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+Project Gutenberg's Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces, by Thomas W. Hanshew
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces
+
+Author: Thomas W. Hanshew
+
+Release Date: December 12, 2004 [EBook #14332]
+[Last updated: November 17, 2012]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLEEK: THE MAN OF THE FORTY FACES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Beginners Projects, Mary Meehan, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                  CLEEK: The Man of the Forty Faces
+
+                        By THOMAS W. HANSHEW
+
+AUTHOR OF "Cleek of Scotland Yard," "The Riddle of the Night," Etc.
+
+                                1912
+
+
+
+CLEEK: THE MAN OF THE FORTY FACES
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+THE AFFAIR OF THE MAN WHO CALLED HIMSELF HAMILTON CLEEK
+
+
+The thing wouldn't have happened if any other constable than Collins had
+been put on point duty at Blackfriars Bridge that morning. For Collins
+was young, good-looking, and--knew it. Nature had gifted him with a
+susceptible heart and a fond eye for the beauties of femininity. So when
+he looked round and saw the woman threading her way through the maze of
+vehicles at "Dead Man's Corner," with her skirt held up just enough to
+show two twinkling little feet in French shoes, and over them a
+graceful, willowy figure, and over that an enchanting, if rather too
+highly tinted face, with almond eyes and a fluff of shining hair under
+the screen of a big Parisian hat--that did for him on the spot.
+
+He saw at a glance that she was French--exceedingly French--and he
+preferred English beauty, as a rule. But, French or English, beauty is
+beauty, and here undeniably was a perfect type, so he unhesitatingly
+sprang to her assistance and piloted her safely to the kerb, revelling
+in her voluble thanks, and tingling as she clung timidly but rather
+firmly to him.
+
+"Sair, I have to give you much gratitude," she said in a pretty, wistful
+sort of way, as they stepped on to the pavement. Then she dropped her
+hand from his sleeve, looked up at him, and shyly drooped her head, as
+if overcome with confusion and surprise at the youth and good looks of
+him. "Ah, it is nowhere in the world but Londres one finds these
+delicate attentions, these splendid sergeants de ville," she added, with
+a sort of sigh. "You are wonnerful--you are mos' wonnerful, you Anglais
+poliss. Sair, I am a stranger; I know not ze ways of this city of
+amazement, and if monsieur would so kindly direct me where to find the
+Abbey of the Ves'minster--"
+
+Before P.C. Collins could tell her that if that were her destination,
+she was a good deal out of her latitude; indeed, even before she
+concluded what she was saying, over the rumble of the traffic there rose
+a thin, shrill piping sound, which to ears trained to the call of it
+possessed a startling significance.
+
+It was the shrilling of a police whistle, far off down the Embankment.
+
+"Hullo! That's a call to the man on point!" exclaimed Collins, all alert
+at once. "Excuse me, mum. See you presently. Something's up. One of my
+mates is a-signalling me."
+
+"Mates, monsieur? Mates? Signalling? I shall not understand the vords.
+But yes, vat shall that mean--eh?"
+
+"Good Lord, don't bother me now! I--I mean, wait a bit. That's the call
+to 'head off' someone, and--By George! There he is now, coming head on,
+the hound, and running like the wind!"
+
+For of a sudden, through a break in the traffic, a scudding figure had
+sprung into sight--the figure of a man in a grey frock-coat and a
+shining "topper," a well-groomed, well-set-up man, with a small,
+turned-up moustache and hair of that peculiar purplish-red one sees only
+on the shell of a roasted chestnut. As he swung into sight, the distant
+whistle shrilled again; far off in the distance voices sent up cries of
+"Head him off!" "Stop that man!" _et cetera_; then those on the pavement
+near to the fugitive took up the cry, joined in pursuit, and in a
+twinkling, what with cabmen, tram-men, draymen, and pedestrians
+shouting, there was hubbub enough for Hades.
+
+"A swell pickpocket, I'll lay my life," commented Collins, as he squared
+himself for an encounter and made ready to leap on the man when he came
+within gripping distance. "Here! get out of the way, madmazelly.
+Business before pleasure. And, besides, you're like to get bowled over
+in the rush. Here, chauffeur!"--this to the driver of a big, black
+motor-car which swept round the angle of the bridge at that moment, and
+made as though to scud down the Embankment into the thick of the
+chase--"pull that thing up sharp! Stop where you are! Dead still. At
+once, at once, do you hear? We don't want you getting in the way. Now,
+then"--nodding his head in the direction of the running man--"come on
+you bounder; I'm ready for you!"
+
+And, as if he really heard that invitation, and really was eager to
+accept it, the red-headed man did "come on" with a vengeance. And all
+the time, "madmazelly," unheeding Collins's advice, stood calmly and
+silently waiting.
+
+Onward came the runner, with the whole roaring pack in his wake, dodging
+in and out among the vehicles, "flooring" people who got in his way,
+scudding, dodging, leaping, like a fox hard pressed by the
+hounds--until, all of a moment he spied a break in the traffic, leapt
+through it, and--then there was mischief. For Collins sprang at him like
+a cat, gripped two big, strong-as-iron hands on his shoulders, and had
+him tight and fast.
+
+"Got you, you ass!" snapped he, with a short, crisp, self-satisfied
+laugh. "None of your blessed squirming now. Keep still. You'll get out
+of your coffin, you bounder, as soon as out of my grip. Got you--got
+you! Do you understand?"
+
+The response to this fairly took the wind out of him.
+
+"Of course I do," said the captive, gaily; "it's part of the programme
+that you should get me. Only, for Heaven's sake, don't spoil the film by
+remaining inactive, you goat! Struggle with me--handle me roughly--throw
+me about. Make it look real; make it look as though I actually did get
+away from you, not as though you let me. You chaps behind there, don't
+get in the way of the camera--it's in one of those cabs. Now, then,
+Bobby, don't be wooden! Struggle--struggle, you goat, and save the
+film!"
+
+"Save the what?" gasped Collins. "Here! Good Lord! Do you mean to
+say--?"
+
+"Struggle--struggle--struggle!" cut in the man impatiently. "Can't you
+grasp the situation? It's a put-up thing: the taking of a kinematograph
+film--a living picture--for the Alhambra to-night! Heavens above,
+Marguerite, didn't you tell him?"
+
+"Non, non! There was not ze time. You come so quick, I could not. And
+he--ah, le bon Dieu!--he gif me no chance. Officair, I beg, I entreat of
+you, make it real! Struggle, fight, keep on ze constant move.
+Zere!"--something tinkled on the pavement with the unmistakable sound of
+gold--"zere, monsieur, zere is the half-sovereign to pay you for ze
+trouble, only, for ze lof of goodness, do not pick it up while the
+instrument--ze camera--he is going. It is ze kinematograph, and you
+would spoil everything!"
+
+The chop-fallen cry that Collins gave was lost in a roar of laughter
+from the pursuing crowd.
+
+"Struggle--struggle! Don't you hear, you idiot?" broke in the red-headed
+man irritably. "You are being devilishly well paid for it, so for
+goodness' sake make it look real. That's it! Bully boy! Now, once more
+to the right, then loosen your grip so that I can push you away and make
+a feint of punching you off. All ready there, Marguerite? Keep a clear
+space about her, gentlemen. Ready with the motor, chauffeur? All right.
+Now, then, Bobby, fall back, and mind your eye when I hit out, old chap.
+One, two, three--here goes!"
+
+With that he pushed the chop-fallen Collins from him, made a feint of
+punching his head as he reeled back, then sprang toward the spot where
+the Frenchwoman stood, and gave a finish to the adventure that was
+highly dramatic and decidedly theatrical. For "mademoiselle," seeing him
+approach her, struck a pose, threw out her arms, gathered him into
+them--to the exceeding enjoyment of the laughing throng--then both
+looked back and behaved as people do on the stage when "pursued,"
+gesticulated extravagantly, and, rushing to the waiting motor, jumped
+into it.
+
+"Many thanks, Bobby; many thanks, everybody!" sang out the red-headed
+man. "Let her go, chauffeur. The camera men will pick us up again at
+Whitehall, in a few minutes' time."
+
+"Right you are, sir," responded the chauffeur gaily. Then "toot-toot"
+went the motor-horn as the gentleman in grey closed the door upon
+himself and his companion, and the vehicle, darting forward, sped down
+the Embankment in the exact direction whence the man himself had
+originally come, and, passing directly through that belated portion of
+the hurrying crowd to whom the end of the adventure was not yet known,
+flew on and--vanished.
+
+And Collins, stooping to pick up the half-sovereign that had been thrown
+him, felt that after all it was a poor price to receive for all the
+jeers and gibes of the assembled onlookers.
+
+"Smart capture, Bobby, wasn't it?" sang out a deriding voice that set
+the crowd jeering anew. "You'll git promoted, you will! See it in all
+the evenin' papers--oh, yus! ''Orrible hand-to-hand struggle with a
+desperado. Brave constable has 'arf a quid's worth out of an infuriated
+ruffin!' My hat! won't your missis be proud when you take her to see
+that bloomin' film?"
+
+"Move on, now, move on!" said Collins, recovering his dignity, and
+asserting it with a vim. "Look here, cabby, I don't take it kind of you
+to laugh like that; they had you just as bad as they had me. Blow that
+Frenchy! She might have tipped me off before I made such an ass of
+myself. I don't say that I'd have done it so natural if I had known,
+but--Hullo! What's that? Blowed if it ain't that blessed whistle again,
+and another crowd a-pelting this way; and--no!--yes, by Jupiter!--a
+couple of Scotland Yard chaps with 'em. My hat! what do you suppose that
+means?"
+
+He knew in the next moment. Panting and puffing, a crowd at their heels,
+and people from all sides stringing out from the pavement and trooping
+after them, the two "plain-clothes" men came racing through the grinning
+gathering and bore down on P.C. Collins.
+
+"Hullo, Smathers, you in this, too?" began he, his feelings softened by
+the knowledge that other arms of the law would figure on that film with
+him at the Alhambra to-night. "Now, what are you after, you goat? That
+French lady, or the red-headed party in the grey suit?"
+
+"Yes, yes, of course I am. You heard me signal you to head him off,
+didn't you?" replied Smathers, looking round and growing suddenly
+excited when he realized that Collins was empty-handed, and that the
+red-headed man was not there. "Heavens! you never let him get away, did
+you? You grabbed him, didn't you--eh?"
+
+"Of course I grabbed him. Come out of it. What are you giving me, you
+josser?" said Collins with a wink and a grin. "Ain't you found out even
+yet, you silly? Why, it was only a faked-up thing--the taking of a
+kinematograph picture for the Alhambra. You and Petrie ought to have
+been here sooner and got your wages, you goats. I got half a quid for my
+share when I let him go."
+
+Smathers and Petrie lifted up their voices in one despairing howl.
+
+"When you what?" fairly yelled Smathers. "You fool! You don't mean to
+tell me that you let them take you in like that--those two? You don't
+mean to tell me that you had him--had him in your hands--and then let
+him go? You did? Oh! you seventy-seven kinds of a double-barrelled ass!
+Had him--think of it!--had him, and let him go! Did yourself out of a
+share in a reward of two hundred quid when you'd only to shut your hands
+and hold on to it!"
+
+"Two hundred quid? Two hun--W-what are you talking about? Wasn't it
+true? Wasn't it a kinematograph picture, after all?"
+
+"No, you fool, no!" howled Smathers, fairly dancing with despair. "Oh,
+you blithering idiot! You ninety-seven varieties of a fool! Do you know
+who you had in your hands? Do you know who you let go? It was that devil
+'Forty Faces'--'The Vanishing Cracksman'--the man who calls himself
+'Hamilton Cleek'; and the woman was his pal, his confederate, his
+blessed stool-pigeon--'Margot, the Queen of the Apache'; and she came
+over from Paris to help him in that clean scoop of Lady Dresmer's jewels
+last week!"
+
+"Heavens!" gulped Collins, too far gone to say anything else, too deeply
+dejected to think of anything but that he had had the man for whom
+Scotland Yard had been groping for a year--the man over whom all
+England, all France, all Germany wondered--close shut in the grip of his
+hands and then had let him go. The biggest and boldest criminal the
+police had ever had to cope with, the almost supernatural genius of
+crime, who defied all systems, laughed at all laws, mocked at all the
+Vidocqs, and Dupins, and Sherlock Holmeses, whether amateur or
+professional, French or English, German or American, that ever had been
+or ever could be pitted against him, and who, for sheer devilry, for
+diabolical ingenuity and for colossal impudence, as well as for a
+nature-bestowed power that was simply amazing, had not his match in all
+the universe.
+
+Who or what he really was, whence he came, whether he was English,
+Irish, French, German, Yankee, Canadian, Italian or Dutchman, no man
+knew and no man might ever hope to know unless he himself chose to
+reveal it. In his many encounters with the police he had assumed the
+speech, the characteristics, and, indeed, the facial attributes of each
+in turn, and assumed them with an ease and a perfection that were simply
+marvellous, and had gained for him the sobriquet of "Forty Faces" among
+the police, and of "The Vanishing Cracksman" among the scribes and
+reporters of newspaperdom. That he came, in time, to possess another
+name than these was due to his own whim and caprice, his own bald,
+unblushing impudence; for, of a sudden, whilst London was in a fever of
+excitement and all the newspapers up in arms over one of the most daring
+and successful coups, he chose to write boldly to both editors and
+police complaining that the title given him by each was both vulgar and
+cheap.
+
+"You would not think of calling Paganini a 'fiddler,'" he wrote; "why,
+then, should you degrade me with the coarse term of 'cracksman'? I claim
+to be as much an artist in my profession as Paganini was in his, and I
+claim also a like courtesy from you. So, then, if in the future it
+becomes necessary to allude to me--and I fear it often will--I shall be
+obliged if you do so as 'The Man Who Calls Himself Hamilton Cleek.' In
+return for that courtesy, gentlemen, I promise to alter my mode of
+procedure, to turn over a new leaf, as it were, to give you at all times
+hereafter distinct information, in advance, of such places as I elect
+for the field of my operations, and of the time when I shall pay my
+respects to them, and, on the morning after each such visit, to bestow
+some small portion of the loot upon Scotland Yard as a souvenir of the
+event."
+
+And to that remarkable programme he rigidly adhered from that time
+forth--always giving the police twelve hours' notice, always evading
+their traps and snares, always carrying out his plans in spite of them,
+and always, on the morning after, sending some trinket or trifle to
+Superintendent Narkom at Scotland Yard, in a little pink cardboard box,
+tied up with rose-coloured ribbon, and marked "With the compliments of
+The Man Who Calls Himself Hamilton Cleek."
+
+The detectives of the United Kingdom, the detectives of the Continent,
+the detectives of America--each and all had measured swords with him,
+tried wits with him, spread snares and laid traps for him, and each and
+all had retired from the field vanquished.
+
+And this was the man that he--Police Constable Samuel James Collins--had
+actually had in his hands; nay, in his very arms, and then had given up
+for half a sovereign and let go!
+
+"Oh, so help me! You make my head swim, Smathers, that you do!" he
+managed to say at last. "I had him--I had the Vanishing Cracksman--in my
+blessed paws--and then went and let that French hussy--But look here; I
+say, now, how do you know it was him? Nobody can go by his looks; so how
+do you know?"
+
+"Know, you footler!" growled Smathers, disgustedly. "Why shouldn't I
+know when I've been after him ever since he left Scotland Yard half an
+hour ago?"
+
+"Left what? My hat! You ain't a-going to tell me that he's been there?
+When? Why? What for?"
+
+"To leave one of his blessed notices, the dare-devil. What a detective
+he'd a made, wouldn't he, if he'd only a-turned his attention that way,
+and been on the side of the law instead of against it? He walked in bold
+as brass, sat down, and talked with the superintendent over some
+cock-and-bull yarn about a 'Black Hand' letter that he said had been
+sent to him, and asked if he couldn't have police protection whilst he
+was in town. It wasn't until after he'd left that the super he sees a
+note on the chair where the blighter had been sitting, and when he
+opened it, there it was in black and white, something like this:
+
+"'The list of presents that have been sent for the wedding to-morrow of
+Sir Horace Wyvern's eldest daughter make interesting reading,
+particularly that part which describes the jewels sent--no doubt as a
+tribute to her father's position as the greatest brain specialist in the
+world--from the Austrian Court and the Continental principalities. The
+care of such gems is too great a responsibility for the bride. I
+propose, therefore, to relieve her of it to-night, and to send you the
+customary souvenir of the event to-morrow morning. Yours faithfully,
+
+"'The Man Who Calls Himself Hamilton Cleek.
+
+"That's how I know, dash you! Superintendent sent me out after him, hot
+foot; and after a bit I picked him up in the Strand, toddling along with
+that French hussy as cool as you please. But, blow him! he must have
+eyes all round his head, for he saw me just as soon as I saw him, and he
+and Frenchy separated like a shot. She hopped into a taxi and flew off
+in one direction; he dived into a crowd and bolted in another, and
+before you could say Jack Robinson he was doubling and twisting, jumping
+into cabs and jumping out again--all to gain time, of course, for the
+woman to do what he'd put her up to doing--and leading me the devil's
+own chase through the devil's own tangle till he was ready to bunk for
+the Embankment. And you let him go, you blooming footler! Had him and
+let him go, and chucked away a third of £200 for the price of half a
+quid!"
+
+And long after Smathers and Petrie had left him, and the wondering crowd
+had dispersed, and point duty at "Dead Man's Corner" was just point duty
+again and nothing more, P.C. Collins stood there, chewing the cud of
+bitter reflection over those words, and trying to reckon up just how
+many pounds and how much glory had been lost to him.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+"But, damme, sir, the thing's an outrage! I don't mince my words, Mr.
+Narkom--I say plump and plain the thing's an outrage, a disgrace to the
+police, an indignity upon the community at large; and for Scotland Yard
+to permit itself to be defied, bamboozled, mocked at in this appalling
+fashion by a paltry burglar--"
+
+"Uncle, dear, pray don't excite yourself in this manner. I am quite sure
+that if Mr. Narkom could prevent the things--"
+
+"Hold your tongue, Ailsa--I will not be interfered with! It's time that
+somebody spoke out plainly and let this establishment know what the
+public has a right to expect of it. What do I pay my rates and taxes
+for--and devilish high ones they are, too, b'gad--if it's not to
+maintain law and order and the proper protection of property? And to
+have the whole blessed country terrorised, the police defied, and
+people's houses invaded with impunity by a gutter-bred brute of a
+cracksman is nothing short of a scandal and a shame! Call this sort of
+tomfoolery being protected by the police? God bless my soul! one might
+as well be in charge of a parcel of doddering old women and be done with
+it!"
+
+It was an hour and a half after that exciting affair at "Dead Man's
+Corner." The scene was Superintendent Narkom's private room at
+headquarters, the dramatis personae, Mr. Maverick Narkom himself, Sir
+Horace Wyvern, and Miss Ailsa Lorne, his niece, a slight, fair-haired,
+extremely attractive girl of twenty, the only and orphaned daughter of a
+much-loved sister, who, up till a year ago, had known nothing more
+exciting in the way of "life" than that which is to be found in a small
+village in Suffolk, and falls to the lot of an underpaid vicar's only
+child. A railway accident had suddenly deprived her of both parents,
+throwing her wholly upon her own resources, without a penny in the
+world. Sir Horace had gracefully come to the rescue and given her a home
+and a refuge, being doubly repaid for it by the affection and care she
+gave him and the manner in which she assumed control of a household
+which hitherto had been left wholly to the attention of servants, Lady
+Wyvern having long been dead, and her two daughters of that type which
+devotes itself entirely to the pleasures of society and the demands of
+the world. A regular pepper-box of a man--testy, short-tempered,
+exacting--Sir Horace had flown headlong to Superintendent Narkom's
+office as soon as that gentleman's note, telling him of the Vanishing
+Cracksman's latest threat, had been delivered, and, on Miss Lorne's
+advice, had withheld all news of it from the members of his household
+and brought her with him.
+
+"I tell you that Scotland Yard must do something--must! must! must!"
+stormed he as Narkom, resenting that stigma upon the institution,
+puckered up his lips and looked savage. "That fellow has always kept his
+word--always, in spite of your precious band of muffs--and if you let
+him keep it this time, when there's upwards of £40,000 worth of jewels
+in the house, it will be nothing less than a national disgrace, and you
+and your wretched collection of bunglers will be covered with deserved
+ridicule."
+
+Narkom swung round, smarting under these continued taunts, these
+"flings" at the efficiency of his prided department, his nostrils
+dilated, his temper strained to the breaking-point.
+
+"Well, he won't keep it this time--I promise you that!" he rapped out
+sharply. "Sooner or later every criminal, no matter how clever, meets
+his Waterloo--and this shall be his! I'll take this affair in hand
+myself, Sir Horace. I'll not only send the pick of my men to guard the
+jewels, but I'll go with them; and if that fellow crosses the threshold
+of Wyvern House to-night, by the Lord, I'll have him. He will have to be
+the devil himself to get away from me! Miss Lorne"--recollecting himself
+and bowing apologetically--"I ask your pardon for this strong
+language--my temper got the better of my manners."
+
+"It does not matter, Mr. Narkom, so that you preserve my cousin's
+wedding-gifts from that appalling man," she answered with a gentle
+inclination of the head and with a smile that made the superintendent
+think she must certainly be the most beautiful creature in all the
+world, it so irradiated her face and added to the magic of her glorious
+eyes. "It does not matter what you say, what you do, so long as you
+accomplish that."
+
+"And I will accomplish it--as I'm a living man, I will! You may go home
+feeling assured of that. Look for my men some time before dusk, Sir
+Horace--I will arrive later. They will come in one at a time. See that
+they are admitted by the area door, and that, once in, not one of them
+leaves the house again before I put in an appearance. I'll look them
+over when I arrive to be sure that there's no wolf in sheep's clothing
+amongst them. With a fellow like that--a diabolical rascal with a
+diabolical gift for impersonation--one can't be too careful. Meantime,
+it is just as well not to have confided this news to your daughters,
+who, naturally, would be nervous and upset; but I assume that you have
+taken some one of the servants into your confidence in order that nobody
+may pass them and enter the house under any pretext whatsoever?"
+
+"No, I have not. Miss Lorne advised against it, and, as I am always
+guided by her, I said nothing of the matter to anybody."
+
+"Was that wrong, do you think, Mr. Narkom?" queried Ailsa anxiously. "I
+feared that if they knew they might lose their heads, and that my
+cousins, who are intensely nervous and highly emotional, might hear of
+it, and add to our difficulties by becoming hysterical and demanding our
+attention at a time when we ought to be giving every moment to watching
+for the possible arrival of that man. And as he has always lived up to
+the strict letter of his dreadful promises heretofore, I knew that he
+was not to be expected before nightfall. Besides, the jewels are locked
+up in the safe in Sir Horace's consulting-room, and his assistant, Mr.
+Merfroy, has promised not to leave it for one instant before we return."
+
+"Oh, well, that's all right, then. I dare say there is very little
+likelihood of our man getting in whilst you and Sir Horace are here, and
+taking such a risk as stopping in the house until nightfall to begin his
+operations. Still, it was hardly wise, and I should advise hurrying back
+as fast as possible and taking at least one servant--the one you feel
+least likely to lose his head--into your confidence, Sir Horace, and
+putting him on the watch for my men. Otherwise, keep the matter as quiet
+as you have done, and look for me about nine o'clock. And rely upon this
+as a certainty: the Vanishing Cracksman will never get away with even
+one of those jewels if he enters that house to-night, and never get out
+of it unshackled!"
+
+With that, he suavely bowed his visitors out and rang up the pick of his
+men without an instant's delay.
+
+Promptly at nine o'clock he arrived, as he had promised, at Wyvern
+House, and was shown into Sir Horace's consulting-room, where Sir Horace
+himself and Miss Lorne were awaiting him, and keeping close watch before
+the locked door of a communicating apartment in which sat the six men
+who had preceded him. He went in and put them all and severally through
+a rigid examination--pulling their hair and beards, rubbing their faces
+with a clean handkerchief in quest of any trace of "make-up" or disguise
+of any sort, examining their badges and the marks on the handcuffs they
+carried with them to make sure that they bore the sign which he himself
+had scratched upon them in the privacy of his own room a couple of hours
+ago.
+
+"No mistake about this lot," he announced, with a smile. "Has anybody
+else entered or attempted to enter the house?"
+
+"Not a soul," replied Miss Lorne. "I didn't trust anybody to do the
+watching, Mr. Narkom--I watched myself."
+
+"Good. Where are the jewels? In that safe?"
+
+"No," replied Sir Horace. "They are to be exhibited in the
+picture-gallery for the benefit of the guests at the wedding breakfast
+to-morrow, and as Miss Wyvern wished to superintend the arrangement of
+them herself, and there would be no time for that in the morning, she
+and her sister are in there laying them out at this moment. As I could
+not prevent that without telling them what we have to dread, I did not
+protest against it; but if you think it will be safer to return them to
+the safe after my daughters have gone to bed, Mr. Narkom--"
+
+"Not at all necessary. If our man gets in, their lying there in full
+view like that will prove a tempting bait, and--well, he'll find there's
+a hook behind it. I shall be there waiting for him. Now go and join the
+ladies, you and Miss Lorne, and act as though nothing out of the common
+was in the wind. My men and I will stop here, and you had better put out
+the light and lock us in, so that there may be no danger of anybody
+finding out that we are here. No doubt Miss Wyvern and her sister will
+go to bed earlier than usual on this particular occasion. Let them do
+so. Send the servants to bed, too. You and Miss Lorne go to your beds at
+the same time as the others--or, at least, let them think that you have
+done so; then come down and let us out."
+
+To this Sir Horace assented, and, taking Miss Lorne with him, went at
+once to the picture-gallery and joined his daughters, with whom they
+remained until eleven o'clock. Promptly at that hour, however, the house
+was locked up, the bride-elect and her sister went to bed--the servants
+having already gone to theirs--and stillness settled down over the
+darkened house. At the end of a dozen minutes, however, it was faintly
+disturbed by the sound of slippered feet coming along the passage
+outside the consulting-room, then a key slipped into the lock, the door
+was opened, the light switched on, and Sir Horace and Miss Lorne
+appeared before the eager watchers.
+
+"Now, then, lively, my men--look sharp!" whispered Narkom. "A man to
+each window and each staircase, so that nobody may go up or down or in
+or out without dropping into the arms of one of you. Confine your
+attention to this particular floor, and if you hear anybody coming, lay
+low until he's within reach, and you can drop on him before he bolts. Is
+this the door of the picture-gallery, Sir Horace?"
+
+"Yes," answered Sir Horace, as he fitted a key to the lock. "But surely
+you will need more men than you have brought, Mr. Narkom, if it is your
+intention to guard every window individually, for there are four to this
+room--see!"
+
+With that he swung open the door, switched on the electric light, and
+Narkom fairly blinked at the dazzling sight that confronted him. Three
+long tables, laden with crystal and silver, cut glass and jewels, and
+running the full length of the room, flashed and scintillated under the
+glare of the electric bulbs which encircled the cornice of the gallery,
+and clustered in luminous splendour in the crystal and frosted silver of
+a huge central chandelier, and spread out on the middle one of these--a
+dazzle of splintered rainbows, a very plain of living light--lay caskets
+and cases, boxes and trays, containing those royal gifts of which the
+newspapers had made so much and the Vanishing Cracksman had sworn to
+make so few.
+
+Mr. Narkom went over and stood beside the glittering mass, resting his
+hand against the table and feasting his eyes upon all that opulent
+splendour.
+
+"God bless my soul! it's superb, it's amazing," he commented. "No wonder
+the fellow is willing to take risks for a prize like this. You are a
+splendid temptation; a gorgeous bait, you beauties; but the fish that
+snaps at you will find that there's a nasty hook underneath in the shape
+of Maverick Narkom. Never mind the many windows, Sir Horace. Let him
+come in by them, if that's his plan. I'll never leave these things for
+one instant between now and the morning. Good night, Miss Lorne. Go to
+bed and to sleep--you do the same, Sir Horace. My lay is here!"
+
+With that he stooped and, lifting the long drapery which covered the
+table and swept down in heavy folds to the floor, crept out of sight
+under it, and let it drop back into place again.
+
+"Switch off the light and go," he called to them in a low-sunk voice.
+"Don't worry yourselves, either of you. Go to bed, and to sleep if you
+can."
+
+"As if we could," answered Miss Lorne agitatedly. "I shan't be able to
+close an eyelid. I'll try, of course, but I know I shall not succeed.
+Come, uncle, come! Oh, do be careful, Mr. Narkom; and if that horrible
+man does come--"
+
+"I'll have him, so help me God!" he vowed. "Switch off the light, and
+shut the door as you go out. This is 'Forty Faces'' Waterloo at last."
+
+And in another moment the light snicked out, the door closed, and he was
+alone in the silent room.
+
+For ten or a dozen minutes not even the bare suggestion of a noise
+disturbed the absolute stillness; then of a sudden, his trained ear
+caught a faint sound that made him suck in his breath and rise on his
+elbow, the better to listen--a sound which came, not without the house,
+but from within, from the dark hall where he had stationed his men, to
+be exact. As he listened he was conscious that some living creature had
+approached the door, touched the handle, and by the swift, low rustle
+and the sound of hard breathing, that it had been pounced upon and
+seized. He scrambled out from beneath the table, snicked on the light,
+whirled open the door, and was in time to hear the irritable voice of
+Sir Horace say, testily: "Don't make an ass of yourself by your
+over-zealousness. I've only come down to have a word with Mr. Narkom,"
+and to see him standing on the threshold, grotesque in a baggy suit of
+striped pyjamas, with one wrist enclosed as in a steel band by the
+gripped fingers of Petrie.
+
+"Why didn't you say it was you, sir?" exclaimed that crestfallen
+individual, as the flashing light made manifest his mistake. "When I
+heard you first, and see you come up out of that back passage, I made
+sure it was him; and if you'd a struggled, I'd have bashed your head as
+sure as eggs."
+
+"Thank you for nothing," he responded testily. "You might have
+remembered, however, that the man's first got to get into the place
+before he can come downstairs. Mr. Narkom," turning to the
+superintendent, "I was just getting into bed when I thought of something
+I'd neglected to tell you; and as my niece is sitting in her room with
+the door open, and I wasn't anxious to parade myself before her in my
+night clothes, I came down by the back staircase. I don't know how in
+the world I came to overlook it, but I think you ought to know that
+there's a way of getting into the picture gallery without using either
+the windows or the stairs, and that way ought to be both searched and
+guarded."
+
+"Where is it? What is it? Why in the world didn't you tell me in the
+first place?" exclaimed Narkom irritably, as he glanced round the place
+searchingly. "Is it a panel? a secret door? or what? This is an old
+house, and old houses are sometimes a very nest of such things."
+
+"Happily, this one isn't. It's a modern innovation, not an ancient
+relic, that offers the means of entrance in this case. A Yankee occupied
+this house before I bought it from him--one of those blessed shivery
+individuals his country breeds, who can't stand a breath of cold air
+indoors after the passing of the autumn. The wretched man put one of
+those wretched American inflictions, a hot-air furnace, in the cellar,
+with huge pipes running to every room in the house--great tin
+monstrosities bigger round than a man's body, ending in openings in the
+wall, with what they call 'registers,' to let the heat in, or shut it
+out as they please. I didn't have the wretched contrivance removed or
+those blessed 'registers' plastered up. I simply had them papered over
+when the rooms were done up (there's one over there near that settee),
+and if a man got into this house, he could get into that furnace thing
+and hide in one of those flues until he got ready to crawl up it as
+easily as not. It struck me that perhaps it would be as well for you to
+examine that furnace and those flues before matters go any further."
+
+"Of course it would. Great Scott! Sir Horace, why didn't you think to
+tell me of this thing before?" said Narkom, excitedly. "The fellow may
+be in it at this minute. Come, show me the wretched thing."
+
+"It's below--in the cellar. We shall have to go down the kitchen stairs,
+and I haven't a light."
+
+"Here's one," said Petrie, unhitching a bull's-eye from his belt and
+putting it into Narkom's hand. "Better go with Sir Horace at once, sir.
+Leave the door of the gallery open and the light on. Fish and me will
+stand guard over the stuff till you come back, so in case the man is in
+one of them flues and tries to bolt out at this end, we can nab him
+before he can get to the windows."
+
+"A good idea," commented Narkom. "Come on, Sir Horace. Is this the way?"
+
+"Yes, but you'll have to tread carefully, and mind you don't fall over
+anything. A good deal of my paraphernalia--bottles, retorts and the
+like--is stored in the little recess at the foot of the staircase, and
+my assistant is careless and leaves things lying about."
+
+Evidently the caution was necessary, for a minute or so after they had
+passed on and disappeared behind the door leading to the kitchen
+stairway, Petrie and his colleagues heard a sound as of something being
+overturned and smashed, and laughed softly to themselves. Evidently,
+too, the danger of the furnace had been grossly exaggerated by Sir
+Horace, for when, a few minutes later, the door opened and closed, and
+Narkom's men, glancing toward it, saw the figure of their chief
+reappear, it was plain that he was in no good temper, since his features
+were knotted up into a scowl, and he swore audibly as he snapped the
+shutter over the bull's-eye and handed it back to Petrie.
+
+"Nothing worth looking into, superintendent?"
+
+"No--not a thing!" he replied. "The silly old josser! pulling me down
+there amongst the coals and rubbish for an insane idea like that! Why,
+the flues wouldn't admit the passage of a child; and even then, there's
+a bend--an abrupt 'elbow'--that nothing but a cat could crawl up. And
+that's a man who's an authority on the human brain! I sent the old silly
+back to bed by the way he came, and if--"
+
+There he stopped, stopped short, and sucked in his breath with a sharp,
+wheezing sound. For, of a sudden, a swift pattering footfall and a
+glimmer of moving light had sprung into being and drawn his eyes upward;
+and there, overhead, was Miss Lorne coming down the stairs from the
+upper floor in a state of nervous excitement, and with a bedroom candle
+in her shaking hand, a loose gown flung on over her nightdress, and her
+hair streaming over her shoulders in glorious disarray.
+
+He stood and looked at her, with ever-quickening breath, with
+ever-widening eyes, as though the beauty of her had wakened some dormant
+sense whose existence he had never suspected; as though, until now, he
+had never known how fair it was possible for a woman to be, how fair,
+how lovable, how much to be desired; and whilst he was so looking she
+reached the foot of the staircase and came pantingly toward him.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Narkom, what was it--that noise I heard?" she said in a tone of
+deepest agitation. "It sounded like a struggle--like the noise of
+something breaking--and I dressed as hastily as I could and came down.
+Did he come? Has he been here? Have you caught him? Oh! why don't you
+answer me, instead of staring at me like this? Can't you see how
+nervous, how frightened, I am? Dear Heaven! will no one tell me what has
+happened?"
+
+"Nothing has happened, miss," answered Petrie, catching her eye as she
+flashed round on him. "You'd better go back to bed. Nobody's been here
+but Sir Horace. The noise you heard was me a-grabbing of him, and he and
+Mr. Narkom a-tumbling over something as they went down to look at the
+furnace."
+
+"Furnace? What furnace? What are you talking about?" she cried
+agitatedly. "What do you mean by saying that Sir Horace came down?"
+
+"Only what the superintendent himself will tell you, miss, if you ask
+him. Sir Horace came downstairs in his pyjamas a few minutes ago to say
+as he'd recollected about the flues of the furnace in the cellar being
+big enough to hold a man, and then him and Mr. Narkom went below to have
+a look at it."
+
+She gave a sharp and sudden cry, and her face went as pale as a dead
+face.
+
+"Sir Horace came down?" she repeated, moving back a step and leaning
+heavily against the bannister. "Sir Horace came down to look at the
+furnace? We have no furnace!"
+
+"What!"
+
+"We have no furnace, I tell you, and Sir Horace did not come down. He is
+up there still. I know--I know, I tell you--because I feared for his
+safety, and when he went to his room I locked him in!"
+
+"Superintendent!" The word was voiced by every man present, and six
+pairs of eyes turned toward Narkom with a look of despairing
+comprehension.
+
+"Get to the cellar. Head the man off! It's he--the Cracksman!" he
+shouted out. "Find him! Get him! Nab him, if you have to turn the house
+upside down!"
+
+They needed no second bidding, for each man grasped the situation
+instantly, and in a twinkling there was a veritable pandemonium.
+Shouting and scrambling like a band of madmen, they lurched to the door,
+whirled it open, and went flying down the staircase to the kitchen and
+so to a discovery which none might have foreseen. For, almost as they
+entered they saw lying on the floor a suit of striped pyjamas, and close
+to it, gagged, bound, helpless, trussed up like a goose that was ready
+for the oven, gyves on his wrists, gyves on his ankles, their chief,
+their superintendent, Mr. Maverick Narkom, in a state of collapse, and
+with all his outer clothing gone!
+
+"After him! After that devil, and a thousand pounds to the man that gets
+him!" he managed to gasp as they rushed to him and ripped loose the gag.
+"He was here when we came! He has been in the house for hours. Get him!
+get him! get him!"
+
+They surged from the room and up the stairs like a pack of stampeded
+animals; they raced through the hall and bore down on the
+picture-gallery in a body, and, whirling open the now closed door, went
+tumbling headlong in.
+
+The light was still burning. At the far end of the room a window was
+wide open, and the curtains of it fluttered in the wind. A collection of
+empty cases and caskets lay on the middle table, but man and jewels were
+alike gone! Once again the Vanishing Cracksman had lived up to his
+promise, up to his reputation, up to the very letter of his name, and
+for all Mr. Maverick Narkom's care and shrewdness, "Forty Faces" had
+"turned the trick" and Scotland Yard was "done!"
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Through all the night its best men sought him, its dragnets fished for
+him, its tentacles groped into every hole and corner of London in quest
+of him, but sought and fished and groped in vain. They might as well
+have hoped to find last summer's partridges or last winter's snow as any
+trace of him. He had vanished as mysteriously as he had appeared, and no
+royal jewels graced the display of Miss Wyvern's wedding gifts on the
+morrow.
+
+But it was fruitful of other "gifts," fruitful of an even greater
+surprise, that "morrow." For the first time since the day he had given
+his promise, no "souvenir" from "The Man Who Called Himself Hamilton
+Cleek," no part of last night's loot came to Scotland Yard; and it was
+while the evening papers were making screaming "copy" and glaring
+headlines out of this that the surprise in question came to pass.
+
+Miss Wyvern's wedding was over, the day and the bride had gone, and it
+was half-past ten at night, when Sir Horace, answering a hurry call from
+headquarters, drove post haste to Superintendent Narkom's private room,
+and passing in under a red and green lamp which burned over the doorway,
+entered and met that "surprise."
+
+Maverick Narkom was there alone, standing beside his desk, with the
+curtains of his window drawn and pinned together, and at his elbow an
+unlighted lamp of violet-coloured glass, standing and looking
+thoughtfully down at something which lay before him. He turned as his
+visitor entered and made an open-handed gesture toward it.
+
+"Look here," he said laconically, "what do you think of this?"
+
+Sir Horace moved forward and looked; then stopped and gave a sort of
+wondering cry. The electric bulbs overhead struck a glare of light down
+on the surface of the desk, and there, spread out on the shining oak,
+lay a part of the royal jewels that had been stolen from Wyvern House
+last night.
+
+"Narkom! You got him, then--got him after all?"
+
+"No, I did not get him. I doubt if any man could, if he chose not to be
+found," said Narkom bitterly. "I did not recover these jewels by any act
+of my own. He sent them to me; gave them up voluntarily."
+
+"Gave them up? After he had risked so much to get them? God bless my
+soul, what a man! Why, there must be quite half here of what he took."
+
+"There is half--an even half. He sent them to-night, and with them this
+letter. Look at it, and you will understand why I sent for you and asked
+you to come alone."
+
+"There's some good in even the devil, I suppose, if one but knows how to
+reach it and stir it up," Sir Horace read. "I have lived a life of crime
+from my very boyhood because I couldn't help it, because it appealed to
+me, because I glory in risks and revel in dangers. I never knew where it
+would lead me--I never thought, never cared--but I looked into the
+gateway of heaven last night, and I can't go down the path to hell any
+longer. Here is an even half of Miss Wyvern's jewels. If you and her
+father would have me hand over the other half to you, and would have
+'The Vanishing Cracksman' disappear forever, and a useless life
+converted into a useful one, you have only to say so to make it an
+accomplished thing. All I ask in return is your word of honour (to be
+given to me by signal) that you will send for Sir Horace Wyvern to be at
+your office at eleven o'clock to-night, and that you and he will grant
+me a private interview unknown to any other living being. A red and
+green lantern hung over the doorway leading to your office will be the
+signal that you agree, and a violet light in your window will be the
+pledge of Sir Horace Wyvern. When these two signals, these two pledges,
+are given, I shall come in and hand over the remainder of the jewels,
+and you will have looked for the first time in your life upon the real
+face of 'The Man Who Calls Himself Hamilton Cleek.'"
+
+"God bless my soul! What an amazing creature--what an astounding
+request!" exclaimed Sir Horace, as he laid the letter down. "Willing to
+give up £20,000 worth of jewels for the mere sake of a private
+interview! What on earth can be his object? And why should he include
+me?"
+
+"I don't know," said Narkom in reply. "It's worth something, at all
+events, to be rid of 'The Vanishing Cracksman' for good and all; and he
+says that it rests with us to do that. It's close to eleven now. Shall
+we give him the pledge he asks, Sir Horace? My signal is already hung
+out; shall we agree to the conditions and give him yours?"
+
+"Yes, yes, by all means," Sir Horace made answer. And lighting the
+violet lamp, Narkom flicked open the pinned curtains and set it in the
+window.
+
+For ten minutes nothing came of it, and the two men, talking in whispers
+while they waited, began to grow nervous. Then somewhere in the distance
+a clock started striking eleven, and without so much as a warning sound,
+the door flashed open, flashed shut again, a voice that was undeniably
+the voice of breeding and refinement said quietly: "Gentlemen, my
+compliments. Here are the diamonds and here am I!" and the figure of a
+man, faultlessly dressed, faultlessly mannered, with the slim-loined
+form, the slim-walled nose, and the clear-cut features of the born
+aristocrat, stood in the room.
+
+His age might lie anywhere between twenty-five and thirty-five, his eyes
+were straight-looking and clear, his fresh, clean-shaven face was
+undeniably handsome, and, whatever his origin, whatever his history,
+there was something about him, in look, in speech, in bearing, that
+mutely stood sponsor for the thing called "birth."
