armed with a magazine rifle.
He followed Colston down the passage, and when within a dozen feet of the sentry, he brought his rifle to the “ready,” and the following strange dialogue ensued between him and Colston —
“Quien va?”
“Zwei Freunde der Bruderschaft.”
“Por la libertad?”
“Für Freiheit über alles!”
“Pass, friends.”
The rifle grounded as the words were spoken, and the sentry stepped back to the wall of the passage.
At the same moment another bell rang beyond the door, and then the door itself opened as the other had done.
They passed through, and it closed instantly behind them, leaving them in total darkness.
Colston caught Arnold by the arm, and drew him towards him, saying as he did so —
“What do you think of our system of passwords?”
“Pretty hard to get through unless one knew them, I should think. Why the different languages?”
“To make assurance doubly sure every member of the Inner Circle must be conversant with four European languages. On these the changes are rung, and even I did not know what the two languages were to be to-night before I entered the house, and if I had asked for ‘Mr. Brown’ instead of ‘Mr. Smith,’ we should never have got beyond the drawing-room.
“When the footman told me in German that the word was ‘Freedom,’ I knew that I should have to answer the challenge of the sentry in German. I did not know that he would challenge in Spanish, and if I had not understood him, or had replied in any other language but German, he would have shot us both down without saying another word, and no one would ever have known what had become of us. You will be exempt from this condition, because you will always come with me. I am, in fact, responsible for you.”
“H’m, there doesn’t seem much chance of any one getting through on false pretences,” replied Arnold, with an irrepressible shudder. “Has any one ever tried?”
“Yes, once. The two gentlemen whose disappearance made the famous ‘Clapham Mystery’ of about twelve months ago. They were two of the smartest detectives in the French service, and the only two men who ever guessed the true nature of this house. They are buried under the floor on which you are standing at this moment.”
The words were spoken with a cruel inflexible coldness, which struck Arnold like a blast of frozen air. He shivered, and was about to reply when Colston caught him by the arm again, and said hurriedly —
“H’st! We are going in. Remember what I said, and don’t speak again till some one asks you to do so.”
As he spoke a door opened in the wall of the dark chamber in which they had been standing for the last few minutes, and a flood of soft light flowed in upon their dazzled eyes. At the same moment a man’s voice said from the room beyond in Russian —
“Who stands there?”
“Maurice Colston and the Master of the Air,” replied Colston in the same language.
“You are welcome,” was the reply, and then Colston, taking Arnold by the arm, led him into the room.
Chapter 5.
The Inner Circle.
As soon as Arnold’s eyes got accustomed to the light, he saw that he was in a large, lofty room with panelled walls adorned with a number of fine paintings. As he looked at these his gaze was fascinated by them, even more than by the strange company which was assembled round the long table that occupied the middle of the room.
Though they were all manifestly the products of the highest form of art, their subjects were dreary and repulsive beyond description. There was a horrible realism about them which reminded him irresistibly of the awful collection of pictorial horrors in the Musée Wiertz, in Brussels — those works of the brilliant but unhappy genius who was driven into insanity by the sheer exuberance of his own morbid imagination.
Here was a long line of men and women in chains staggering across a wilderness of snow that melted away into the horizon without a break. Beside them rode Cossacks armed with long whips that they used on men and women alike when their fainting limbs gave way beneath them, and they were like to fall by the wayside to seek the welcome rest that only death could give them.
There was a picture of a woman naked to the waist, and tied up to a triangle in a prison yard, being flogged by a soldier with willow wands, while a group of officers stood by, apparently greatly interested in the performance. Another painting showed a poor wretch being knouted to death in the market-place of a Russian town, and yet another showed a young and beautiful woman in a prison cell with her face distorted by the horrible leer of madness, and her little white hands clawing nervously at her long dishevelled hair.
Arnold stood for several minutes fascinated by the hideous realism of the pictures, and burning with rage and shame at the thought that they were all too terribly true to life, when he was startled out of his reverie by the same voice that had called them from the dark room saying to him in English —
“Well, Richard Arnold, what do you think of our little picture gallery? The paintings are good in themselves, but it may make them more interesting to you if you know that they are all faithful reproductions of scenes that have really taken place within the limits of the so-called civilised and Christian world. There are some here in this room now who have suffered the torments depicted on those canvases, and who could tell of worse horrors than even they portray. We should like to know what you think of our paintings?”
Arnold glanced towards the table in search of Colston, but he had vanished. Around the long table sat fourteen masked and shrouded forms that were absolutely indistinguishable one from the other. He could not even tell whether they were men or women, so closely were their forms and faces concealed. Seeing that he was left to his own discretion, he laid the case containing the model, which he had