use, and my inner man revived
with his food and drink.

"Allus glad to oblige the p'lice," said Mr. Moon; "allus. 'Cos why?
Ain't they the p'lice? Very well then!"

THE ADVENTURE OF CHANNEL MARSH

I

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 meta