+
+"God bless my soul!" exclaimed Sir Horace, amazed and appalled to find
+the reality so widely different from the image he had drawn. "What
+monstrous juggle is this? Why, man alive, you're a gentleman! Who are
+you? What's driven you to a dog's life like this?"
+
+"A natural bent, perhaps; a supernatural gift, certainly, Sir Horace,"
+he made reply. "Look here! Could any man resist the temptation to use it
+when he was endowed by Nature with the power to do this?" His features
+seemed to writhe and knot and assume in as many moments a dozen
+different aspects. "I've had the knack of doing that since the hour I
+could breathe. Could any man 'go straight' with a fateful gift like that
+if the laws of Nature said that he should not?"
+
+"And do they say that?"
+
+"That's what I want you to tell me--that's why I have requested this
+interview. I want you to examine me, Sir Horace, to put me through those
+tests you use to determine the state of mind of the mentally fit and
+mentally unfit; I want to know if it is my fault that I am what I am,
+and if it is myself I have to fight in future, or the devil that lives
+within me. I'm tired of wallowing in the mire. A woman's eyes have lit
+the way to heaven for me. I want to climb up to her, to win her, to be
+worthy of her, and to stand beside her in the light."
+
+"Her? What 'her'?"
+
+"That's my business, Mr. Narkom, and I'll take no man into my confidence
+regarding that."
+
+"Yes, my friend, but 'Margot'--how about her?"
+
+"I'm done with her! We broke last night, when I returned and she
+learned--never mind what she learned! I'm done with her--done with the
+lot of them. My life is changed forever."
+
+"In the name of Heaven, man, who and what are you?"
+
+"Cleek--just Cleek; let it go at that," he made reply. "Whether it's my
+name or not is no man's business; who I am, what I am, whence I came, is
+no man's business either. Cleek will do--Cleek of the Forty Faces. Never
+mind the past; my fight is with the future, and so--examine me, Sir
+Horace, and let me know if I or Fate's to blame for what I am."
+
+Sir Horace did.
+
+"Absolutely Fate," he said, when, after a long examination, the man put
+the question to him again. "It is the criminal brain fully developed,
+horribly pronounced. God help you, my poor fellow; but a man simply
+could not be other than a thief and a criminal with an organ like that.
+There's no hope for you to escape your natural bent except by death. You
+can't be honest. You can't rise--you never will rise; it's useless to
+fight against it!"
+
+"I will fight against it! I will rise! I will! I will! I will!" he cried
+out vehemently. "There is a way to put such craft and cunning to
+account; a way to fight the devil with his own weapons and crush him
+under the weight of his own gifts, and that way I'll take!"
+
+"Mr. Narkom"--he whirled and walked toward the superintendent, his hand
+outstretched, his eager face aglow--"Mr. Narkom, help me! Take me under
+your wing. Give me a start--give me a chance--give me a lift on the way
+up!"
+
+"Good heaven, man, you--you don't mean--?"
+
+"I do--I do! So help me heaven, I do. All my life I've fought against
+the law--now let me switch over and fight with it. I'm tired of being
+Cleek, the thief; Cleek, the burglar. Make me Cleek, the detective, and
+let us work together, hand in hand, for a common cause and for the
+public good. Will you, Mr. Narkom? Will you?"
+
+"Will I? Won't I!" said Narkom, springing forward and gripping his hand.
+"Jove! what a detective you will make. Bully boy! Bully boy!"
+
+"It's a compact, then?"
+
+"It's a compact--Cleek."
+
+"Thank you," he said in a choked voice. "You've given me my chance; now
+watch me live up to it. The Vanishing Cracksman has vanished forever,
+Mr. Narkom, and it's Cleek, the detective--Cleek of the Forty Faces from
+this time on. Now, give me your riddles--I'll solve them one by one."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The sound came again--so unmistakably, this time, the sound of a
+footstep in the soft, squashy ooze on the Heath, there could be no
+question regarding the nature of it. Miss Lorne came to an instant
+standstill and clutched her belongings closer to her with a shake and a
+quiver; and a swift prickle of goose-flesh ran round her shoulders and
+up and down the backs of her hands. There was good, brave blood in her,
+it is true; but good, brave blood isn't much to fall back upon if you
+happen to be a girl without escort, carrying a hand-bag containing
+twenty-odd pounds in money, several bits of valuable jewellery--your
+whole earthly possessions, in fact--and have lost your way on Hampstead
+Heath at half-past eight o'clock at night, with a spring fog shutting
+you in like a wall and shutting out everything else but a "mackerel"
+collection of clouds that looked like grey smudges on the greasy-silver
+of a twilit sky.
+
+She looked round, but she could see nothing and nobody. The Heath was a
+white waste that might have been part of the scenery in Lapland for all
+there was to tell that it lay within reach of the heart and pulse of the
+sluggish leviathan London. Over it the vapours of night crowded, an
+almost palpable wall of thick, wet mist, stirred now and again by some
+atmospheric movement which could scarcely be called a wind, although, at
+times, it drew long, lacey filaments above the level of the denser mass
+of fog and melted away with them into the calm, still upper air.
+
+Miss Lorne hesitated between two very natural impulses--to gather up her
+skirts and run, or to stand her ground and demand an explanation from
+the person who was undoubtedly following her. She chose the latter.
+
+"Who is there? Why are you following me? What do you want?" she flung
+out, keeping her voice as steady as the hard, sharp hammering of her
+heart would permit.
+
+The question was answered at once--rather startlingly, since the
+footsteps which caused her alarm, had all the while proceeded from
+behind, and slightly to the left of her. Now there came a hurried rush
+and scramble on the right; there was the sound of a match being
+scratched, a blob of light in the grey of the mist, and she saw standing
+in front of her, a ragged, weedy, red-headed youth, with the blazing
+match in his scooped hands.
+
+He was thin to the point of ghastliness. Hunger was in his pinched face,
+his high cheekbones, his gouged jaws; staring like a starved wolf,
+through the unnatural brightness of his pale eyes, from every gaunt
+feature of him.
+
+"'Ullo!" he said with a strong Cockney accent, as he came up out of the
+fog, and the flare of the match gave him a full view of her, standing
+there with her lips shut hard, and, the hand-bag clutched up close to
+her with both hands. "You wot called, was it? Wot price me for
+arnswerin' of you, eh?"
+
+"Yes, it was I that called," she replied, making a brave front of it.
+"But I do not think it was you that I called to. Keep away, please.
+Don't come any nearer. What do you want?" "Well, I'll take that blessed
+'and-bag to go on with; and if there aren't no money in it--tumble it
+out--let's see--lively now! I'll feed for the rest of this week--Gawd,
+yuss!"
+
+She made no reply, no attempt to obey him, no movement of any sort. Fear
+had absolutely stricken every atom of strength from her. She could do
+nothing but look at him with big, frightened eyes, and shake.
+
+"Look 'ere, aren't you a-goin' to do it quiet, or are you a-goin' to
+mike me tike the blessed thing from you?" he asked.
+
+"I'll do it if you put me to it--my hat! yuss! It aren't my gime--I'm
+wot you might call a hammer-chewer at it, but when there's summink
+inside you, wot tears and tears and tears, any gime's worth tryin' that
+pulls out the claws of it."
+
+She did not move even yet. He flung the spent match from him, and made a
+sharp step toward her, and he had just reached out his hand to lay hold
+of her, when another hand--strong, sinewy, hard-shutting as an iron
+clamp--reached out from the mist, and laid hold of him; plucking him by
+the neckband and intruding a bunch of knuckles and shut fingers between
+that and his up-slanted chin.
+
+"Now, then, drop that little game at once, you young monkey!" struck in
+the sharp staccato of a semi-excited voice. "Interfering with young
+ladies, eh? Let's have a look at you. Don't be afraid, Miss
+Lorne--nobody's going to hurt you."
+
+Then a pocket torch spat out a sudden ray of light; and by it both the
+half-throttled boy and the wholly frightened girl could see the man who
+had thus intruded himself upon their notice.
+
+"Oh, it is you--it is you again, Mr. Cleek?" said Ailsa with something
+between a laugh and a sigh of relief as she recognized him.
+
+"Yes, it is I. I have been behind you ever since you left the house in
+Bardon Road. It was rash of you to cross the heath at this time and in
+this weather. I rather fancied that something of this kind would be
+likely to happen, and so took the liberty of following you."
+
+"Then it was you I heard behind me?"
+
+"It was I--yes. I shouldn't have intruded myself upon your notice if you
+hadn't called out. A moment, please. Let's have a look at this young
+highwayman, who so freely advertises himself as an amateur."
+
+The light spat full into the gaunt, starved face of the young man and
+made it stare forth doubly ghastly. He had made no effort to get away
+from the very first. Perhaps he understood the uselessness of it, with
+that strong hand gripped on his ragged neckband. Perhaps he was, in his
+way, something of a fatalist--London breeds so many among such as he:
+starved things that find every boat chained, every effort thrust back
+upon them unrewarded. At any rate, from the moment he had heard the girl
+give to this man a name which every soul in England had heard at one
+time or another during the past two years, he had gone into a sort of
+mild collapse, as though realising the utter uselessness of battling
+against fate, and had given himself up to what was to be.
+
+"Hello," said Cleek, as he looked the youth over. "Yours is a face I
+don't remember running foul of before, my young beauty. Where did you
+come from?"
+
+"Where I seem like to be goin' now you've got your currant-pickers on
+me--Hell," answered the boy, with something like a sigh of despair.
+"Leastways, I been in Hell ever since I can remember anyfink, so I
+reckon I must have come from there."
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+"Dollops. S'pose I must a had another sometime, but I never heard of it.
+Wot's that? Yuss--most nineteen. _Wot?_ Oh, go throw summink at
+yourself! I aren't too young to be 'ungry, am I? And where's a cove
+goin' to _find_ this 'ere 'honest work' you're a-talkin' of? I'm fair
+sick of the gime of lookin' for it. Besides, you don't see parties as
+goes in for the other thing walkin' round with ribs on 'em like
+bed-slats, and not even the price of a cup of corfy in their pockets, do
+you? No fear! I wouldn't've 'urt the young lydie; but I tell you strite,
+I'd a took every blessed farthin' she 'ad on her if you 'adn't've
+dropped on me like this."
+
+"Got down to the last ditch--down to the point of desperation, eh?"
+
+"Yuss. So would you if you 'ad a fing inside you tearin' and tearin'
+like I 'ave. Aren't et a bloomin' crumb since the day before yusterday
+at four in the mawnin' when a gent in an 'ansom--drunk as a lord, he
+was--treated me and a parcel of others to a bun and a cup of corfy at a
+corfy stall over 'Ighgate way. Stood out agin bein' a crook as long as
+ever I could--as long as ever I'm goin' to, I reckon, now _you've_ got
+your maulers on me. I'll be on the list after this. The cops 'ull know
+me; and when you've got the nime--well, wot's the odds? You might as
+well 'ave the gime as well, and git over goin' empty. All right, run me
+in, sir. Any'ow, I'll 'ave a bit to eat and a bed to sleep in to-night,
+and that's one comfort--"
+
+Cleek had been watching the boy closely, narrowly, with an
+ever-deepening interest; now he loosened the grip of his fingers and let
+his hand drop to his side.
+
+"Suppose I don't 'run you in,' as you put it? Suppose I take a chance
+and lend you five shillings, will you do some work and pay it back to me
+in time?" he asked.
+
+The boy looked up at him and laughed in his face.
+
+"Look 'ere, Gov'nor, it's playin' it low down to lark wiv a chap jist
+before you're goin' to 'ang 'im," he said. "You come off your blessed
+perch."
+
+"Right," said Cleek. "And now you get up on yours and let us see what
+you're made of." Then he put his hand into his trousers pocket; there
+was a chink of coins and two half-crowns lay on his outstretched palm.
+"There you are--off with you now, and if you are any good, turn up some
+time to-night at No. 204, Clarges Street, and ask for Captain Horatio
+Burbage. He'll see that there's work for you. Toddle along now and get a
+meal and a bed. And mind you keep a close mouth about this."
+
+The boy neither moved nor spoke nor made any sound. For a moment or two
+he stood looking from the man to the coins and from the coins back to
+the man; then, gradually, the truth of the thing seemed to trickle into
+his mind and, as a hungry fox might pounce upon a stray fowl, he grabbed
+the money and--bolted.
+
+"Remember the name and remember the street," Cleek called after him.
+
+"You take your bloomin' oath I will!" came back through the enfolding
+mist; "Gawd, yuss!"--Just that; and the youth was gone.
+
+"I wonder what you will think of me, Miss Lorne," said Cleek, turning to
+her; "taking a chance like this; and, above all, with a fellow who would
+have stripped you of every jewel and every penny you have with you if
+things hadn't happened as they have?"
+
+"And I can very ill afford to lose anything _now_--as I suppose you
+know, Mr. Cleek. Things have changed sadly for me since that day Mr.
+Narkom introduced us at Ascot," she said, with just a shadow of
+seriousness in her eyes. "But as to what I think regarding your action
+toward that dreadful boy.... Oh, of course, if there is a chance of
+saving him from a career of crime, I think one owes him that as a duty.
+In the circumstances, the temptation was very great. It must be a
+horrible thing to be so hungry that one is driven to robbery to satisfy
+the longing for food."
+
+"Yes, very horrible--very, very indeed. I once knew a boy who stood as
+that boy stands--at the parting of the ways; when the good that was in
+him fought the last great fight with the Devil of Circumstances. If a
+hand had been stretched forth to help that boy at that time ... Ah,
+well! it wasn't. The Devil took the reins and the game went _his_ way.
+If five shillings will put the reins into that boy's hands to-night and
+steer him back to the right path, so much the better for him and--for
+me. I'll know if he's worth the chance I took to-morrow. Now let us talk
+about something else. Will you allow me to escort you across the heath
+and see you safely on your way home? Or would you prefer that I should
+remain in the background as before?"
+
+"How ungrateful you must think me, to suggest such a thing as that," she
+said with a reproachful smile. "Walk with me if you will be so kind. I
+hope you know that this is the third time you have rendered me a service
+since I had the pleasure of meeting you. It is very nice of you; and I
+am extremely grateful. I wonder you find the time or--well, take the
+trouble," rather archly; "a great man like you."
+
+"Shall I take off my hat and say 'thank you, ma'am'; or just the
+hackneyed 'Praise from Sir Hubert is praise indeed'?" he said with a
+laugh as he fell into step with her and they faced the mist and the
+distance together. "I suppose you are alluding to my success in the
+famous Stanhope Case--the newspapers made a great fuss over that, Mr.
+Narkom tells me. But--please. One big success doesn't make a 'great man'
+any more than one rosebush makes a garden."
+
+"Are you fishing for a compliment? Or is that really natural modesty? I
+had heard of your exploits and seen your name in the papers, oh, dozens
+of times before I first had the pleasure of meeting you; and since then
+... No, I shan't flatter you by saying how many successes I have seen
+recorded to your credit in the past two years. Do you know that I have a
+natural predilection for such things? It may be morbid of me--is
+it?--but I have the strongest kind of a leaning toward the tales of
+Gaboriau; and I have always wanted to know a really great
+detective--like Lecocq, or Dupin. And that day at Ascot when Mr. Narkom
+told me that he would introduce me to the famous 'Man of the Forty
+Faces' ... Mr. Cleek, why do they call you 'the Man of the Forty Faces'?
+You always look the same to me."
+
+"Perhaps I shan't, when we come to the end of the heath and get into the
+public street, where there are lights and people," he said. "That I
+always look the same in your eyes, Miss Lorne, is because I have but one
+face for you, and that is my real one. Not many people see it, even
+among the men of The Yard whom I occasionally work with. You do,
+however; so does Mr. Narkom, occasionally. So did that boy,
+unfortunately. I had to show it when I came to your assistance, if only
+to assure you that you were in friendly hands and to prevent you taking
+fright and running off into the mist in a panic and losing yourself
+where even I might not be able to find you. That is why I told the boy
+to apply for work to 'Captain Burbage of Clarges Street.' _I_ am Captain
+Burbage, Miss Lorne. Nobody knows that but my good friend Mr. Narkom
+and, now, you."
+
+"I shall respect it, of course," she said. "I hope I need not assure you
+of that, Mr. Cleek."
+
+"You need assure me of nothing, Miss Lorne," he made reply. "I owe so
+much more to you than you are aware, that--Oh, well, it doesn't matter.
+You asked me a question a moment ago. If you want the answer to it--look
+here."
+
+He stopped short as he spoke; the pocket-torch clicked faintly and from
+the shelter of a curved hand, the glow of it struck upward to his face.
+It was not the same face for ten seconds at a time. What Sir Horace
+Wyvern had seen in Mr. Narkom's private office at Scotland Yard on that
+night of nights more than two years ago, Sir Horace Wyvern's niece saw
+now.
+
+"Oh!" she said, with a sharp intaking of the breath as she saw the
+writhing features knot and twist and blend. "Oh, don't! It is uncanny!
+It is amazing. It is awful!" And, after a moment, when the light had
+been shut off and the man beside her was only a shape in the mist: "I
+hope I may never see you do it again," she merely more than whispered.
+"It is the most appalling thing. I can't think how you do it--how you
+came by the power to do such a thing."
+
+"Perhaps by inheritance," said Cleek, as they walked on again. "Once
+upon a time, Miss Lorne, there was a--er--lady of extremely high
+position who, at a time when she should have been giving her thoughts
+to--well, more serious things, used to play with one of those curious
+little rubber faces which you can pinch up into all sorts of distorted
+countenances--you have seen the things, no doubt. She would sit for
+hours screaming with laughter over the droll shapes into which she
+squeezed the thing. Afterward, when her little son was born, he
+inherited the trick of that rubber face as a birthright. It may have
+been the same case with me. Let us say it was, and drop the subject,
+since you have not found the sight a pleasing one. Now tell me
+something, please, that I want to know about you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+"About me, Mr. Cleek?"
+
+"Yes. You spoke about there being a change in your circumstances--spoke
+as though you thought I knew. I do not; but I should like to if I may.
+It will perhaps explain why you are out alone and in this neighbourhood
+at this time of night."
+
+"It will," she said, with just a shadow of deeper colour coming into her
+cheeks. "The house you saw me coming out of is the residence of a friend
+and former schoolmate. I went there to inquire if she could help me in
+any way to secure a position; and stopped later than I realised."
+
+"Procure you a position, Miss Lorne? A position as what?"
+
+"Companion, amanuensis, governess--anything that," with a laugh and a
+blush, "'respectable young females' may do to earn a living when they
+come down in the world. You may possibly have heard that my uncle, Sir
+Horace, has married again. I think you must have done so, for the papers
+were full of it at the time. But I forget"--quizzically--"you don't read
+newspapers, do you, even when they contain accounts of your own
+greatness."
+
+"I wonder if I deserve that? At any rate, I got it," said Cleek with a
+laugh. "Yes, I heard all about Sir Horace's wedding. Some four or five
+months ago, wasn't it?"
+
+"No, three--three, last Thursday, the fourteenth. A woman doesn't forget
+the date of her enforced abdication. The new Lady Wyvern soon let me
+know that I was a superfluous person in the household. To-day, I came to
+the conclusion to leave it; and have taken the first actual step toward
+doing so. A lucky step, too, I fancy; or, at least, it promises to be."
+
+"As how?"
+
+"My friend knows of two people who would be likely to need me: one, a
+titled lady here in England, who might be 'very glad to have me'--I am
+quoting that, please--as governess to her little boy. The other, a young
+French girl who is returning shortly to Paris, who also might be 'glad
+to have me' as companion. Of course, I would sooner remain in England,
+but--well, it is nicer to be a companion than a governess; and the young
+lady is very nearly my own age. Indeed, we were actually at the same
+school together when we were very little girls."
+
+"I see," said Cleek, a trifle gloomily. "So then it is possible that it
+will, eventually, be the young French lady and--Paris, in future. When,
+do you fancy? Soon?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know about that. I haven't quite made up my mind as yet
+which of the two it will be. And then there's the application to be sent
+afterwards."
+
+"Still, it will be one of the two certainly?"
+
+"Oh, yes. I shall have to earn my living in future, you know; so,
+naturally, of course--" She gave her shoulder an eloquent upward
+movement, and let the rest go by default.
+
+Cleek did not speak for a moment: merely walked on beside her--a ridge
+between his eyebrows and his lower lip sucked in; as if he were mentally
+debating upon something and was afraid he might speak incautiously. But
+of a sudden:
+
+"Miss Lorne," he said, in a curiously tense voice, "may I ask you
+something? Let us say that you had set your heart upon obtaining one or
+the other of these two positions--set it so entirely that life wouldn't
+be worth a straw to you if you didn't get it. Let us say, too, that
+there was something you had done, something in your past which, if
+known, might utterly preclude the possibility of your obtaining what you
+wanted--it is an absurd hypothesis, of course: but let us use it for the
+sake of argument. We will say you had done your best to live down that
+offensive 'something' done, and were still doing all that lay in your
+power to atone for it; that nobody but one person shared the knowledge
+of that 'something' with you, and upon his silence you could rely. Now
+tell me: would you feel justified in accepting the position upon which
+you had set your heart _without_ confessing the thing; or would you feel
+in duty bound to speak, well knowing that it would in all human
+probability be the end of all your hopes? I should like to have your
+opinion upon that point, please."
+
+"I can't see that I or anybody else could have other than the one," she
+replied. "It is an age-old maxim, is it not, Mr. Cleek, that two wrongs
+cannot by any possibility constitute a right? I should feel in duty
+bound, in honour bound, to speak, of course. To do the other would be to
+obtain the position by fraud--to steal it, as a thief steals things that
+_he_ wants. No sort of atonement is possible, is even worth the name, if
+it is backed up by deceit, Mr. Cleek."
+
+"Even though that deceit is the only thing that could give you your
+heart's desire? The only thing that could open the Gates of Heaven for
+you?"
+
+"The 'Gates of Heaven,' as you put it, can never be opened with a lie,
+Mr. Cleek. They might be opened by the very thing of which you
+speak--confession. I think I should take my chances upon that. At any
+rate, if I failed, I should at least have preserved my self-respect and
+done more to merit what I wanted than if I had secured it by treachery.
+Think of the boy you helped a little while ago. How much respect will
+you have for him if he never lives up to his promise; never goes to
+Clarges Street at all? Yet if he does live up to it, will he not be
+doubly worth the saving? But please!" with a sudden change from
+seriousness to gaiety, "if I am to be led into sermonizing, might I not
+know what it is all about? I shall be right, shall I not, in supposing
+that all this is merely the preface to something else?"
+
+"Either the Preface or--the Finis," said Cleek, with a deeply drawn
+breath. "Still, as you say, no atonement is worth calling an atonement
+if it is based upon fraud; and so--Miss Lorne, I am going to ask you to
+indulge in yet another little flight of fancy. Carry your mind back,
+will you, to the night when your cousin--to the night two years ago when
+Sir Horace Wyvern's daughter had her wedding presents stolen and you, I
+believe, had rather a trying moment with that fellow who was known as
+'The Vanishing Cracksman.' You can remember it, can you not?"
+
+"Remember it? I shall never forget it. I thought, when the police ran
+down stairs and left me with him, that I was talking to Mr. Narkom. I
+think I nearly went daft with terror when I found out that it was he."
+
+"And you found it out only through his telling you, did you not?
+Afterward, I am told, the police found you lying fainting at the foot of
+the stairs. The man had touched you, spoken to you, even caught up your
+hand and put it to his lips? Can you remember what he said when he did
+that? Can you?"
+
+"Yes," she answered, with a little shudder of recollection. "For weeks
+afterward I used to wake up in the middle of the night thinking of it
+and going cold all over. He said, 'You have come down into Hell and
+lifted me out. Under God, you shall lift me into Heaven as well!'"
+
+"And perhaps you shall," said Cleek, stopping short and uncovering his
+head. "At any rate, I'll not attempt to win it by fraud. Miss Lorne, I
+am that man. I am the 'Vanishing Cracksman' of those other days. I've
+walked the 'straight path' since the moment I kissed your hand."
+
+She said nothing, made no faintest sound. She couldn't--all the
+strength, all the power to do anything but simply stand and look at him
+had gone out of her. But even so, she was conscious--dimly but yet
+conscious--of a feeling of relief that they had come at last close to
+the end of the heath, that there was the faint glow of lights dimly
+observable through the enfolding mist, and that there was the rumble of
+wheels, the pulse of life, the law-guarded paths of the city's streets
+beyond.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+She could not herself have been more conscious of that feeling of relief
+than he was of its coming. It spoke to him in the swift glance she gave
+toward those distant, fog-blurred lights, in the white, drained face of
+her, in the shrinking backward movement of her body when he spoke again;
+and something within him voiced "the exceeding bitter cry."
+
+"I am not sure that I even hoped you would take the revelation in any
+other way than this," he said. "A hawk--even a tamed one--must be a
+thing of terror in the eyes of a dove. Still, I am not sorry that I have
+made the confession, Miss Lorne. When the worst has been told, a burden
+rolls away."
+
+"Yes," she acquiesced faintly, finding her voice; but finding it only to
+lose it again. "But that you--that _you_...." And was faint and very
+still again.
+
+"Shall we go on? It isn't more than fifty paces to the road; and you may
+rely upon finding a taxicab there. Would you like me to show you the
+way?"
+
+"Yes, please. I--oh, don't think me unsympathetic, unkind, severe. It is
+such a shock; it is all so horrible--I mean--that is.... Let me get used
+to it. I shall never tell, of course--no, never! Now, please, may we not
+walk faster? I am very, very late as it is; and they will be worrying at
+home."
+
+They did walk faster, and in a minute more were at the common's end.
+Cleek stopped and again lifted his hat.
+
+"We will part here, Miss Lorne," he said. "I won't force my company on
+you any further. From here, you are quite beyond all danger, and I am
+sure you would rather I left you to find a taxi for yourself. Good
+night." He did not even offer to put out his hand. "May I say again,
+that I am not sorry I told you? Nor did I ever expect you would, take it
+other than like this. It is only natural. Try to forgive me; or, at the
+least, believe that I have not tried to keep your friendship by a lie,
+or to atone in seeming only. Good night."
+
+He gave her no chance to reply, no time to say one single word. Deep
+wounds require time in which to heal. He knew that he had wounded the
+white soul of her so that it was sick with uncertainty, faint with
+dread; and, putting on his hat, stepped sharply back and let the mist
+take him and hide him from her sight.
+
+But, though she did not see, he was near her even then.
+
+He knew when she walked out into the light-filled street; he knew when
+she found a taxicab; and he did not make an effort to go his way until
+he was sure that she was safely started upon hers. Then he screwed round
+on his heel and went back into the mist and loneliness of the heath, and
+walked, and walked, and walked. Afterward--long afterward: when the
+night was getting old and the town was going to sleep, he, too, fared
+forth in quest of a taxi, and finding one went _his_ way as she had gone
+hers.
+
+In the neighbourhood of Bond Street--now a place of darkness and
+slow-tramping policemen--he dismissed the taxi and continued the journey
+along Piccadilly afoot. It was close to one o'clock when he came at
+length to Clarges Street and swung into it from the Piccadilly end, and
+moved on in the direction of the house which sheltered him and his
+secrets together. But, though he walked with apparent indifference, his
+eye was ever on the lookout for some chance watcher in the windows of
+the other houses; for "Captain Horatio Burbage" was supposed, in the
+neighbourhood, to be a superannuated seaman who maintained a bachelor
+establishment with the aid of an elderly housekeeper and a deaf-and-dumb
+maid of all work.
+
+But no one was on the watch to-night; and it was only when he came at
+last to the pillared portico of his own residence that he found any sign
+of life from one end of the street to the other. He did find it then,
+however; for the boy, Dollops, was sitting huddled up on the top step
+with the thick shadow of the portico making a safe screen for him.
+
+He had made good use of the two half-crowns, for he had not only
+feasted--and was feasting still: on a bag of winkles and a saveloy--but
+was washed and brushed and had gone to the length of a shoe-shine and a
+collar.
+
+"Been waitin' since eleven o'clock, sir," he said, getting up and
+pulling his forelock as Cleek appeared. "Didn't knock and arsk for no
+one, though--not me. Twigged as it would be you, sir, on account of your
+sayin' to-night. I've read summink of the ways of 'tecs. Wot ho!"
+
+"You seem a sharp little customer, at all events," said Cleek with a
+curious one-sided smile--a smile that was peculiar to him. "I somehow
+fancy that I've made a good investment, Dollops. Filled up, eh?"
+
+"No, sir--never filled. Born 'ungry, I reckon. But filled as much as you
+could fill me, bless your 'eart. I aren't never goin' to forget that,
+Gov'nor--no fear. An eater and a scrapper I am, sir; and I'll scrap for
+_you_, sir, while there's a bloomin' breff left in my blessed body!
+Gimme the tip wot kind of work I _can_ do for you, Gov'nor, will you? I
+want to get them two 'arf-crowns off my conscience as quick as I can."
+
+Cleek looked at him and smiled again.
+
+"Yes, I'm _sure_ I made a good bargain, Dollops," he said. "Come in."
+And in this way the attachment which existed between them ever afterward
+had its beginning.
+
+He took the boy in and up to the little room on the second floor which
+he called his den; and, turning on the light, motioned him to a chair,
+laid aside his hat and gloves, and was just about to pull up a chair for
+himself when he caught sight of an unstamped letter lying upon his
+writing-table.
+
+"Sit down there and wait a moment until I read this, my lad," he said;
+and forthwith tore the letter open.
+
+It was from Superintendent Narkom. He had known that from the first,
+however. No one but Narkom ever wrote him letters. This one was
+exceedingly brief. It simply contained these two lines:
+
+"My dear Cleek. The Three Jolly Fishermen, Richmond, at tea-time
+to-morrow. An astonishing affair. Yours, M. N."
+
+"Dollops, my lad, I think I'm going to make a man of you," he said as he
+tore the letter into a dozen pieces and tossed the fragments into a
+waste-basket. "At any rate, I'm going to have a try. Know anything about
+Richmond?"
+
+"Yuss, sir."
+
+"Good. Well, we'll have a half-hour's talk and then I'll find a
+temporary bed for you for the night, and to-morrow we'll take a pull on
+the river at Richmond and see what we shall see."
+
+The half-hour, however, developed into a full one; for it was after two
+o'clock when the talk was finished and a bed improvised for the boy; but
+Cleek, saying good night to him at last and going to his own bedroom,
+felt that it was a long, long way from being time wasted.
+
+What Dollops thought is, perhaps, best told by the fact that he burst
+out crying when Cleek came in in the morning to ask how he had slept.
+
+"Slept, Gov'nor!" he said. "Why, bless your 'eart, sir, I couldn't a
+slept better on a bed of roses, nor 'ad 'arf such comfort. Feel like I
+needed someone to lend me a biff on the coco, sir, to make sure as I
+aren't a dreamin'--it's so wot a cove fancies 'Eaven to be like, sir."
+
+And afterward, when the day was older, and they had gone to Richmond,
+and Cleek--in his boating flannels--was pulling him up the shining river
+and talking to him again as he had talked last night, he felt that it
+was even more like Heaven than ever.
+
+It was after four--long after--when they finally separated and Cleek,
+leaving the boy in charge of the boat, stepped ashore in the
+neighbourhood of the inn of the Three Jolly Fishermen and went to keep
+his appointment with Narkom.
+
+He found him enjoying tea at a little round table in the niche of a big
+bay window in the small private parlour which lay immediately behind the
+bar-room.
+
+"My dear chap, do forgive me for not waiting," said the superintendent
+contritely, as Cleek came in, looking like a college-bred athlete in his
+boating-flannels and his brim-tilted panama. "But the fact is you are a
+little later than I anticipated; and I was simply famishing."
+
+"Share the blame of my lateness with me, Mr. Narkom," said Cleek as he
+tossed aside his hat and threw the fag-end of his cigarette through the
+open window. "You merely said 'tea-time,' not any particular hour; and I
+improved the opportunity to take another spin up the river and to talk
+like a Dutch uncle to a certain young man whom I shall introduce to your
+notice in due time. It isn't often that duty calls me to a little Eden
+like this. The air is like balm to-day; and the river--oh, the river is
+a sheer delight."
+
+Narkom rang for a fresh pot of tea and a further supply of buttered
+toast, and, when these were served, Cleek sat down and joined him.
+
+"I dare say," said the superintendent, opening fire at once, "that you
+wonder what in the world induced me to bring you out here to meet me, my
+dear fellow, instead of following the usual course and calling at
+Clarges Street? Well, the fact is, Cleek, that the gentleman with whom I
+am now about to put you in touch lives in this vicinity, and is so
+placed that he cannot get away without running the risk of having the
+step he is taking discovered."
+
+"Humph! He is closely spied upon, then?" commented Cleek. "The trouble
+arises from someone or something in his own household?"
+
+"No--in his father's. The 'trouble,' so far as I can gather, seems to
+emanate from his stepmother, a young and very beautiful woman, who was
+born on the island of Java, where the father of our client met and
+married her some two years ago, whither he had gone to probe into the
+truth of the amazing statement that a runic stone had been unearthed in
+that part of the globe."
+
+"Ah, then you need not tell me the gentleman's name, Mr. Narkom,"
+interposed Cleek. "I remember perfectly well the stir which that
+ridiculous and unfounded statement created at the time. Despite the fact
+that scholars of all nations scoffed at the thing, and pointed out that
+the very term 'rune' is of Teutonic origin, one enthusiastic old
+gentleman--Mr. Michael Bawdrey, a retired brewer, thirsting for
+something more enduring than malt to carry his name down the
+ages--became fired with enthusiasm upon the subject, and set forth for
+Java 'hot foot,' as one might say. I remember that the papers made great
+game of him; but I heard, I fancy, that, in spite of all, he was a dear,
+lovable old chap, and not at all like the creature the cartoonists
+portrayed him."
+
+"What a memory you have, my dear Cleek. Yes, that is the party; and he
+_is_ a dear, lovable old chap at bottom. Collects old china, old
+weapons, old armour, curiosities of all sorts--lots of 'em bogus, no
+doubt; catch the charlatans among the dealers letting a chance like that
+slip them--and is never so happy as when showing his 'collection' to his
+friends and being mistaken by the ignorant for a man of deep learning."
+
+"A very human trait, Mr. Narkom. We all are anxious that the world
+should set the highest possible valuation upon us. It is only when we
+are underrated that we object. So this dear, deluded old gentleman,
+having failed to secure a 'rune' in Java, brought back something equally
+cryptic--a woman? Was the lady of his choice a native or merely an
+inhabitant of the island?"
+
+"Merely an inhabitant, my dear fellow. As a matter of fact, she is
+English. Her father, a doctor, long since deceased, took her out there
+in her childhood. She was none too well off, I believe; but that did not
+prevent her having many suitors, among whom was Mr. Bawdrey's own son,
+the gentleman who is anxious to have you take up this case."
+
+"Oho!" said Cleek, with a strong, rising inflection. "So the lady was of
+the careful and calculating kind? She didn't care for youth and all the
+rest of it when she could have papa and the money-chest without waiting.
+A common enough occurrence. Still, this does not make up an 'affair,'
+and especially an 'affair' which requires the assistance of a detective,
+and you spoke of 'a case.' What is the case, Mr. Narkom?"
+
+"I will leave Mr. Philip Bawdrey himself to tell you that," said Narkom,
+as the door opened to admit a young man of about eight-and-twenty,
+clothed in tennis flannels, and looking very much perturbed, a handsome,
+fair-haired, fair-moustached young fellow, with frank, boyish eyes and
+that unmistakable something which stamps the products of the 'Varsities.
+"Come in, Mr. Bawdrey. You said we were not to wait tea, and you see
+that we haven't. Let me have the pleasure of introducing Mr.--"
+
+"Headland," put in Cleek adroitly, and with a look at Narkom as much as
+to say, "Don't give me away. I may not care to take the case when I hear
+it, so what's the use of letting everybody know who I am?" Then he
+switched round in his chair, rose, and held out his hand. "Mr. George
+Headland, of the Yard, Mr. Bawdrey. I don't trust Mr. Narkom's
+proverbially tricky memory for names. He introduced me as Jones once,
+and I lost the opportunity of handling the case because the party in
+question couldn't believe that anybody named Jones would be likely to
+ferret it out."
+
+"Funny idea, that!" commented young Bawdrey, smiling, and accepting the
+proffered hand. "Rum lot of people you must run across in your line, Mr.
+Headland. Shouldn't take you for a detective myself, shouldn't even in a
+room full of them. College man, aren't you? Thought so. Oxon or Cantab?"
+
+"Cantab--Emmanuel."
+
+"Oh, Lord! Never thought I'd ever live to appeal to an Emmanuel man to
+do anything brilliant. I'm an Oxon chap; Brasenose is my alma mater. I
+say, Mr. Narkom, do give me a cup of tea, will you? I had to slip off
+while the others were at theirs, and I've run all the way. Thanks very
+much. Don't mind if I sit in that corner and draw the curtain a little,
+do you?" his frank, boyish face suddenly clouding. "I don't want to be
+seen by anybody passing. It's a horrible thing to feel that you are
+being spied upon, at every turn, Mr. Headland, and that want of caution
+may mean the death of the person you love best in all the world."
+
+"Oh, it's that kind of case, is it?" queried Cleek, making room for him
+to pass round the table and sit in the corner, with his back to the
+window and the loosened folds of the chintz curtain keeping him in the
+shadow.
+
+"Yes," answered young Bawdrey, with a half-repressed shudder and a
+deeper clouding of his rather pale face. "Sometimes I try to make myself
+believe that it isn't, that it's all fancy, that she never could be so
+inhuman, and yet how else is it to be explained? You can't go behind the
+evidence; you can't make things different simply by saying that you will
+not believe." He stirred his tea nervously, gulped down a couple of
+mouthfuls of it, and then set the cup aside. "I can't enjoy anything; it
+takes the savour out of everything when I think of it," he added, with a
+note of pathos in his voice. "My dad, my dear, bully old dad, the best
+and dearest old boy in all the world! I suppose, Mr. Headland, that Mr.
+Narkom has told you something about the case?"
+
+"A little--a very little indeed. I know that your father went to Java,
+and married a second wife there; and I know, too, that you yourself were
+rather taken with the lady at one time, and that she threw you over as
+soon as Mr. Bawdrey senior became a possibility."
+
+"That's a mistake," he replied. "She never threw me over, Mr. Headland;
+she never had the chance. I found her out long before my father became
+anything like what you might call a rival, found her out as a mercenary,
+designing woman, and broke from her voluntarily. I only wish that I had
+known that he had one serious thought regarding her. I could have warned
+him; I could have spoken then. But I never did find out until it was too
+late. Trust her for that. She waited until I had gone up-country to look
+after some fine old porcelains and enamels that the governor had heard
+about; then she hurried him off and tricked him into a hasty marriage.
+Of course, after that I couldn't speak--I wouldn't speak. She was my
+father's wife, and he was so proud of her, so happy, dear old boy, that
+I'd have been little better than a brute to say anything against her."
+
+"What could you have said if you had spoken?"
+
+"Oh, lots of things--the things that made me break away from her in the
+beginning. She'd had more love affairs than one; her late father's
+masquerading as a doctor for another. They had only used that as a
+cloak. They had run a gambling-house on the sly--he as the card-sharper,
+she as the decoy. They had drained one poor fellow dry, and she had
+thrown him over after leading him on to think that she cared for him and
+was going to marry him. He blew out his brains in front of her, poor
+wretch. They say she never turned a hair. You wouldn't believe it
+possible, if you saw her; she is so sweet and caressing, and so young
+and beautiful, you'd almost believe her an angel. But there's Travers in
+the background--always Travers."
+
+"Travers! Who is he?"
+
+"Oh, one of her old flames, the only one she ever really cared for, they
+say. She was supposed to have broken with him out there in Java, because
+they were too poor to marry; and now he's come over to England, and he's
+there, in the house with the dear old dad and me, and they are as thick
+as thieves together. I've caught them whispering and prowling about
+together, in the grounds and along the lanes, after she has said 'Good
+night,' and gone to her room and is supposed to be in bed. There's a
+houseful of her old friends three parts of the time. They come and they
+go, but Travers never goes. I know why"--waxing suddenly excited,
+suddenly vehement--"yes! I know why. He's in the game with her!"
+
+"Game! What game, Mr. Bawdrey? What is it that she is doing?"
+
+"She's killing my old dad!" he answered, with a sort of sob in his
+excited voice. "She's murdering him by inches, that's what she's doing,
+and I want you to help me bring it home to her. God knows what it is
+she's using or how she uses it; but you know what demons they are for
+secret poisons, those Javanese, what means they have of killing people
+without a trace. And she was out there for years and years. So, too, was
+Travers, the brute! They know all the secrets of those beastly
+barbarians, and between them they're doing something to my old dad."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"I don't know it--that's the worst of it. But I couldn't be surer of it
+if they took me into their secrets. But there's the evidence of his
+condition; there's the fact that it didn't begin until after Travers
+came. Look here, Mr. Headland, you don't know my dad. He's got the
+queerest notions sometimes. One of his fads is that it's unlucky to make
+a will. Well, if he dies without one, who will inherit his money, as I
+am an only child?"
+
+"Undoubtedly you and his widow."
+
+"Exactly. And if I die at pretty nearly the same time--and they'll see
+to that, never fear; it will be my turn the moment they are sure of
+him--she will inherit everything. Now, let me tell you what's happening.
+From being a strong, healthy man, my father has, since Travers's
+arrival, begun to be attacked by a mysterious malady. He has periodical
+fainting-fits, sometimes convulsions. He'll be feeling better for a day
+or so; then, without a word of warning, whilst you're talking to him,
+he'll drop like a shot bird and go into the most horrible convulsions.
+The doctors can't stop it; they don't even know what it is. They only
+know that he's fading away--turning from a strong, virile old man into a
+thin, nervous, shivering wreck. But I know! I know! They're dosing him
+somehow with some diabolical Javanese thing, those two. And
+yesterday--God help me!--yesterday, I, too, dropped like a shot bird; I,
+too, had the convulsions and the weakness and the fainting-fit. My time
+has begun also!"
+
+"Bless my soul! what a diabolical thing!" put in Narkom agitatedly. "No
+wonder you appealed to me!"
+
+"No wonder!" Bawdrey replied. "I felt that it had gone as far as I dared
+to let it; that it was time to call in the police and to have help
+before it was too late. That's the case, Mr. Headland. I want you to
+find some way of getting at the truth, of looking into Travers's
+luggage, into my stepmother's effects, and unearthing the horrible stuff
+with which they are doing this thing; and perhaps, when that is known,
+some antidote may be found to save the dear old dad and restore him to
+what he was. Can't you do this? For God's sake, say that you can."
