The Cleveland Moffett Mystery MEGAPACK® by Cleveland Moffett

Author:Cleveland Moffett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, crime, true crime, detective, murder
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2018-02-19T16:00:00+00:00

Around the four walls were logs piled evenly to the height of nearly six feet, and at the archway the pile ran straight through into the smaller room. The logs were in two-foot lengths, and as the archway was about four feet wide, the passage between the two rooms was half blocked with wood.

Coquenil walked slowly around the chamber, peering carefully into cracks between the logs, as if searching for something. As he went on he held the candle lower and lower, and presently got down upon his hands and knees and crept along the base of the pile.

“What are you doing?” asked Alice, watching him in wonder from the archway.

Without replying, the detective rose to his feet, and holding the candle high above his head, examined the walls above the wood pile. Then he reached up and scraped the stones with his finger nails in several places, and then held his fingers close to the candlelight and looked at them and smelled them. His fingers were black with soot.

“M. Paul, won’t you speak to me?” begged the girl.

“Just a minute, just a minute,” he answered absently. Then he spoke with quick decision: “I’m going to set you to work,” he said. “By the way, have you any idea where we are?”

She looked at him in surprise. “Why, don’t you know?”

“I think we are on the Rue de Varennes—a big hôtel back of the high wall?”

“That’s right,” she said.

“Ah, he didn’t take me away!” reflected M. Paul. “That is something. Pougeot will scent danger and will move heaven and earth to save us. He will get Tignol and Tignol knows I was here. But can they find us? Can they find us? Tell me, did you come down many stairs?”

“Yes,” she said, “quite a long flight; but won’t you please—”

He cut her short, speaking kindly, but with authority.

“You mustn’t ask questions, there isn’t time. I may as well tell you our lives are in danger. He’s going to set fire to this wood and—”

“Oh!” she cried, her eyes starting with terror.

“See here,” he said sharply. “You’ve got to help me. We have a chance yet. The fire will start in this big chamber and—I want to cut it off by blocking the passageway. Let’s see!” He searched through his pockets. “He has taken my knife. Ah, this will do!” and lifting a plate from the table he broke it against the wall. “There! Take one of these pieces and see if you can saw through the rope. Use the jagged edge—like this. That cuts it. Try over there.”

Alice fell to work eagerly, and in a few moments they had freed a section of the wood piled in the smaller chamber from the restraining ropes and stakes.

“Now then,” directed Coquenil, “you carry the logs to me and I’ll make a barricade in the passageway.”

The word passageway is somewhat misleading—there was really a distance of only three feet between the two chambers, this being the thickness of the massive stone wall that separated them.

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