+
+"At all events, I can try, Mr. Bawdrey," responded Cleek.
+
+"Oh, thank you, thank you!" said Bawdrey gratefully. "I don't care a
+hang what it costs, what your fees are, Mr. Headland. So long as you run
+those two to earth, and get hold of the horrible stuff, whatever it is,
+that they are using, I'll pay any price in the world, and count it cheap
+as compared with the life of my dear old dad. When can you take hold of
+the case? Now?"
+
+"I'm afraid not. Mysterious things like this require a little thinking
+over. Suppose we say to-morrow noon? Will that do?"
+
+"I suppose it must, although I should have liked to take you back with
+me. Every moment's precious at a time like this. But if it must be
+delayed until to-morrow--well, it must, I suppose. But I'll take jolly
+good care that nobody gets a chance to come within touching distance of
+the pater--bless him!--until you do come, if I have to sit on the mat
+before his door until morning. Here's the address on this card, Mr.
+Headland. When and how shall I expect to see you again? You'll use an
+alias, of course?"
+
+"Oh, certainly! Had you any old friend in your college days whom your
+father only knew by name and who is now too far off for the imposture to
+be discovered?"
+
+"Yes. Jim Rickaby. We were as inseparable as the Siamese twins in our
+undergrad days. He's in Borneo now. Haven't heard from him in a dog's
+age."
+
+"Couldn't be better," said Cleek. "Then 'Jim Rickaby' let it be. You'll
+get a letter from him first thing in the morning saying that he's back
+in England, and about to run down and spend the week-end with you. At
+noon he will arrive, accompanied by his Borneo servant,
+named--er--Dollops. You can put the 'blackie' up in some quarter of the
+house where he can move about at will without disturbing any of your own
+servants, and can get in and out at all hours; he will be useful, you
+know, in prowling about the grounds at night and ascertaining if the
+lady really does go to bed when she retires to her room. As for 'Jim
+Rickaby' himself--well, you can pave the way for his operations by
+informing your father, when you get the letter, that he has gone daft on
+the subject of old china and curios and things of that sort, don't you
+know."
+
+"What a ripping idea!" commented young Bawdrey. "I twig. He'll get
+chummy with you, of course, and you can lead him on and adroitly 'pump'
+him regarding her, and where she keeps her keys and things like that.
+That's the idea, isn't it?"
+
+"Something of that sort. I'll find out all about her, never fear," said
+Cleek in reply. Then they shook hands and parted, and it was not until
+after young Bawdry had gone that either he or Narkom recollected that
+Cleek had overlooked telling the young man that Headland was not his
+name.
+
+"Oh, well, it doesn't matter. Time enough to tell him that when it comes
+to making out the cheque," said Cleek, as the superintendent remarked
+upon the circumstance. Then he pushed back his chair and walked over to
+the window, and stood looking silently out upon the flowing river.
+Narkom did not disturb his reflections. He knew from past experience, as
+well as from the manner in which he took his lower lip between his teeth
+and drummed with his finger-tips upon the window-ledge, that some idea
+relative to the working out of the case had taken shape within his mind,
+and so, with the utmost discretion, went on with his tea and refrained
+from speaking. Suddenly Cleek turned. "Mr. Narkom, do me a favour, will
+you? Look me up a copy of Holman's 'Diseases of the Kidneys' when you go
+back to town. I'll send Dollops round to the Yard to-night to get it."
+
+"Right you are," said Narkom, taking out his pocket-book and making a
+note of it. "But, I say, look here, my dear fellow, you can't possibly
+believe that it's anything of that sort--anything natural, I mean--in
+the face of what we've heard?"
+
+"No, I don't. I think it's something confoundedly unnatural, and that
+that poor old chap is being secretly and barbarously murdered. I think
+that--and--I think, too--" His voice trailed off. He stood silent and
+preoccupied for a moment, and then, putting his thoughts into words,
+without addressing them to anybody: "Ayupee!" he said reflectively;
+"Pohon-Upas, Antjar, Galanga root, Ginger and Black Pepper--that's the
+Javanese method of procedure, I believe. Ayupee!--yes, assuredly,
+Ayupee!"
+
+"What the dickens are you talking about, Cleek? And what does all that
+gibberish and that word 'Ayupee' mean?"
+
+"Nothing--nothing. At least, just yet. I say, put on your hat, and let's
+go for a pull on the river, Mr. Narkom. I've had enough of mysteries for
+to-day and am spoiling for another hour in a boat."
+
+Then he screwed round on his heel and walked out into the brilliant
+summer sunshine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Promptly, at the hour appointed, "Mr. Jim Rickaby" and his black servant
+arrived at Laburnam Villa; and certainly the former had no cause to
+complain of the welcome he received at the hands of his beautiful young
+hostess.
+
+He found her not only an extremely lovely woman to the eye, but one
+whose gentle, caressing ways, whose soft voice and simple girlish charm
+were altogether fascinating, and, judging from outward appearances, from
+the tender solicitude for her elderly husband's comfort and well-being,
+from the look in her eyes when she spoke to him, the gentleness of her
+hand when she touched him, one would have said that she really and truly
+loved him, and that it needed no lure of gold to draw this particular
+May to the arms of this one December.
+
+He found Captain Travers a laughing, rollicking, fun-loving type of
+man--at least, to all outward appearances--who seemed to delight in
+sports and games and to have an almost childish love of card tricks and
+that species of entertainment which is known as parlour magic. He found
+the three other members of the little house-party--to wit: Mrs.
+Somerby-Miles, Lieutenant Forshay, and Mr. Robert Murdock--respectively,
+a silly, flirtatious, little gadfly of a widow; a callow, love-struck,
+lap-dog, young army officer, with a budding moustache and a full-blown
+idea of his own importance; and a dour Scotchman of middle age, with a
+passion for chess, a glowering scorn of frivolities, and a deep and
+abiding conviction that Scotland was the only country in the world for a
+self-respecting human being to dwell in, and that everything outside of
+the Established Church was foredoomed to flames and sulphur and the
+perpetual prodding of red-hot pitchforks. And last, but not least by any
+means, he found Mr. Michael Bawdrey just what he had been told he would
+find him, namely, a dear, lovable, sunny-tempered old man, who fairly
+idolised his young wife and absolutely adored his frank-faced,
+affectionate, big boy of a son, and who ought not, in the common course
+of things, to have an enemy or an evil wisher in all the world.
+
+The news, which, of course, had preceded Cleek's arrival, that this
+whilom college chum of his son's was as great an enthusiast as he
+himself on the subject of old china, old porcelain, bric-à-brac and
+curios of every sort, filled him with the utmost delight, and he could
+scarcely refrain from rushing him off at once to view his famous
+collection.
+
+"Michael, dear, you mustn't overdo yourself just because you happen to
+have been a little stronger these past two days," said his wife, laying
+a gentle hand upon his arm. "Besides, we must give Mr. Rickaby time to
+breathe. He has had a long journey, and I am sure he will want to rest.
+You can take him in to see that wonderful collection after dinner,
+dear."
+
+"Humph! Full of fakes, as I supposed--and she knows it," was Cleek's
+mental comment upon this. And he was not surprised when, finding herself
+alone with him a few minutes later, she said, in her pretty, pleading
+way:
+
+"Mr. Rickaby, if you are an expert, don't undeceive him. I could not let
+you go to see the collection without first telling you. It is full of
+bogus things, full of frauds and shams that unscrupulous dealers have
+palmed off on him. But don't let him know. He takes such pride in them,
+and--and he's breaking down--God pity me, his health is breaking down
+every day, Mr. Rickaby, and I want to spare him every pang, if I can,
+even so little a pang as the discovery that the things he prizes are not
+real."
+
+"Set your mind at rest, Mrs. Bawdrey," promised Cleek. "He will not find
+it out from me. He will not find anything out from me. He is just the
+kind of man to break his heart, to crumple up like a burnt glove, and
+come to the end of all things, even life, if he were to discover that
+any of his treasures, anything that he loved and trusted in, is a sham
+and a fraud."
+
+His eyes looked straight into hers as he spoke, his hand rested lightly
+on her sleeve. She sucked in her breath suddenly, a brief pallor chased
+the roses from her cheeks, a brief confusion sat momentarily upon her.
+She appeared to hesitate, then looked away and laughed uneasily.
+
+"I don't think I quite grasp what you mean, Mr. Rickaby," she said.
+
+"Don't you?" he made answer. "Then I will tell you--some
+time--to-morrow, perhaps. But if I were you, Mrs. Bawdrey--well, no
+matter. This I promise you: that dear old man shall have no ideal
+shattered by me."
+
+And, living up to that promise, he enthused over everything the old man
+had in his collection when, after dinner that night, they went, in
+company with Philip, to view it. But bogus things were on every hand.
+Spurious porcelains, fraudulent armour, faked china were everywhere. The
+loaded cabinets and the glazed cases were one long procession of faked
+Dresden and bogus faience, of Egyptian enamels that had been
+manufactured in Birmingham, and of sixth-century "treasures" whose
+makers were still plying their trade and battening upon the ignorance of
+such collectors as he.
+
+"Now, here's a thing I am particularly proud of," said the gulled old
+man, reaching into one of the cases and holding out for Cleek's
+admiration an irregular disc of dull, hammered gold that had an
+iridescent beetle embedded in the flat face of it. "This scarab, Mr.
+Rickaby, has helped to make history, as one might say. It was once the
+property of Cleopatra. I was obliged to make two trips to Egypt before I
+could persuade the owner to part with it. I am always conscious of a
+certain sense of awe, Mr. Rickaby, when I touch this wonderful thing. To
+think, sir, to think! that this bauble once rested on the bosom of that
+marvellous woman; that Mark Antony must have seen it, may have touched
+it; that Ptolemy Auletes knew all about it, and that it is older, sir,
+than the Christian religion itself!"
+
+He held it out upon the flat of his palm, the better for Cleek to see
+and to admire it, and signed to his son to hand the visitor a magnifying
+glass.
+
+"Wonderful, most wonderful!" observed Cleek, bending over the spurious
+gem and focussing the glass upon it; not, however, for the purpose of
+studying the fraud, but to examine something just noticed--something
+round and red and angry-looking which marked the palm itself, at the
+base of the middle finger.
+
+"No wonder you are proud of such a prize. I think I should go off my
+head with rapture if I owned an antique like that. But, pardon me, have
+you met with an accident, Mr. Bawdrey? That's an ugly place you have on
+your palm."
+
+"That? Oh, that's nothing," he answered, gaily. "It itches a great deal
+at times, but otherwise it isn't troublesome. I can't think how in the
+world I got it, to tell the truth. It came out as a sort of red blister
+in the beginning, and since it broke it has been spreading a great deal.
+But, really, it doesn't amount to anything at all."
+
+"Oh, that's just like you, dad," put in Philip, "always making light of
+the wretched thing. I notice one thing, however, Rickaby, it seems to
+grow worse instead of better. And dad knows as well as I do when it
+began. It came out suddenly about a fortnight ago, after he had been
+holding some green worsted for my stepmother to wind into balls. Just
+look at it, will you, old chap?"
+
+"Nonsense, nonsense!" chimed in the old man, laughingly. "Don't mind the
+silly boy, Mr. Rickaby. He will have it that that green worsted is to
+blame, just because he happened to spy the thing the morning after."
+
+"Let's have a look at it," said Cleek, moving nearer the light. Then,
+after a close examination, "I don't think it amounts to anything, after
+all," he added, as he laid aside the glass. "I shouldn't worry myself
+about it if I were you, Phil. It's just an ordinary blister, nothing
+more. Let's go on with the collection, Mr. Bawdrey; I'm deeply
+interested in it, I assure you. Never saw such a marvellous lot. Got any
+more amazing things--gems, I mean--like that wonderful scarab? I
+say!"--halting suddenly before a long, narrow case, with a glass front,
+which stood on end in a far corner, and, being lined with black velvet,
+brought into ghastly prominence the suspended shape of a human skeleton
+contained within--"I say! What the dickens is this? Looks like a
+doctor's specimen, b'gad. You haven't let anybody--I mean, you haven't
+been buying any prehistoric bones, have you, Mr. Bawdrey?"
+
+"Oh, that?" laughed the old man, turning round and seeing to what he was
+alluding. "Oh, that's a curiosity of quite a different sort, Mr.
+Rickaby. You are right in saying it looks like a doctor's specimen. It
+is--or, rather, it was. Mrs. Bawdrey's father was a doctor, and it once
+belonged to him. Properly, it ought to have no place in a collection of
+this sort, but--well, it's such an amazing thing I couldn't quite refuse
+it a place, sir. It's a freak of nature. The skeleton of a nine-fingered
+man."
+
+"Of a what?"
+
+"A nine-fingered man."
+
+"Well, I can't say that I see anything remarkable in that. I've got nine
+fingers myself, nine and one over, when it comes to that."
+
+"No, you haven't, you duffer!" put in young Bawdrey, with a laugh.
+"You've got eight fingers--eight fingers and two thumbs. This bony
+johnny has nine fingers and two thumbs. That's what makes him a freak. I
+say, dad, open the beggar's box, and let Rickaby see."
+
+His father obeyed the request. Lifting the tiny brass latch which alone
+secured it, he swung open the glazed door of the case, and, reaching in,
+drew forward the flexible left arm of the skeleton.
+
+"There you are," he said, supporting the bony hand upon his palm, so
+that all its fingers were spread out and Cleek might get a clear view of
+the monstrosity. "What a trial he must have been to the glove trade,
+mustn't he?" laughing gaily. "Fancy the confusion and dismay, Mr.
+Rickaby, if a fellow like this walked into a Bond Street shop in a hurry
+and asked for a pair of gloves."
+
+Cleek bent over and examined the thing with interest. At first glance,
+the hand was no different from any other skeleton hand one might see any
+day in any place where they sold anatomical specimens for the use of
+members of the medical profession; but as Mr. Bawdrey, holding it on the
+palm of his right hand, flattened it out with the fingers of his left,
+the abnormality at once became apparent. Springing from the base of the
+fourth finger, a perfectly developed fifth appeared, curling inward
+toward what had once been the palm of the hand, as though, in life, it
+had been the owner's habit of screening it from observation by holding
+it in that position. It was, however, perfectly flexible, and Mr.
+Bawdrey had no difficulty in making it lie out flat after the manner of
+its mates.
+
+The sight was not inspiring--the freaks of mother Nature rarely are. No
+one but a doctor would have cared to accept the thing as a gift, and no
+one but a man as mad on the subject of curiosities and with as little
+sense of discrimination as Mr. Bawdrey would have dreamt for a moment of
+adding it to a collection.
+
+"It's rather uncanny," said Cleek, who had no palate for the abnormal in
+Nature. "For myself, I may frankly admit that I don't like things of
+that sort about me."
+
+"You are very much like my wife in that," responded the old man. "She
+was of the opinion that the skeleton ought to have been destroyed or
+else handed over to some anatomical museum. But--well, it is a
+curiosity, you know, Mr. Rickaby. Besides, as I have said, it was once
+the property of her late father, a most learned man, sir, most learned,
+and as it was of sufficient interest for him to retain it--oh, well, we
+collectors are faddists, you know, so I easily persuaded Mrs. Bawdrey to
+allow me to bring it over to England with me when we took our leave of
+Java. And now that you have seen it, suppose we have a look at more
+artistic things. I have some very fine specimens of neolithic implements
+and weapons which I am most anxious to show you. Just step this way,
+please."
+
+He let the skeleton's hand slip from his own, swing back into the case,
+and forthwith closed the glass door upon it; then, leading the way to
+the cabinet containing the specimens referred to, he unlocked it, and
+invited Cleek's opinion of the flint arrow-heads, stone hatchets, and
+granite utensils within.
+
+For a minute they lingered thus, the old man talking, laughing, exulting
+in his possessions, the detective examining and pretending to be deeply
+impressed. Then, of a sudden, without hint or warning to lessen the
+shock of it, the uplifted lid of the cabinet fell with a crash from the
+hand that upheld it, shivering the glass into fifty pieces, and Cleek,
+screwing round on his heel with a "jump" of all his nerves, was in time
+to see the figure of his host crumple up, collapse, drop like a thing
+shot dead, and lie foaming and writhing on the polished floor.
+
+"Dad! Oh, heavens! Dad!" The cry was young Bawdrey's. He seemed fairly
+to throw himself across the intervening space and to reach his father in
+the instant he fell. "Now you know! Now you know!" he went on wildly, as
+Cleek dropped down beside him and began to loosen the old man's collar.
+"It's like this always; not a hint, not a sign, but just this utter
+collapse. My God, what are they doing it with? How are they managing it,
+those two? They're coming, Headland. Listen! Don't you hear them?"
+
+The crash of the broken glass and the jar of the old man's fall had
+swept through all the house, and a moment later, headed by Mrs. Bawdrey
+herself, all the members of the little house-party came piling excitedly
+into the room.
+
+The fright and suffering of the young wife seemed very real as she threw
+herself down beside her husband and caught him to her with a little
+shuddering cry. Then her voice, uplifting in a panic, shrilled out a
+wild appeal for doctor, servants--help of any kind. And, almost as she
+spoke, Travers was beside her, Travers and Forshay and Robert
+Murdock--yes, and silly little Mrs. Somerby-Miles, too, forgetting in
+the face of such a time as this to be anything but helpful and
+womanly--and all of these gave such assistance as was in their power.
+
+"Help me get him up to his own room, somebody, and send a servant
+post-haste for the doctor," said Captain Travers, taking the lead after
+the fashion of a man who is used to command. "Calm yourself as much as
+possible, Mrs. Bawdrey. Here, Murdock, lend a hand and help him."
+
+"Eh, mon, there is nae help but Heaven's in sic a case as this,"
+dolefully responded Murdock, as he came forward and solemnly stooped to
+obey. "The puir auld laddie! The Laird giveth and the Laird taketh awa',
+and the weel o' mon is as naething."
+
+"Oh, stow your croaking, you blundering old fool!" snapped Travers, as
+Mrs. Bawdrey gave a heart-wrung cry and hid her face in her hands. "You
+and your eternal doldrums! Here, Bawdrey, lend a hand, old chap. We can
+get him upstairs without the assistance of this human trombone, I know."
+
+But "this human trombone" was not minded that they should; and so it
+fell out that, when Lieutenant Forshay led Mrs. Somerby-Miles from the
+room, and young Bawdrey and Captain Travers carried the stricken man up
+the stairs to his own bed-chamber, his wife flying in advance to see
+that everything was prepared for him, Cleek, standing all alone beside
+the shattered cabinet, could hear Mr. Robert Murdock's dismal croakings
+rumbling steadily out as he mounted the staircase with the others.
+
+For a moment after the closing door of a room overhead had shut them
+from his ears, he stood there, with puckered brows and pursed-up lips,
+drumming with his finger-tips a faint tattoo upon the framework of the
+shattered lid; then he walked over to the skeleton case, and silently
+regarded the gruesome thing within.
+
+"Nine fingers," he muttered sententiously, "and the ninth curves inward
+to the palm!" He stepped round and viewed the case from all points--both
+sides, the front, and even the narrow space made at the back by the
+angle of the corner where it stood. And after this he walked to the
+other end of the room, took the key from the lock, slipped it in his
+pocket, and went out, closing the door behind him, that none might
+remember it had not been locked when the master of the place was carried
+above.
+
+It was, perhaps, twenty minutes later that young Bawdrey came down and
+found him all alone in the smoking-room, bending over the table whereon
+the butler had set the salver containing the whiskey decanter, the soda
+siphon, and the glasses that were always laid out there, that the
+gentlemen might help themselves to the regulation "night-cap" before
+going to bed.
+
+"I've slipped away to have a word in private with you, Headland," he
+said, in an agitated voice, as he came in. "Oh, what consummate actors
+they are, those two. You'd think her heart was breaking, wouldn't you?
+You'd think--Hullo! I say! What on earth are you doing?" For, as he came
+nearer, he could see that Cleek had removed the glass stopper of the
+decanter, and was tapping with his finger-tips a little funnel of white
+paper, the narrow end of which he had thrust into the neck of the
+bottle.
+
+"Just adding a harmless little sleeping-draught to the nightly
+beverage," said Cleek, in reply, as he screwed up the paper funnel and
+put it in his pocket. "A good sound sleep is an excellent thing, my dear
+fellow, and I mean to make sure that the gentlemen of this house-party
+have it--one gentleman in particular: Captain Travers."
+
+"Yes; but--I say! What about me, old chap? I don't want to be drugged,
+and you know I have to show them the courtesy of taking a 'night-cap'
+with them."
+
+"Precisely. That's where you can help me out. If any of them remark
+anything about the whiskey having a peculiar taste, you must stoutly
+assert that you don't notice; and, as they've seen you drinking from the
+same decanter--why, there you are. Don't worry over it. It's a very,
+very harmless draught; you won't even have a headache from it. Listen
+here, Bawdrey. Somebody is poisoning your father."
+
+"I know it. I told you so from the beginning, Headland," he answered,
+with a sort of wail. "But what's that got to do with drugging the
+whiskey?"
+
+"Everything. I'm going to find out to-night whether Captain Travers is
+that somebody or not. Sh-h-h! Don't get excited. Yes, that's my game. I
+want to get into his rooms whilst he is sleeping, and be free to search
+his effects. I want to get into every man's room here, and wherever I
+find poison--well, you understand?"
+
+"Yes," he replied, brightening as he grasped the import of the matter.
+"What a ripping idea! And so simple."
+
+"I think so. Once let me find the poison, and I'll know my man. Now one
+other thing: the housekeeper must have a master-key that opens all the
+bedrooms in the place. Get it for me. It will be easier and swifter than
+picking the locks."
+
+"Right you are, old chap. I'll slip up to Mrs. Jarret's room and fetch
+it to you at once."
+
+"No; tuck it under the mat just outside my door. As it won't do for me
+to be drugged as well as the rest of you. I shan't put in an appearance
+when the rest come down. Say I've got a headache, and have gone to bed.
+As for my own 'night-cap'--well, I can send Dollops down to get the
+butler to pour me one out of another decanter, so that will be all
+right. Now, toddle off and get the key, there's a good chap. And, I say,
+Bawdrey, as I shan't see you again until morning--good-night."
+
+"Good-night, old chap!" he answered in his impulsive, boyish way. "You
+are a friend, Headland. And--you'll save my dad, God bless you! A true,
+true friend--that's what you are. Thank God I ran across you."
+
+Cleek smiled and nodded to him as he passed out and hurried away; then,
+hearing the other gentlemen coming down the stairs, he, too, made haste
+to get out of the room and to creep up to his own after they had
+assembled, and the cigar cabinet and the whiskey were being passed
+round, and the doctor was busy above with the man who was somebody's
+victim.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The big old grandfather clock at the top of the stairs pointed ten
+minutes past two, and the house was hushed of every sound save that
+which is the evidence of deep sleep, when the door of Cleek's room swung
+quietly open, and Cleek himself, in dressing-gown and wadded bedroom
+slippers, stepped out into the dark hall, and, leaving Dollops on guard,
+passed like a shadow over the thick, unsounding carpet.
+
+The rooms of all the male occupants of the house, including that of
+Philip Bawdrey himself, opened upon this. He went to each in turn,
+unlocked it, stepped in, closed it after him, and lit the bedroom
+candle.
+
+The sleeping-draught had accomplished all that was required of it; and
+in each and every room he entered--Captain Travers's, Lieutenant
+Forshay's, Mr. Robert Murdock's--there lay the occupant thereof
+stretched out at full length in the grip of that deep and heavy sleep
+which comes of drugs.
+
+Cleek made the round of the rooms as quietly as any shadow, even
+stopping as he passed young Bawdrey's on his way back to his own to peep
+in there. Yes; he, too, had got his share of the effective draught, for
+there he lay snarled up in the bed-clothes, with his arms over his head
+and his knees drawn up until they were on a level with his waist, and
+his handsome, boyish face a little paler than usual.
+
+Cleek didn't go into the room, simply looked at him from the threshold,
+then shut the door, and went back to Dollops.
+
+"All serene, Gov'nor?" questioned that young man, in an eager whisper.
+
+"Yes, quite," his master replied, as he turned to a writing-table
+whereon there lay a sealed note, and, pulling out the chair, sat down
+before it and took up a pen. "Wait a bit, and then you can go to bed.
+I'll give you still another note to deliver. While I'm writing it you
+may lay out my clothes."
+
+"Slipping off, sir?"
+
+"Yes. You will stop here, however. Now, then, hold your tongue; I'm
+busy."
+
+Then he pulled a sheet of paper to him and wrote rapidly:
+
+"DEAR MR. BAWDREY:
+
+"I've got my man, and am off to consult with Mr. Narkom and to have what
+I've found analysed. I don't know when I shall be back--probably not
+until the day after to-morrow. You are right. It is murder, and Java is
+at the bottom of it. Dollops will hand you this. Say nothing--just wait
+till I get back."
+
+This he slipped, unsigned in his haste, into an envelope, handed it to
+Dollops, and then fairly jumped into his clothes. Ten minutes later, he
+was out of the house, and--the end of the riddle was in sight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+On the morrow, Mrs. Bawdrey made known the rather surprising piece of
+news that Mr. Rickaby had written her a note to say that he had received
+a communication of such vital importance that he had been obliged to
+leave the house that morning before anybody was up, and might not be
+able to return to it for several days.
+
+"No very great hardship in that, my dear," commented Mrs. Somerby-Miles,
+"for a more stupid and uninteresting person I never encountered. Fancy!
+he never even offered to assist the gentlemen to get poor Mr. Bawdrey
+upstairs last night. How is the poor old dear this morning, darling?
+Better?"
+
+"Yes--much," said Mrs. Bawdrey, in reply. "Doctor Phillipson came to the
+house before four o'clock, and brought some wonderful new medicine that
+has simply worked wonders. Of course, he will have to stop in bed and be
+perfectly quiet for three or four days; but, although the attack was by
+far the worst he has ever had, the doctor feels quite confident that he
+will pull him safely through."
+
+Now although, in the light of her apparent affection for her aged
+husband, she ought, one would have thought, to be exceedingly happy over
+this, it was distinctly noticeable that she was nervous and ill at ease,
+that there was a hunted look in her eyes, and that, as the day wore on,
+these things seemed to be accentuated. More than that, there seemed
+added proof of the truth of young Bawdrey's assertion that she and
+Captain Travers were in league with each other, for that day they were
+constantly together, constantly getting off into out-of-the-way places,
+and constantly talking in an undertone of something that seemed to worry
+them.
+
+Even when dinner was over, and the whole party adjourned to the
+drawing-room for coffee, and the lady ought, in all conscience, to have
+given herself wholly up to the entertainment of her guests it was
+observable that she devoted most of her time to whispered confidences
+with Captain Travers, that they kept going to the window and looking up
+at the sky, as if worried and annoyed that the twilight should be so
+long in fading and the night in coming on. But worse than this, at ten
+o'clock Captain Travers made an excuse of having letters to write, and
+left the room, and it was scarcely six minutes later that she followed
+suit.
+
+But the Captain had not gone to write letters, as it had happened.
+Instead, he had gone straight to the morning-room, an apartment
+immediately behind that in which the elder Mr. Bawdrey's collection was
+housed, and from which a broad French window opened out upon the
+grounds, and it might have caused a scandal had it been known that Mrs.
+Bawdrey joined him there one minute after leaving the drawing-room.
+
+"It is the time, Walter, it is the time!" she said, in a breathless sort
+of way, as she closed the door and moved across the room to where he
+stood, a dimly seen figure in the dim light. "God help and pity me! but
+I am so nervous, I hardly know how to contain myself. The note said at
+ten to-night in the morning-room, and it is ten now. The hour is here,
+Walter, the hour is here!"
+
+"So is the man, Mrs. Bawdrey," answered a low voice from the outer
+darkness; then a figure lifted itself above the screening shrubs just
+beyond the ledge of the open window, and Cleek stepped into the room.
+
+She gave a little hysterical cry and reached out her hands to him.
+
+"Oh, I am so glad to see you, even though you hint at such awful things,
+I am so glad, so glad!" she said. "I almost died when I read your note.
+To think that it is murder--murder! And but for you he might be dead
+even now. You will like to know that the doctor brought the stuff you
+sent by him--brought it at once--and my darling is better--better."
+
+Before Cleek could venture any reply to this, Captain Travers stalked
+across the room and gripped his hand.
+
+"And so you are that great man Cleek, are you?" he said. "Bully boy!
+Bully boy! And to think that all the time it wasn't some mysterious
+natural affliction; to think that it was crime--murder--poison. What
+poison, man, what poison--what?"
+
+"Ayupee, or, as it is variously called in the several islands of the
+Eastern Archipelago, Pohon-Upas, Antjar, and Ipo," said Cleek, in reply.
+"The deadly venom which the Malays use in poisoning the heads of their
+arrows."
+
+"What! that awful stuff!" said Mrs. Bawdrey, with a little shuddering
+cry. "And someone in this house--" Her voice broke. She plucked at
+Cleek's sleeve and looked up at him in an agony of entreaty. "Who?" she
+implored. "Who in this house could? You said you would tell
+to-night--you said you would. Oh, who could have the heart? Ah! Who? It
+is true, if you have not heard it, that once upon a time there was bad
+blood between Mr. Murdock and him--that Mr. Murdock is a family
+connection; but even he, oh, even he--Tell me--tell me, Mr. Cleek!"
+
+"Mrs. Bawdrey, I can't just yet," he made reply. "In my heart I am as
+certain of it as though the criminal had confessed; but I am waiting for
+a sign, and, until that comes, absolute proof is not possible. That it
+will come, and may, indeed, come at any moment now that it is quite
+dark, I am very certain. When it does--"
+
+He stopped and threw up a warning hand. As he spoke a queer thudding
+sound struck one dull note through the stillness of the house. He stood,
+bent forward, listening, absolutely breathless; then, on the other side
+of the wall, there rippled and rolled a something that was like the
+sound of a struggle between two voiceless animals, and--the sign that he
+awaited had come!
+
+"Follow me--quickly, as noiselessly as you can. Let no one hear, let no
+one see!" he said in a breath of excitement. Then he sprang cat-like to
+the door, whirled it open, scudded round the angle of the passage to the
+entrance of the room where the fraudulent collection was kept, and went
+in with the silent fleetness of a panther. And a moment later, when
+Captain Travers and Mrs. Bawdrey swung in through the door and joined
+him, they came upon a horrifying sight.
+
+For there, leaning against the open door of the case where the skeleton
+of the nine-fingered man hung, was Dollops, bleeding and faint, and with
+a score of tooth-marks on his neck and throat, and on the floor at his
+feet Cleek was kneeling on the writhing figure of a man, who bit and
+tore and snarled like a cornered wolf and fought with teeth and feet and
+hands alike in the wild effort to get free from the grip of destiny. A
+locked handcuff clamped one wrist, and from it swung, at the end of the
+connecting chain, its unlocked mate; the marks of Dollops' fists were on
+his lips and cheeks, and at the foot of the case, where the hanging
+skeleton doddered and shook to the vibration of the floor, lay a
+shattered phial of deep-blue glass.
+
+"Got you, you hound!" said Cleek, through his teeth as he wrenched the
+man's two wrists together and snapped the other handcuff into place.
+"You beast of ingratitude--you Judas! Kissing and betraying like any
+other Iscariot! And a dear old man like that! Look here, Mrs. Bawdrey;
+look here Captain Travers; what do you think of a little rat like this?"
+
+They came forward at his word, and, looking down, saw that the figure he
+was bending over was the figure of Philip Bawdrey.
+
+"Oh!" gulped Mrs. Bawdrey, and then shut her two hands over her eyes and
+fell away weak and shivering. "Oh, Mr. Cleek, it can't be--it can't! To
+do a thing like that?"
+
+"Oh, he'd have done worse, the little reptile, if he hadn't been pulled
+up short," said Cleek in reply. "He'd have hanged you for it, if it had
+gone the way he planned. You look in your boxes; you, too, Captain
+Travers. I'll wager each of you finds a phial of Ayupee hidden among
+them somewhere. Came in to put more of the cursed stuff on the ninth
+finger of the skeleton, so that it would be ready for the next time,
+didn't he, Dollops?"
+
+"Yes, Gov'nor. I waited for him behind the case just as you told me to,
+sir, and when he ups and slips the finger of the skilligan into the neck
+of the bottle, I nips out and whacks the bracelet on him. But he was too
+quick for me, sir, so I only got one on; and then, the hound, he turns
+on me like a blessed hyena, sir, and begins a-chawin' of me windpipe. I
+say, Gov'nor, take off his silver wristlets, will you, sir, and lemme
+have jist ten minutes with him on my own? Five for me, sir, and five for
+his poor old dad!"
+
+"Not I," said Cleek. "I wouldn't let you soil those honest hands of
+yours on his vile little body, Dollops. Thought you had a noodle to deal
+with, didn't you, Mr. Philip Bawdrey? Thought you could lead me by the
+nose, and push me into finding those phials just where you wanted them
+found, didn't you? Well, you've got a few more thoughts coming. Look
+here, Captain Travers: what do you think of this fellow's little game?
+Tried to take me in about you and Mrs. Bawdrey being lovers, and trying
+to do away with him and his father to get the old man's money."
+
+"Why, the contemptible little hound! Bless my soul, man, I'm engaged to
+Mrs. Bawdrey's cousin. And as for his stepmother--why, she threw the
+little worm over as soon as he began making love to her, and tried to
+make her take up with him by telling her how much he'd be worth when his
+father died."
+
+"I guessed as much. I didn't fancy him from the first moment; and he was
+so blessed eager to have me begin by suspecting you two, that I smelt a
+rat at once. Oh, but he's been crafty enough in other things. Putting
+that devilish stuff on the ninth finger of the skeleton, and never
+losing an opportunity to get his poor old father to handle it and show
+it to people. It's a strong, irritant poison--sap of the upas-tree is
+the base of it--producing first an irritation of the skin, then a
+blister, and, when that broke, communicating the poison directly to the
+blood every time the skeleton hand touched it. A weak solution at first,
+so that the decline would be natural, the growth of the malady gradual.
+But if I'd found that phial in your room last night, as he hoped and
+believed I had done--well, look for yourself. The finger of the skeleton
+is thick with the beastly, gummy stuff to-night. Double strength, of
+course. The next time his father touched it he'd have died before
+morning. And the old chap fairly worshipping him. I suspected him, and
+suspected what the stuff that was being used really was from the
+beginning. Last night I drugged him, and then--I knew."
+
+"Knew, Mr. Cleek? Why, how could you?"
+
+"The most virulent poisons have their remedial uses, Captain," he made
+reply. "You can kill a man with strychnine; you can put him in his grave
+with arsenic; you can also use both these powerful agents to cure and to
+save, in their proper proportions and in the proper way. The same rule
+applies to Ayupee. Properly diluted and properly used, it is one of the
+most powerful agents for the relief, and, in some cases, the cure, of
+Bright's disease of the kidneys. But the Government guards this unholy
+drug most carefully. You can't get a drop of it in Java for love or
+money, unless on the order of a recognized physician; and you can't
+bring it into the ports of England unless backed by that physician's
+sworn statement and the official stamp of the Javanese authorities. A
+man undeniably afflicted with Bright's disease could get these
+things--no other could. Well, I wanted to know who had succeeded in
+getting Ayupee into this country and into this house. Last night I
+drugged every man in it, and--I found out."
+
+"But how?"
+
+"By finding the one who could not sleep stretched out at full length.
+One of the strongest symptoms of Bright's disease is a tendency to draw
+the knees up close to the body in sleep, Captain, and to twist the arms
+above the head. Of all the men under this roof, this man here was the
+only one who slept like that last night!" He paused and looked down at
+the scowling, sullen creature on the floor. "You wretched little cur!"
+he said, with a gesture of unspeakable contempt. "And all for the sake
+of an old man's money! If I did my duty, I'd gaol you. But if I did, it
+would be punishing the innocent for the crimes of the guilty. It would
+kill that dear old man to learn this; and so he's not going to learn it,
+and the law's not going to get its own." He twitched out his hand, and
+something tinkled on the floor. "Get up!" he said sharply. "There's the
+key of the handcuffs; take it and set yourself free. Do you know what's
+going to happen to you? To-morrow morning Dr. Phillipson is going to
+examine you, and to report that you'll be a dead man in a year's time if
+you stop another week in this country. You are going out of it, and you
+are going to stop out of it. Do you understand? _Stop_ out of it to the
+end of your days. For if ever you put foot in it again I'll handle you
+as a terrier handles a rat! Dollops!"
+
+"Yes, Gov'nor?"
+
+"My things packed and ready?"
+
+"Yes, sir. And all waitin' in the arbour, sir, as you told me to have
+'em."
+
+"Good lad! Get them, and we'll catch the first train back. Mrs. Bawdrey,
+my best respects. Captain, all good luck to you," said Cleek--and swung
+out into the darkness and the moist, warm fragrance of the night; his
+mental poise a bit unsteady, his nerves raw. It was not in him to have
+stopped longer, to have remained under the same roof with a monster like
+young Bawdrey and keep his temper in check.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The stillness, the balm, the soothing influences of the night worked
+their own spell; and, after a time, rubbed out the mental wrinkles and
+brought a sense of restfulness and peace. It could not well do otherwise
+with such a nature as his. The night was all a-musk with mignonette and
+roses, the sky all a-glitter with stars. A gunshot distant the river
+ran--a silver thing ribboning along between the dark of bending trees;
+somewhere in the darkness a nightingale shook out the scale of Nature's
+Anthem to the listening Night, and, farther afield, others took up the
+chorus of it and sang and sang with the sheer joy of living.
+
+What a world--God, what a world for parricides to exist in, and for the
+sons of men to forget the Fifth Commandment!
+
+He walked on faster, and made his way to the arbour where Dollops
+waited. The boy rose to meet him.
+
+"Everythink all ready, sir--see!" he said, holding up a kit bag. "Wot's
+it now, Gov'nor?--the railway station? Good enough. Shall I nip off
+ahead or keep with you till we get there?"
+
+"Suit yourself, my lad."
+
+"Thanky, sir; then I'll walk at your heels, if you don't mind. I'd like
+to walk at your heels all the rest of my blessed life. Did I carry it
+off all right, Gov'nor? Did I do it jist as you wanted of it done?"
+
+"To a T, my lad," said Cleek, smiling and patting him on the shoulder.
+"You'll do, Dollops--you'll do finely. I think I did a good job for the
+pair of us, my boy, when I gave you those two half-crowns."
+
+"Advanced, Gov'nor, advanced," corrected Dollops, with a look of sheer
+affection. "Let me work 'em off, sir, like you said I might. I don't
+want nothin' but wot I earns, Gov'nor; nothin' but wot I've got a right
+to have; for when I sees wot wantin' money as don't belong to you leads
+to; when I thinks wot that young Bawdrey chap was willin' to do for the
+love of havin' it--"
+
+"Don't!" struck in Cleek, a trifle roughly. "Drop the man's name--I
+can't trust myself to think of it. That the one world, the one self-same
+world, could hold two such widely dissimilar creations of God as that
+monster and ... No matter. Thank God, I've been able to do something
+to-night for a good woman--I owe so much to another of her kind. No;
+don't speak--just walk quietly and"--jerking his thumb in the direction
+of the fluting nightingales--"listen to that. God! the man who could
+think evil things when a nightingale sings, isn't fit to stand even in
+the Devil's presence."
+
+Dollops looked at him--half-puzzled, half-awed. He could not understand
+the character of the man: there were so many sides to it; and they came
+and went so oddly. One minute, a very brute-beast in his ferocity, the
+next, a woman in his tenderness and a poet in his thoughts. But if the
+boy was puzzled, he was, at least, discreet. He put nothing into words:
+merely walked on in silence, and left the man to his thoughts and the
+nightingales to their melody.
+
+And Cleek was unusually thoughtful from that period onward; speaking
+hardly a word through all the journey home. For now that the events
+which had occupied his mind for the past two or three days were over and
+done with, his memory harked back to those things which had to do with
+his own affairs, and he caught himself wondering how matters had gone
+with Ailsa Lorne; which of the two positions--the English one or the
+French--she had finally elected to apply for; and if time had as yet
+softened the shock of that disclosure made in the mist and darkness at
+Hampstead Heath.
+
+He had, of course, heard nothing of her since that time; and the days he
+had spent at Richmond had utterly precluded the possibility of giving
+himself that small pleasure--so often indulged in--of adopting a safe
+disguise, prowling about the neighbourhood where she lived until she
+should come forth upon one errand or another, and then following her,
+unsuspected.
+
+That she could have taken the knowledge of what he once had been in no
+other way than she had done; that to such a woman, such a man must at
+the first blush be an object of abhorrence--a thing to be put out of her
+life as completely and as expeditiously as possible--he fully realised;
+yet, at bottom, he was conscious of a hope that Time--even so little as
+had passed--might lend a softening influence that should lead eventually
+to Pity, and from that to a day when the word Forgiveness might be
+spoken.
+
+He wanted that forgiveness--the soul of the man needed it, as parched
+plants need water. He had not climbed up out of himself without some
+struggle, some moments when he wavered between what he had become, and
+what Nature had written that he was meant to be; for no Soul is purged
+all in a moment, no man may conquer himself with just one solitary
+fight. He needed her forgiveness, the thought of her, the hope of her,
+to rivet his armour for the long, brave fight. He needed her
+Friendship--if he might never have her love he needed _that_. And if she
+were to pass like this from his life.... If the Light were to go out ...
+and all the long, dark way of the Future still to be faced.... Something
+within him seemed to writhe. He took his lower lip between his thumb and
+forefinger and squeezed it hard.
+
+That he had hoped for some token, some word--forwarded through Mr.
+Narkom--he did not quite realise until he got back to Clarges Street and
+found that there was none.
+
+Followed a sense of despair, a moment of deep dejection, that passed in
+turn and gave place to a feeling of personal injury, of savage
+resentment, and of the ferocity which comes when the half-tamed wolf
+wakes to the realisation that here is nothing before it evermore, but
+the bars of the cage and the goad of the keeper; and that far and away
+in the world there are still the free woods, the naked body of Nature,
+and the savage company of its kind.
+
+Under the stress of that gust of passion, he sent Dollops flying from
+the room. He wrenched open the drawer of his writing-table, and scooped
+up in his hands some trifles of faded ribbon and trinkets of
+gold--things that he treasured, none knew why or for what--and holding
+them thus, looked down on them and laughed, bitterly and savagely, as
+though a devil were within him.
+
+"Me! She scorns me!" he said, and laughed again, and flung them all back
+and shut the drawer upon them. And presently he knew that he held her
+all the higher because she did scorn him; because her life was such that
+she _could_ scorn him; and the bitterness dropped out of him, his eyes
+softened, and though he still laughed, it was for an utterly different
+reason, and in a wholly different way.
+
+Some pots of tulips and mignonette stood on the ledge of his window. He
+walked over to see that they were watered before he went to bed. And
+between the time when he got down on his knees to fish out his
+bath-slippers from beneath the bed-stead and the creak of the springs
+when he lay down for the night, he was so long and so still that one
+might have believed he was doing something else.
+
+He slept long, and rose in the morning soothed and subdued in
+spirit--better and brighter in every way; for now no affair, for The
+Yard hampered his movements and claimed his time. He was free; he was
+back in the Town--beautiful because it contained her--and he might hark
+back to the old trick of watching and following and being close to her
+without her knowledge.
+
+It was a vain hope that, however. For, although he dressed and went out
+and haunted the neighbourhood of Sir Horace Wyvern's house for hours on
+end, he saw nothing of her that day. Nor did he see her the next, nor
+the next, nor yet the next again. At first, he began to think that she
+must come out and return during the times when he was obliged to go off
+guard and get his meal--for he could not bring himself to play the part
+of the spy or the common policeman, and filch news from the
+servants--but when a week had gone by in this manner, he set all
+question upon that point at rest by remaining at his post from sunrise
+to ten o'clock at night. She did not appear. He wondered what that
+meant--whether it indicated that she had already accepted one of the two
+positions, or had gone to stop with her friend on the other side of
+Hampstead Heath.
+
+The result of that wondering was that, for the next five days, the
+gentleman who was known in Clarges Street as "Captain Horatio Burbage,"
+became a regular visitor to the neighbourhood of the house in Bardon
+Road. The issue was exactly the same. Miss Lorne did not appear.
+
+He could no longer doubt that she had accepted one or other of the two
+positions; but steadfastly refrained from making any personal inquiry.
+She would hear of it if anybody called to inquire her whereabouts; and
+she would guess who had done it. He would not have her feel that he was
+thrusting himself upon her, inquiring about her as one might inquire
+about a common servant. If it was her will that he should know, then
+that knowledge should come from her, not be picked up as one picks up
+clues to missing people of the criminal class.
+
+So then, it was good-bye to Bardon Road, just as it had been good-bye to
+Mayfair. He turned his back upon it in the very moment he came to that
+conclusion, and had just set his face in the direction of the heath when
+he was brought to a standstill by the sound of someone calling out
+sharply: "Burbage--I say, Captain Burbage: stop a moment, please." And,
+screwing round instantly, he saw a red limousine pelting toward him, and
+an excited chauffeur waving a gloved hand.
+
+He knew that red limousine, and he knew that chauffeur. Both belonged to
+Mr. Maverick Narkom.
+
+He stood waiting until the motor was abreast of him--had, in fact, come
+to a standstill--then spoke in a guarded tone:
+
+"What is it, Lennard?" he asked. "The Yard?"
+
+"Yessir. Young Dollops told us where to look for you. Hop in quickly,
+sir. Superintendent inside."
+
+Cleek opened the door of the vehicle at once, stepped in, shut it after
+him, and sat down beside Mr. Narkom with the utmost composure.
+
+"My dear fellow, I _have_ had a chase!" said the superintendent, with a
+long deep breath of relief, as the limousine swung out into the roadway,
+and pelted off westward at a pace that brushed the very fringes of the
+speed limit. "I made certain I should find you at home. Fairly floored
+when I discovered that you weren't. If it hadn't been for that boy,
+Dollops--bright young button, that Dollops, Cleek; exceedingly bright,
+b'gad."
+
+"Yes," agreed Cleek, quietly. "Bright, faithful, and--inventive."
+
+"Really? What has the young beggar invented, then?"
+
+"An original appliance which may possibly be of a good deal of service
+one of these days. But, never mind that at present. It is fair to
+suppose, from your rushing out here in quest of me, that you've got
+something on hand, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes--rather! An amazing 'something,' old chap. It's a letter. Arrived
+at headquarters about an hour and a half ago. Not an affair for The Yard
+this time, Cleek, but a thing you must take up on your own, if you take
+it up at all; and I tell you frankly, I don't like it."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"For one thing, it's from Paris; and--well, you know what dangers Paris
+would have for _you_. There's that she-devil you broke with--that woman
+Margot. You know what she swore, what she wrote when you sent her that
+letter telling her that you were done with her and her lot, and warning
+her never to set foot on English soil again? If you were to run foul of
+her--if she were ever to get any hint of your real identity--"
+
+"She can't. She knows no more of my real history than you do; no more
+than I actually know of hers. Our knowledge of each other began when we
+started to 'pal' together--it ended when we split, eighteen months ago.
+But about that letter? What is it? Why do you say that you don't like
+it?"
+
+"Well, to begin with, I'm afraid it is some trap of hers to decoy you
+over there--get you into some unknown place--"
+
+"There are no 'unknown places' in Paris so far as I am concerned. I know
+every hole and corner of it, from the sewers on. I know it as well as I
+know London, as well as I know Berlin--New
+York--Vienna--Edinburgh--Rome. You couldn't lose me or trap me in any
+one of them. Is that the letter in your hand? Good--then read it,
+please."
+
+"To the Superintendent of Police, Scotland Yard," read Narkom, obeying
+the request.
+
+"'DISTINGUISHED MONSIEUR:
+
+"'Of your grace and pity, I implore you to listen to the prayer of an
+unhappy man whose honour, whose reason, whose very life are in deadly
+peril, not alone of "The Red Crawl," but of things he may not even name,
+dare not commit to writing, lest this letter should go astray. It shall
+happen, monsieur, that the whole world shall hear with amazement of that
+most marvellous "Cleek"--that great reader of riddles and unmasker of
+evil-doers who, in the past year, has made the police department of
+England the envy of all nations; and it shall happen also that I who
+dare not appeal to the police of France appeal to the mercy, the
+humanity, of this great man, as it is my only hope. Monsieur, you have
+his ear, you have his confidence, you have the means at your command.
+Ah! ask him, pray him, implore him for the love of God, and the sake of
+a fellow-man, to come alone to the top floor of the house number 7 of
+the Rue Toison d'Or, Paris, at nine hours of the night of Friday, the
+26th inst., to enter into the darkness and say but the one word "Cleek"
+as a signal it is he, and I may come forward and throw myself upon his
+mercy. Oh, save me, Monsieur Cleek--save me! save me!'
+
+"There, that's the lot, and there's no signature," said Narkom, laying
+down the letter. "What do you make of it, Cleek?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+"A very real, a very moving thing, Mr. Narkom," he replied. "The cry of
+a human heart in deep distress; the agonised appeal of a man so wrought
+up by the horrors of his position that he forgets to offer a temptation
+in the way of reward, and speaks of outlandish things as though they
+must be understood of all. As witness his allusion to something which he
+calls 'The Red Crawl,' without attempting to explain the meaningless
+phrase. Whatever it is, it is so real to him that it seems as if
+everybody must understand."
+
+"You think, then, that the thing is genuine?"
+
+"So genuine that I shall answer its call, Mr. Narkom, and be alone in
+the dark on the top floor of No. 7, Rue Toison d'Or, to-morrow night as
+surely as the clock strikes nine."
+
+And that was how the few persons who happened to be in the quiet upper
+reaches of the Rue Bienfaisance at half-past eight o'clock the next
+evening came to see a fat, fussing, red-faced Englishman in a grey
+frock-coat, white spats, and a shining topper, followed by a liveried
+servant with a hat-box in one hand and a portmanteau in the other--so
+conspicuous, the pair of them, that they couldn't have any desire to
+conceal themselves--cross over the square before the Church of St.
+Augustine, fare forth into the darker side passages, and move in the
+direction of the street of the Golden Fleece.
+
+They were, of course, Cleek and the boy Dollops.
+
+"Lumme, Gov'nor," whispered he, as they turned at last into the utter
+darkness and desertion of the narrow Rue Toison d'Or, "if this is wot
+yer calls Gay Paree--this precious black slit between two rows of
+houses--I'll take a slice of the Old Kent Road with thanks. Not even so
+much as a winkle-stall in sight, and me that empty my shirt-bosom's
+a-chafing my blessed shoulder-blades!"
+
+"You'll see plenty of life before the game's over, I warrant you,
+Dollops. Now then, my lad, here's a safe spot. Sit down on the hat-box
+and wait. That's No. 7, that empty house with the open door, just across
+the way. Keep your eye on it. I don't know how long I'll be, but if
+anybody comes out before I do, mind you don't let him get away."
+
+"No fear!" said Dollops sententiously. "I'll be after him as if he was a
+ham sandwich, sir. Look out for my patent 'Tickle Tootsies' when you
+come out, Gov'nor. I'll sneak over and put 'em round the door as soon as
+you've gone in." For Dollops, who was of an inventive turn of mind, had
+an especial "man-trap" of his own, which consisted of heavy brown paper,
+cut into squares, and thickly smeared over with a viscid varnish-like
+substance that would adhere to the feet of anybody incautiously stepping
+upon it, and so interfere with flight that it was an absolute necessity
+to stop and tear the papers away before running with any sort of ease
+and swiftness was possible. This was the "invention" to which Cleek had
+alluded. Dollops, who was rather proud of the achievement, carried with
+him a full supply of ready-cut papers and a big collapsible tube of the
+viscid, ropy, varnish-like glue.
+
+Meantime, Cleek, having left the boy sitting on the hat-box in the
+darkness, crossed the narrow street to the open doorway of No. 7, and,
+without hesitation, stepped in. The place was as black as a pocket, and
+had that peculiar smell which belongs to houses that have long stood
+vacant. The house, nevertheless, was a respectable one, and, like all
+the others, fronted on another street--this dark Toison d'Or being
+merely a back passage used principally by the tradespeople for the
+delivery of supplies. Feeling his way to the first of the three flights
+of stairs which led upward into the stillness and gloom above, Cleek
+mounted steadily until he found himself at length in a sort of
+attic--quite windowless, and lit only by a skylight through which shone
+the ineffectual light of the stars. It was the top at last. Bracing his
+back against the wall, so that nobody could get behind him, and holding
+himself ready for any emergency, he called out in a clear, calm voice:
+"Cleek!"
+
+Almost simultaneously there was a sharp metallic "snick," an electric
+bulb hanging from the ceiling flamed out luminously, a cupboard door
+flashed open, a voice cried out in joyous, perfect English: "Thank God
+for a man!" And, switching round with a cry of amazement, he found
+himself looking into the face and eyes of a woman.
+
+And of all women in the world--Ailsa Lorne!
+
+He sucked in his breath and his heart began to hammer.
+
+"Miss Lorne!" he exclaimed, so carried out of himself that he scarcely
+knew what he did. "It was the French position that you chose, then? It
+is you--_you_--that calls upon me?"
+
+"No, it is not," she made reply, a rush of colour reddening her cheeks,
+a feeling of embarrassment and of a natural restraint making her shake
+visibly. "I am merely the envoy of another. I should not know you,
+disguised as you are, but for that. Yes, I chose the French position, as
+you see, Mr. Cleek. I am now the companion to Mademoiselle Athalie,
+daughter of the Baron de Carjorac."
+
+"Baron de Carjorac? Do you mean the French Minister of the Interior, the
+President of the Board of National Defences, Miss Lorne--that
+enthusiastic old patriot, that rabid old spitfire, whose one dream is
+the wresting back of Alsace-Lorraine, the driving of the hated Germans
+into the sea? Do you mean that ripping old firebrand?"
+
+"Yes. But you'd not call him that if you were to see him now; if you
+could see the wreck, the broken and despairing wreck, that six weeks of
+the Château Larouge, six weeks of that horrible 'Red Crawl' have made of
+him."
+
+"'The Red Crawl'! Good heavens! then that letter, that appeal for
+help--"
+
+"Came from him!" she finished excitedly. "It was he who was to have met
+you here to-night, Mr. Cleek. This house is one he owns; he thought he
+might with safety risk coming here, but--he can't! he can't! He knows
+now that there is danger for him everywhere; that his every step is
+tracked; that the snare which is about him has been about him,
+unsuspected, for almost a year; that he dare not, absolutely dare not,
+appeal to the French police, and that if it were known he had appealed
+to you, he would be a dead man inside of twenty-four hours, and not only
+dead, but--disgraced. Oh, Mr. Cleek!"--she stretched out two shaking
+hands and laid them on his arm, lifted a white, imploring face to
+his--"save him! save that dear broken old man! Ah, think! think! They
+are our friends, our dear country's friends, these French people. Their
+welfare is our welfare, ours is theirs. Oh, help him, save him, Mr.
+Cleek--for his own sake--for mine--for France. Save him, and win my
+gratitude for ever!"
+
+"That is a temptation that would carry me to the ends of the earth, Miss
+Lorne. Tell me what the work is, and I will carry it through. What is
+this incomprehensible thing of which both you and Baron de Carjorac have
+spoken--this thing you allude to as 'The Red Crawl'?"
+
+She gave a little shuddering cry and fell back a step, covering her face
+with both hands.
+
+"Oh!" she said, with a shiver of repulsion. "It is loathly--it is
+horrible--it is necromancy--beyond belief! Why, oh, why were we ever
+driven to that horrible Château Larouge! Why could not fate have spared
+the Villa de Carjorac? It could not have happened then!"
+
+"Villa de Carjorac? That was the name of the baron's residence, I
+believe. I remember reading in the newspapers some five or six weeks ago
+that it was destroyed by fire, which originated--nobody knew how--in the
+apartments of the late baroness in the very dead of the night. I thought
+at the time it read suspiciously like the work of an incendiary,
+although nobody hinted at such a thing. The Château Larouge I also have
+a distinct memory of, as an old historic property in the neighbourhood
+of St. Cloud. Speaking from past experience, I know that, although it is
+in such a state of decay, and supposed to be uninhabitable, it has, in
+fact, often been occupied at a period when the police and the public
+believed it to be quite empty. Gentlemen of the Apache persuasion have
+frequently made it a place of retreat. There is also an underground
+passage--executed by those same individuals--which connects with the
+Paris sewers. That, too, the police are unaware of. What can the ruined
+Château Larouge possibly have to do with the affairs of the Baron de
+Carjorac, Miss Lorne, that you connect them like this?"
+
+"They have everything to do with them--everything. The Château is no
+longer a ruin, however. It was purchased, rebuilt, refitted by the
+Comtesse Susanne de la Tour, Mr. Cleek, and she and her brother live
+there. So do we--Athalie, Baron de Carjorac, and I. So, also, does the
+creature--the thing--the abominable horror known as 'The Red Crawl.'"
+
+"My dear Miss Lorne, what are you saying?"
+
+"The truth, nothing but the truth!" she answered hysterically. "Oh, let
+me begin at the beginning--you'll never understand unless I do. I'll
+tell you in as few words as possible--as quickly as I can. It all began
+last winter, when Athalie and her father were at Monte Carlo. There they
+met Madame la Comtesse de la Tour and her brother, Monsieur Gaston
+Merode. The baron has position but he has not wealth, Mr. Cleek. Athalie
+is ambitious. She loves luxury, riches, a life of fashion--all the
+things that boundless money can give; and when Monsieur Merode--who is
+young, handsome, and said to be fabulously wealthy--showed a distinct
+preference for her over all the other marriageable girls he met, she was
+flattered out of her silly wits. Before they left Monte Carlo for Paris
+everybody could see that he had only to ask her hand, to have it
+bestowed upon him. For although the baron never has cared for the man,
+Athalie rules him, and her every caprice is humoured.
+
+"But for all he was so ardent a lover, Monsieur Merode was slow in
+coming to the important point. Perhaps his plans were not matured. At
+any rate, he did not propose to Athalie at Monte Carlo; and, although he
+and his sister returned to Paris at the same time as the baron and his
+daughter, he still deferred the proposal."
+
+"Has he not made it yet?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Cleek. He made it six weeks ago--to be exact, two nights
+before the Villa de Carjorac was fired."
+
+"You think it was fired, then?"
+
+"I do now, although I had no suspicion of it at the time. Athalie
+received her proposal on the Saturday, the baron gave his consent on the
+Sunday, and on Monday night the villa was mysteriously burnt, leaving
+all three of us without an immediate refuge. In the meantime, Madame la
+Comtesse had purchased the ruin of the Château Larouge, and during the
+period of her brother's deferred proposal was engaged in fitting it up
+as an abode for herself and him. On the very day it was finished,
+Monsieur Merode asked for Athalie's hand."
+
+"Oho!" said Cleek, with a strong rising inflection. "I think I begin to
+smell the toasting of the cheese. Of course, when the villa was burnt
+out, Madame la Comtesse insisted that, as the _fiancée_ of her brother,
+Mlle. de Carjorac must make her home at the Château until the necessary
+repairs could be completed; and, of course, the baron had to go with
+her?"
+
+"Yes," admitted Ailsa. "The baron accepted--Athalie would not have
+allowed him to decline had he wished to--so we all three went there and
+have been residing there ever since. On the night after our arrival an
+alarming, a horrifying thing occurred. It was while we were at dinner
+that the conversation turned upon the supernatural--upon houses and
+places that were reputed to be haunted--and then Madame la Comtesse made
+a remarkable statement. She laughingly asserted that she had just
+learned that, in purchasing the Château Larouge, she had also become the
+possessor of a sort of family ghost. She said that she had only just
+heard--from an outside source--that there was a horrible legend
+connected with the place; in short, that for centuries it had been
+reputed to be under a sort of spell of evil and to be cursed by a
+dreadful visitant known as 'The Red Crawl'--a hideous and loathsome
+creature, neither spider nor octopus, but horribly resembling
+both--which was supposed to 'appear' at intervals in the middle of the
+night, and, like the fabled giants of fairy tales, carry off 'lovely
+maidens and devour them.'"
+
+"Who is responsible for that ridiculous assertion, I wonder? I think I
+may say that I know as much about the Château Larouge and its history as
+anybody, Miss Lorne, but I never heard of this supposed 'legend' before
+in all my life."
+
+"So the baron, too, declared, laughing as derisively as any of us over
+the story, although it is well known that he has a natural antipathy to
+all crawling things--an abhorrence inherited from his mother--and has
+been known to run like a frightened child from the appearance of a mere
+garden spider."
+
+"Oho!" said Cleek again. "I see! I see! The toasted cheese smells
+stronger, and there's a distinct suggestion of the Rhine about it this
+time. There's something decidedly German about that fabulous 'monster'
+and that haunted château, Miss Lorne. They are clever and careful
+schemers, those German Johnnies. Of course, this amazing 'Red Crawl' was
+proved to have an absolute foundation in fact, and equally, of course,
+it 'appeared' to the Baron de Carjorac?"
+
+"Yes--that very night. After we had all gone to bed, the house was
+roused by his screams. Everybody rushed to his chamber, only to find him
+lying on the floor in a state of collapse. The thing had been in his
+room, he said. He had seen it--it had even touched him--a horrible,
+hideous red reptile, with squirming tentacles, a huge, glowing body, and
+eyes like flame. It had crept upon him out of the darkness--he knew not
+from where. It had seized him, resisted all his wild efforts to tear
+loose from it, and when he finally sank, overcome and fainting, upon the
+floor, his last conscious recollection was of the loathsome thing
+settling down upon his breast and running its squirming 'feelers' up and
+down his body."
+
+"Of course! Of course! That was part of the game. It was after
+something. Something of the utmost importance to German interests.
+That's why the Château Larouge was refitted, why the Villa de Carjorac
+was burnt down, and why this Monsieur Gaston Merode became engaged to
+Mademoiselle Athalie."
+
+"Oh, how could you know that, Mr. Cleek? Nobody ever suspected. The
+baron never confessed to any living soul until he did so to me,
+to-day--and then only because he had to tell somebody, in order that the
+appointment with you might be kept. How, then, could you guess?"
+
+"By putting two and two together, Miss Lorne, and discovering that they
+do not make five. The inference is very clear: Baron de Carjorac is
+President of the Board of National Defences; Germany, in spite of its
+public assurances to the contrary, is known by those who are 'on the
+inside' to harbour a very determined intention of making a secret
+attack, an unwarned invasion, upon England. France is the key to the
+situation. If, without the warning that must come through the delay of
+picking a quarrel and entering into an open war with the Republic, the
+German army can swoop down in the night, cross the frontier, and gain
+immediate possession of the ports of France, in five hours' time it can
+be across the English Channel, and its hordes pouring down upon a
+sleeping people. To carry out this programme, the first step would, of
+course, be to secure knowledge of the number, location, manner of the
+secret defences of France--the plans of fortification, the maps of the
+'danger zone,' the documentary evidence of her strongest and weakest
+points--and who so likely to be the guardian of these as the Baron de
+Carjorac? That is how I know that 'The Red Crawl' was after something of
+vital importance to German interests, Miss Lorne. That he got it, I know
+from the fact that the baron, while hinting at disgrace and speaking of
+peril to his own life, dared not confide in the French authorities and
+ask the assistance of the French police. Moreover, if 'The Red Crawl'
+had failed to secure anything, the baron, with his congenital loathing
+of all crawling things, would have left the Château Larouge
+immediately."
+
+"Oh, to think that you guessed it so easily--and it was all such a
+puzzle to me. I could not think, Mr. Cleek, why he did remain--why he
+would not be persuaded to go, although every night was adding to the
+horror of the thing and it seemed clear to me that he was going mad. Of
+course, Madame la Comtesse and her brother tried to reason him out of
+what he declared, tried to make him believe that it was all fancy--that
+he did not really see the fearful thing; it was equally in vain that I
+myself tried to persuade him to leave the place before his reason became
+unsettled. Last night"--she paused, shuddered, put both hands over her
+face, and drew in a deep breath--"last night, I, too, saw 'The Red
+Crawl,' Mr. Cleek--I, too!"
+
+"You, Miss Lorne?"
+
+"Yes. I made up my mind that I would--that, if it existed, I would have
+absolute proof of it. The countess and her brother had scoffed so
+frequently, had promised the baron so often that they would set a
+servant on guard in the corridor to watch, and then had said so often to
+poor, foolish, easily persuaded Athalie that it was useless doing
+anything so silly, as it was absolutely certain that her father only
+imagined the thing, that I--I determined to take the step myself,
+unknown to any of them. After everybody had gone to bed, I threw on a
+loose, dark gown, crept into the corridor, and hid in a niche from which
+I could see the door of the baron's room. I waited until after
+midnight--long after--and then--and then--"
+
+"Calm yourself, Miss Lorne. Then the thing appeared, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes; but not before something equally terrible had happened. I saw the
+door of the countess's room open; I saw the countess herself come out,
+accompanied by the man who up till then I had believed, like everybody
+else, was her brother."
+
+"And who is not her brother, after all?"
+
+"No, he is not. Theirs is a closer tie. I saw her kiss him. I saw her go
+with him to an angle of the corridor, lift a rug, and raise a trap in
+the floor."
+
+"Hullo! Hullo!" ejaculated Cleek. "Then she, too; knows of the passage
+which leads to the sewers. Clearly, then, this Countess de la Tour is
+not what she seems, when she knows secrets that are known only to the
+followers of--well, never mind. Go on, Miss Lorne, go on. You saw her
+lift that trap; and--what then?"
+
+"Then there came up out of it--oh, the most loathsome-looking creature I
+ever saw; a huge, crawling, red shape that was like a blood-red spider,
+with the eyes, the hooked beak, and the writhing tentacles of an
+octopus. It made no sound, but it seemed to know her, to understand her,
+for when she waved her hand toward the open door of her own room it
+crawled away and, obeying that gesture, dragged its huge bulk over the
+threshold, and passed from sight. Then the man she called her brother
+kissed her again, and as he descended into the darkness below the trap I
+heard her say quite distinctly: 'Tell Marise that I will come as soon as
+I can; but not to delay the revel. If I am compelled to forego it
+to-night, there shall be a wilder one to-morrow, when Clodoche
+arrives.'"
+
+"Clodoche! By Jupiter!" Cleek almost jumped as he spoke. "Now I know the
+'lay'! No; don't ask me anything yet. Go on with the story, please. What
+then, Miss Lorne, what then?"
+
+"Then the man below said something which I could not hear--something to
+which she answered in these words: 'No, no; there is no danger. I will
+guard it safely, and it shall go into no hands but Clodoche's. He and
+Count von Hetzler will be there about midnight to-morrow to complete the
+deal and pay over the money. Clodoche will want the fragment, of course,
+to show to the count as a proof that it is the right one, as "an
+earnest" of what the remainder is worth. And you must bring me that
+"remainder" without fail, Gaston--you hear me?--without fail! I shall be
+there, at the rendezvous, awaiting you, and the thing must be in our
+hands when von Hetzler comes. The thing must be finished to-morrow
+night, even if you and Serpice have to throw all caution to the winds
+and throttle the old fool.' Then, as if answering a further question,
+she laughingly added: 'Oh, get that fear out of your head. I'm not a
+bat, to be caught napping. I'll give it to no one but Clodoche--and not
+even to him until he gives the secret sign.' And then, Mr. Cleek, as she
+closed the trap I heard the man call back to her 'Good night' and give
+her a name I had not heard before. We had always supposed that she had
+been christened 'Suzanne,' but as that man left he called her--"
+
+"I know before you tell me--'Margot'!" interjected Cleek. "I guessed the
+identity of this 'Countess de la Tour' from the moment you spoke of
+Clodoche and that secret trap. Her knowledge of those two betrayed her
+to me. Clodoche is a renegade Alsatian, a spy in the pay of the German
+Government, and an old _habitué_ of 'The Inn of the Twisted Arm,' where
+the Queen of the Apaches and her pals hold their frequent revels. I can
+guess the remainder of your story now. You carried this news to the
+Baron de Carjorac, and he, breaking down, confessed to you that he had
+lost something."
+
+"Yes, yes--a dreadful 'something,' Mr. Cleek: the horrible thing that
+has been making life an agony to him ever since. On the night when that
+abominable 'Red Crawl' first overcame him, there was upon his person a
+most important document--a rough draft of the maps of fortification and
+the plan of the secret defences of France, the identical document from
+which was afterwards transcribed the parchment now deposited in the
+secret archives of the Republic. When Baron de Carjorac recovered his
+senses after his horrifying experience--"
+
+"That document was gone?"
+
+"Part of it, Mr. Cleek--thank God, only a part! If it had been the
+parchment itself, no such merciful thing could possibly have happened.
+But the paper was old, much folding and handling had worn the creases
+through, and when, in his haste, the secret robber grabbed it, whilst
+that loathsome creature held the old man down, it parted directly down
+the middle, and he got only a vertical section of each of its many
+pages."
+
+"Victoria! 'And the fool hath said in his heart, There is no God,'"
+quoted Cleek. "So, then, the hirelings of the enemy have only got half
+what they are after; and, as no single sentence can be complete upon a
+paper torn like that, nothing can be made of it until the other half is
+secured, and--our German friends are still 'up a gum-tree.' I know now
+why the baron stayed on at the Château Larouge, and why 'The Red Crawl'
+is preparing to pay him another visit to-night: he hoped, poor chap, to
+find a clue to the whereabouts of the fragment he had lost; and that
+thing is after the fragment he still retains. Well, it will be a long,
+long day before either of those two fragments fall into German hands."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Cleek, you think you can get the stolen paper back? You believe
+you can outwit those dreadful people and save the Baron de Carjorac's
+honour and his life?"
+
+"Miss Lorne"--he took her hand in his and lifted it to his lips--"Miss
+Lorne, I thank you for giving me the chance! If you will do what I ask
+you, be where I ask you in two hours' time, so surely as we two stand
+here this minute, I will put back the German calendar by ten years at
+least. They drink 'To the day,' those German Johnnies, but by to-morrow
+morning the English hand you are holding will have given them reason to
+groan over the night!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+It was half-past eleven o'clock. Madame la Comtesse, answering a reputed
+call to the bedside of a dying friend, had departed early, and was not
+to be expected back, she said, until to-morrow noon. The servants--given
+permission by the gentleman known in the house as Monsieur Gaston
+Merode, and who had graciously provided a huge char-à-banc for the
+purpose--had gone in a body to a fair over in the neighbourhood of
+Sèvres, and darkness and stillness filled the long, broad corridor of
+the Château Larouge. Of a sudden, however, a mere thread of sound
+wavered through the silence, and from the direction of Miss Lorne's room
+a figure in black, with feet muffled in thick, woollen stockings, padded
+to an angle of the passage, lifted a trap carefully hidden beneath a
+huge tiger-skin rug, and almost immediately Cleek's head rose up out of
+the gap.
+
+"Thank God you managed to do it. I was horribly afraid you would not,"
+said Ailsa in a palpitating whisper.
+
+"You need not have been," he answered. "I know a dozen places beside
+'The Inn of the Twisted Arm' from which one can get into the sewers.
+I've screwed a bolt and socket on the inner side of this trap in case of
+an emergency, and I've carried a few things into the passage for
+'afterwards.' I suppose that fellow Merode, as he calls himself, is in
+his room, waiting?"
+
+"Yes; and, although he pretends to be alone to-night, he--he has other
+men with him, hideous, ruffianly looking creatures, whom I saw him admit
+after the servants had gone. The countess has left the house and gone I
+don't know where."
+
+"I do, then. Make certain she's at 'The Twisted Arm,' waiting, first,
+for the coming of Clodoche, and, second, for the arrival of this
+precious 'Merode' with the remaining half of the document. I've sent
+Dollops there to carry out his part of the programme, and when once I
+get the password Margot requires before she will hand over the paper,
+the game will be in my hands entirely. They are desperate to-night, Miss
+Lorne, and will stop at nothing--not even murder. There! the rug's
+replaced. Quick! lead me to the baron's room--there's not a minute to
+waste."
+
+She took his hand and led him tiptoe through the darkness, and in
+another moment he was in the Baron de Carjorac's presence.
+
+"Oh, monsieur, God for ever bless you!" exclaimed the broken old man,
+throwing himself on his knees before Cleek.
+
+"Out with the light--out with the light!" exclaimed he, ducking down
+suddenly. "Were you mad to keep it burning till I came, with
+that"--pointing to a huge bay window opening upon a
+balcony--"uncurtained and the grounds, no doubt, alive with spies?"
+
+Miss Lorne sprang to the table where the baron's reading-lamp stood,
+jerked the cord of the extinguisher, and darkness enveloped the room,
+darkness tempered only by the faint gleams of the moon streaming over
+the balcony, and through the panes of the uncurtained window.
+
+Cleek, on his knees beside the kneeling baron, whipped a tiny electric
+torch from his pocket, and, shielding its flare with his scooped hands,
+flashed it upon the old man's face.
+
+"Simple as rolling off a log--exactly like your pictures," he commented.
+"I'll 'do' you as easily as I 'do' Clodoche--and I could 'do' him in the
+dark from memory. Quick"--snicking off the light of the electric torch
+and rising to his feet--"into your dressing-room, baron. I want that
+suit of clothes; I want that ribbon, that cross--and I want them at
+once. You're a bit thicker-set than me, but I've got my Clodoche rig on
+underneath this, and it will fill out your coat admirably and make us as
+like as two peas. Give me five minutes, Miss Lorne, and I promise you a
+surprise."
+
+He flashed out of sight with the baron as he ceased speaking; and Ailsa,
+creeping to the window and peering cautiously out, was startled
+presently by a voice at her elbow saying, in a tone of extreme
+agitation: "Oh, mademoiselle, I fear, even yet I fear, that this Anglais
+monsieur attempts too much, and that the papier he is gone for ever."
+
+"Oh, no, baron, no!" she soothed, as she laid a solicitous hand upon his
+arm. "Do believe in him; do have faith in him. Ah, if you only knew--"
+
+"Thanks. I reckon I shall pass muster!" interposed Cleek's voice; and it
+was only then she realised. "You'll find the baron in the other room,
+Miss Lorne, looking a little grotesque in that grey suit of mine. In
+with you, quickly; go with him through the other door, and get below
+before those fellows begin to stir. Get out of the house as quietly and
+as expeditiously as you can. With God's help, I'll meet you at the Hôtel
+du Louvre in the morning, and put the missing fragment in the baron's
+hands."
+
+"And may God give you that help!" she answered fervently as she moved
+towards the dressing-room door. "Ah, what a man! what a man!"
+
+Then, in a twinkling she was gone, and Cleek stood alone in the silent
+room. Giving her and the baron time to get clear of the other one, he
+went in on tiptoe, locked the door through which they had passed, put
+the key in his pocket, and returned. Going to the door which led from
+the main room into the corridor, he took the key from the lock of that,
+too, replacing it upon the outer side, and leaving the door itself
+slightly ajar.
+
+"Now then for you, Mr. 'The Red Crawl,'" he said, as he walked to the
+baron's table, and, sinking down into a deep chair beside it, leaned
+back with his eyes closed as if in sleep, and the faint light of the
+moon half-revealing his face. "I want that password, and I'll get it, if
+I have to choke it out of your devil's throat! And she said that she
+would be grateful to me all the rest of her life! Only 'grateful,' I
+wonder? Is nothing else possible? What a good, good thing a real woman
+is!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How long was it that he had been reclining there waiting before his
+strained ears caught the sound of something like the rustling of silk
+shivering through the stillness, and he knew that at last it was coming?
+It might have been ten minutes, it might have been twenty--he had no
+means of determining--when he caught that first movement, and, peering
+through the slit of a partly opened eye, saw the appalling thing drag
+its huge bulk along the balcony, and, with squirming tentacles writhing,
+slide over the low sill of the window, and settle down in a glowing red
+heap upon the floor; and--fake though he knew it to be--he could not
+repress a swift rush and prickle of "goose-flesh" at sight of it.
+
+For a few seconds it lay dormant; then one red feeler shot out, then
+another, and another, and it began to edge its way across the carpet to
+the chair. Cleek lay still and waited, his heavy breathing sounding
+regularly, his head thrown back, his limp hands lying loosely, palms
+upward, beside him; and nearer and nearer crept the loathsome, red,
+glowing thing.
+
+It crawled to his feet, and still he was quiet; it slid first one
+tentacle, and then another, over his knees and up toward his breast, and
+still he made no movement; then, as it rose higher--rose until its
+hideous beaked countenance was close to his own, his hands flashed
+upward and clamped together like a vice--clamped on a palpitating human
+throat--and in the twinkling of an eye the tentacles were wrapped about
+him, and he and "The Red Crawl" were rolling over and over on the floor
+and battling together.
+
+"Serpice, you low-bred hound, I know you!" he whispered, as they
+struggled. "You can't utter a cry--you shan't utter a cry--to bring
+help. I'll throttle you, you beastly renegade, that's willing to sell
+his own country--throttle you, do you hear?--before you shall bring any
+of your mates to the rescue. Oh, you've not got a weak old man to fight
+with this time! Do you know me? It's the 'cracksman'--the 'cracksman'
+who went over to the police. If you doubt it, now that we're in the
+moonlight, look up and see my face. Oho! you recognise me, I see. Well,
+you will die looking at me, you dog, if you deny me what I'm after. I'll
+loosen my grip enough for you to whisper, and no more. Now what's the
+password that Clodoche must give to Margot to-night at 'The Twisted
+Arm'? Tell me what it is; if you want your life, tell me what it is."
+
+"I'll see you dead first!" came in a whisper from beneath the hideous
+mask. Then, as Cleek's fingers clamped tight again and the battle began
+anew, one long, thin arm shot out from amongst the writhing tentacles,
+one clutching hand gripped the leg of the table, and, with a wrench and
+a twist, brought it crashing to the ground with a sound that a deaf man
+might have heard.
+
+And in an instant there was pandemonium.
+
+A door flung open, and clashing heavily against the wall, sent an echo
+reeling along the corridor; then came a clatter of rushing feet, a voice
+cried out excitedly: "Come on! come on! He's had to kill the old fool to
+get it!" and Cleek had just time to tear loose from the shape with which
+he was battling, and dodge out of the way when the man Merode lurched
+into the room, with half a dozen Apaches tumbling in at his heels.
+
+"Serpice!" he cried, rushing forward, as he saw the gasping red shape
+upon the floor; "Serpice! Mon Dieu! what is it?"
+
+"The cracksman!" he gulped. "Cleek!--the cracksman who went against us!
+Catch him! stop him!"
+
+"The cracksman!" howled out Merode, twisting round in the darkness and
+reaching blindly for the haft of his dirk. "Nom de Dieu! Where?"
+
+And almost before the last word was uttered a fist like a sledge-hammer
+shot out, caught him full in the face, and he went down with a whole
+smithy of sparks flashing and hissing before his eyes.
+
+"There!" answered Cleek, as he bowled him over. "Gentlemen of the
+sewers, my compliments. You'll make no short cut to 'The Twisted Arm'
+to-night!"
+
+Then, like something shot from a catapult, he sprang to the door,
+whisked through it, banged it behind him, turned the key, and went
+racing down the corridor like a hare.
+
+"It must be sheer luck now!" he panted, as he reached the angle and,
+kicking aside the rug, pulled up the trap. "They'll have that door down
+in a brace of shakes, and be after me like a pack of ravening wolves.
+The race is to the swift this time, gentlemen, and you'll have to take a
+long way round if you mean to head me off."
+
+Then he passed down into the darkness, closed the trap-door after him,
+shot into its socket the bolt he had screwed there, flashed up the light
+of his electric torch, and, _without_ the password, turned toward the
+sewers, and ran, and ran, and ran!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+It lacked but a minute of the stroke of twelve, and the revels at "The
+Twisted Arm"--wild at all times, but wilder to-night than ever--were at
+their noisiest and most exciting pitch. And why not? It was not often
+that Margot could spend a whole night with her rapscallion crew, and she
+had been here since early evening--was to remain here until the dawn
+broke grey over the house-tops and the murmurs of the workaday world
+awoke anew in the streets of the populous city. It was not often that
+each man and each abandoned woman present knew to a certainty that he or
+she would go home through the mists of the grey morning with a fistful
+of gold that had been won without labour or the taking of any personal
+risk; and to-night the half of four hundred thousand francs was to be
+divided among them.
+
+No wonder they had made a carnival of it, and tricked themselves out in
+gala attire; no wonder they had brought a paste tiara and crowned
+Margot--Margot, who was in flaming red to-night, and looked a devil's
+daughter indeed, with her fire-like sequins and her red ankles twinkling
+as she threw herself into the thick of the dance and kicked, and
+whirled, and flung her bare arms about to the lilt of the music and the
+fluting of her own happy laughter.
+
+"Per Bacco! The devil's in her to-night!" grinned old Marise, the
+innkeeper, from her place behind the bar, where the lid of the
+sewer-trap opened. "She has not been like it since the cracksman broke
+with her, Toinette. But that was before your time, _ma fille_. Mother of
+the heavens! but there was a man for you! There was a king that was
+worthy of such a queen. Name of disaster! that she could not hold him,
+that the curse of virtue sapped such a splendid tree, and that she could
+take up with another after him!"
+
+"Why not?" cried Toinette, as she tossed down the last half of her
+absinthe and twitched her flower-crowned head. "A kingdom must have a
+king, _ma mère_; and Dieu: but he is handsome, this Monsieur Gaston
+Merode! And if he carries out his part of the work to-night he will be
+worthy of the homage of all."
+
+"'If' he carries it out--'if'!" exclaimed Marise, with a lurch of the
+shoulders and a flirt of her pudgy hand. "Soul of me! that's where the
+difference lies. Had it been the cracksman, there would have been no
+'if'--it were done as surely as he attempted it. Name of misfortune! I
+had gone into a nunnery had I lost such a man. But she--"
+
+The voice of Margot shrilled out and cut into her words. "Absinthe,
+Marise, absinthe for them all--and set the score down to me!" she cried.
+"Drink up, my bonny boys; drink up, my loyal maids. Drink--drink till
+your skins will hold no more. No one pays to-night but me!"
+
+They broke into a cheer, and bearing down in a body upon Marise, threw
+her into a fever of haste to serve them.
+
+"To Margot!" they shouted, catching up the glasses and lifting them
+high. "_Vive la Reine des Apaches! Vive la compagnie!_ To Margot! To
+Margot!"
+
+She swept them a merry bow, threw them a laughing salute, and drank the
+toast with them.
+
+"Messieurs, my love--mesdames et mademoiselles, my admiration," she
+cried, with a ripple of joy-mad laughter. "To the success of the
+Apaches, to the glory of four hundred thousand francs, and to the quick
+arrival of Serpice and Gaston!" Then, her upward glance catching sight
+of the musicians sipping their absinthe in the little gallery above, she
+flung her empty glass against the wall behind them, and shook with
+laughter as they started in alarm and spilled the green poison when they
+dodged aside. "Another dance, you dawdlers!" she cried. "Does Marise pay
+you to sit there like mourners? Strike up, you mummies, or you pay
+yourselves for what you drink to-night. Soul of desires!"--as the
+musicians grabbed up their instruments, and a leaping, lilting,
+quick-beating air went rollicking out over the hubbub--"a quadrille, you
+angels of inspiration! Partners, gentlemen! Partners, ladies! A
+quadrille! A quadrille!"
+
+They set up a many-throated cheer and flocked out with her upon the
+floor; and in one instant feet were flying, skirts were whirling,
+laughter and jest mingling with waving arms and kicking toes, and the
+whole place was in one mad riot of delirious joy.
+
+And in the midst of this there rolled up suddenly a voice crying, as
+from the bowels of the earth, "Hola! Hola! La la! loi!" the cry of the
+Apache to his kind.
+
+"Mother of delights! It is one of us, and it comes from the sewer
+passage--from the sewer!" shrilled out Marise, as the dancers halted and
+Margot ran, with fleet steps, towards the bar. "Listen! listen! They
+come to you, Margot--Serpice and Gaston. The work is done."
+
+"And before even Clodoche or von Hetzler have arrived!" she replied
+excitedly. "Give them light, give them welcome. Be quick!"
+
+Marise ducked down, loosened the fastenings of the trap-door, flung it
+back, and, leaning over the gap with a light in her hand, called down
+into the darkness, "Hola! Hola! La! la! loi! Come on, comrades, come
+on!"
+
+The caller obeyed instantly. A hand reached up and gripped the edge of
+the flooring, and out of the darkness into the light emerged the figure
+of a man in a leather cap and the blue blouse of a mechanic--a pale,
+fox-faced, fox-eyed fellow, with lank, fair hair, a brush of ragged,
+yellow beard, and with the look and air of the sneak and spy indelibly
+branded upon him.
+
+It was Cleek.
+
+"Clodoche!" exclaimed Marise, falling back in surprise.
+
+"Clodoche!" echoed Margot. "Clodoche--and from the sewers?"
+
+"Yes--why not?" he answered, his tongue thick-burred with the accent of
+Alsace, his shifting eyes flashing toward the huge window behind the
+bar, where, in the moonlight, the narrow passage leading down to the
+door of "The Twisted Arm" gaped evilly between double rows of scowling,
+thief-sheltering houses. "Name of the fiend! Is this the welcome you
+give the bringer of fortune, Margot?"
+
+"But from the sewer?" she repeated. "It is incomprehensible, _cher ami_.
+You were to pilot von Hetzler over from the Café Dupin to the square
+beyond there"--pointing to the window--"to leave him waiting a moment
+while you came on to see if it were safe for him to enter; and now you
+come from the sewer--from the opposite direction entirely!"
+
+"Mother of misfortunes! You had done the same yourself--you, Lantier;
+you, Clopin; you, Cadarousse; any of you--had you been in my boots," he
+made answer. "I stole a leaf from your own book, earlier in the evening.
+Garotted a fellow with jewels on him--in the Rue Noir, near the Market
+Place--and nearly got into 'the stone bottle' for doing it. He was a
+decoy, set there by the police for some of you fellows, and there was a
+sergeant de ville after me like a whirlwind. I was not fool enough to
+turn the chase in this direction, so I doubled and twisted until it was
+safe to dive into the tavern of Fouchard, and lay in hiding there.
+Fouchard let his son carry a message to the count for me, and will guide
+him to the square. When it grew near the time to come, Fouchard let me
+down into the sewer passage from there. Get on with your dance--silence
+is always suspicious. An absinthe, Marise! Have Gaston and Serpice
+arrived yet with the rest of the document, Margot la reine?"
+
+"Not yet," she answered. "But one may expect them at any minute."
+
+"Where is the fragment we already possess?"
+
+"Here," tapping her bodice and laughing, "tenderly shielded, _mon ami_,
+and why not? Who would not mother a thing that is to bring one four
+hundred thousand francs?"
+
+"Let me see it. It must be shown to the count, remember. He will take no
+risks, come not one step beyond the square, until he is certain that it
+is the paper his Government requires. Let me have it--let me take it to
+him--quick!"
+
+She waved aside airily the hand he stretched toward her, and danced into
+the thick of the resumed quadrille.
+
+"Ah, non! non! non!" she laughed, as he came after her. "The conditions
+were of your own making, _cher ami_; we break no rules even among
+ourselves."
+
+"Soul of a fool! But if the count comes to the square--he is due there
+now, mignonne--and I am not there to show him the thing--Margot, for the
+love of God, let me have the paper!"
+
+"Let me have the sign, the password!"
+
+Cleek snapped at a desperate chance because there was nothing else to
+do, because he knew that at any moment now the end might come.
+
+"'When the purse will not open, slit it!'" he hazarded,
+desperately--choosing, on the off-chance of its correctness, the
+password of the Apache.
+
+"It is not the right one! It is by no means the right one!" she made
+reply, backing away from him suddenly, her absinthe-brightened eyes
+deriding him, her absinthe-sharpened laughter mocking him. "Your
+thoughts are in the Bois, _cher ami_. What is the password of the
+brotherhood to the cause of Germany, stupid? It is not right, non! non!
+It is not right!"
+
+The cause of Germany! At the words the truth rushed like a flash of
+inspiration across Cleek's mind. The cause of Germany! What a dolt he
+was not to have thought of that before! There was but one phrase ever
+used for that among the Kaiser's people, and that phrase--
+
+"'To the day!'" he said, with a burst of sudden laughter. "My wits are
+in the moon to-night, _la reine_. 'To the day,' of course--'To the
+day!'" And even before she replied to him, he knew that he had guessed
+aright.
+
+"Bravo!" she said, with a little hiccough--for the absinthe, of which
+she had imbibed so freely to-night, was beginning to take hold of her.
+"A pretty conspirator to forget how to open the door he himself locked!
+It is well I know thee--it is well it was the word of les Apaches in the
+beginning, or I had been suspicious, silly! Wait but a moment!"--putting
+her hand to her breast and beginning to unfasten her bodice--"wait but a
+moment, Monsieur Twitching-Fingers, and the thing shall be in your
+hand."
+
+The strain, the relief, were all too great for even such nerves as
+Cleek's, and if he had not laughed aloud, he knew that he must have
+cheered.
+
+"Oho! you grin because one's fingers blunder with eagerness," hiccoughed
+Margot, thinking his laughter was for the trouble she had in getting the
+fastenings of her bodice undone. "Peste, monsieur! may not a lady well
+be modestly careful, when--Name of the devil! what's that?"
+
+It was the note of a whistle shrilling down the narrow passage
+without--the passage where Dollops, in Apache garb, had been set on
+watch; and, hearing it, Cleek clamped his jaws together and breathed
+hard. A single whistle--short and sharp, such as this one was--was the
+signal agreed upon that the real Clodoche was coming, and that he and
+Count von Hetzler had already appeared in the square beyond.
+
+"Soul of a sloth! Will not that hurry you, _la reine_?" he said
+excitedly, in reply to Margot's startled question. "It is the signal
+Fouchard's son was to give when he and von Hetzler arrived at the place
+where I am to meet them. Give me the paper--quick! quick! Tear the
+fastenings, if they will not come undone else. One cannot keep a von
+Hetzler waiting like a lackey for a scrap of ribbon and a bit of lace."
+
+"Pardieu! they have kept better men than he waiting many an hour before
+this," she made reply. "But you shall have the thing in a twinkling now.
+There! but one more knot, and then it is in your hands."
+
+And, had the fates not decreed otherwise, so, indeed, it would have
+been. But then, just then, when another second would have brought the
+paper into view, another moment seen it shut tight in the grip of his
+itching fingers, disaster came and blotted out his hopes!
+
+Without hint or warning, without sign or sound to lessen the shock of
+it, the trap-door behind the bar flew up and backward with a crash that
+sent Marise and her assistants darting away from it in shrieking alarm;
+a babel of excited voices sounded, a scurry of rushing feet scuffled and
+flashed along the shaking floor, and Merode and his followers tumbled
+helter-skelter into the room.
+
+Cleek, counting on the bolt which kept them from entering the passage
+from the corridor of the Château Larouge--forcing them to take a long,
+roundabout journey to "The Twisted Arm"--had not counted on their
+shortening that journey by entering the passage from Fouchard's tavern,
+doing, in fact, the very thing which he had declared to Margot he
+himself had done. And lo! here they were, howling and crowding about
+him--dirks in their hands and devils in their eyes and hearts--and the
+paper not his yet!
+
+A clamour rose as they poured in; the dancers ceased to dance; the music
+ceased to play; and Margot, shutting a tight clutch on the loosened part
+of her half-unfastened bodice, swung away from Cleek's side, and flew in
+a panic to Merode.
+
+"Gaston!" she cried, knowing from his wild look and the string of oaths
+and curses his followers were blurting out that something had gone
+amiss. "Gaston, _mon coeur_! Name of disaster! what is wrong?"
+
+"Everything is wrong!" he flung back excitedly. "That devil--that
+renegade--that fury, Cleek, the cracksman, is here. He came to the
+rescue--came out of the very skies--and all but killed Serpice!"
+
+"Cleek!" Fifty shrill voices joined Margot's in that screaming cry;
+fifty more dirks flashed into view. "Cleek in France? Cleek? Where is
+he? Which way did he go? Where's the narker--where--where?"
+
+"Here, if anywhere!"
+
+"Here?"
+
+"Yes--unless you've been fooled, and let him get away. He knows about
+the paper, and is after it, Margot; and if anyone has come up from the
+sewers within the past twenty minutes--"
+
+They knew--they grasped the situation instantly--and a roar of excited
+voices yelled out: "Clodoche! Clodoche! Clodoche!" as, snarling and
+howling like a pack of wolves, they bore down with a rush on the
+blue-bloused figure that was creeping towards the door.
+
+But as they sprang it sprang also! It was neck or nothing now. Cleek
+realised it, and, throwing himself headlong over the bar, clutched
+frantically at the lever which he knew controlled the flow of gas,
+jammed it down with all his strength, shut off the light, and, grabbing
+up a chair, sent it crashing through the window.
+
+The crowd surged on towards the wrecked bar with a yell, surged from all
+directions, and then abruptly stopped and huddled together in one. For
+the sudden flashing down of the darkness within, had made more
+prominent, the moon-lighted passage without; and there, scuttling away
+in alarm from this sudden uproar, and the outward flying of that hurled
+chair, a figure which but a moment before had come skulking to the
+window, could now be seen.
+
+"There he goes--there! there!" shrilled out a chorus of excited voices,
+as the yellow-bearded, blue-bloused figure came into view. "After him!
+Catch him! Knife him!"
+
+In an instant they were at the door, tumbling out into the darkness,
+pouring up the passage in hot pursuit. And it was at that moment the
+balance changed again. Those who were in the front rank of the pursuers
+were in time to see a lithe, thin figure--dressed as one of their own
+kind--spring up in the path of that other figure, jump on it, grip it,
+clap a huge square of sticky brown paper over the howling mouth of it,
+and bear it, struggling and kicking, to the ground.
+
+In another second they, too, were upon it--swarming over it like rats,
+and digging and hacking at it with their dirks. And so they were still
+hacking at it--although it had long since ceased to move, or to make any
+sound--when Merode came up and called them to a halt.
+
+"Drag it inside; let Margot have a thrust at it--it is her right. Pull
+off the dog's disguise, and bring me the plucky one that captured him.
+He shall have absinthe enough to swim in, the little king! Off with it
+all, Lanchere. First, the plaster--that's right. Now, the wig and beard,
+and after that--What's that you say? The beard is real? The hair is
+real? They will not come off? Name of the devil! what are you saying?"
+
+"The truth, _mon roi_, the truth! Mother of disasters! It is not the
+cracksman--it is the real Clodoche we have killed!"
+
+For one moment a sort of panic held them, swayed them, befogged the
+brains of them; then, of a sudden, Merode howled out, "Get back! Get
+back! The fellow's in there still!" and led a blind race down the
+passage to the bar, where they had seen Cleek last. It was still in
+darkness; but an eager hand gripping the lever, turned on the gas again,
+and matches everywhere were lifted to the jets.
+
+And when the light flamed out and the room was again ablaze they knew
+that they might as well hope to call back yesterday as dream of finding
+Cleek again. For there on the floor, her limp hands turned palms upward,
+a chloroformed cloth folded over her mouth and nose, lay, in a deep
+stupor, the figure of Margot, her bodice torn wide open and the paper
+forever gone!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was five minutes later when the Count von Hetzler, crouching back in
+the shadow of the square and waiting for the return of Clodoche, heard a
+dull, whirring sound that was unmistakably the purr of a motor throb
+through the stillness; and, leaning forward, saw an automobile whirl up
+out of the darkness, cut across the square, and dash off westward like a
+flash. Yet in the brief instant it took to go past the place where he
+waited there was time for him to catch the sharp click of a lowered
+window, see the clear outlines of a man's face looking out, and to hear
+a voice from within the vehicle speak.
+
+"Herr Count," it said in clear, incisive tones. "A positively infallible
+recipe for the invasion of England: Wait until the Channel freezes and
+then skate over. Good night!"
+
+"One for his nob that, Gov'nor--my hat, yuss!" said Dollops, with a
+shrill laugh, as he stuck a red head and a face all shiny with cocoa
+butter and half-removed grease-paint out of the window, and, despite the
+fact that the swift pace of the automobile had already carried it far
+past the place where the count had been in hiding, made a fan of his
+five fingers and his snub nose. "Oh, Mother 'Ubbard! Did you see him,
+sir? Bunked back in his 'ole like somebody had 'give him the hook,' and
+cleared the blessed stage before the eggs began to fly. I don't think
+them Germans 'ull be sittin' on the steps of St. Paul's this year,
+sir--not them!"
+
+Cleek laughed; and, ordering the boy to shut down the window and get on
+with the work of changing his clothes, set about doing the same thing
+himself.
+
+"I suppose you know, you clever little monkey, that I should have been
+floating down the Seine with a slit throat and enough lead in me to sink
+a barrel by this time, if it hadn't been for you," he said, as he pushed
+the outward semblance of Clodoche into the kit-bag, and began to get
+into ordinary civilian's dress as expeditiously as possible. "If you had
+slipped up--if you had been one-half minute late--or if that fellow had
+had a chance to make one cry before you covered his mouth--"
+
+"Please, sir--_don't_!" interposed Dollops, with a sort of shiver. "If
+anythink had've happened to you, Gov'nor ..." Then stopped short and
+made a sound as if he were swallowing something, and then grew very,
+very still.
+
+Cleek looked at him out of the corner of his eye--moved in spite of
+himself--hesitated a moment and then, obeying an impulse, leaned over
+and gently tapped him on the shoulder.
+
+"Dollops, shake hands," he said.
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"Shake hands."
+
+"Gawd, Gov'nor! You don't never _mean_ that, sir?"
+
+"Shake hands," said Cleek for the third time. "Do you know, you little
+monkey, that you're the only soul in all God's world that could ever
+muster up a tear for me? Thank you, my lad--you're a brick!"--then
+gripped the grimy hand that was reached out with a sort of awe, wrung it
+heartily, patted the astonished boy on the shoulder; and fell to
+whistling merrily as he went on with his dressing.
+
+"Sir, you do lick me, you fair do," said Dollops, laughing unsteadily,
+and drawing his sleeve across his eyes. "Arfter wot you've been and went
+through, a-sittin' there and whistlin' as merry as can be--like as if
+life was all beer and skittles, and you hadn't a care in the world."
+
+"I haven't--for the minute, my lad," said Cleek with a laugh of utter
+happiness. "Beer and skittles? Lord, it's all roses my boy, roses! I've
+had the good luck to accomplish a thing that's going to give me--well,
+at least one moment in Paradise--and when a man has a prospect like that
+in view ..." His voice trailed off; he laughed again; then fell to
+whistling once more--noisily, joyously, as if some schoolboy sort of
+madness was in his blood to-night--and was still whistling when the
+automobile pulled up sharply in front of the Hôtel du Louvre.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+By this time he had concluded the alteration in his toilet which was
+necessary to assure his entrance into the hotel without occasioning
+comment; and as Dollops had followed suit they readily passed muster,
+when they alighted, for an ordinary English gentleman accompanied by an
+ordinary English manservant.
+
+"What was the charge at the garage?" inquired Cleek of Dollops just
+previously to alighting.
+
+"I dunno wot it runs to in this 'ere rum lingo of francs and sous, sir,"
+said Dollops, "but the garage gent he said it would amount to two pounds
+ten in English money, so I'll have to leave you to work it out for
+yourself. The shuvver, he said sommink about 'poor boars'--which I've
+heard is wot you has to give 'em as a tip to themselves, Gov'nor--so I
+promised him 'arf a crown to stop at 'tother end of that passage leadin'
+up from The Twisted Arm till he was wanted, sir. Made it a good tip
+because I wanted him to be there sure--it would have been a case of
+'nab' for us if he hadn't. Wasn't too much, was it, sir?"
+
+"No," said Cleek--and let him see that it wasn't by giving the chauffeur
+a pourboire of ten francs and sending him back to the garage with the
+impression that he had had dealings with a millionaire.
+
+Ten minutes later the hotel register bore the record of the arrival of
+"Mr. Philip Barch and servant"; and one attendant was engaged in showing
+the servant into a neat little bedroom which was to be his resting-place
+until morning while another was ushering the master into the suite
+engaged by the Baron de Carjorac.
+
+Three persons were there: the Baron, his daughter, and his daughter's
+companion; but Cleek saw but one--and that the only one who made no
+movement, uttered no sound, when he came into the room. Curiously pale
+and curiously quiet, she stood with one arm resting on the mantelpiece
+and the other hanging by her side, looking at him--looking _for_ him, in
+fact--but not saying one word, not making one sound. That she left
+wholly to the baron and his daughter.
+
+They, too, maintained, although with an effort, an appearance of
+composure so long as the hotel servant was present; but in the moment
+the door closed and the man was gone an overpowering excitement seized
+and mastered them.
+
+"Monsieur, for the love of God, don't tell me you have failed," implored
+the baron. "I have died a hundred deaths of torture and suspense since
+your card was carried up. But if I am to hear bad news ... Oh, my
+country!"
+
+"Don't cross bridges, baron, until you come to them," said Cleek
+composedly. "I gave Miss Lorne my promise that I would not leave France
+until I had done what she asked me to do; and--I am returning to England
+to-morrow by the noon boat. I have had an exciting evening, but it has
+had its compensation. Here is something for you. I had a bit of a fight
+for it, baron--look out that it doesn't get into the wrong hands again."
+
+He had taken a small packet of torn papers from his pocket while he was
+speaking; now he put it into the baron's hand--not wholly without a
+certain sense of gratification, however, in the excitement and delight
+which the act called forth; for no man is utterly devoid of personal
+vanity, personal pride in his achievements, and this man was no less
+human than his kind.
+
+He let the tumult of excitement and joy wear itself out; he suffered the
+baron's embraces--even the two rapturous kisses the man planted upon
+first one and then the other of his cheeks--he endured Mlle. Athalie's
+exuberant hand-clapping and hand-shaking and the cyclonic and wholly
+Gallic manner in which she deported herself when comparison with the
+fragments which the baron had still retained proved beyond all question
+that these were indeed the missing portions of the all-important
+document; and not until these things were over did he so much as look at
+Ailsa Lorne again.
+
+She had taken no part in the general excitement, moved not one foot from
+where she had been standing from the first. Even when Athalie danced
+over and hugged her and showed the important fragments; even when she
+reproved her with a wondering, "Ah, you strange Anglais--you stone-cold
+Anglais! Is it possible that you can have blood in your veins and yet
+take wondrous things like this so calmly?"--even then, she merely smiled
+and remained standing just as she still was; her pallor not one whit
+lessened, her reserve but the merest shadow less apparent than it had
+been before.
+
+Cleek chose that moment to walk over to her, to lift his eyes to hers,
+and to stand looking at her questioningly. For now that he was close to
+her he could see that she was trembling nervously; that her calmness was
+merely an outward thing, and that under it nerves writhed and a
+frightened heart was beating thick and fast.
+
+Was even the fancied moment in Paradise to be denied him then? That such
+a woman could not, all in a moment--could not by just one act of heroism
+on his part--be won over and lured into complete forgetfulness of such a
+past as his, he realized to the fullest extent. Always he had been
+conscious of that; but even so ... Ah, well, the meanest may hope, the
+lowest may at least look up; and even saints and angels were not above
+saying, "Well done!" to a soul that had struggled, to a sinner that had
+done his best.
+
+"I managed it, you see, Miss Lorne," he said, in a slightly lowered
+voice, while the baron busied himself in looking for his cheque-book and
+Athalie bustled about in quest of ink and a pen. "It wasn't an easy
+night's work, and I'm a bit fagged out. So, as I leave in the morning,
+it will be good-bye as well as good-night."
+
+She moved for the first time. The hand that lay upon the shelf of the
+mantelpiece shook and closed quickly. She lifted up her head and looked
+at him. Her eyes were misty and faint clouds of color were coming and
+going over her face.
+
+"What is it?" he asked. "Surely, Miss Lorne, you--are not afraid of me?"
+
+"No," she said, averting her face again. "Not of you but of myself. That
+is--I--" trying to laugh, but making a parody of it--"I was always more
+or less of a coward, Mr. Cleek, but ..." She faced round again sharply
+and held out her hand to him. "Will you let me thank you? Will you let
+me say that I must be merely a little child in intellect since it is
+only now that I have begun to understand how natural it is that a pound
+of gold should inevitably outweigh an ounce of dirt? And will you please
+understand that I am trying to thank you, trying to let you know that I
+am very, very sorry if I ever hurt your feelings. I don't think I meant
+to. I couldn't see then so clearly as I do now. Please forgive me."
+
+He took the hand she held out to him; and so had his moment in Paradise
+after all.
+
+"Hurt me as often as you like, if it will always end like this," he said
+with a queer little laugh that seemed to come from the very depths of
+his chest. "As for that other time ... How could I have expected that
+you would take it in any other way, being what you are and I what I had
+been? I am glad I told you. You could never have respected me for an
+instant if you had found it out in any other way; and I want your
+respect: I want it very, very earnestly, Miss Lorne. If you can ever
+give it to me I'll do my best to be worthy of it."
+
+She had withdrawn her hand from his and was drumming with her
+finger-tips upon the mantelshelf. A little pucker was between her
+eyebrows, she was biting her under lip perplexedly, and appeared to be
+hesitating. But of a sudden she twitched round her head sharply and a
+sweep of red went up over her face.
+
+"Shall I show you how much I do respect you, then?" she said. "One may
+ask of a friend things one would not dream of asking of a mere
+acquaintance, and so--Mr. Cleek, this night of horror has been too much
+for me. I know now that I can no longer remain in this position in this
+dreadful city. I have already resigned my post, and will return to
+England, and--if I am not too late for it--make an effort to secure the
+post of governess to Lady Chepstow's little son. I shall start in the
+morning. Will you play the part of friend and guide and see me safely
+across the Channel?"
+
+"Do you mean that?" he asked, his face alight, his eyes shining. "You
+will let me have the privilege, the honour? What a queen you are! You
+give largesse with both hands when a simple coin would have been enough.
+Shall I secure your tickets? When will you have your luggage ready? Is
+there anything you will need before you leave?"
+
+She smiled at his enthusiasm, coloured anew, and again held out her
+hand.
+
+"We will talk of all that in the morning," she said. "There will be
+plenty of time. Mlle. de Carjorac has promised to look after my effects
+and to see that they are shipped on to me in due course. But now it
+really must be good-night. I shall see you again at breakfast."
+
+"At breakfast?" repeated Cleek, with a happy laugh. "I wonder if you
+understand that I shall be kicking my heels on my bedside until it is
+ready?--that I shan't sleep a wink all night?"
+
+And as events proved he came respectably close to living up to that
+exuberant assertion--merely napping now and again, to wake up suddenly
+and "moon" for an hour or so; and, between periodical inspections of his
+watch, to wonder if God ever made a night so long and slow-dragging as
+this one.
+
+It had its recompense, however; for all--or nearly all--the next day was
+passed in company with _her_; and more than that he would not have asked
+of Heaven. Long before she rose he had made all arrangements for the
+journey to Calais; and she was not a little gratified--yes, and touched
+if the truth must be told--on arriving at the train, to find that he had
+made no effort to secure accommodations which would compel her to endure
+his companionship alone from the Gare du Nord to the steamer, but had
+considerately reserved seats in a compartment containing other
+travellers, and had done everything in his power to relieve her of any
+possible embarrassment and to insure her all possible comforts. Even
+magazines and pictorial papers were not omitted, but were there for her
+in plenty lest she might prefer an excuse for not indulging much in
+conversation; and there was also a huge bunch of La France roses bought
+at the temporary flower market beside the Madeleine at daybreak that
+morning.
+
+"They are beautiful, aren't they?" he said, as he laid them in her lap.
+"Will it surprise you to learn that flowers are a passion with me, and
+that I am a living refutation of the fallacy that 'there can be nothing
+very wrong about a man who can cultivate a garden'?"
+
+She looked up at him and smiled.
+
+"I think nothing about you will surprise me--you are so many-sided
+and--if you will pardon me saying it--so different from what one
+imagines men of--of your calling to be," she said; and laughed a little,
+colouring divinely until her face was like the roses themselves. "You
+treat me as if I were a queen; and I am not used to Court manners.
+Where, if you please, did you acquire yours?"
+
+"In the vast Kingdom of the World," he made answer, with just a
+momentary change of countenance--a mere suspicion of embarrassment:
+laughed off before she could be quite sure that it had had any real
+existence. "Please remember that to appear to be what one is not, and to
+ape manners foreign to one's real self is part of what you have so
+nicely, so euphemistically, termed 'my calling.' I am an Actor on the
+World's Stage, Miss Lorne; I should be but a very poor one if I could
+not accommodate myself to many rôles."
+
+"If you play them all so well as you do that of the _preux chevalier_,
+it is no wonder you are a success," she replied gaily, slipping thus
+into easy conversation with him.
+
+And so it fell out that the magazines and the illustrated papers were
+not so much of a boon as both had fancied they might be when Cleek
+brought them to her; for they had not even been opened when the train
+ran up to the quay side at Calais and brought them almost abreast of the
+channel steamer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+It was not until they were aboard the boat and the shores of France were
+slipping off into the distance that Miss Lorne saw anything at all of
+Dollops. As he had travelled down from Paris to Calais in a separate
+compartment there had been no opportunity to do so. He had, too, held
+himself respectfully aloof even after they had boarded the steamer; and,
+but that once, when a lurch of the vessel had unexpectedly disturbed
+Cleek's equilibrium and knocked his hat off, she might not have seen him
+even then.
+
+But the manner in which he pounced upon that hat, the tender care with
+which he brushed it, and the affectionate interest in both voice and
+eyes when he handed it back and inquired eagerly, "Didn't hurt yourself,
+Gov'nor, did you, sir?" compelled her to take notice of him, and, in
+doing so, to understand the position in which they stood to each other.
+
+"You are travelling with a servant?" she enquired.
+
+"More than a servant--a devoted henchman, Miss Lorne. They say you can't
+purchase fidelity for all the money in the world, but I secured the
+finest brand of it in the Universe by the simple outlay of two half
+crowns. It is the boy of that night on Hampstead Heath--the boy who
+stood at the turning point. The Devil didn't get him, you see. He kept
+his promise and has been walking the straight road ever since."
+
+She turned round and looked at him; realizing more of the man's
+character in that moment than a hundred deeds of bravery, a thousand
+acts of gentle courtesy, could ever have made her understand.
+
+"And you took him in?" she said slowly. "You gave him a chance? You
+helped him to redeem himself? How good of you."
+
+"How good _for_ me, you mean," he laughed, "It was 'bread on the waters'
+with a vengeance, Miss Lorne. I should have lost my life last night but
+for that boy."--And told her briefly and airily how the thing had come
+to pass.
+
+"Don't think it vindictive of me, but I am sorry, I am very, very sorry
+you were not able to hand that dreadful woman, Margot, over to the
+authorities, Mr. Cleek," she said, with an expression of great
+seriousness. "She is not likely to forget or to forgive what you have
+done; and some day, perhaps ... Oh, do be on your guard. It was really
+foolhardy to have attempted the thing alone. Surely you might have
+appealed for assistance to the Paris police and not only have minimised
+your personal risk but made sure of the woman's arrest."
+
+"Not without allowing the authorities to learn exactly what the Baron de
+Carjorac was so anxious to keep them _from_ learning, Miss Lorne. They
+must have found out what I was after, what really had been lost, if I
+had applied to them for assistance. I had either to do the thing alone
+or drop the case entirely. And drop it I would not after _you_ had asked
+me to accept it, and--Pardon? No, Miss Lorne, I do not know who the
+woman Margot really is. Even that name may be fictitious, as was the one
+of 'Comtesse de la Tour.' I only know of her that she is one of the
+great figures of the Underworld; that money is her game--money alone;
+money first, last, and all the time; that her personal history is as
+much of a mystery to her closest associates as was--well, no matter;
+people of that ilk are not fit subjects to discuss with you. All that I
+know of the woman is that she has travelled pretty well over the world;
+that some six or eight months ago she was in Ceylon with a--er--a
+certain member of her crew, and came within an ace of falling foul of
+the law. She had put up a plan to loot the depository of the Pearl
+Fisheries Company at a period when there were thousands of pounds worth
+of gems awaiting transport. With her usual luck she slipped out of the
+net and left the country before she could be arrested. But she will have
+found something there that will repay her for the visit in one way or
+another. Luck of that kind seems to follow her always."
+
+And a long time afterward he had reason to remember what he said. For
+the present, however, he had banished from his mind all things but the
+happiness which was his to-day; and gave himself up to that happiness
+with his whole heart.
+
+Not once did he again intrude anything that had to do with himself, his
+exploits, or his future upon Ailsa's attention until all the voyage
+across the channel and all the journey from Dover up to London had come
+to an end; and even then, eager though he was to know how matters might
+shape themselves for _her_ future--he was tactful, considerate, careful
+not to force her into any embarrassing position or to claim from her
+more than the merest acquaintance might.
+
+"You are going to your friend at Hampstead, I suppose," he said as he
+handed her into a taxicab at Charing Cross. "I shall like to know if you
+succeed in getting the position with Lady Chepstow; and if you send no
+word to Mr. Narkom, I shall take silence as an assent and know that you
+have."
+
+And afterward, when the days grew in number and late April merged into
+early May and no word came, he knew that she had succeeded; and was
+comforted, thinking of her safely housed and perhaps in a position more
+congenial than the last. At any rate, she was in England, she was again
+in the same land with him; and that of itself was comfort.
+
+But other comforts were not wanting. The full glory of tulip time was
+here; The Yard had no immediate occasion for his services, and time was
+his to dawdle in the public parks among the children, the birds, and the
+flowers.
+
+"And, lord, how he do love 'em all, bless his heart!" commented Dollops
+in confidence to himself as he bustled about, putting the Den in order,
+watering the plants and touching lovingly the things that belonged to
+the master he adored--his daily task when Cleek was in the Park and had
+no need for his services. It was a pleasure to the boy, that service.
+His whole heart was in it. He resented anything that interfered with it
+even for an instant; and as at this particular time he was in the very
+midst of preparing a small surprise against his master's return, he was
+by no means pleased when a sharp whirring sound of a telephone bell
+shrilled out from the adjoining room and called him from his labour of
+love.
+
+"Oh, blow that thing! A body don't have a minute to call his own since
+it's been put in," he blurted out disgustedly, and answered the call.
+"'Ullo! Yuss; this is Cap'n Burbage's. Wot? No, he aren't in. Dunno when
+he will be. Dunno where he is. But if there's any messidge--I say, who
+wants him? Wot? Oh, s'elp me. You, is it, Mr. Narkom? Yuss, it's me,
+sir--Dollops. Wot? No, sir. Went out two hours ago. Gone to Kensington
+Palace Gardens. Tulips is in full bloom and you couldn't hold him
+indoors with a chain at tulip-time, bless his heart. Yuss, sir. Top hat,
+white spats--same as the 'Cap'n' always wears, sir."
+
+Narkom, at the other end of the line, called back: "If I miss him, if he
+comes in without seeing me, tell him to wait; I'll be round before
+three. Good-bye!" then hung up the receiver and turned to the gentleman
+who stood by the window on the other side of the private office,
+agitatedly twirling the end of his thick grey-threaded moustache with
+one hand, while with the other he drummed a nervous tattoo upon the
+broad oaken sill. "Not at home, Sir Henry; but, fortunately, I know
+where to find him with but little loss of time," he said, and pressed
+twice upon an electric button beside his desk. "My motor will be at the
+door in a couple of minutes, and with ordinary luck we ought to be able
+to pick him up inside of the next half-hour."
+
+Sir Henry--Sir Henry Wilding, Bart., to give him his full name and
+title--a handsome, well-set-up man of about forty years of age, well
+groomed, and with the upright bearing which comes of military training,
+twisted round on his heel at this and gave the superintendent an almost
+grateful look.
+
+"I hope so--God knows I hope so, Mr. Narkom," he said agitatedly. "Time
+is the one important thing at present. The suspense and uncertainty are
+getting on my nerves so horribly that the very minutes seem endless.
+Remember, there are only three days before the race, and if those
+rascals, whoever they are, get at Black Riot before then, God help
+me--that's all! And if this man Cleek can't probe the diabolical
+mystery, they _will_ get at her, too, and put Logan where they put
+Tolliver, the brutes!"
+
+"You may trust Cleek to see that they don't, Sir Henry. It is just the
+kind of case he will glory in; and if Black Riot is all that you believe
+her, you'll carry off the Derby in spite of these enterprising gentry
+who--Hallo! here's the motor. Clap on your hat, Sir Henry, and come
+along. Mind the step! Kensington Palace Gardens, Lennard--and as fast as
+you can streak it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+The chauffeur proved that he could "streak it" as close to the margin of
+the speed limit as the law dared wink at, even in the case of the
+well-known red limousine, and in a little over ten minutes pulled up
+before the park gates. Narkom jumped out, beckoned Sir Henry to follow
+him, and together they hurried into the grounds in quest of Cleek.
+
+Where the famous tulip beds made splotches of brilliant colour against
+the clear emerald of the closely clipped grass they came upon him--a
+solitary figure in the garb of the elderly seaman, "Captain Burbage, of
+Clarges Street"--seated on one of the garden benches, his hands folded
+over the knob of his thick walking-stick and his chin resting upon them,
+staring fixedly at the gorgeous flowers and apparently deaf and blind to
+all else.
+
+He was not, however; for as the superintendent approached he, without
+altering his gaze or his attitude in the slightest particle, said with
+the utmost calmness: "Superb, are they not, my friend? What a pity they
+should be scentless. It is as though Heaven had created a butterfly and
+deprived it of the secret of flight. Walk on, please, without addressing
+me. I am quite friendly with that policeman yonder and I do not wish him
+to suspect that the elderly gentleman he is so kind to is in any way
+connected with The Yard. Examine the tulips. That's right. You came in
+your limousine, of course? Where is it?"
+
+"Just outside the gates, at the end of the path on the right," replied
+Narkom, halting with Sir Henry and appearing to be wholly absorbed in
+pointing out the different varieties of tulips.
+
+"Good," replied Cleek, apparently taking not the slightest notice. "I'll
+toddle on presently, and when you return from inspecting the flowers you
+will find me inside the motor awaiting you."
+
+"Do, old chap--and please hurry; time is everything in this case. Let me
+introduce you to your client. (Keep looking at the flowers, please, Sir
+Henry.) I have the honour to make you acquainted with Sir Henry Wilding,
+Cleek; he needs you, my dear fellow."
+
+"Delighted--in both instances. My compliments, Sir Henry. By any chance
+that Sir Henry Wilding whose mare, Black Riot, is the favourite for next
+Wednesday's Derby?"
+
+"Yes--that very man, Mr. Cleek; and if--"
+
+"Don't get excited and don't turn, please; our friend the policeman is
+looking this way. What's the case? One of 'nobbling'? Somebody trying to
+get at the mare?"
+
+"Yes. A desperate 'somebody,' who doesn't stop even at murder. A very
+devil incarnate who seems to possess the power of invisibility, and who
+strikes in the dark. Save me, Mr. Cleek! All I've got in the world is at
+stake, and if anything happens to Black Riot, I'm a ruined man."
+
+"Yar-r-r!" yawned the elderly sea captain, rising and stretching. "I do
+believe, constable, I've been asleep. Warm weather, this, for May. A
+glorious week for Epsom. Shan't see you to-morrow, I'm afraid. Perhaps
+shan't see you until Thursday. Here, take that, my lad, and have
+half-a-crown's worth on Black Riot for the Derby; she'll win it, sure."
+
+"Thanky, sir. Good luck to you, sir."
+
+"Same to you, my lad. Good day." Then the old gentleman in the top hat
+and white spats moved slowly away, passed down the tree-shaded walk,
+passed the romping children, passed the Princess Louise's statue of
+Queen Victoria, and, after a moment, vanished. Ten minutes later, when
+Narkom and Sir Henry returned to the waiting motor, they found him
+seated within it awaiting them, as he had promised. Giving Lennard
+orders to drive about slowly in the least frequented quarters, while
+they talked, the superintendent got in with Sir Henry, and opened fire
+on the "case" without further delay.
+
+"My dear Cleek," he said, "as you appear to know all about Sir Henry and
+his famous mare, there's no need to go into that part of the subject, so
+I may as well begin by telling you at once that Sir Henry has come up to
+town for the express purpose of getting you to go down to his place in
+Suffolk to-night in company with him, as his only hope of outwitting a
+diabolical agency which has set out to get at the horse and put it out
+of commission before Derby Day, and in the most mysterious, the most
+inscrutable manner ever heard of, my dear chap. Already one groom who
+sat up to watch with her has been killed, another hopelessly paralysed,
+and to-night Logan, the mare's trainer, is to sit up with her in the
+effort to baulk the almost superhuman rascal who is at the bottom of it
+all. Conceive if you can, my dear fellow, a power so crafty, so
+diabolical, that it gets into a locked and guarded stable, gets in, my
+dear Cleek, despite four men constantly pacing back and forth before
+each and every window and door that leads into the place and with a
+groom on guard inside, and then gets out again in the same mysterious
+manner without having been seen or heard by a living soul. In addition
+to all the windows being small and covered with a grille of iron, a fact
+which would make it impossible for anyone to get in or out once the
+doors were closed and guarded, Sir Henry himself will tell you that the
+stable has been ransacked from top to bottom, every hole and every
+corner probed into, and not a living creature of any sort discovered.
+Yet only last night the groom, Tolliver, was set upon inside the place
+and killed outright in his efforts to protect the horse; killed, Cleek,
+with four men patrolling outside, and willing to swear--each and every
+one of them--that nothing and no one, either man, woman, child or beast,
+passed them going in or getting out from sunset until dawn."
+
+"Hum-m-m!" said Cleek, sucking in his lower lip. "Mysterious, to say the
+least. Was there no struggle? Did the men on guard hear no cry?"
+
+"In the case of the first groom, Murple, the one that was
+paralysed--no," said Sir Henry, as the question was addressed to him.
+"But in the case of Tolliver--yes. The men heard him cry out, heard him
+call out 'Help!' but by the time they could get the doors open it was
+all over. He was lying doubled up before the entrance to Black Riot's
+stall, with his face to the floor, as dead as Julius Caesar, poor
+fellow, and not a sign of anybody anywhere."
+
+"And the horse? Did anybody get at that?"
+
+"No; for the best of reasons. As soon as these attacks began, Mr. Cleek,
+I sent up to London. A gang of twenty-four men came down, with steel
+plates, steel joists, steel posts, and in seven hours' time Black Riot's
+box was converted into a sort of safe, to which I alone hold the key the
+instant it is locked up for the night. A steel grille about half a foot
+deep, and so tightly meshed that nothing bigger than a mouse could pass
+through, runs all round the enclosure close to the top of the walls, and
+this supplies ventilation. When the door is closed at night, it
+automatically connects itself with an electric gong in my own bedroom,
+so that the slightest attempt to open it, or even to touch it, would
+hammer out an alarm close to my head."
+
+"Has it ever done so?"
+
+"Yes--last night, when Tolliver was killed."
+
+"How killed, Sir Henry? Stabbed or shot?"
+
+"Neither. He appeared to have been strangled, poor fellow, and to have
+died in most awful agony."
+
+"Strangled? But, my dear sir, that would hardly have been possible in so
+short a time. You say your men heard him call out for help. Granted that
+it took them a full minute--and it probably did not take them half
+one--to open the doors and come to his assistance, he would not be stone
+dead in so short a time; and he was stone dead when they got in, I
+believe you said?"
+
+"Yes. God knows what killed him--the coroner will find that out, no
+doubt--but there was no blood shed and no mark upon him that I could
+see."
+
+"Hum-m-m! Was there any mark on the door of the steel stall?"
+
+"Yes. A long scratch, somewhat semi-circular, and sweeping downwards at
+the lower extremity. It began close to the lock and ended about a foot
+and a half lower."
+
+"Undoubtedly, you see, Cleek," put in Narkom, "someone tried to force an
+entrance to the steel room and get at the mare, but the prompt arrival
+of the men on guard outside the stable prevented his doing so."
+
+Cleek made no response. Just at that moment the limousine was gliding
+past a building whose courtyard was one blaze of parrot tulips, and, his
+eye caught by the flaming colours, he was staring at them and
+reflectively rubbing his thumb and forefinger up and down his chin.
+After a moment, however:
+
+"Tell me something, Sir Henry," he said abruptly. "Is anybody interested
+in your not putting Black Riot into the field on Derby Day? Anybody with
+whom you have a personal acquaintance, I mean, for of course I know
+there are other owners who would be glad enough to see him scratched.
+But is there anybody who would have a particular interest in your
+failure?"
+
+"Yes--one. Major Lambson-Bowles, owner of Minnow. Minnow's second
+favourite, as perhaps you know. It would delight Lambson-Bowles to see
+me 'go under'; and as I'm so certain of Black Riot that I've mortgaged
+every stick and stone I have in the world to back her, I should go under
+if anything happened to the mare. That would suit Lambson-Bowles down to
+the ground."
+
+"Bad blood between you, then?"
+
+"Yes--very. The fellow's a brute, and--I thrashed him once, as he
+deserved, the bounder. It may interest you to know that my only sister
+was his first wife. He led her a dog's life, poor girl, and death was a
+merciful release to her. Twelve months ago he married a rich American
+woman--widow of a man who made millions in hides and leather. That's
+when Lambson-Bowles took up racing, and how he got the money to keep a
+stud. Had the beastly bad taste, too, to come down to Suffolk--within a
+gunshot of Wilding Hall--take Elmslie Manor, the biggest and grandest
+place in the neighbourhood, and cut a dash under my very nose, as it
+were."
+
+"Oho!" said Cleek; "then the major is a neighbour as well as a rival for
+the Derby plate. I see! I see!"
+
+"No, you don't--altogether," said Sir Henry quickly. "Lambson-Bowles is
+a brute and a bounder in many ways, but--well, I don't believe he is
+low-down enough to do this sort of thing--and with murder attached to
+it, too--although he did try to bribe poor Tolliver to leave me. Offered
+my trainer double wages, too, to chuck me and take up his horses."
+
+"Oh, he did that, did he? Sure of it, Sir Henry?"
+
+"Absolutely. Saw the letter he wrote to Logan."
+
+"Hum-m-m! Feel that you can rely on Logan, do you?"
+
+"To the last gasp. He's as true to me as my own shadow. If you want
+proof of it, Mr. Cleek, he's going to sit in the stable and keep guard
+himself to-night--in the face of what happened to Murple and Tolliver."
+
+"Murple is the groom who was paralysed, is he not?" said Cleek, after a
+moment. "Singular thing, that. What paralysed him, do you think?"
+
+"Heaven knows. He might just as well have been killed as poor Tolliver
+was, for he'll never be any use again, the doctors say. Some injury to
+the spinal column, and with it a curious affection of the throat and
+tongue. He can neither swallow nor speak. Nourishment has to be
+administered by tube, and the tongue is horribly swollen."
+
+"I'm of the opinion, Cleek," put in Narkom, "that strangulation is
+merely part of the procedure of the rascal who makes these diabolical
+nocturnal visits. In other words, that he is armed with some
+quick-acting infernal poison, which he forces into the mouths of his
+victims. That paralysis of the muscles of the throat is one of the
+symptoms of prussic acid poisoning, you must remember."
+
+"I do remember, Mr. Narkom," replied Cleek enigmatically. "My memory is
+much stimulated by these details, I assure you. I gather from them that,
+whatever is administered, Murple did not get quite so much of it as
+Tolliver, or he, too, would be dead. Sir Henry"--he turned again to the
+baronet--"do you trust everybody else connected with your establishment
+as much as you trust Logan?"
+
+"Yes. There's not a servant connected with the hall that hasn't been in
+my service for years, and all are loyal to me."
+
+"May I ask who else is in the house besides the servants?"
+
+"My wife, Lady Wilding, for one; her cousin, Mr. Sharpless, who is on a
+visit to us, for another; and, for a third, my uncle, the Rev. Ambrose
+Smeer, the famous revivalist."
+
+"Mr. Smeer does not approve of the race track, of course?"
+
+"No, he does not. He is absurdly 'narrow' on some subjects, and 'sport'
+of all sorts is one of them. But, beyond that, he is a dear, lovable old
+fellow, of whom I am amazingly fond."
+
+"Hum-m-m! And Lady Wilding and Mr. Sharpless--do they, too, disapprove
+of racing?"
+
+"Quite to the contrary. Both are enthusiastic upon the subject, and both
+have the utmost faith in Black Riot's certainty of winning. Lady Wilding
+is something more than attached to the mare; and as for Mr. Sharpless,
+he is so upset over these rascally attempts that every morning when the
+steel room is opened and the animal taken out, although nothing ever
+happens in the daylight, he won't let her get out of his sight for a
+single instant until she is groomed and locked up for the night. He is
+so incensed, so worked up over this diabolical business, that I verily
+believe if he caught any stranger coming near the mare he'd shoot him in
+his tracks."
+
+"Hum-m-m!" said Cleek abstractedly, and then sat silent for a long time,
+staring at his spats and moving one thumb slowly round the breadth of
+the other, his fingers interlaced and his lower lip pushed upwards over
+the one above.
+
+"There, that's the case, Cleek," said Narkom, after a time. "Do you make
+anything out of it?"
+
+"Yes," he replied; "I make a good deal out of it, Mr. Narkom, but, like
+the language of the man who stepped on the banana skin, it isn't fit for
+publication. One question more, Sir Henry. Heaven forbid it, of course,
+but if anything should happen to Logan to-night, whom would you put on
+guard over the horse to-morrow?"
+
+"Do you think I could persuade anybody if a third man perished?" said
+the baronet, answering one question with another. "I don't believe
+there's a groom in England who'd take the risk for love or money. There
+would be nothing for it but to do the watching myself. What's that? Do
+it? Certainly, I'd do it! Everybody that knows me knows that."
+
+"Ah, I see!" said Cleek, and lapsed into silence again.
+
+"But you'll come, won't you?" exclaimed Sir Henry agitatedly. "It won't
+happen if you take up the case; Mr. Narkom tells me he is sure of that.
+Come with me, Mr. Cleek. My motor is waiting at the garage. Come back
+with me, for God's sake--for humanity's sake--and get to the bottom of
+the thing."
+
+"Yes," said Cleek in reply. "Give Lennard the address of the garage,
+please; and--Mr. Narkom!"
+
+"Yes, old chap?"
+
+"Pull up at the first grocer's shop you see, will you, and buy me a
+couple of pounds of the best white flour that's milled; and if you can't
+manage to get me either a sieve or a flour dredger, a tin pepper-pot
+will do!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+It was two o'clock when Sir Henry Wilding's motor turned its back upon
+the outskirts of London, and it was a quarter past seven when it whirled
+up to the stables of Wilding Hall, and the baronet and his grey-headed,
+bespectacled and white-spatted companion alighted, having taken five
+hours and a quarter to make a journey which the trains which run daily
+between Liverpool Street and Darsham make in four.
+
+As a matter of fact, however, they really had outstripped the train, but
+it had been Cleek's pleasure to make two calls on the way, one at
+Saxmundham, where the paralysed Murple lay in the infirmary of the local
+practitioner, the other at the mortuary where the body of Tolliver was
+retained, awaiting the sitting of the coroner. Both the dead and the
+still living man Cleek had subjected to a critical personal examination,
+but whether either furnished him with any suggested clue he did not say;
+indeed, the only remark he made upon the subject was when Sir Henry, on
+hearing from Murple's wife that the doctor had said he would probably
+not last the week out, had inquired if the woman knew where to "put her
+hand on the receipt for the payment of the last premium, so that her
+claim could be sent into the life assurance company without delay when
+the end came."
+
+"Tell me something, Sir Henry," said Cleek when he heard that, and
+noticed how gratefully the woman looked at the baronet when she replied,
+"Yes, Sir Henry, God bless you, sir!" "Tell me, if it is not an
+impertinent question, did you take out an insurance policy on Murple's
+life and pay the premium on it yourself? I gathered the idea that you
+did from the manner in which the woman spoke to you."
+
+"Yes, I did," replied Sir Henry. "As a matter of fact, I take out a
+similar policy--payable to the widow--for every married man I employ in
+connection with my racing stud."
+
+"May I ask why?"
+
+"Well, for one thing, they usually are too poor and have too many
+children to support to be able to take it out for themselves, and
+exercising racers has a good many risks. Then, for another thing, I'm a
+firm believer in the policy of life assurance. It's just so much money
+laid up in safety, and one never knows what may happen."
+
+"Then it is fair," said Cleek, "to suppose, in that case, that you have
+taken out one on your own life?"
+
+"Yes--rather! And a whacking big one, too."
+
+"And Lady Wilding is, of course, the beneficiary?"
+
+"Certainly. There are no children, you know. As a matter of fact, we
+have been married only seven months. Before the date of my wedding the
+policy was in my uncle Ambrose's--the Rev. Mr. Smeer's--favour."
+
+"Ah, I see!" said Cleek reflectively. Then fell to thinking deeply over
+the subject, and was still thinking of it when the motor whizzed into
+the stable yard at Wilding Hall and brought him into contact for the
+first time with the trainer, Logan. He didn't much fancy Logan at first
+blush--and Logan didn't fancy him at all at any time.
+
+"Hur!" he said disgustedly, in a stage aside to his master, as Cleek
+stood on the threshold of the stable, with his head thrown back and his
+chin at an angle, sniffing the air somewhat after the manner of a
+bird-dog. "Hur! If un's the best Scotland Yard could let out to ye,
+sir--a half-baked old softy like that!--the rest of 'em must be a
+blessed poor lot, Ah'm thinkin'. What's un doin' now, the
+noodle?--snuffin' the air like he did not understand the smell of it!
+He'd not be expectin' a stable to be scented with eau de cologne, would
+he? What's un name, sir?"
+
+"Cleek."
+
+"Hur! Sounds like a golf-stick--an' Ah've no doubt he's got a head like
+one: main thick and with a twist in un. I dunna like 'tecs, Sir Henry,
+and I dunna like this one especial. Who's to tell as he aren't in with
+they devils as is after Black Riot? Naw! I dunna like him at all."
+
+Meantime, serenely unconscious of the displeasure he had excited in
+Logan's breast, Cleek went on sniffing the air and "poking about," as he
+phrased it, in all corners of the stable; and when, a moment later, Sir
+Henry went in and joined him, he was standing before the door of the
+steel room examining the curving scratch of which the baronet had
+spoken.
+
+"What do you make of it, Mr. Cleek?"
+
+"Not much in the way of a clue, Sir Henry--a clue to any possible
+intruder, I mean. If your artistic soul hadn't rebelled against bare
+steel--which would, of course, have soon rusted in this
+ammonia-impregnated atmosphere--and led you to put a coat of paint over
+the metal, there would have been no mark at all, the thing is so slight.
+I am of the opinion that Tolliver himself caused it. In short, that it
+was made by either a pin or a cuff button in his wristband when he was
+attacked and fell. But, enlighten me upon a puzzling point, Sir Henry:
+What do you use coriander and oil of sassafras for in a stable?"
+
+"Coriander? Oil of sassafras? I don't know what the dickens they are.
+Have you found such things here?"
+
+"No; simply smelt them. The combination is not usual--indeed, I know of
+but one race in the world who make any use of it, and they merely for a
+purpose which, of course, could not possibly exist here, unless--"
+
+He allowed the rest of the sentence to go by default, and turning,
+looked all round the place. For the first time he seemed to notice
+something unusual for the equipment of a stable, and regarded it with
+silent interest. It was nothing more nor less than a box, covered with
+sheets of virgin cork, and standing on the floor just under one of the
+windows, where the light and air could get to a weird-looking,
+rubbery-leaved, orchid-like plant, covered with ligulated scarlet
+blossoms which grew within it.
+
+"Sir Henry," he said, after a moment, "may I ask how long it is since
+you were in South America?"
+
+"I? Never was there in my life, Mr. Cleek--never."
+
+"Ah! Then who connected with the hall has been?"
+
+"Oh, I see what you are driving at," said Sir Henry, following the
+direction of his gaze. "That Patagonian plant, eh? That belonged to poor
+Tolliver. He had a strange fancy for ferns and rock plants and things of
+that description, and as that particular specimen happens to be one that
+does better in the atmosphere of a stable than elsewhere, he kept it in
+here."
+
+"Who told him that it does better in the atmosphere of a stable?"
+
+"Lady Wilding's cousin, Mr. Sharpless. It was he who gave Tolliver the
+plant."
+
+"Oho! Then Mr. Sharpless has been to South America, has he?"
+
+"Why, yes. As a matter of fact, he comes from there; so also does Lady
+Wilding. I should have thought you would have remembered that, Mr.
+Cleek, when--But perhaps you have never heard? She--they--that is,"
+stammering confusedly and colouring to the temples, "up to seven months
+ago, Mr. Cleek, Lady Wilding was on the--er--music-hall stage. She and
+Mr. Sharpless were known as 'Signor Morando and La Belle Creole'--they
+did a living statue turn together. It was highly artistic; people raved;
+I--er--fell in love with the lady and--that's all!"
+
+But it wasn't; for Cleek, reading between the lines, saw that the mad
+infatuation which had brought the lady a title and an over-generous
+husband had simmered down--as such things always do sooner or later--and
+that the marriage was very far from being a happy one. As a matter of
+fact, he learned later that the county, to a woman, had refused to
+accept Lady Wilding; that her ladyship, chafing under this ostracism,
+was for having a number of her old professional friends come down to
+visit her and make a time of it, and that, on Sir Henry's objecting, a
+violent quarrel had ensued, and the Rev. Ambrose Smeer had come down to
+the hall in the effort to make peace. And he learned something else that
+night which gave him food for deep reflection: the Rev. Ambrose Smeer,
+too, had been to South America, and when he met that gentleman--well, in
+spite of the fact that Sir Henry thought so highly of him, and it was
+known that his revival meetings had done a world of good, Cleek did not
+fancy the Rev. Ambrose Smeer any more than he fancied the trainer,
+Logan.
+
+But to return to the present. By this time the late falling twilight of
+May had begun to close in, and presently--as the day was now done and
+the night approaching--Logan led in Black Riot from the paddock,
+followed by a slim, sallow-featured, small-moustached man, bearing a
+shotgun, and dressed in grey tweeds. Sir Henry, who, it was plain to
+see, had a liking for the man, introduced this newcomer to Cleek as the
+South American, Mr. Andrew Sharpless.
+
+"That's the English of it, Mr. Cleek," said the latter jovially, but
+with an undoubted Spanish twist to the tongue. "I wouldn't have you risk
+breaking your jaw with the Brazilian original. Delighted to meet you,
+sir. I hope to Heaven you will get at the bottom of this diabolical
+thing. What do you think, Henry? Lambson-Bowles's jockey was over in
+this neighbourhood this afternoon. Trying to see how Black Riot shapes,
+of course, the bounder! Fortunately I saw him skulking along on the
+other side of the hedge, and gave him two minutes in which to make
+himself scarce. If he hadn't, if he had come a step nearer to the mare,
+I'd have shot him down like a dog. That's right, Logan, put her up for
+the night, old chap, and I'll get out your bedding."
+
+"Aye," said Logan, through his clamped teeth, "and God help man or devil
+that comes a-nigh her this night--God help him, Lunnon Mister, that's
+all Ah say!" Then he passed into the steel room with the mare, attended
+her for the night, and coming out a minute or two later, locked her up
+and gave Sir Henry the key.
+
+"Broke her and trained her, Ah did; and willin' to die for her, Ah am,
+if Ah can't pull un through no other way," he said, pausing before Cleek
+and giving him a black look, "A Derby winner her's cut out for, Lunnon
+Mister, and a Derby winner her's goin' to be, in spite of all the
+Lambson-Bowleses and the low-down horse-nobblers in Christendom!" Then
+he switched round and walked over to Sharpless, who had taken a pillow
+and a bundle of blankets from a convenient cupboard, and was making a
+bed of them on the floor at the foot of the locked steel door.
+
+"Thanky, sir, 'bliged to un, sir," said Logan as Sharpless hung up the
+shotgun and, with a word to the baronet, excused himself and went in to
+dress for dinner. Then he faced round again on Cleek, who was once more
+sniffing the air, and pointed to the rude bed: "There's where Ted Logan
+sleeps this night--there!" he went on suddenly; "and them as tries to
+get at Black Riot comes to grips with me first, me and the shotgun Mr.
+Sharpless has left Ah. And if Ah shoot, Lunnon Mister, Ah shoot to
+kill!"
+
+"Do me a favour, Sir Henry," said Cleek. "For reasons of my own, I want
+to be in this stable alone for the next ten minutes, and after that let
+no one come into it until morning. I won't be accountable for this man's
+life if he stops in here to-night, and for his sake, as well as for your
+own, I want you to forbid him to do so."
+
+Logan seemed to go nearly mad with rage at this.
+
+"Ah won't listen to it! Ah will stop here--Ah will! Ah will!" he cried
+out in a passion. "Who comes ull find Ah here waitin' to come to grips
+with un. Ah won't stop out--Ah won't! Don't un listen to Lunnon Mister,
+Sir Henry--for God's sake, don't!"
+
+"I am afraid I must in this instance, Logan. You are far too suspicious,
+my good fellow. Mr. Cleek doesn't want to 'get at' the mare; he wants to
+protect her; to keep anybody else from getting at her, so--join the
+guard outside if you are so eager. You must let him have his way." And,
+in spite of all Logan's pleading, Cleek did have his way.
+
+Protesting, swearing, almost weeping, the trainer was turned out and the
+doors closed, leaving Cleek alone in the stable; and the last Logan and
+Sir Henry saw of him until he came out and rejoined them he was standing
+in the middle of the floor, with his hands on both hips, staring fixedly
+at the impromptu bed in front of the steel-room door.
+
+"Put on the guard now and see that nobody goes into the place until
+morning, Sir Henry," he said when he came out and rejoined them some
+minutes later. "Logan, you silly fellow, you'll do no good fighting
+against Fate. Make the best of it and stop where you are."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+That night Cleek met Lady Wilding for the first time. He found her what
+he afterwards termed "a splendid animal," beautiful, statuesque, more of
+Juno than of Venus, and freely endowed with the languorous temperament
+and the splendid earthy loveliness which grows nowhere but under
+tropical skies and in the shadow of palm groves and the flame of cactus
+flowers. She showed him but scant courtesy, however, for she was but a
+poor hostess, and after dinner carried her cousin away to the
+billiard-room, and left her husband to entertain the Rev. Ambrose and
+the detective as best he could. Cleek needed but little entertaining,
+however, for in spite of his serenity he was full of the case on hand,
+and kept wandering in and out of the house and upstairs and down until
+eleven o'clock came and bed claimed him with the rest.
+
+His last wakeful recollection was of the clock in the lower corridor
+striking the first quarter after eleven; then sleep claimed him, and he
+knew no more until all the stillness was suddenly shattered by a
+loud-voiced gong hammering out an alarm and the sound of people tumbling
+out of bed and scurrying about in a panic of fright. He jumped out of
+bed, pulled on his clothing, and rushed out into the hall, only to find
+it alive with people, and at their head Sir Henry, with a dressing-gown
+thrown on over his pyjamas and a bedroom candle in his shaking hand.
+
+"The stable!" he cried out excitedly. "Come on, come on, for God's sake!
+Someone has touched the door of the steel room; and yet the place was
+left empty--empty!"
+
+But it was no longer empty, as they found out when they reached it, for
+the doors had been flung open, the men who had been left on guard
+outside the stables were now inside it, the electric lights were in full
+blaze, the shotgun still hanging where Sharpless had left it, the
+impromptu bed was tumbled and tossed in a man's death agony, and at the
+foot of the steel door Logan lay, curled up in a heap and stone dead!
+
+"He would get in, Sir Henry, he'd have shot one or the other of us if we
+hadn't let him," said one of the outer guards as Sir Henry and Cleek
+appeared. "He would lie before the door and watch, sir--he simply would;
+and God have mercy on him, poor chap; he was faithful to the last!"
+
+"And the last might not have come for years, the fool, if he had only
+obeyed," said Cleek; then lapsed into silence and stood staring at a
+dust of white flour on the red-tiled floor and at a thin wavering line
+that broke the even surface of it.
+
+It was perhaps two minutes later when the entire household--mistress,
+guests, and servants alike--came trooping across the open space between
+the hall and the stables in a state of semi-deshabille, but in that
+brief space of time friendly hands had reverently lifted the body of the
+dead man from its place before the steel door, and Sir Henry was
+nervously fitting the key to the lock in a frantic effort to get in and
+see if Black Riot was safe.
+
+"Dios! what is it? What has happened?" cried Lady Wilding as she came
+hurrying in, followed closely by Sharpless and the Rev. Ambrose Smeer.
+Then, catching sight of Logan's body, she gave a little scream and
+covered her eyes. "The trainer, Andrew, the trainer now!" she went on
+half hysterically. "Another death--another! Surely they have got the
+wretch at last?"
+
+"The mare! The mare, Henry! Is she safe?" exclaimed Sharpless excitedly
+as he whirled away from his cousin's side and bore down upon the
+baronet. "Give me the key--you're too nervous." And, taking it from him,
+unlocked the steel room and passed swiftly into it.
+
+In another instant Black Riot was led out--uninjured, untouched, in the
+very pink of condition--and, in spite of the tragedy and the dead man's
+presence, one or two of the guards were so carried away that they
+essayed a cheer.
+
+"Stop that! Stop it instantly!" rapped out Sir Henry, facing round upon
+them. "What's a horse--even the best--beside the loss of an honest life
+like that?" and flung out a shaking hand in the direction of dead Logan.
+"It will be the story of last night over again, of course? You heard his
+scream, heard his fall, but he was dead when you got to him--dead--and
+you found no one here?"
+
+"Not a soul, Sir Henry. The doors were all locked; no grille is missing
+from any window; no one is in the loft; no one in any of the stalls; no
+one in any crook or corner of the place."
+
+"Send for the constable--the justice of the peace--anybody!" chimed in
+the Rev. Ambrose Smeer at this. "Henry, will you never be warned, never
+take these awful lessons to heart? This sinful practice of racing horses
+for money--"
+
+"Oh, hush, hush! Don't preach me a sermon now, uncle," interposed Sir
+Henry. "My heart's torn, my mind crazed by this abominable thing. Poor
+old Logan! Poor, faithful old chap! Oh!" He whirled and looked over at
+Cleek, who still stood inactive, staring at the flour-dusted floor. "And
+they said that no mystery was too great for you to get to the bottom of
+it, no riddle too complex for you to find the answer! Can't you do
+something? Can't you suggest something? Can't you see any glimmer of
+light at all?"
+
+Cleek looked up, and that curious smile which Narkom knew so well--and
+would have known had he been there was the "danger signal"--looped up
+one corner of his mouth.
+
+"I fancy it is _all_ 'light,' Sir Henry," he said. "I may be wrong, but
+I fancy it is merely a question of comparative height. Do I puzzle you
+by that? Well, let me explain. Lady Wilding there is one height, Mr.
+Sharpless is another, and I am a third; and if they two were to place
+themselves side by side and, say, about four inches apart, and I were to
+stand immediately behind them, the difference would be most apparent.
+There you are. Do you grasp it?"
+
+"Not in the least."
+
+"Bothered if I do either," supplemented Sharpless. "It all sounds like
+tommy rot to me."
+
+"Does it?" said Cleek. "Then let me explain it by illustration"--and he
+walked quietly towards them. "Lady Wilding, will you oblige me by
+standing here? Thank you very much. Now, if you please, Mr. Sharpless,
+will you stand beside her ladyship while I take up my place here
+immediately behind you both? That's it exactly. A little nearer,
+please--just a little, so that your left elbow touches her ladyship's
+right. Now then"--his two hands moved briskly, there was a click-click,
+and after it: "There you are--that explains it, my good Mr. and Mrs.
+Filippo Bucarelli; that explains it completely!"
+
+And as he stepped aside on saying this, those who were watching, those
+who heard Lady Wilding's scream and Mr. Sharpless's snarling oath and
+saw them vainly try to spring apart and dart away, saw also that a steel
+handcuff was on the woman's right wrist, its mate on the man's left one,
+and that they were firmly chained together.
+
+"In the name of Heaven, man," began Sir Henry, appalled by this, and
+growing red and white by rapid turns.
+
+"I fancy that Heaven has very little to do with this precious pair, Sir
+Henry," interposed Cleek. "You want the two people who are accountable
+for these diabolical crimes, and--there they stand."
+
+"What! Do you mean to tell me that Sharpless, that my wife--"
+
+"Don't give the lady a title to which she has not and never had any
+legal right, Sir Henry. If it had ever occurred to you to emulate my
+example to-night and search the lady's effects, you would have found
+that she was christened Enriqua Dolores Torjado, and that she was
+married to Señor Filippo Bucarelli here, at Valparaiso, in Chili, three
+years ago, and that her marriage to you was merely a clever little
+scheme to get hold of a pot of money and share it with her rascally
+husband."
+
+"It's a lie!" snarled out the male prisoner. "It's an infernal
+policeman's lie! You never found any such thing!"
+
+"Pardon me, but I did," replied Cleek serenely. "And what's more, I
+found the little phial of coriander and oil of sassafras in your room,
+señor, and--I shall finish off the Mynga Worm in another ten minutes!"
+
+Bucarelli and his wife gave a mingled cry, and, chained together though
+they were, made a wild bolt for the door; only, however, to be met on
+the threshold by the local constable, to whom Cleek had dispatched a
+note some hours previously.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Philpotts; you are very prompt," he said. "There are
+your prisoners nicely trussed and waiting for you. Take them away--we
+are quite done with them here. Sir Henry"--he turned to the baronet--"if
+Black Riot is fitted to win the Derby she will win it, and you need have
+no more fear for her safety. No one has ever for one moment tried to get
+at her. You yourself were the one that precious pair were after, and the
+bait was your life assurance. By killing off the watchers over Black
+Riot one by one they knew that there would come a time when, being able
+to get no one else to take the risk of guarding the horse and sleeping
+on that bed before the steel-room door, you would do it yourself; and
+when that time came they would have had you."
+
+"But how? By what means?"
+
+"By one of the most diabolical imaginable. Among the reptiles of
+Patagonia, Sir Henry, there is one--a species of black adder, known in
+the country as the Mynga Worm--whose bite is more deadly than that of
+the rattler or the copperhead, and as rapid in its action as prussic
+acid itself. It has, too, a great velocity of movement and a peculiar
+power of springing and hurling itself upon its prey. The Patagonians are
+a barbarous people in the main and, like all barbarous people, are
+vengeful, cunning, and subtle. A favourite revenge of theirs upon
+unsuspecting enemies is to get within touch of them and secretly to
+smear a mixture of coriander and oil of sassafras upon some part of
+their bodies, and then either to lure or drive them into the forest; for
+by a peculiar arrangement of Mother Nature this mixture has a
+fascination, a maddening effect upon the Mynga Worm--just as a red rag
+has on a bull--and, enraged by the scent, it finds the spot smeared with
+it and delivers its deadly bite."
+
+"Good heaven! How horrible! And you mean to tell me--"
+
+"That they employed one of these deadly reptiles in this case? Yes, Sir
+Henry. I suspected it the very moment I smelt the odour of the coriander
+and sassafras; but I suspected that an animal or a reptile of some kind
+was at the bottom of the mystery at a prior period. That is why I wanted
+the flour. Look! Do you see where I sifted it over this spot near the
+Patagonian plant? And do you see those serpentine tracks through the
+middle of it? The Mynga Worm is there--in that box, at the roots of that
+plant. Now see!"
+
+He caught up a horse blanket, spread it on the floor, lifted the box and
+plant, set them down in the middle of it, and with a quick gathering up
+of the ends of the blanket converted it into a bag and tied it round
+with a hitching strap.
+
+"Get spades, forks, anything, and dig a hole outside in the paddock," he
+went on. "A deep hole--a yard deep at the least--then get some straw,
+some paraffin, turpentine--anything that will burn furiously and
+quickly--and we will soon finish the little beast."
+
+The servants flew to obey, and when the hole was dug he carried the bag
+out and lowered it carefully into it, covered it with straw, drenched
+this with a gallon or more of lamp oil, and rapidly applied a match to
+it and sprang back.
+
+A moment later those who were watching saw a small black snake make an
+ineffectual effort to leap out of the blazing mass, fall back into the
+flames and disappear for ever.
+
+"The method of procedure?" said Cleek, answering the baronet's query as
+the latter was pouring out what he called "a nerve settler," prior to
+following the Rev. Ambrose's example and going to bed. "Very cunning,
+and yet very, very simple, Sir Henry. Bucarelli made a practice, as I
+saw this evening, of helping the chosen watcher to make his bed on the
+floor in front of the door to the steel room, but during the time he was
+removing the blankets from the cupboard his plan was to smear them with
+the coriander and sassafras and so arrange the top blanket that when the
+watcher lay down the stuff touched his neck or throat and made that the
+point of attack for the snake, whose fangs make a small round spot not
+bigger than a knitting needle, which is easily passed over by those not
+used to looking for such a thing. There was such a spot on Tolliver's
+throat; such another at the base of Murple's skull, and there is a third
+in poor Logan's left temple. No, thank you--no more to-night, Sir Henry.
+Alcohol and I are never more than speaking acquaintances at the best of
+times. But if you really wish to do me a kindness--"
+
+"I don't think there is room to doubt that, Mr. Cleek. If I am certain
+of anything in this world I am certain of Black Riot's success on
+Wednesday; and that success I feel I shall owe to you. Money can't
+offset some debts, you know; and if there is anything in the world I can
+do, you have only to let me know."
+
+"Thank you," said Cleek. "Then invite me to spend to-morrow here, and
+give me the freedom of those superb gardens. My senses are drunk already
+with the scent of your hyacinths; and if I might have a day among them,
+I should be as near happy as makes no difference."
+
+He had his day--breaking it only to 'phone up to Clarges Street and
+quiet any possible fears upon Dollops's part--and if ever man was
+satisfied, that man was he.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+It was late on the afternoon of the day following when he turned up at
+Clarges Street and threw Dollops into a very transport of delight at the
+bare sight of him.
+
+"Crumbs, Gov'nor, but I am glad to see you, sir!" said the boy, with a
+look of positive adoration. "A fish out o' water ain't a patch to wot
+I've felt like--Lord, no! Why, sir, it's the first time you've ever been
+away from me since you took me on; and the dreams I've had is enough to
+drive a body fair dotty. I've seen parties a-stickin' knives in your
+back and puttin' poison in your food and doin' the Lord knows wot not to
+you, sir; and every blessed nerve in my body has been a doin' of a
+constant shake--like a jelly-fish on a cold day."
+
+Cleek laughed, and catching him by the shoulder whirled him round,
+looked at him, and then clapped him on the back.
+
+"Look here, don't you get to worrying and to developing nerves, young
+man," he said, "or I shall have to ship you off somewhere for a long
+rest; and I'm just beginning to feel as if I couldn't do without you.
+What you want is a change; and what I want is the river, so, if there is
+no message from The Yard--"
+
+"There isn't, sir."
+
+"Good. Then 'phone through to Mr. Narkom and tell him that you and I are
+going for a few days up the river as far as Henley, and that we are
+going to break it on Wednesday to go to the Derby."
+
+"Gov'nor! Gawd's truth, sir, you aren't never a-goin' to give me two
+sich treats as that? From now till Thursday with jist you--jist _you_,
+sir? I'll go balmy on the crumpet--I'll get to stickin' straws in my
+bloomin' 'air!"
+
+"You 'get to' the telephone and send that message to The Yard, if you
+know when you're well off," said Cleek, laughing. "And, after that, out
+with the kit bag and in with such things as we shall need; and--Hullo!
+what's this thing?"
+
+"A necktie and a rose bush wot I took the liberty of buyin' for you,
+sir, bein' as you give me ten shillin's for myself," said Dollops
+sheepishly. "I been a-keepin' of my eye on that rose bush and that
+necktie for a week past, sir. I 'ope you'll take 'em, Gov'nor, and not
+think me presumin', sir."
+
+Cleek faced round and looked at him--a long look--without saying
+anything, then he screwed round on his heel and walked to the window.
+
+"It is very nice and very thoughtful of you, Dollops," he said
+presently, his voice a little thick, his tones a little uneven. "But
+don't be silly and waste your money, my lad. Lay it by. You may need it
+one day. Now toddle on and get things ready for our outing." But
+afterwards--when the boy had gone and he was alone in the room--he
+walked back to the potted rose bush and touched its buds lovingly, and
+stood leaning over it and saying nothing for a long time. And though the
+necktie that hung on its branches was a harlequin thing of red and green
+and violent purple, when he came to dress for that promised outing he
+put it on and adjusted it as tenderly, wore it as proudly as ever knight
+of old wore the colours of his lady.
+
+"You look a fair treat in it, sir," said Dollops, delightedly and
+admiringly, when he came in later and saw that he had it on. And if
+anything had been wanting to make him quite, quite happy, it was wanting
+no more. Or, if it had been, the night that came down and found them
+housed in a little old-world inn, with a shining river at its door and
+the hush and the odorous darkness of the country lanes about it, must of
+itself have supplied the omission; for when all the house was still and
+all the lights were out, he crept from his bed and curled up like a dog
+on the mat before Cleek's door, and would not have changed places with
+an emperor.
+
+They were up and on the river, master and man, almost as soon as the
+dawn itself; taking their morning plunge under a sky that was but just
+changing the tints of rose to those of saffron before they merged into
+the actual light of day; and to the boy the man seemed almost a god in
+that dim light, which showed but an ivory shoulder lifting now and again
+as he struck outwards and deft his way through a yielding, yellow-grey
+waste that leaped in little lilac-hued ripples to his chin, and thence
+wavered off behind him in dancing lines of light. And once, when he
+heard him lift up his voice and sing as he swam, he felt sure that he
+_must_ be a god--that that alone could explain why he had found him so
+different from other men, and cared for him as he had never cared for
+any human thing before.
+
+From dawn to dark that day was one of unalloyed delight to him. Never
+before had the starved soul of him--fed, all his life, when it was fed
+at all, from the drippings of the flesh-pots and the "leavings" of the
+City--found any savour in the insipid offerings of the Country; never
+before had he known what charms lie on a river's breast, what spells of
+magic a blossoming hedge and the white "candles" of a horse-chestnut
+tree may weave, and never before had a meadow been anything to him but a
+simple grass-grown field. To-day Nature--through this man who was so
+essentially bred in the very womb of her--spoke to his understanding and
+found her words not lost on air. The dormant things within the boy had
+awakened. Life spoke; Hope sang; and between them all the world was
+changed. Yesterday, he had looked upon this day of idling in the country
+as a pleasant interlude, as a happy prologue to those greater delights
+that would come when he at last went to Epsom and really saw the famous
+race for the Derby. To-day, he was sorry that anything--even so great a
+thing as that--must come to disturb such placid happiness as this.
+
+And yet, when the wondrous "Wednesday" came and he was actually on his
+way to Epsom Downs at last ... Ah, well, Joy is elastic; Youth is a time
+of many dreams, and who blames a boy for being delighted that one of
+them is coming true at last?
+
+Cleek did not, at all events. Indeed, Cleek aided and abetted him in all
+his boisterous outbursts from first to last; and was quite as excited as
+he when the event of the meeting--the great race for the famous Derby
+Stakes--was put up at last. Indeed, he was a bit wilder, if anything,
+than the boy himself when the flag fell and the whole field swept by in
+one thunderous rush, with Minnow in the lead and Black Riot far and away
+behind. Nor did his excitement abate when, as the whole cavalcade swung
+onwards over the green turf with the yelling thousands waving and
+shouting about it, Sir Henry Wilding's mare began to lessen that lead,
+and foot by foot to creep up towards the head.
+
+He shouted then--as wildly as Dollops himself, as wildly as any man
+present. He jumped up on his seat and waved his hat; he thumped Dollops
+on the back and cried: "She's creeping up! She's creeping up! Stick to
+it, old chap, stick to it! Give her her head, you fool! She'll do it--by
+God, she'll do it! Hurrah! Hurrah!" And was shouted down, and even
+seized and pulled down by others whose view he obstructed, and whose
+interest and excitement were as great as his.
+
+Onwards they flew, horses and riders, the whole pounding, mixing,
+ever-changing mass of them; jackets and caps of every hue flashing here
+and there--now in a huddled mass, now with this one in the lead, and
+again with that: a vast, ever-moving, ever-altering kaleidoscope that
+was, presently, hidden entirely from the main mass of the onlookers, by
+the surging crowd, the mass of drags and carriages of all sorts in the
+huge square of the central enclosure, and most of all by the people who
+stood up on seats and wheels and even the tops of the vehicles. Then,
+for a little time, the roars came from a distance only--from those in
+the enclosure who alone could see--then neared and neared and grew in
+volume, as the unseen racers pounded onward and came pelting up the long
+stretch toward Tattenham Corner. And by and bye they swung into view
+again--still a huddled mass, still so closely packed together that the
+positions of the individual horses was a matter of uncertainty--but
+always the roaring sound went on and always it came nearer and nearer,
+until a thousand voices took it up at the foot of the grand stand, and
+other thousands bellowed it up and up from tier to tier to the very
+roof.
+
+For, of a sudden, that blaze of caps and jackets, that huddle of horses
+red and horses grey, horses black and horses roan, piebald, white--every
+colour that a horse may be--had come at last to Tattenham Corner and
+burst into the full view of everybody. Yet, as they came, a black mare,
+hugging the railed enclosure on the inner side of the sweep, arrowed
+forward with a sudden spurt, came like a rocket to the fore, and all the
+earth and all the sky seemed to ring with the cry: "Wilding! Wilding!
+Black Riot leads! Black Riot leads!"
+
+She did--and kept it to the end!
+
+In half a minute her number was up, yelling thousands were tumbling out
+upon the field to cheer her, to cheer her rider, to cheer her proud
+owner when he came out to lead her to the paddock and the weighing room,
+and to feel in that moment the proudest and the happiest man in England;
+and of those, not the least excited and delighted was Cleek.
+
+Carried away by enthusiasm, he had risen again in his seat and, with his
+hat held aloft upon a walking stick, was waving and stamping and
+shouting enthusiastically: "Black Riot wins! Black Riot! Black Riot!
+Bully boy! Bully boy!"
+
+And so he was still shouting when he felt a hand touch him, and looking
+round saw Mr. Narkom.
+
+"Ripping, wasn't it, old chap?" said the superintendent. "No wonder you
+are excited, considering what interest you have. Been looking for you,
+my dear fellow. Knew of course, from your telling me, that you would be
+here to-day, but shouldn't have been able to identify you but for the
+presence of young Dollops here. I say: you're not going to stop now that
+the great race is over, are you? The rest won't amount to anything."
+
+"No, I shall not stop," said Cleek. "Why? Do you want me?"
+
+"Yes. Lennard's outside with the limousine. Hop into it, will you, and
+meet me at the Fiddle and Horseshoe, between Shepherd's Bush and Acton?
+It's only half-past three and the limousine can cover the distance in
+less than no time. Can't go with you. Got to round up my men here,
+first. Join you shortly, however. McTavish has a sixty-horse-power
+Mercedes, and he'll rush me over almost on your heels. Let Dollops go
+home by train, and you meet me as I've asked, will you?"
+
+"Yes," said Cleek.
+
+And so the joyous holiday came to an unexpected end.
+
+Parting from Dollops, and leaving the boy to journey on to Clarges
+Street alone, he fared forth to find Lennard and the red limousine, and
+was whirled away in record time to the inn of the Fiddle and Horseshoe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+It had but just gone five when Narkom walked into the little bar parlour
+and found him standing there, looking out on the quaint, old-fashioned
+bowling green that lay all steeped in sunshine and zoned with the froth
+of pear and apple blossoms thick piled above the time-stained bricks of
+an enclosing wall.
+
+"What a model of punctuality you are, old chap," the superintendent
+said, nodding approvingly. "Wait a moment while I go and order tea, and
+then we will get down to business in real earnest. Shan't be long."
+
+"Pray, don't hurry yourself on my account, Mr. Narkom," returned Cleek,
+"coming down to earth" out of a mental airship. "I could do with another
+hour of that"--nodding toward the view--"and still wonder where the time
+had gone. These quaint old inns, which the march of what we are pleased
+to call 'Progress' is steadily crowding off the face of the land, are
+always deeply interesting to me; I love them. What a day! What a
+picture! What a sky! As blue as what Dollops calls the 'Merry Geranium
+Sea.' I'd give a Jew's eye for a handful of those apple blossoms--they
+are divine!"
+
+Narkom hastened from the room without replying. The strain of poetry
+underlying the character of this strange, inscrutable man, his amazing
+love of Nature, his moments of almost womanish weakness and sentiment,
+astonished and mystified him. It was as if a hawk had acquired the
+utterly useless trick of fluting like a nightingale, and being himself
+wholly without imagination, he could not comprehend it in the smallest
+degree.
+
+When he returned a few minutes later, however, the idealist seemed to
+have simmered down into the materialist, the extraordinary to have
+become merged in the ordinary, for he found his famous ally no longer
+studying the beauties of Nature, but giving his whole attention to the
+sordid commonplaces of man, for he was standing before a glaringly
+printed bill one of many that were tacked upon the walls, which set
+forth in amazing pictures and double-leaded type the wonders that were
+to be seen daily and nightly at Olympia, where, for a month past, "Van
+Zant's Royal Belgian Circus and World-famed Menagerie" had been holding
+forth to "Crowded and delighted audiences." Much was made of two "star
+turns" upon this lurid bill: "Mademoiselle Marie de Zanoni, the
+beautiful and peerless bare-back equestrienne, the most daring lady
+rider in the universe," for the one; and for the other, "Chevalier
+Adrian di Roma, king of the animal world, with his great aggregation of
+savage and ferocious wild beasts, including the famous man-eating
+African lion, Nero, the largest and most ferocious animal of its species
+in captivity." And under this latter announcement there was a picture of
+a young and handsome man, literally smothered with medals, lying at full
+length, with his arms crossed and his head in the wide-open jaws of a
+snarling, wild-eyed lion.
+
+"My dear chap, you really do make me believe that there actually is such
+a thing as instinct," said Narkom, as he came in. "Fancy your selecting
+that particular bill out of all the others in the room! What an abnormal
+individual you are!"
+
+"Why? Has it anything to do with the case you have in hand?"
+
+"Anything to do with it? My dear fellow, it _is_ 'the case.' I can't
+imagine what drew your attention to it."
+
+"Can't you?" said Cleek, with a half-smile. Then he stretched forth his
+hand and touched the word "Nero" with the tip of his forefinger. "That
+did. Things awaken a man's memory occasionally, Mr. Narkom, and--Tell
+me, isn't that the beast there was such a stir about in the newspapers a
+fortnight or so ago--the lion that crushed the head of a man in full
+view of the audience?"
+
+"Yes," replied Narkom, with a slight shudder. "Awful thing, wasn't it?
+Gave me the creeps to read about it. The chap who was killed, poor
+beggar, was a mere boy, not twenty, son of the Chevalier di Roma
+himself. There was a great stir about it. Talk of the authorities
+forbidding the performance, and all that sort of thing. They never did,
+however, for on investigation--Ah, the tea at last, thank fortune. Come,
+sit down, my dear fellow, and we'll talk whilst we refresh ourselves.
+Landlady, see that we are not disturbed, will you, and that nobody is
+admitted but the parties I mentioned?"
+
+"Clients?" queried Cleek, as the door closed and they were alone
+together.
+
+"Yes. One, Mlle. Zelie, the 'chevalier's' only daughter, a slack-wire
+artist; the other, Signor Scarmelli, a trapeze performer, who is the
+lady's fiancé."
+
+"Ah, then our friend the chevalier is not so young as the picture on the
+bill would have us believe he is."
+
+"No, he is not. As a matter of fact, he is considerably past forty, and
+is--or, rather, was, up to six months ago, a widower with three
+children, two sons and a daughter."
+
+"I suppose," said Cleek, helping himself to a buttered scone, "I am to
+infer from what you say that at the period you mentioned, six months
+ago, the intrepid gentleman showed his courage yet more forcibly by
+taking a second wife? Young or old?"
+
+"Young," said Narkom in reply. "Very young, not yet four-and-twenty, in
+fact, and very, very beautiful. That is she who is 'featured' on the
+bill as the star of the equestrian part of the programme: 'Mlle. Marie
+de Zanoni.' So far as I have been able to gather, the affair was a love
+match. The lady, it appears, had no end of suitors, both in and out of
+the profession; it has even been hinted that she could, had she been so
+minded, have married an impressionable young Austrian nobleman of
+independent means who was madly in love with her; but she appears to
+have considered it preferable to become 'an old man's darling,' so to
+speak, and to have selected the middle-aged chevalier rather than
+someone whose age is nearer her own."
+
+"Nothing new in that, Mr. Narkom. Young women before Mlle. Marie de
+Zanoni's day have been known to love elderly men sincerely: young Mrs.
+Bawdrey, in the case of 'The Nine-fingered Skeleton,' is an example of
+that. Still, such marriages are not common, I admit, so when they occur
+one naturally looks to see if there may not be 'other considerations' at
+the bottom of the attachment. Is the chevalier well-to-do? Has he
+expectations of any kind?"
+
+"To the contrary; he has nothing but the salary he earns--which is by no
+means so large as the public imagines; and as he comes of a long line of
+circus performers, all of whom died early and poor, 'expectations,' as
+you put it, do not enter into the affair at all. Apparently the lady did
+marry him for love of him, as she professes and as he imagines;
+although, if what I hear is true, it would appear that she has lately
+outgrown that love; in short, that a Romeo more suitable to her age has
+recently joined the show in the person of a rider called Signor Antonio
+Martinelli; that he has fallen desperately in love with her, and that--"
+
+He bit off his words short and rose to his feet. The door had opened
+suddenly to admit a young man and a young woman, who entered in a state
+of nervous excitement. "Ah, my dear Mr. Scarmelli, you and Miss Zelie
+are most welcome," continued the superintendent. "My friend and I were
+this moment talking about you."
+
+Cleek glanced across the room, and, as was customary with him, made up
+his mind instantly. The girl, despite her association with the arena,
+was a modest, unaffected little thing of about eighteen; the man was a
+straight-looking, clear-eyed, boyish-faced young fellow of about
+eight-and-twenty; well, but by no means flashily, dressed, and carrying
+himself with the air of one who respects himself and demands the respect
+of others. He was evidently an Englishman, despite his Italian _nom de
+théâtre_, and Cleek decided out of hand that he liked him.
+
+"We can shelve 'George Headland' in this instance, Mr. Narkom," he said,
+as the superintendent led forward the pair for the purpose of
+introducing them, and suffered himself to be presented in the name of
+Cleek.
+
+The effect of this was electrical; would, in fact, had he been a vain
+man, have been sufficient to gratify him to the fullest, for the girl,
+with a little "Oh!" of amazement, drew back and stood looking at him
+with a sort of awe that rounded her eyes and parted her lips, while the
+man leaned heavily upon the back of a convenient chair and looked and
+acted as one utterly overcome.
+
+"Cleek!" he repeated, after a moment's despairful silence. "You, sir,
+are that great man? This is a misfortune, indeed."
+
+"A misfortune, my friend? Why a 'misfortune,' pray? Do you think the
+riddle you have brought is beyond my powers?"
+
+"Oh, no; not that--never that!" he made reply. "If there is any one man
+in the world who could get at the bottom of it, could solve the mystery
+of the lion's change, the lion's smile, you are that man, sir, you. That
+is the misfortune: that you could do it, and yet--I cannot expect it,
+cannot avail myself of this great opportunity. Look! I am doing it all
+on my own initiative, sir--all for the sake of Zelie and that dear,
+lovable old chap, her father. I have saved fifty-eight pounds, Mr.
+Cleek. I had hoped that that might tempt a clever detective to take up
+the case; but what is such a sum to such a man as you?"
+
+"If that is all that stands in the way, don't let it worry you, my good
+fellow," said Cleek, with a smile. "Put your fifty-eight pounds in your
+pocket against your wedding-day, and--good luck to you. I'll take the
+case for nothing. Now then, what is it? What the dickens did you mean
+just now when you spoke about 'the lion's change' and 'the lion's
+smile'? What lion--Nero? Here, sit down and tell me all about it."
+
+"There is little enough to tell, Heaven knows," said young Scarmelli,
+with a sigh, accepting the invitation after he had gratefully wrung
+Cleek's hand, and his fiancée, with a burst of happy tears, had caught
+it up as it slipped from his and had covered it with thankful kisses.
+"That, Mr. Cleek, is where the greatest difficulty lies--there is so
+little to explain that has any bearing upon the matter at all. It is
+only that the lion--Nero, that is, the chevalier's special pride and
+special pet--seems to have undergone some great and inexplicable change,
+as though he is at times under some evil spell, which lasts but a moment
+and yet makes that moment a tragical one. It began, no one knows why nor
+how, two weeks ago, when, without hint or warning, he killed the person
+he loved best in all the world--the chevalier's eldest son. Doubtless
+you have heard of that?"
+
+"Yes," said Cleek. "But what you are now telling me sheds a new light
+upon the matter. Am I to understand, then, that all that talk, on the
+bills and in the newspapers, about the lion being a savage and a
+dangerous one is not true, and that he really is attached to his owner,
+and his owner's family?"
+
+"That is the truth," replied Scarmelli; "Nero is, in fact, the gentlest,
+most docile, most intelligent beast of his kind living. In short, sir,
+there's not a 'bite' in him; and, added to that, he is over thirty years
+old. Zelie--Miss di Roma--will tell you that he was born in captivity;
+that from his earliest moment he has been the pet of her family; that he
+was, so to speak, raised with her and her brothers; that, as children,
+they often slept with him; that he will follow those he loves like any
+dog, fight for them, protect them, let them tweak his ears and pull his
+tail without showing the slightest resentment, even though they may
+actually hurt him. Indeed, he is so general a favourite, Mr. Cleek, that
+there isn't an attendant connected with the show who would not, and,
+indeed, has not at some time, put his head in the beast's mouth, just as
+the chevalier does in public, certain that no harm could possibly come
+of the act.
+
+"You may judge, then, sir, what a shock, what a horrible surprise it was
+when the tragedy of two weeks ago occurred. Often, to add zest to the
+performance, the chevalier varies it by allowing his children to put
+their heads into Nero's mouth instead of doing so himself, merely making
+a fake of it that he has the lion under such control that he will
+respect any command given by him. That is what happened on that night.
+Young Henri was chosen to put his head into Nero's mouth, and did so
+without fear or hesitation. He took the beast's jaws and pulled them
+apart, and laid his head within them, as he had done a hundred times
+before; but of a sudden an appalling, an uncanny, thing happened. It was
+as though some supernatural power laid hold of the beast and made a
+thing of horror of what a moment before had been a noble-looking animal;
+for suddenly a strange hissing noise issued from its jaws, its lips
+curled upward until it smiled--smiled, Mr. Cleek!--oh, the ghastliest,
+most awful, most blood-curdling smile imaginable--and then, with a sort
+of mingled snarl and bark, it clamped its jaws together and crushed the
+boy's head as though it were an egg-shell!"
+
+He put up his hands and covered his eyes as if to shut out some
+appalling vision, and for a moment or two nothing was heard but the low
+sobbing of the victim's sister.
+
+"As suddenly as that change had come over the beast, Mr. Cleek,"
+Scarmelli went on presently, "just so suddenly it passed, and it was the
+docile, affectionate animal it had been for years. It seemed to
+understand that some harm had befallen its favourite--for Henri was its
+favourite--and, curling itself up beside his body, it licked his hands
+and moaned disconsolately in a manner almost human. That's all there is
+to tell, sir, save that at times the horrid change, the appalling smile,
+repeat themselves when either the chevalier or his son bend to put a
+head within its jaws, and but for their watchfulness and quickness the
+tragedy of that other awful night would surely be repeated. Sir, it is
+not natural; I know now, as surely as if the lion itself had spoken,
+that someone is at the bottom of this ghastly thing, that some human
+agency is at work, some unknown enemy of the chevalier's is doing
+something, God alone knows what or why, to bring about his death as his
+son's was brought about."
+
+And here, for the first time, the chevalier's daughter spoke.
+
+"Ah, tell him all, Jim, tell him all," she said, in her pretty broken
+English. "Monsieur, may the good God in heaven forgive me, if I wrong
+her; but--but--Ah, Monsieur Cleek, sometimes I feel that she, my
+stepmother, and that man, that 'rider' who knows not how to ride as the
+artist should--monsieur, I cannot help it, but I feel that they are at
+the bottom of it."
+
+"Yes, but why?" queried Cleek. "I have heard of your father's second
+marriage, mademoiselle, and of this Signor Antonio Martinelli, to whom
+you allude. Mr. Narkom has told me. But why should you connect these two
+persons with this inexplicable thing? Does your father do so, too?"
+
+"Oh, no! Oh, no!" she answered excitedly. "He does not even know that we
+suspect, Jim and I. He loves her, monsieur. It would kill him to doubt
+her."
+
+"Then why should you?"
+
+"Because I cannot help it, monsieur. God knows, I would if I could, for
+I care for her dearly--I am grateful to her for making my father happy.
+My brothers, too, cared for her. We believed she loved him; we believed
+it was because of that she married him. And yet--and yet--Ah, monsieur,
+how can I fail to feel as I do when this change in the lion came with
+that man's coming? And she--ah, monsieur, she is always with him. Why
+does she curry favour of him and his rich friend?"
+
+"He has a rich friend, then?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur. The company was in difficulties; Monsieur van Zant, the
+proprietor, could not make it pay, and it was upon the point of
+disbanding. But, suddenly, this indifferent performer, this rider who
+is, after all, but a poor amateur and not fit to appear with a company
+of trained artists, suddenly this Signor Martinelli comes to Monsieur
+van Zant to say that, if he will engage him, he has a rich friend--one
+Señor Sperati, a Brazilian coffee planter--who will 'back' the show with
+his money and buy a partnership in it. Of course, M. van Zant accepted;
+and since then this Señor Sperati has travelled everywhere with us, has
+had the entrée like one of us, and his friend, the bad rider, has fairly
+bewitched my stepmother, for she is ever with him, ever with them both,
+and--and--Ah, mon Dieu! the lion smiles, and my people die! Why does it
+'smile' for no others? Why is it only they--my father, my brother--they
+alone?"
+
+"Is that a fact?" said Cleek, turning to young Scarmelli. "You say that
+all connected with the circus have so little fear of the beast that even
+attendants sometimes do this foolhardy trick. Does the lion never
+'smile' for any of those?"
+
+"Never, Mr. Cleek--never under any circumstances. Nor does it always
+smile for the chevalier and his son. That is the mystery of it. One
+never knows when it is going to happen--one never knows why it does
+happen. But if you could see that uncanny smile--"
+
+"I should like to," interposed Cleek. "That is, if it might happen
+without any tragical result. Hum-m-m! Nobody but the chevalier and the
+chevalier's son! And when does it happen in their case--during the
+course of the show, or when there is nobody about but those connected
+with it?"
+
+"Oh, always during the course of the entertainment, sir. Indeed, it has
+never happened at any other time--never at all."
+
+"Oho!" said Cleek. "Then it is only when they are dressed and made up
+for the performance, eh? Hum-m-m! I see." Then he relapsed into silence
+for a moment, and sat tracing circles on the floor with the toe of his
+boot. But, of a sudden: "You came here directly after the matinee, I
+suppose?" he queried, glancing up at young Scarmelli.
+
+"Yes; in fact, before it was wholly over."
+
+"I see. Then it is just possible that all the performers have not yet
+got into their civilian clothes. Couldn't manage to take me round behind
+the scenes, so to speak, if Mr. Narkom will lend us his motor to hurry
+us there? Could, eh? That's good. I think I'd like to have a look at
+that lion and, if you don't mind, an introduction to the parties
+concerned. No! don't fear; we won't startle anybody by revealing my
+identity or the cause of the visit. Let us say that I'm a vet, to whom
+you have appealed for an opinion, regarding Nero's queer conduct. All
+ready, Mr. Narkom? Thanks--then let's be off."
+
+Two minutes later the red limousine was at the door, and, stepping into
+it with his two companions, he was whizzed away to Olympia and the first
+step towards the solution of the riddle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+As it is the custom of those connected with the world of the circus to
+eat, sleep, have their whole being, as it were, within the environment
+of the show, to the total exclusion of hotels, boarding-houses, or
+outside lodgings of any sort, he found on his arrival at his destination
+the entire company assembled in what was known as the "living-tent,"
+chatting, laughing, reading, playing games, and killing time generally
+whilst waiting for the call to the "dining-tent," and this gave him an
+opportunity to meet all the persons connected with the "case," from the
+"chevalier" himself to the Brazilian coffee planter who was "backing"
+the show.
+
+He found this latter individual a somewhat sullen and taciturn man of
+middle age, who had more the appearance of an Austrian than a Brazilian,
+and with a swinging gait and an uprightness of bearing which were not to
+be misunderstood.
+
+"Humph! Known military training," was Cleek's mental comment as soon as
+he saw the man walk. "Got it in Germany, too; I know that peculiar
+'swing.' What's his little game, I wonder? And what's a Brazilian doing
+in the army of the Kaiser? And, having been in it, what's he doing
+dropping into this line--backing a circus, and travelling with it like a
+Bohemian?"
+
+But although these thoughts interested him, he did not put them into
+words nor take anybody into his confidence regarding them.
+
+As for the other members of the company, he found "the indifferent
+rider," known as Signor Antonio Martinelli, an undoubted Irishman of
+about thirty years of age, extremely handsome, but with a certain
+"shiftiness" of the eye which was far from inspiring confidence, and
+with a trick of the tongue which suggested that his baptismal
+certificate probably bore the name of Anthony Martin. He found, too,
+that all he had heard regarding the youth and beauty of the chevalier's
+second wife was quite correct, and although she devoted herself a great
+deal to the Brazilian coffee planter and the Irish-Italian "Martinelli,"
+she had a way of looking over at her middle-aged spouse, without his
+knowledge, that left no doubt in Cleek's mind regarding the real state
+of her feelings towards the man. And last, but not least by any means,
+he found the chevalier himself a frank, open-minded, open-hearted,
+lovable man who ought not, in the natural order of things, to have an
+enemy in the world. Despite his high-falutin' _nom de théâtre_, he was
+Belgian--a big, soft-hearted, easy-going, unsuspicious fellow, who
+worshipped his wife, adored his children, and loved every creature of
+the animal world.
+
+How well that love was returned, Cleek saw when he went with him to that
+part of the building where his animals were kept, and watched them
+"nose" his hand or lick his cheek whenever the opportunity offered. But
+Nero, the lion, was perhaps the greatest surprise of all, for so tame,
+so docile, so little feared was the animal, that its cage-door was open,
+and they found one of the attendants squatting cross-legged inside and
+playing with it as though it were a kitten.
+
+"There he is, doctor," said the chevalier, waving his hand towards the
+beast. "Ah, I will not believe that it was anything but an accident,
+sir. He loved my boy. He would hurt no one that is kind to him. Fetch
+him out, Tom, and let the doctor see him at close quarters."
+
+Despite all these assurances of the animal's docility, Cleek could not
+but remember what the creature had done, and, in consequence, did not
+feel quite at ease when it came lumbering out of the cage with the
+attendant and ranged up alongside of him, rubbing its huge head against
+the chevalier's arm after the manner of an affectionate cat.
+
+"Don't be frightened, sir," said Tom, noticing this. "Nothing more'n a
+big dog, sir. Had the care of him for eight years, I have--haven't I,
+chevalier?--and never a growl or scratch out of him. No 'smile' for your
+old Tom, is there, Nero, boy, eh? No fear! Ain't a thing as anybody does
+with him, sir, that I wouldn't do off-hand and feel quite safe."
+
+"Even to putting your head in his mouth?" queried Cleek.
+
+"Lord yes!" returned the man, with a laugh. "That's nothing. Done it
+many a day. Look here!" With that he pulled the massive jaws apart, and,
+bending down, laid his head within them. The lion stood perfectly
+passive, and did not offer to close his mouth until it was again empty.
+It was then that Cleek remembered and glanced round at young Scarmelli.
+
+"He never 'smiles' for any but the chevalier and his son, I believe you
+said," he remarked. "I wonder if the chevalier himself would be as safe
+if he were to make a feint of doing that?" For the chevalier, like most
+of the other performers, had not changed his dress after the matinee,
+since the evening performance was soon to begin; and if, as Cleek had an
+idea, that the matter of costume and make-up had anything to do with the
+mystery of the thing, here, surely, was a chance to learn.
+
+"Make a feint of it? Certainly I will, doctor," the chevalier replied.
+"But why a feint? Why not the actual thing?"
+
+"No, please--at least, not until I have seen how the beast is likely to
+take it. Just put your head down close to his muzzle, chevalier. Go
+slow, please, and keep your head at a safe distance."
+
+The chevalier obeyed. Bringing his head down until it was on a level
+with the animal's own, he opened the ponderous jaws. The beast was as
+passive as before; and, finding no trace of the coming of the mysterious
+and dreaded "smile," he laid his face between the double row of gleaming
+teeth, held it there a moment, and then withdrew it uninjured. Cleek
+took his chin between his thumb and forefinger and pinched it hard. What
+he had just witnessed would seem to refute the idea of either costume or
+make-up having any bearing upon the case.
+
+"Did you do that to-day at the matinee performance, chevalier?" he
+hazarded, after a moment's thoughtfulness.
+
+"Oh, yes," he replied. "It was not my plan to do so, however. I alter my
+performance constantly to give variety. To-day I had arranged for my
+little son to do the trick; but somehow--Ah! I am a foolish man,
+monsieur; I have odd fancies, odd whims, sometimes odd fears,
+since--since that awful night. Something came over me at the last
+moment, just as my boy came into the cage to perform the trick I changed
+my mind. I would not let him do it. I thrust him aside and did the trick
+myself."
+
+"Oho!" said Cleek. "Will the boy do it to-night, then, chevalier?"
+
+"Perhaps," he made reply. "He is still dressed for it. Look, here he
+comes now, monsieur, and my wife, and some of our good friends with him.
+Ah, they are so interested, they are anxious to hear what report you
+make upon Nero's condition."
+
+Cleek glanced round. Several members of the company were advancing
+towards them from the "living-tent." In the lead was the boy, a little
+fellow of about twelve years of age, fancifully dressed in tights and
+tunic. By his side was his stepmother, looking pale and anxious. But
+although both Signor Martinelli and the Brazilian coffee planter came to
+the edge of the tent and looked out, it was observable that they
+immediately withdrew, and allowed the rest of the party to proceed
+without them.
+
+"Dearest, I have just heard from Tom that you and the doctor are
+experimenting with Nero," said the chevalier's wife, as she came up with
+the others and joined him. "Oh, do be careful, do! Much as I like the
+animal, doctor, I shall never feel safe until my husband parts with it
+or gives up that ghastly 'trick.'"
+
+"My dearest, my dearest, how absurdly you talk!" interrupted her
+husband. "You know well that without that my act would be commonplace,
+that no manager would want either it or me. And how, pray, should we
+live if that were to happen?"
+
+"There would always be my salary; we could make that do."
+
+"As if I would consent to live upon your earnings and add nothing
+myself! No, no! I shall never do that--never. It is not as though that
+foolish dream of long ago had come true, and I might hope one day to
+retire. I am of the circus, and of it I shall always remain."
+
+"I wish you might not; I wish the dream might come true, even yet," she
+made reply. "Why shouldn't it? Wilder ones have come true for other
+people; why should they not for you?"
+
+Before her husband could make any response to this, the whole trend of
+the conversation was altered by the boy.
+
+"Father," he said, "am I to do the trick to-night? Señor Sperati says it
+is silly of me to sit about all dressed and ready if I am to do nothing,
+like a little super, instead of a performer and an artist."
+
+"Oh, but that is not kind of the señor to say that," his father replied,
+soothing his ruffled feelings. "You are an artist, of course; never
+super--no, never. But if you shall do the trick or not, I cannot say. It
+will depend, as it did at the matinee. If I feel it is right, you shall
+do it; but if I feel it is wrong, then it must be no. You see, doctor,"
+catching Cleek's eye, "what a little enthusiast he is, and with how
+little fear."
+
+"Yes, I do see, chevalier; but I wonder if he would be willing to humour
+me in something? As he is not afraid, I've an odd fancy to see how he'd
+go about the thing. Would you mind letting him make the feint you
+yourself made a few minutes ago? Only, I must insist that in this
+instance it be nothing more than a feint, chevalier. Don't let him go
+too near at the time of doing it. Don't let him open the lion's jaws
+with his own hands. You do that. Do you mind?"
+
+"Of a certainty not, monsieur. Gustave, show the good doctor how you go
+about it when papa lets you do the trick. But you are not really to do
+it just yet, only to bend the head near to Nero's mouth. Now then, come,
+see."
+
+As he spoke he divided the lion's jaws and signalled the child to bend.
+He obeyed. Very slowly the little head drooped nearer to the gaping,
+full-fanged mouth, very slowly and very carefully, for Cleek's hand was
+on the boy's shoulder, Cleek's eyes were on the lion's face. The huge
+brute was as meek and as undisturbed as before, and there was actual
+kindness in its fixed eyes. But of a sudden, when the child's head was
+on a level with those gaping jaws, the lips curled backward in a ghastly
+parody of a smile, a weird, uncanny sound whizzed through the bared
+teeth, the passive body bulked as with a shock, and Cleek had just time
+to snatch the boy back when the great jaws struck together with a snap
+that would have splintered a skull of iron had they closed upon it.
+
+The hideous and mysterious "smile" had come again, and, brief though it
+was, its passing found the boy's sister lying on the ground in a dead
+faint, the boy's stepmother cowering back, with covered eyes and shrill,
+affrighted screams, and the boy's father leaning, shaken and white,
+against the empty case and nursing a bleeding hand.
+
+In an instant the whole place was in an uproar. "It smiled again! It
+smiled again!" ran in broken gasps from lip to lip; but through it all
+Cleek stood there, clutching the frightened child close to him, but not
+saying one word, not making one sound. Across the dark arena came a rush
+of running footsteps, and presently Señor Sperati came panting up,
+breathless and pale with excitement.
+
+"What's the matter? What's wrong?" he cried. "Is it the lion again? Is
+the boy killed? Speak up!"
+
+"No," said Cleek very quietly, "nor will he be. The father will do the
+trick to-night, not the son. We've had a fright and a lesson, that's
+all." And, putting the sobbing child from him, he caught young
+Scarmelli's arm and hurried him away. "Take me somewhere that we can
+talk in safety," he said. "We are on the threshold of the end,
+Scarmelli, and I want your help."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Cleek, have you any idea--any clue?"
+
+"Yes, more than a clue. I know how, but I have not yet discovered why.
+Now, if you know, tell me what did the chevalier mean, what did his wife
+mean, when they spoke of a dream that might have come true, but didn't?
+Do you know? Have you any idea? Or, if you have not, do you think your
+fiancée has?"
+
+"Why, yes," he made reply. "Zelie has told me about it often. It is of a
+fortune that was promised and never materialized. Oh, such a long time
+ago, when he was quite a young man, the chevalier saved the life of a
+very great man, a Prussian nobleman of great wealth. He was profuse in
+his thanks and his promises, that nobleman; swore that he would make him
+independent for life, and all that sort of thing."
+
+"And didn't?"
+
+"No, he didn't. After a dozen letters promising the chevalier things
+that almost turned his head, the man dropped him entirely. In the midst
+of his dreams of wealth a letter came from the old skinflint's steward
+enclosing him the sum of six hundred marks, and telling him that as his
+master had come to the conclusion that wealth would be more of a curse
+than a blessing to a man of his class and station, he had thought better
+of his rash promise. He begged to tender the enclosed as a proper and
+sufficient reward for the service rendered, and 'should not trouble the
+young man any further.' Of course, the chevalier didn't reply. Who
+would, after having been promised wealth, education, everything one had
+confessed that one most desired? Being young, high-spirited, and
+bitterly, bitterly disappointed, the chevalier bundled the six hundred
+marks back without a single word, and that was the last he ever heard of
+the Baron von Steinheid from that day to this."
+
+"The Baron von Steinheid?" repeated Cleek, pulling himself up as though
+he had trodden upon something. "Do you mean to say that the man whose
+life he saved--Scarmelli--tell me something: Does it happen by any
+chance that the 'Chevalier di Roma's' real name is Peter Janssen
+Pullaine?"
+
+"Yes," said Scarmelli, in reply. "That is his name. Why?"
+
+"Nothing, but that it solves the riddle, and--the lion has smiled for
+the last time! No, don't ask me any questions; there isn't time to
+explain. Get me as quickly as you can to the place where we left Mr.
+Narkom's motor. Will this way lead me out? Thanks! Get back to the
+others, and look for me again in two hours' time; and--Scarmelli!"
+
+"Yes, sir?"
+
+"One last word--don't let that boy get out of your sight for one
+instant, and don't, no matter at what cost, let the chevalier do his
+turn to-night before I get back. Good-bye for a time. I'm off."
+
+Then he moved like a fleetly-passing shadow round the angle of the
+building, and two minutes later he was with Narkom in the red limousine.
+
+"To the German embassy as fast as we can fly," he said as he scrambled
+in. "I've something to tell you about that lion's smile, Mr. Narkom, and
+I'll tell it while we're on the wing."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+It was nine o'clock and after. The great show at Olympia was at its
+height; the packed house was roaring with delight over the daring
+equestrianship of "Mlle. Marie de Zanoni," and the sound of the cheers
+rolled in to the huge dressing-tent, where the artists awaited their
+several turns, and the chevalier, in spangled trunks and tights, all
+ready for his call, sat hugging his child and shivering like a man with
+the ague.
+
+"Come, come, buck up, man, and don't funk it like this," said Señor
+Sperati, who had graciously consented to assist him with his dressing
+because of the injury to his hand. "The idea of you losing your nerve,
+you of all men, and because of a little affair like that. You know very
+well that Nero is as safe as a kitten to-night, that he never has two
+smiling turns in the same week, much less the same day. Your act's the
+next on the programme. Buck up and go at it like a man."
+
+"I can't, señor, I can't!" almost wailed the chevalier. "My nerve is
+gone. Never, if I live to be a thousand, shall I forget that awful
+moment, that appalling 'smile.' I tell you, there is wizardry in the
+thing; the beast is bewitched. My work in the arena is done--done for
+ever, señor. I shall never have courage to look into the beast's jaws
+again."
+
+"Rot! You're not going to ruin the show, are you, and after all the
+money I've put into it? If you have no care for yourself, it's your duty
+to think about me. You can at least try. I tell you you must try! Here,
+take a sip of brandy, and see if that won't put a bit of courage into
+you. Hello!" as a burst of applause and the thud of a horse's hoofs down
+the passage to the stables came rolling in, "there's your wife's turn
+over at last; and there--listen! the ringmaster is announcing yours. Get
+up, man; get up and go out."
+
+"I can't, señor--I can't! I can't!"
+
+"But I tell you you must."
+
+And just here an interruption came.
+
+"Bad advice, my dear captain," said a voice--Cleek's voice--from the
+other end of the tent; and with a twist and a snarl the "señor" screwed
+round on his heel in time to see that other intruders were putting in an
+appearance as well as this unwelcome one.
+
+"Who the deuce asked you for your opinion?" rapped out the "señor"
+savagely. "And what are you doing in here, anyhow? If we want the
+service of a vet., we're quite capable of getting one for ourselves
+without having him shove his presence upon us unasked."
+
+"You are quite capable of doing a great many things, my dear captain,
+even making lions smile!" said Cleek serenely. "It would appear that the
+gallant Captain von Gossler, nephew, and, in the absence of one who has
+a better claim, heir to the late Baron von Steinheid--That's it, nab the
+beggar. Played, sir, played! Hustle him out and into the cab, with his
+precious confederate, the Irish-Italian 'signor,' and make a clean sweep
+of the pair of them. You'll find it a neck-stretching game, captain, I'm
+afraid, when the jury comes to hear of that poor boy's death and your
+beastly part in it."
+
+By this time the tent was in an uproar, for the chevalier's wife had
+come hurrying in, the chevalier's daughter was on the verge of
+hysterics, and the chevalier's prospective son-in-law was alternately
+hugging the great beast-tamer and then shaking his hand and generally
+deporting himself like a respectable young man who had suddenly gone
+daft.
+
+"Governor!" he cried, half laughing, half sobbing. "Bully old governor.
+It's over--it's over. Never any more danger, never any more hard times,
+never any more lion's smiles."
+
+"No, never," said Cleek. "Come here, Madame Pullaine, and hear the good
+news with the rest. You married for love, and you've proved a brick. The
+dream's come true, and the life of ease and of luxury is yours at last,
+Mr. Pullaine."
+
+"But, sir, I--I do not understand," stammered the chevalier. "What has
+happened? Why have you arrested the Señor Sperati? What has he done? I
+cannot comprehend."
+
+"Can't you? Well, it so happens, chevalier, that the Baron von Steinheid
+died something like two months ago, leaving the sum of sixty thousand
+pounds sterling to one Peter Janssen Pullaine and the heirs of his body,
+and that a certain Captain von Gossler, son of the baron's only sister,
+meant to make sure that there was no Peter Janssen Pullaine and no heirs
+of his body to inherit one farthing of it."
+
+"Sir! Dear God, can this be true?"
+
+"Perfectly true, chevalier. The late baron's solicitors have been
+advertising for some time for news regarding the whereabouts of Peter
+Janssen Pullaine, and if you had not so successfully hidden your real
+name under that of your professional one, no doubt some of your
+colleagues would have put you in the way of finding it out long ago. The
+baron did not go back on his word and did not act ungratefully. His
+will, dated twenty-nine years ago, was never altered in a single
+particular. I rather suspect that that letter and that gift of money
+which came to you in the name of his steward, and was supposed to close
+the affair entirely, was the work of his nephew, the gentleman whose
+exit has just been made. A crafty individual that, chevalier, and he
+laid his plans cleverly and well. Who would be likely to connect him
+with the death of a beast-tamer in a circus, who had perished in what
+would appear an accident of his calling? Ah, yes, the lion's smile was a
+clever idea--he was a sharp rascal to think of it."
+
+"Sir! You--you do not mean to tell me that he caused that? He never went
+near the beast--never--even once."
+
+"Not necessary, chevalier. He kept near you and your children; that was
+all that he needed to do to carry out his plan. The lion was as much his
+victim as anybody else--you or your children. What it did it could not
+help doing. The very simplicity of the plan was its passport to success.
+All that was required was the unsuspected sifting of snuff on the hair
+of the person whose head was to be put in the beast's mouth. The lion's
+smile was not, properly speaking, a smile at all, chevalier; it was the
+torture which came of snuff getting into its nostrils, and when the
+beast made that uncanny noise and snapped its jaws together, it was
+simply the outcome of a sneeze. The thing would be farcical if it were
+not that tragedy hangs on the thread of it, and that a life, a useful
+human life, was destroyed by means of it. Yes, it was clever, it was
+diabolically clever; but you know what Bobby Burns says about the best
+laid schemes of mice and men. There's always a Power--higher up--that
+works the ruin of them."
+
+With that he walked by, and, going to young Scarmelli, put out his hand.
+
+"You're a good chap and you've got a good girl, so I expect you will be
+happy," he said; and then lowered his voice so that the rest might not
+reach the chevalier's ears. "You were wrong to suspect the little
+stepmother," he added. "She's true blue, Scarmelli. She was only playing
+up to those fellows because she was afraid the 'señor' would drop out
+and close the show if she didn't, and that she and her husband and the
+children would be thrown out of work. She loves her husband--that's
+certain--and she's a good little woman; and, Scarmelli!"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Cleek?"
+
+"There's nothing better than a good woman on this earth, my lad. Always
+remember that. I think you, too, have found one. I hope you have. I hope
+you'll be happy. What's that? Owe me? Not a rap, my boy. Or, if you feel
+that you must give me something, give me your prayers for equal luck,
+and--send me a slice of the wedding cake. Good-night!"
+
+And twisted round on his heel and walked out; making his way out to the
+streets and facing the journey to Clarges Street afoot. For to be
+absolutely without envy of any sort is not given to anything born of
+woman; and the sight of this man's happiness, the knowledge of this
+man's reward, brought upon him a bitter recollection of how far he still
+was from his own.
+
+Would he ever get that reward? he wondered. Would he ever be nearer to
+it than he was to-night? It hurt--yes, it hurt horribly, sometimes, this
+stone-cold silence, this walking always in shadowed paths without a ray
+of light, without the certainty of arriving _anywhere_, though he plod
+onward for a lifetime--and the old feeling of savage resentment, the old
+sense of self-pity--the surest thing on God's earth to blaze a trail for
+the oncoming of the worst that is in a man--bit at the soul of him and
+touched him on the raw again.
+
+He knew what that boded; and he also knew the antidote.
+
+"Dollops, they broke into our holiday--they did us out of a part of it,
+didn't they, old chap?" he said, when he reached home at last and found
+the boy anxiously awaiting him. "Well, we'll have a day for every hour
+they deprived us of, a whole day, bonny boy. Pack up again and we'll be
+off to the land as God made it, and where God's things still live; and
+we'll have a fortnight of it--a whole blessed fortnight, my boy, with
+the river and the fields and the flowers and the dreams that hide in
+trees."
+
+Dollops made no reply. He simply bolted for the kit-bag and began to
+pack at once. And the morrow, when it came, found these two--the servant
+who was still a boy, and the master who had discovered the way back to
+boyhood's secrets--forging up the shining river and seeking the Land of
+Nightingales again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+The spring had blossomed itself out and the summer had bloomed itself
+in. The holiday up the river was a thing of the past; the dreams of the
+Dreamer had given place to those sterner phases of life which must be
+coped with by the Realist; and Cleek was "back in harness" again.
+
+A half-dozen more or less important cases had occupied his time since
+his return; but, although he had carried these to a successful issue and
+had again been lauded to the skies by the daily papers, the one word of
+praise from the one quarter whence he so earnestly desired to hear was
+never forthcoming.
+
+Of Ailsa Lorne he had heard not a solitary thing, either directly or
+indirectly, since that day when he had put her into the taxicab at
+Charing Cross Station and saw her safely on her way to Hampstead before
+he went his own.
+
+True, her silence was, as he had agreed, an admission that all was well
+with her and that she had secured the position in question; true it was
+also that it was not for her to take the initiative and break that
+silence; that he fully realised how impossible, for a girl born and bred
+as she had been, to voluntarily open up a correspondence with a man who
+was as yet little more than a mere acquaintance; but, all the same, he
+chafed under that silence and spent many a wakeful hour at night
+brooding on it.
+
+In his heart he knew that if any advance was to be made, that advance
+was the man's duty, not the woman's; but the fear that she would think
+he was thrusting himself upon her, the dread that even yet the white
+soul of her could not but shrink from a closer association with him,
+kept him from taking one step towards breaking the silence he deplored.
+
+The French have a proverb which says: "It is always the unexpected that
+happens." And it was the unexpected that happened in this case.
+
+In the midst of his dejection, in the very depths of returning despair,
+there came to him this note from Mr. Narkom:
+
+"My Dear Cleek,
+
+"Kindly refrain from going out this evening. I shall call about nine
+o'clock, bringing with me Miss Ailsa Lorne, whom you doubtless remember,
+and her present patron, Angela, Countess Chepstow, the young widow of
+that ripping old warhorse, who, as you may recall, quelled that
+dangerous and fanatical rising of the Cingalese at Trincomalee. These
+ladies wish to see you with reference to a most extraordinary case, an
+inexplicable mystery, which both they and I believe no man but yourself
+can satisfactorily probe.
+
+"Yours in haste,
+
+"Maverick Narkom."
+
+So, then, he was to see her again, to touch her hand, hear her voice,
+look into the eyes that had lighted him back from the path to
+destruction! Cleek's heart began to hammer and his pulses to drum.
+Needless to say, he took extraordinary care with his toilet that
+evening, with the result that when the ladies arrived there was nothing
+even vaguely suggestive of the detective about him.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Cleek, do help us--please do," implored Ailsa, after the first
+greetings were over. "Lady Chepstow is almost beside herself with dread
+and anxiety over the inexplicable thing, and I have persuaded her that
+if anybody on earth can solve the mystery of it, avert the new and
+appalling danger of it, it is you! Oh, say that you will take the case,
+say that you will save little Lord Chepstow and put an end to this
+maddening mystery!"
+
+"Little Lord Chepstow?" repeated Cleek, glancing over at the countess,
+who stood, a very Niobe in her grief and despair, holding out two
+imploring hands in silent supplication. "That is your ladyship's son, is
+it not?"
+
+"Yes," she answered, with a sort of wail; "my only son--my only child.
+All that I have to love--all that I have to live for in this world."
+
+"And you think the little fellow is in peril?"
+
+"Yes--in deadly peril."
+
+"From what source? From whose hand?"
+
+"I don't know--I don't know!" she answered, distractedly. "Sometimes I
+am wild enough to suspect even Captain Hawksley, unjust and unkind as it
+seems."
+
+"Captain Hawksley? Who is he?"
+
+"My late husband's cousin; heir, after my little son, to the title and
+estates. He is very poor, deeply in debt, and the inheritance would put
+an end to all his difficulties. But he is fond of my son; they seem
+almost to worship each other. I, too, am fond of him. But, for all that,
+I have to remember that he and he alone would benefit by Cedric's death,
+and--and--wicked as it seems--Oh, Mr. Cleek, help me! Direct me!
+Sometimes I doubt him. Sometimes I doubt everybody. Sometimes I think of
+those other days, that other mystery, that land which reeks of them; and
+then--and then--Oh, that horrible Ceylon! I wish I had never set foot in
+it in all my life!"
+
+Her agitation and distress were so great as to make her utterances only
+half coherent; and Ailsa, realising that this sort of thing must only
+perplex Cleek, and leave him in the dark regarding the matter upon which
+they had come to consult him, gently interposed.
+
+"Do try to calm yourself and to tell the story as briefly as possible,
+dear Lady Chepstow," she advised. Then, taking the initiative, added
+quietly, "It begins, Mr. Cleek, at a period when his little lordship,
+whose governess I have the honour to be, was but two years old, and at
+Trincomalee, where his late father was stationed with his regiment four
+years ago. Somebody, for some absurd reason, had set afoot a ridiculous
+rumour that the English had received orders from the Throne to stamp out
+every religion but their own--in short, if the British were not
+exterminated, dreadful desecrations would occur, as they were
+determined--"
+
+"To loot all the temples erected to Buddha, destroy the images, and make
+a bonfire of all the sacred relics," finished Cleek himself. "I rarely
+forget history, Miss Lorne, especially when it is such recent history as
+that memorable Buddhist rising at Trincomalee. It began upon an utterly
+unfounded, ridiculous rumour; it terminated, if my memory serves me
+correctly, in something akin to the very thing it was supposed to avert.
+That is to say, during the outburst of fanaticism, that most sacred of
+all relics--the holy tooth of Buddha--disappeared mysteriously from the
+temple of Dambool, and in spite of the fact that many lacs of rupees
+were offered for its recovery, it has never, I believe, been found, or
+even traced, to this day, although a huge fortune awaits the restorer,
+and, with it, overpowering honours from the native princes. Those must
+have been trying times, Lady Chepstow, for the commandant's wife, the
+mother of the commandant's only child?"
+
+"Horrible! horrible!" she answered, with a shudder, forgetting for an
+instant the dangers of the present in the recollection of the tragical
+past. "For a period, our lives were not safe; murder hid behind every
+bush, skulked in the shadow of every rock and tree, and we knew not at
+what minute the little garrison might be rushed under cover of the
+darkness and every soul slaughtered before the relief force could come
+to our assistance. I died a hundred deaths in a day in my anxiety for
+husband and child. And once the very zealousness of our comrades almost
+brought about the horror I feared. Oh!"--with a shudder of horrified
+recollection and a covering of the eyes, as if to shut out the memory of
+it--"Oh! that night--that horrible night! Unknown to any of us, my baby,
+rising from the bed where I had left him sleeping, whilst I went outside
+to stand by Lord Chepstow, wandered beyond the line of defence, and,
+before anybody realised it, was out in the open, alone and unprotected.
+
+"Ferralt, the cook, saw him first; saw, too, the crouching figure of a
+native, armed with a gun, in the shadow of the undergrowth. Without
+hesitation the brave fellow rushed out, fell upon the native before he
+could dart away, wrenched the gun from him, and brained him with the
+butt. A cry of the utmost horror rang out upon the air, and, uttering
+it, another native bounded out from a hiding-place close to where the
+first had been killed, and flew zigzagging across the open, where Cedric
+was. Evidently he had no intention of molesting the little fellow, for
+he fled straight on past him, still shrieking after the accident
+occurred; but to Ferralt it seemed as if his intention were to murder
+the boy, and, clapping the gun to his shoulder, in a panic of
+excitement, he fired. If it had been one of the soldiers,
+someone--anyone--who understood marksmanship and was not likely to be in
+a nervous quake over the circumstances, the thing could not have
+happened, although the fugitive was careering along in a direct line
+with my precious little one. But, with Ferralt--Oh, Mr. Cleek, can you
+imagine my horror when I saw the flash of that shot, heard a shrill cry
+of pain, and saw my child drop to the ground?"
+
+"Good heaven!" exclaimed Cleek, agitated in spite of himself. "Then the
+blunderer shot the child instead of the native?"
+
+"Yes; and was so horrified by the mishap that, without waiting to learn
+the result, he rushed blindly to the brink of a deep ravine, and threw
+himself headlong to death. But the injury to Cedric was only a trifling
+one after all. The bullet seemed merely to have grazed him in passing,
+and, beyond a ragged gash in the fleshy part of the thigh, he was not
+harmed at all. That I myself dressed and bandaged, and in a couple of
+weeks it was quite healed. But it taught me a lesson, that night of
+horror, and I never let my baby out of my sight for one instant from
+that time until the rising was entirely quelled.
+
+"As suddenly as it had started, the trouble subsided. Native priests
+came under a flag of truce to Lord Chepstow, and confessed their error,
+acknowledged that they had never any right to suspect the British of any
+design upon their gods, for the loot of the temple had actually taken
+place in the midst of the rising, and they knew that it could not have
+come from the hands of the soldiers, for they had had them under
+surveillance all the time, and not one person of the race had ventured
+within a mile of the temple.
+
+"Yet the tooth of Buddha had been taken, the sacred tooth which is more
+holy to Buddhists than the statue of Gautama Buddha itself. Their
+remorse was very real, and after that, to the day of his death from
+fever, eighteen months afterward, they could never show enough honour to
+Lord Chepstow. And even then their favour continued. They transferred to
+the little son the homage they had done the father, but in a far, far
+greater degree. If he had been a king's son they could have shown him no
+greater honour. Native princes showered him with rich gifts; if he
+walked out, his path was strewn with flowers by bowing maidens; if he
+went into the market-place, the people prostrated themselves before him.
+
+"When I questioned Buddhist women of this amazing homage to Cedric, they
+gave me a full explanation. My son was sacred, they said. Buddha had
+withdrawn his favour from his people because of the evil they had done
+in suspecting the father and of the innocent life--Ferralt's--which had
+been sacrificed, and they had been commanded of the priests to do homage
+to the child and thereby appease the offended god, who, doubtless, had
+himself spirited away the holy tooth, and would not restore it until
+full recompense was made to the sacred son of the sacred dead.
+
+"When it became known that I had decided to return to England with my
+boy, native princes offered me fabulous sums to remain, and when they
+found that I could not be tempted to stay, the populace turned out in
+every town and village through which we passed on our way to the ship,
+and bowing multitudes followed us to the very last. Nor did it cease
+with that, for in all the years that have followed, even here in London,
+the homage and worship have continued. My son can go nowhere but that he
+is followed by Cingalese; can see no man or woman of the race, but he or
+she prostrates herself before him and murmurs, 'Holy, most holy!' And
+daily, almost hourly, rich gifts are showered upon him from unknown
+hands, and he is watched over and guarded constantly. I tell you all
+this, Mr. Cleek, that you may the better understand how appalling is the
+horror which now assails us, how frightful is the knowledge that someone
+now seeks his life, and is using every means to take it."
+
+"In other words, my dear Cleek," put in Narkom, as her ladyship,
+overcome with emotion, broke down suddenly, "there appears to be a
+sudden and inexplicable change of front on the part of these fanatics,
+and they now seem as anxious to bring evil to his little lordship as
+they formerly were to protect and cherish him. At any rate, someone of
+their order has, upon three separate occasions within the last month,
+endeavoured to kidnap him, and, in one instance, even attempted to
+murder him."
+
+"Is that a fact?" queried Cleek sharply, glancing over at Miss Lorne.
+"You are certain it is not a fancy, but an absolute fact?"
+
+"Yes; oh, yes!" she made answer, agitatedly. "Twice when I have gone
+into the Park with him, attempts have been made to separate us, to get
+him away from me; and once they did get him away--so swiftly, so
+adroitly, that he had vanished before I could turn round. But, although
+a bag had been thrown over his head to stifle his cries, he managed to
+make a very little one. I plunged screaming into the undergrowth from
+which that cry had come, and was just in time to save him. He was lying
+on the ground all bundled up in a bag, and his assailant, who must have
+heard me coming, had gone as if by magic. His little lordship, however,
+was able to tell me that the man was a Cingalese, and that he had 'tried
+to cut him with a knife.'"
+
+"Cut him with a knife?" repeated Cleek in a reflective tone, and blew
+out a long, low whistle.
+
+"Oh! but that is not the worst, Mr. Cleek," went on Ailsa. "Three days
+ago a woman--a very beautiful and distinguished-looking woman--called to
+see Lady Chepstow regarding the reference of a former servant, one Jane
+Catherboys, who used to be her ladyship's maid. After the caller left, a
+box of sugared violets was found lying temptingly open on a table in the
+main hall. Little Cedric is passionately fond of sugared violets, and,
+had he happened to pass that way before the box was discovered, he
+surely would have yielded to the temptation and eaten some. In removing
+the box the parlour-maid accidentally upset it, and before she could
+gather all the violets up her ladyship's little Pomeranian dog snapped
+up one and ate it. It was dead in six minutes' time! The sweets were
+simply loaded with prussic acid. When we came to inquire into the matter
+in the hope of tracing the mysterious caller, we found that Jane
+Catherboys was no longer in need of a position; that she had been
+married for eight months; that she knew nothing whatever of the woman,
+and had sent no one to inquire into her references."
+
+"All of which shows, my dear Cleek," put in Narkom significantly, "that,
+whatever hand is directing these attempts, it belongs to one who knows
+more than a mere outsider possibly could: in short, to one who is aware
+of his little lordship's excessive fondness for sugared violets, and is
+aware that Lady Chepstow once did have a maid named Jane Catherboys."
+
+"If," said Cleek, "you mean to suggest by that that this points
+suspiciously in Captain Hawksley's direction, Mr. Narkom, permit me to
+say that it does not necessarily follow. The clever people of the
+under-world do nothing by halves nor without careful inquiry beforehand;
+that is what makes the difference between the common pickpocket and the
+brilliant swindler." He turned to Ailsa. "Is that all, Miss Lorne, or am
+I right in supposing that there is even worse to come?"
+
+"Oh, much worse--much, Mr. Cleek! The knowledge that these would-be
+murderers, whoever they are, whatever may be their mysterious motive,
+have grown desperate enough to invade the house itself has driven Lady
+Chepstow well-nigh frantic. Of course, orders were immediately given to
+the servants that no stranger, no matter how well dressed, how well
+seeming, nor what the plea, was, from that moment, to be allowed past
+the threshold. We felt secure in that, knowing that no servant of the
+household would betray his or her trust, and that all would be on the
+constant watch for any further attempt. The unknown enemy must have
+found out about these precautions, for no stranger came again to the
+door. But last night a thing we had never counted upon happened. In the
+dead of the night the unknown broke into the house--into the very
+nursery itself--and but that Lady Chepstow, impelled she does not know
+by what, only that she was nervous and wakeful, and felt the need of
+some companionship, rose and carried the sleeping child into her own
+bed, he would assuredly have been murdered. The nurse, awakened by a
+horrible suffocating sensation, opened her eyes to find a man bending
+over her with a chloroform-soaked cloth, which he was about to lay over
+her face. She shrieked and fainted, but not before she saw the man
+spring to the little bed on the other side of her own, hack furiously at
+it with a long, murderous knife, then dart to the window and vanish. In
+the darkness he had not, of course, been able to see that that little
+bed was empty, for its position kept it in deep shadow, and hearing the
+household stir at the sound of the nurse's shriek, he struck out blindly
+and flew to save himself from detection. The nurse states that he was
+undoubtedly a foreigner--a dark-skinned Asiatic--and her description of
+him tallies with that his little lordship gave of the man who attempted
+to kill him that day in the Park. There, Mr. Cleek," she concluded,
+"that's the whole story. Can't you do something to help us--something to
+lift this constant state of dread and to remove this terrible danger
+from little Lord Chepstow's life?"
+
+"I'll try, Miss Lorne; but it is a most extraordinary case. Where is the
+boy, now?"
+
+"At home, closely guarded. We appealed to Mr. Narkom, and he generously
+appointed two detective officers to sit with his little lordship and
+keep constant watch over him whilst we are away."
+
+"And in the meantime," added Mr. Narkom, "I've issued orders for a
+general rounding-up of all the Cingalese who can be traced or are known
+to be in town. Petrie and Hammond have that part of the job in hand, and
+if they hit upon any Asiatic who answers to the description of this
+murderous rascal--"
+
+"I don't believe they will," interposed Cleek; "or, if they do, I don't
+for a moment believe he will turn out to be the guilty party. In other
+words, I have an idea that the fellow will prove to be a European."
+
+"But, my dear fellow, both his little lordship and the nurse saw the
+man, and, as you have heard, they both agree that he was dark-skinned
+and quite Oriental in appearance."
+
+"One of the easiest possible disguises, Mr. Narkom. A wig, a stick of
+grease-paint, a threepenny twist of crepe hair, and there you are! No, I
+do not believe that the man is a Cingalese at all; and, far from his
+having any connection with what you were pleased to term just now a
+change of front on the part of the Buddhists who have so long held the
+little chap as something sacred, I don't believe that they know anything
+about him. I base that upon the fact that the child is still treated
+with homage whenever he goes out, according to what Miss Lorne says, and
+that, with the single exception of that one woman who tried to poison
+him, nobody but just one man--this particular one man--has ever made any
+attempt to harm the boy. Fanatics, like those Cingalese, cleave to an
+idea to the end, Mr. Narkom; they don't cast it aside and go off at
+another tangent. You have heard what Lady Chepstow says the native women
+told her; the boy was sacred; their priests had commanded them to
+appease Buddha by doing homage to him until the tooth was found, and the
+tooth has not been found up to the present day! That means that nothing
+on earth could change their attitude toward him, that not one of the
+Buddhist sect would harm a solitary hair of his head for a king's
+ransom; so you may eliminate the Cingalese from the case entirely so far
+as the attempts upon the child's life are concerned. Whoever is making
+the attempts is doing so without their knowledge and for a purely
+personal reason."
+
+"Then, in that case, this Captain Hawksley--"
+
+"I'll have a look at that gentleman before I tumble into bed to-night,
+and you shall have my views upon that point to-morrow morning, Mr.
+Narkom. Frankly, things point rather suspiciously in the captain's
+direction, since he is apparently the only person likely to be benefited
+by the boy's death, and if a motive cannot be traced to some other
+person--" He stopped abruptly and held up his hand. Outside in the dim
+halls of the house a sudden noise had sprung into being, the noise of
+someone running upstairs in great haste, and, stepping quickly to the
+door, Cleek drew it sharply open. As he did so, Dollops came puffing up
+out of the lower gloom, a sheep's trotter in one hand, and a letter in
+the other.
+
+"Law, Gov'nor!" groaned he, from midway on the staircase, "I don't
+believe as I'm ever goin' to be let get a square tuck-in this side of
+the buryin' ground! Jist finished wot was left of that there steak and
+kidney puddin', sir, and started on my seckint trotter, when I sees a
+pair o' legs nip parst the area railin's to the front door, and then nip
+off again like greased lightnin', and when I ups and does a flyin' leap
+up the kitchen stairs, there was this here envellup in the letter-box,
+and them there blessed legs nowheres in sight. I say, sir," agitatedly,
+"look wot's wrote on the envellup, will yer? And us always keepin' of it
+so dark."
+
+Cleek plucked the letter from his extended hand, glanced at it, and
+puckered up his lips; then, with a gesture, he sent Dollops back below
+stairs, and, returning to the room, closed the door behind him.
+
+"The enemy evidently knows all Lady Chepstow's movements, Mr. Narkom,"
+he said. "I expect she and Miss Lorne have been under surveillance all
+day and have been followed here. Look at that!" He flung the letter down
+on a table as he spoke, and Narkom, glancing at it, saw printed in rude,
+illiterate letters upon the envelope the one word "Cleek." The identity
+of "Captain Burbage" was known to someone, and the secret of the house
+in Clarges Street was a secret no longer!
+
+"Purposely disguised, you see. No one, not even a little child, would
+make such a botch of copying the alphabet as that," Cleek said, as he
+took the letter up and opened it. The sheet it contained was lettered in
+the same uncouth manner, and bore these words:
+
+"Cleek, take a fool's advice and don't accept the Chepstow case. Be
+warned. If you interfere, somebody you care about will pay the price.
+You'll find it more satisfactory to buy a wedding bouquet than a funeral
+wreath!"
+
+"Oh!" shuddered the two ladies in one breath. "How horrible! How
+cowardly!" And then, feeling that her last hope had gone, Lady Chepstow
+broke into a fit of violent weeping and laid her head on Ailsa's
+shoulder.
+
+"Oh, my baby! My darling baby boy!" she sobbed. "And now they are
+threatening somebody that you, too, love. Of course, Mr. Cleek, I can't
+expect you to risk the sacrifice of your own dear ones for the sake of
+me and mine, and so--and so--Oh, take me away, Miss Lorne! Let me go
+back to my baby and have him while I may."
+
+"Good-night, Mr. Cleek!" said Ailsa, stretching out a shaking hand to
+him. "Thank you so much for--for what you would have done but for this.
+And you were our last hope, too!"
+
+"Why give it up then, Miss Lorne?" he said, holding her hand and looking
+into her eyes. "Why not go on letting me be your last hope--your only
+hope?"
+
+"Yes, but they--they spoke of a funeral wreath."
+
+"And they also spoke of a wedding bouquet! I am going to take the case,
+Miss Lorne--take it, and solve it, as I'm a living man. Thank you!" as
+her brimming eyes uplifted in deep thankfulness and her shaking hand
+returned the pressure of his. "Now, just give me five minutes' time in
+the next room--it's my laboratory, Lady Chepstow--and I'll tell you
+whether I shall begin with Captain Hawksley or eliminate him from the
+case entirely. You might go in ahead, Mr. Narkom, and get the acid bath
+and the powder ready for me. We'll see what the finger-prints of our
+gentle correspondent have to tell, and, if they are not in the records
+of Scotland Yard or down in my own private little book, we'll get a
+sample of Captain Hawksley's in the morning."
+
+Then, excusing himself to the ladies, he passed into the inner room in
+company with Narkom, and carried the letter with him. When he returned
+it was still in his hand, but there were greyish smudges all over it.
+
+"There's not a finger-print in the lot that is worth anything as a means
+of identification, Miss Lorne," he said. "But you and Lady Chepstow may
+accept my assurance that Captain Hawksley is not the man. The writer of
+this letter belongs to the criminal classes; he is on his guard against
+the danger of finger-prints, and he wore rubber gloves when he penned
+this message. When I find him, rest assured I shall find a man who has
+had dealings with the police before and whose finger-prints are on their
+records. I don't know what his game is nor what he's after yet, but I
+will inside of a week. I've an idea; but it's so wild a thing I'm almost
+afraid to trust myself to believe it possible until I stumble over
+something that points the same way. Now, go home with Lady Chepstow, and
+begin the work of helping me."
+
+"Helping you? Oh, Mr. Cleek, can we? Is there anything we can do to
+help?"
+
+"Yes. When you leave the house, act as though you are in the utmost
+state of dejection--and keep that up indefinitely. Make it appear, for I
+am certain you will be followed and spied upon, as if I had declined the
+case. But don't have any fear about the boy. The two constables will
+sleep in the room with him to-night and every night until the thing is
+cleared up and the danger past. To-morrow about dusk, however, you,
+personally, take him for a walk near the Park, and if, among the other
+Cingalese you may meet, you should see one dressed as an Englishman, and
+wearing a scarlet flower in his buttonhole, take no notice of how often
+you see him nor of what he may do."
+
+"It will be you, Mr. Cleek?"
+
+"Yes. Now go, please; and don't forget to act as if you and her ladyship
+were utterly broken-hearted. Also"--his voice dropped lower, his hand
+met her hand, and in the darkness of the hall a little silver-plated
+revolver was slipped into her palm--"also, take this. Keep it always
+with you, never be without it night or day, and if any living creature
+offers you violence, shoot him down as you would a mad dog. Good-night,
+and--remember!"
+
+And long after she and Lady Chepstow had gone down and passed out into
+the night he stood there, looking the situation straight in the face and
+thinking his own troubled thoughts.
+
+"A wedding bouquet! A threat against her, and the mention of a wedding
+bouquet!" he said, as he went back into the room and sat down to figure
+the puzzle out. "Only one creature in the world knows of my feelings in
+that direction, and only one creature in the world would be capable of
+that threat--Margot! But what interest could she or any of her tribe
+have in the death of Lady Chepstow's little son? Her game is always
+money. If she were after a ransom she would try to abduct the child, not
+to kill him, and if"--A sudden thought came and wrenched away his voice.
+He sat a moment twisting his fingers one through the other and frowning
+at the floor; then, of a sudden, he gave a cry and jumped to his feet.
+"Five lacs of rupees--a fortune! By George, I've got it!" he fairly
+shouted. "The wild guess was a correct one, I'll stake my life. Let's
+put it to the test."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+The summer twilight was deepening into the summer dusk when Ailsa,
+acting upon Cleek's advice, set forth with his little lordship the
+following evening, and turned her steps in the direction of the Park;
+but although, on her way there, she observed more than once that a
+swarthy-skinned man in European dress who wore a scarlet flower in his
+coat, and was so perfect a type of the Asiatic that he would have passed
+muster for one even among a gathering of Cingalese, kept appearing and
+disappearing at irregular intervals, it spoke well for the powers of
+imitation and self-effacement possessed by Dollops, that she never once
+thought of associating that young man with the dawdling messenger boy
+who strolled leisurely along with a package under his arm and patronised
+every bun-shop, winkle-stall, and pork-pie purveyor on the line of
+march.
+
+For upward of an hour this sort of thing went on without any
+interruption or any solitary thing out of the ordinary, Ailsa strolling
+along leisurely, with the boy's hands in hers and his innocent prattle
+running on ceaselessly; then, of a sudden, whilst they were moving along
+close to the Park railings and in the shadow of the overhanging trees,
+the figure of an undersized man in semi-European costume, but wearing on
+his head the twisted turban of a Cingalese, issued from one of the
+gates, and well-nigh collided with them.
+
+He drew back, murmuring an apology in pidgin-English, then, seeing the
+child, he salaamed profoundly and murmured in a voice of deep reverence,
+"Holy, most holy!" and prostrated himself, with his forehead touching
+the ground, until Ailsa and the child had passed on. But barely had they
+taken five steps before Cleek appeared upon the scene, and did exactly
+the same thing as the Cingalese.
+
+"All right. You may go home now. I've got my man," he whispered, as
+Ailsa and the boy passed by. "Look for me at Chepstow House some time
+to-night." Then rose, as she walked on, and went after the man who first
+had prostrated himself before the child.
+
+He had risen and gone on his way, but not before witnessing Cleek's
+obeisance, and flashing upon him a sharp, searching look. Cleek
+quickened his steps and shortened the distance between them. Now or
+never was the time to put to the test that wild thought which last night
+had hammered on his brain, for it was certain that this man was in very
+truth a Cingalese, and, as such, must know! He stretched forth his hand
+and touched the man, who drew back sharply, half indignantly, but
+changed his attitude entirely when Cleek, who knew Hindustani more than
+well, spoke to him in the native tongue.
+
+"Unto thee, oh, brother!" Cleek said. "Thou, too, art of us, for thou,
+too, dost acknowledge the sacred shrine. These eyes have beheld thee."
+
+All his hopes rested on the slim pillar of that one word, "shrine," and
+his heart almost ceased to beat as he watched to see how it was
+received. It broke, however, into a very tumult of disturbance in the
+next instant, for the man positively beamed as he gave reply.
+
+"Sacred be the shrine!" he answered in Hindustani. "Clearly thou art of
+us--not of those others."
+
+"Others? What others? I am but newly come to this country."
+
+"Walk with me, then, to my abode, sup with me, eat of my salt, and I
+will tell thee then, oh, brother. But I forget: thou hast no knowledge
+of me. Listen, then. I am Arjeeb Noosrut, father of the High Priest
+Seydama, and it is among the people of my house that the gun is yet
+preserved. Nor has the blood of Seydama been ever washed from the wood
+of it. Come."
+
+All in a moment a light seemed to break over Cleek's brain. The missing
+link had been supplied--the one thing that could make possible the wild
+thought which had come to him last night had been given into his hands,
+and here at last was the key to the amazing mystery! He turned without a
+word and went with Arjeeb Noosrut.
+
+"What an ass!" he said to himself in the soundless words of thought
+"What an ass never to have suspected it when it is all so clear!"
+
+Meantime Ailsa and the boy, dismissed from any further need of service,
+walked on through the deepening dusk and turned their faces homeward.
+But they had not gone twenty yards from the spot where Cleek had seen
+them last when his little lordship set up a joyful cry and pointed
+excitedly to a claret-coloured limousine which at that moment swung in
+from the middle of the roadway and slowed down as it neared the kerb.
+
+"Oh, look, Miss Lorne; here's mummie's motor car; and I do believe
+that's Bimbi peeping out of it!" exclaimed the child--"Bimbi" being his
+pet name for Captain Hawksley--then broke, in wild excitement, from
+Ailsa's detaining hand and fled to a tall, military-looking man with a
+fair beard and moustache who had just that moment alighted from the
+vehicle. "It is Bimbi--it is!--it is!" he shouted as he ran. "Oh, Bimbi,
+I _am_ glad!"
+
+"Ceddie, dear, you mustn't be so boisterous!" chided Ailsa, coming up
+with him at the kerb. "How fond he is of you to be sure, Captain
+Hawksley. You've come for us, I suppose? Ceddie recognised the car at
+once."
+
+"Yes; jump in," he answered. "Lady Chepstow sent me after you. She's
+nervous, poor soul, every moment the boy's away from her. Jump in, old
+chap!"--catching up his little lordship and swinging him inside. "Better
+take the back seat, Miss Lorne; it's more comfortable. Quite settled,
+both of you? That's good. All right, chauffeur--Home!"
+
+Then he jumped in after them, closed the door, dropped into a seat, and
+the motor, making a wide curve out into the road, pelted away into the
+fast-gathering darkness.
+
+"Bimbi says maybe he's going to be my daddy one day--didn't you, Bimbi?"
+said his little lordship, climbing up on to "Bimbi's" knee and snuggling
+close to him.
+
+"I say, you know, you mustn't tell secrets, old chap!" was the laughing
+response. "Miss Lorne will hand you over to Nursie with orders to put
+you to bed if you do, _I_ know--won't you, Miss Lorne?"
+
+"He ought to be in bed, anyhow," responded Ailsa gaily; and then, this
+giving the conversation a merry turn, they talked and laughed and kept
+up such a chatter that three-quarters of an hour went like magic and
+nobody seemed aware of it. But suddenly Ailsa thought, and then put her
+thoughts into words.
+
+"What a long time we are in getting home," she said, and bent forward so
+that the light from the window might fall upon the dial of her wrist
+watch, then gave a little startled cry and half rose from her seat. For
+the darkness was now tempered by moonlight, and she could see that they
+were no longer in the populous districts of the town, but were speeding
+along past woodlands and open fields in the very depths of the country.
+"Good gracious! Johnston must have lost his senses!" she exclaimed
+agitatedly. "Look where we are, Captain Hawksley!--out in the country
+with only a farmhouse or two in sight. Johnston! Johnston!" She bent
+forward and rapped wildly on the glass panel. "Johnston, stop!--turn
+round!--are you out of your head? Captain Hawksley, stop him--stop him
+for pity's sake!"
+
+"Sit down, Miss Lorne." He made reply in a low, level voice, a voice in
+which there was something that made her pluck the child to her and hold
+him right to her breast. "You are not going home to-night. You are going
+for a ride with me; and if--Oh, that's your little game, is it?"
+lurching forward as she made a frantic clutch at the handle of the door.
+"Sit down, do you hear me?--or it will be worse for you! There!"--the
+cold bore of a revolver barrel touched her temple and wrung a quaking
+gasp of terror from her--"Do you feel that? Now you sit down and be
+quiet! If you make a single move, utter a single cry, I'll blow your
+brains out before you've half finished it. Look here, do you know who
+you're dealing with now? See!"
+
+His hand reached up and twitched away the fair beard and moustache; he
+bent forward so that the moonlight through the glass could fall on his
+face. It had changed as his voice had now changed, and she saw that she
+was looking at the man who in those other days of stress and trial had
+posed as "Gaston Merode," brother to the fictitious "Countess de la
+Tour."
+
+"You!" she said in a bleak voice of desolation and fright. "Dear heaven,
+that horrible Margot's confederate, the King of the Apaches!"
+
+"Yes!" he rapped out. "You and that fellow Cleek came between us in one
+promising game, but I'm hanged if you shall do it in this one! I want
+this boy, and--I've got him. Now, you call off Cleek and tell him to
+drop this case--to make no effort to follow us or to come between us and
+the kid--or I'll slit your throat after I've done with his little
+lordship here. Lanisterre!"--to the chauffeur--"Lanisterre, do you
+hear?"
+
+"_Oui, monsieur_."
+
+"Give her her head--full speed--and get to the mill as fast as you can.
+Margot will be with us in another two hours' time."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Through the ever-deepening dusk Cleek and Arjeeb Noosrut moved onward
+together; and onward behind them moved, too, the same dilatory messenger
+boy who had loitered about in the neighbourhood of the park, squandering
+his halfpence now as then, leaving a small trail of winkle shells and
+trotter bones to mark the record of his passage, and never seeming to
+lose one iota of his appetite, eat as much and as often as he would.
+
+The walk led down into the depths of Soho, that refuge of the foreign
+element in London; but long before they halted at the narrow doorway of
+a narrow house in a narrow side street--a street that seemed to have
+gone to sleep in an atmosphere of gloom and smells--Cleek had adroitly
+"pumped" Arjeeb Noosrut dry, and the riddle of the sacred son was a
+riddle to him no longer. He was now only anxious to part from the man
+and return with the news to Lady Chepstow, and was casting round in his
+mind for some excuse to avoid going indoors with him and wasting
+precious time in breaking bread and eating salt, when there lurched out
+of an adjoining doorway an ungainly figure in turban and sandals and the
+full flower of that grotesque regalia which passes muster at cheap
+theatres and masquerade balls for the costume of a Cingalese. The fellow
+had bent forward out of the deeper darkness of the house-passage into
+the murk and gloom of the ill-lit street, and was straining his eyes as
+if in search for someone long expected.
+
+"Dog of an infidel!" exclaimed Arjeeb Noosrut, speaking in Hindustani,
+and spitting on the pavement as he caught sight of the man. "See,
+well-beloved, he is of those 'others' of which I spoke when I first met
+thee. There are many of them, but true believers none. They dwell in a
+room huddled up as unclean things in the house there; they drink and
+make merry far into the night, and a woman veiled and in European garb
+comes to them and drinks with them sometimes--and sometimes a man of her
+kind with her; and they speak a tongue that is not the tongue of our
+people; yet have I seen them go forth into the city and do homage as we
+to the sacred son."
+
+Cleek sucked in his breath and, twitching round, stared at the dim
+figure leaning forward in the dim light.
+
+"By George!" he said to himself; "if I know anything, I ought to know
+the slouch and the low-sunk head of the Apache! And the woman
+comes!--And a man comes!--And there are five lacs of rupees! I wonder! I
+wonder! But no--she wouldn't come here, to a place like this, if she had
+ventured back into England and had called some of the band over to help.
+She'd go to the old spot--to the old haunt where she and I used to lie
+low and laugh whilst the police were hunting for me. She'd go there, I'm
+sure, to the old Burnt Acre Mill, where, if you were 'stalked,' you
+could open the sluice gates and let the Thames and the mill stream rush
+in and meet, and make a hell of whirling waters that would drown a fish.
+She would go there if it were she. And yet--it is an Apache: I swear it
+is an Apache!"
+
+He turned and looked back at Arjeeb Noosrut, then raised his hand and
+brushed it down the back of his head, which was always the sign "Wait!"
+to Dollops--and then spoke as calmly as he could.
+
+"Brother, I will go in and break bread and eat salt with thee," he said.
+"But I may do no more, for to-night I am in haste."
+
+"Come then," the man answered; and taking him by the hand, led him in
+and up to a room at the back of the second storey, where, hot as the
+night was, the windows were closed and a woman squatted before a lighted
+brasier, was dripping the contents of an oil cruse over the roasting
+carcass of a young kid.
+
+"It is to shut out the sounds of the vile infidel orgies from the house
+adjoining," explained Arjeeb Noosrut, as Cleek walked to the tightly
+closed window and leant his forehead against it. "Yet, if the heat
+oppresses thee--"
+
+"It does," interposed Cleek, and leant far out into the darkness as
+though sucking in the air when the sash was raised and the thing which
+had been only a dim babel of wordless sounds a moment before, became now
+the riotous laughter and the ribald comments of men upon the verses of a
+comic song which one of their number was joyously singing.
+
+"French!" said Cleek under his breath, as he caught the notes of the
+singer and the words of his audience--"French--I knew it!"
+
+Then he drew in his head, and having broken of the bread and eaten of
+the salt which, at a word from Arjeeb Noosrut, the woman brought on a
+wicker tray and laid before them, he moved hastily to the door.
+
+"Brother and son of the faithful, peace be with thee--I must go," he
+said. "But I come again; and it is written that thou shalt be honoured
+above all men when I return to thee, and that the true believers--the
+true sons of Holy Buddha--shall have cause to set thy name at the head
+of the records of those who are most blest of him!"
+
+Then he salaamed and passed out; and, closing the door behind him, ran
+like a hare down the narrow stairs. At the door Dollops rose up like the
+imp in a pantomime and jumped toward him.
+
+"Law, Gov'nor, I'm nigh starved a-waitin' for yer!" he said in a
+whisper. "Wot's the lay now? A double-quick change? I've got the stuff
+here, look!"--holding up the package he was carrying--"or a chance for
+me to do some fly catchin' with me bloomin' tickle tootsies?"
+
+The man in the Cingalese costume had vanished from the doorway of the
+adjoining house, and, catching the boy by the arm, Cleek hurried him to
+it and drew him into the dark passage.
+
+"I'm going to the back; I'm going to climb up to the windows of the
+second storey and see who's there and what's going on," he whispered.
+"Lie low and watch. I think it's Margot's gang."
+
+"Oh, colour me blue! Them beauties? And in London? I'd give a tanner for
+a strong cup o' tea!"
+
+"Sh-h-h! Be quiet--speak low. Don't be seen, but keep a close watch; and
+if anybody comes downstairs--"
+
+"He's mine!" interjected Dollops, stripping up his sleeves. "Glue to the
+eyebrows and warranted to stick! Nip away, Gov'nor, and leave it to the
+tickle tootsies and me!" Then, as Cleek moved swiftly and silently down
+the passage and slipped out into a sort of yard at the back of the
+house, he pulled out his roll of brown paper squares and his tube of
+adhesive, and crawling upstairs on his hands and knees, began operations
+at the top step. But he had barely got the first "plaster" fairly made
+and ready to apply when there came a rush of footsteps behind him and he
+was obliged to duck down and flatten himself against the floor of the
+landing to escape being run down by a man who dashed in through the
+lower floor, flew at top speed up the stairs, and, with a sort of
+blended cheer and yell, whirled open a door on the landing above and
+vanished. In a twinkling other cheers rang out, there was the sound of
+hastily moving feet and the uproar of general excitement.
+
+"Oh, well, if you won't stop to be waited on, gents, help yourselves!"
+said Dollops with a chuckle. Then he began backing hastily down the
+stairs, squirting the contents of the tube all over the steps, and
+concluded the operation by scattering all the loose sheets of paper on
+the floor at the foot of them before slipping out into the street and
+composedly waiting.
+
+Meantime Cleek, sneaking out through the rear door, found himself in a
+small, brick-paved yard hemmed in by a high wall thickly fringed on the
+top with a hedge of broken bottles. At one time in its history the house
+had been occupied by a catgut maker, and the rickety shed in which he
+had carried on his calling still clung, sagging and broken-roofed, to
+the building itself, its rotten slates all but vanished, and its
+interior piled high with mildewed bedding, mouldy old carpet, broken
+furniture, and refuse of every sort.
+
+A foot or two above the roof-level of this glowed--two luminous
+rectangles in the blackness of darkness--the windows of the back room on
+the second storey; and out of these came floating still the song, the
+laughter, and the jabbered French he had heard in the house next door.
+It did not take him long to make up his mind. Gripping the swaying
+supports of the sagging shed, he went up it with the agility of a
+monkey, crawled to the nearer of the two windows, and, cautiously
+raising himself, peeped in. What he saw made him suck in his breath
+sharply and sent his heart hammering hard and fast.
+
+A dozen men were in the room--men whose faces, despite an inartistic
+attempt to appear Oriental, he recognized at a glance and knew better
+than he knew his own. About them lay discarded portions of Cingalese
+attire, thrown off because of the heat, and waiting to be resumed at any
+moment. The air was thick with tobacco smoke and rank with spirituous
+odours. Sprawled figures were everywhere, and on a sort of couch against
+the opposite wall, a cigarette between her fingers, a glass of absinthe
+at her elbow, her laughter and badinage ringing out as loudly as any,
+lay the lissom figure of Margot!
+
+But even as Cleek looked in upon it the picture changed. Swift, sharp,
+and sudden came the rattle of flying feet on the outer stairs. Margot
+flung aside her cigarette and jumped up, the song and the laughter came
+to an abrupt end, the door flew open, and with a shout and a cheer a man
+bounced into the room.
+
+"Serpice! Ah, _le bon Dieu!_ it is Serpice at last!" cried out Margot in
+joyous excitement, as she and the others crowded round him. "Soul of a
+sluggard, don't waste time in laughing and capering like this! Speak up,
+speak up, you hear? Are we to fly at once to the mill and join him? Has
+he succeeded? Is it done?"
+
+"Yes, yes, yes!" shouted back Serpice, throwing up his cap and capering.
+"It is done! It is done! Under the very nose of the cracksman, too!
+Merode's got them--got them both! The little lordship and the
+Mademoiselle Lorne, too! They took the bait like gudgeons; they stepped
+into the automobile without a fear, and--whizz! it was off to the mill
+like that! La, la, la! We win, we win, we win!"
+
+The shock of the thing was too much for Cleek. Carried out of himself by
+the knowledge that the woman he loved was now in peril of her life,
+discretion forsook him, blind rage mastered him, and he did one of the
+few foolish things of his life.
+
+"You lie, you brute--you lie!" he shouted, jumping up into full view.
+"God help the man who lays a hand on her! Let him keep his life from me
+if he can!"
+
+"The cracksman!" yelled out Serpice. "The cracksman! The cracksman!"
+echoed Margot and the rest. Then a pistol barked and spat, the light was
+swept out, a bullet sang past Cleek's ear, and he realised how foolish
+he had been. For part of the crowd came surging to the window, part went
+in one blind rush for the door to head him off and hem him in, and,
+through the din and hubbub rang viciously the voice of Margot shrilling
+out: "Kill him! Kill him!" as though nothing but the sight of his blood
+would glut the malice of her.
+
+It was neck or nothing now, and the race was to the swift. He dropped
+through a gap in the ragged roof--sheer down, like a shot--into the
+rubble and refuse below; he lurched through the shed to the door, and
+through that to the black passage leading to the street--the clatter on
+the higher staircase giving warning of the crowd coming after him--and
+flew like a hare hard pressed toward the outer door, and then--just
+then, when every little moment counted--there was a scrambling sound, a
+chorus of oaths, a slipping, a sliding, a bang on one step and a bump on
+another; and, as he darted by, and sprang out into the street, the hall
+was filled with a writhing, scuffling, swearing mass of glue-covered men
+struggling in a whirling waste of loose brown paper.
+
+"This way! come quickly, for your life!" he shouted to Dollops, as he
+came plunging out into the street. "They've got them--got his little
+lordship! Got Miss Lorne--in spite of me. Come on! come on! come
+on!"--and flew like an arrow from crossing to crossing and street to
+street with Dollops, like a shadow, at his heels.
+
+A sudden swerve to the right brought them into a lighted and populous
+thoroughfare. Italian restaurants, German delicatessen shops, eating
+places of a dozen other nationalities lined the pavements on both sides
+of the street, and, in front of these a high-power motor stood,
+protected by the watchful eye of an accommodating policeman while the
+chauffeur sampled Chianti in a wine-shop close by. With a rush and a
+leap Cleek was upon it, and with another rush and a leap the constable
+was upon him, only to be greeted with the swift flicking open of a coat
+and the gleam of a badge that every man in the force knew.
+
+"Cleek?"
+
+"Yes! In the name of The Yard; in the name of the king! get out of the
+way! In with you, Dollops! We'll get the brutes yet!"
+
+Then he bent over, threw in the clutch, and discarding all speed laws,
+sent the car humming and tearing away.
+
+"Hold tight!" he said, through his teeth. "Whatever comes, we've got to
+get to Burnt Acre Mill inside of an hour. If you know any prayers,
+Dollops, say them."
+
+"The Lord fetch us home in time for supper!" gulped the boy obediently.
+"S'help me, Gov'nor, the wind's goin' through my teeth like I was a
+mouth organ--and I'm hollow enough for a flute!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+It is strange how, in moments of stress and trial, even in times of
+tragedy, the most commonplace thoughts will intrude themselves and the
+mind separate itself from the immediate events. As Merode put the cold
+muzzle of the revolver to Ailsa's temple and she ought, one would have
+supposed, to have been deaf and blind to all things but the horror of
+her position, one of these strange mental lapses occurred, and her mind,
+travelling back over the years of her early schooldays, dwelt on a
+punishment task set her by her preceptress--the task of copying three
+hundred times the phrase "Discretion is the better part of valour."
+
+As the recollection of that time rose before her mental vision, the
+value of the phrase itself forced its worth upon her and, huddling back
+in the corner of the limousine, she clutched the frightened child to her
+and gave implicit obedience to Merode's command to make no effort to
+attract attention either by word or deed. And he, fancying that he had
+thoroughly cowed her, withdrew the touch of the weapon from her temple,
+but held it ready for possible use in the grip of his thin, strong hand.
+
+For a time the limousine kept straight on in its headlong course, then,
+of a sudden, it swerved to the left, the gleam of a river--all silver
+with moonlight--struck up through a line of trees on one side of the
+car, the blank unbroken dreariness of a stretch of waste land spread out
+upon the other; and presently, by the slowing down of the motor, Ailsa
+guessed that they were nearing their destination. They reached it a few
+moments later, and a peep from the window, as the vehicle stopped,
+showed her the outlines of a ruined watermill--ghostly, crumbling,
+owl-haunted--looming black against the silver sky.
+
+A crumbled wheel hung, rotten and moss-grown, over a dry water-course,
+where straggling willows stretched out from the bank and trailed their
+long, feathery ends a yard or so above the level of the weeds and
+grasses that carpeted the sandy bed of it, and along its edge--once
+built as a protection for the heedless or unwary, but now a ruin and a
+wreck--a moss-grown wall with a narrow, gateless archway made an
+irregular shadow on the moon-drenched earth. She saw that archway and
+that dry water-course, and a new, strong hope arose within her.
+Discretion had played its part; now it was time for Valour to take the
+stage.
+
+"Come, get out--this is the end," said Merode, as he unlatched the door
+of the limousine and alighted. "You may yell here until your throat
+splits, for all the good it will do you. Lanisterre, show us a light;
+the path to the door is uncertain, and the floor of the mill is unsafe.
+This way, if you please, Miss Lorne. Let me have the boy--I'll look
+after him!"
+
+"No, no!--not yet! Please, not yet!" said Ailsa, with a little catch in
+her voice as she plucked his little lordship to her and smothered his
+frightened cries against her breast. "Let me have him whilst I may--let
+me hold him to--the last, Monsieur Merode. His mother trusts me. She
+will want to know that I--I stood by him until I could stand no longer.
+Please!--we are so helpless--I am so fond of him, and--he is such a very
+little boy. Listen! You want me to write to Mr. Cleek; you want me to
+ask something of him. I won't do it for myself--no, not if you kill me
+for refusing. I'll never do it for myself; but--but I will do it if you
+won't separate us until he has had time to say his prayers."
+
+"Oh, all right, then," he agreed. "If it's any consolation doing a
+fool's trick like that, why--do it! Now come along, and let's get inside
+the mill without any more nonsense. Lanisterre, bring that lantern here
+so that mademoiselle can see the path to the door. This way, if you
+please, Miss Lorne."
+
+"Thank you," she said as she alighted and moved slowly in the direction
+of the door, soothing the child as they crept along almost within touch
+of the crumbling wall. "Ceddie, darling, don't cry. You are a brave
+little hero, I know, and heroes are never afraid to die." From the tail
+of her eye she watched Merode. He seemed to realise from these words to
+the child that she was reconciled to the inevitable, and with an air of
+satisfaction he put the pistol back into his pocket and walked beside
+her. She kept straight on with her soothing words; and, in the
+half-shadow, neither Merode nor Lanisterre could see that one hand was
+lost in the folds of her skirt.
+
+"Ceddie, darling, let Miss Lorne be able to tell mummie that her little
+man was a hero; that he died, as heroes always die, without a fear or a
+weakening to the very last. I'll stand by you, precious; I'll hold your
+hand; and, when the time comes--"
+
+It came then! The gateless archway was reached at last; and the thing
+she had been planning all along now became possible. With one sudden
+push she sent the boy reeling down the incline into the dry
+water-course, flashed round sharply, and before Merode really knew how
+the thing happened, she was standing with her back to the arch and a
+revolver in her levelled hand.
+
+"Throw up your arms--throw them up at once, or, as God hears me, I'll
+shoot!" she cried. "Run, Ceddie--run, baby! He shan't follow you--I'll
+kill him if he tries!"
+
+"You idiot!" began Merode, and made a lurch toward her. But the pistol
+barked, and something white-hot zigzagged along his arm and bit like a
+flame into his shoulder.
+
+"Up with your hands--up with them!" she said in a voice that shook with
+excitement as he howled out and made a reeling backward step. "Next time
+it will be the head I aim at, not the arm!" Then, lifting up her voice
+in one loud shriek that made the echoes bound, she called with all her
+strength; "Help, somebody--for God's sake help! Scream, Ceddie--scream!
+Help! Help!"
+
+And lo! as she called, as if a miracle had been wrought, out of the
+darkness an answering voice called back to her, and the wild, swift
+notes of a motor horn bleated along the lonely road.
+
+"I'm coming--I--Cleek!" that voice rang out. "Hold your own--hold it to
+the last, Miss Lorne, and God help the man who lays a finger on you!"
+
+"Mr. Cleek! Mr. Cleek, oh, thank God!" she flung back with all the
+rapture a human voice could contain. "Come on, come on! I've got
+him--got that man Merode, and the boy is safe, the boy is safe! Come on!
+come on! come on!"
+
+"We're a-comin', miss, you gamble on that--and the lightnin's a fool to
+us!" shouted Dollops in reply. "Let her have it, Gov'nor! Bust the
+bloomin' tank. Give her her head; give her her feet; give her her
+blessed merry-thought if she wants it! Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!"
+
+And then, just then, when she most needed her strength and her courage,
+Ailsa's evaporated. The reaction came and with the despairing cries of
+Merode and Lanisterre ringing in her ears, she sank back, weak, white,
+almost fainting--and, leaning against the side of the archway, began to
+laugh and to sob hysterically. Merode seized that one moment and sprang
+to the breach.
+
+Realising that the game was all but up, that there was nothing for him
+now but to save his own skin if he could, he called out to Lanisterre to
+follow him, then plunged into the mill, swung over the lever which
+controlled the sluice gates, and, darting out by the back way, fled
+across the waste.
+
+But behind him he left a scene of indescribable horror, and the shrill
+screaming of a little child told him when that horror began. For as the
+sluice gates opened a sullen roar sounded; on one side the diverted
+millstream, and on the other the river, rose as two solid walls of
+water, rushed forward and--met; and in the twinkling of an eye the old
+water-course was one wild, leaping, roaring, gyrating whirlpool of
+up-flung froth and twisting waves that bore in their eddying clutch the
+battling figure of a drowning child.
+
+Even before he came in sight of it the roaring waters and the fearful
+splash of their impact told Cleek what had been done. He could hear
+Ailsa's screams; he could hear the boy's feeble cries, and a moment
+later, when the whizzing motor panted up through the moonlight and sped
+by the broken wall, there was Ailsa, fairly palsied with fright,
+clinging weakly to the crumbling arch and uttering little sobbing,
+wordless, incoherent moans of fright as she stared down into the hell of
+waters; and below, in the foam, a little yellow head was spinning round
+and round and round, in dizzying circles of torn and leaping waves.
+
+"Heavens, Gov'nor!" began Dollops in a voice of appalling despair; but
+before he could get beyond that, Cleek's coat was off, Cleek's body had
+described a sort of semi-circle, and--the child was no longer alone in
+the whirlpool!
+
+Battling, struggling, fairly leaping, as a fish leaps in a torrent, one
+moment half out of the water, the next wholly submerged, Cleek struck
+from eddy to eddy, from circle to circle; until that little yellow head
+was within reach, then put forth his hand and gripped it, pulled it to
+him, and in another moment he was whirling round and round the
+whirlpool's course with the child clutched to him and his wet, white
+face gleaming wax-like over the angle of his shoulder.
+
+They had not made the half of the first circle thus before Dollops had
+leaped to the bending willows, had scrambled up the rough trunk of the
+nearest of them, and, pushing his weight out upon a strong and supple
+bough, bent it downward until the half of its strongest withes were deep
+in the whirling waters.
+
+"Grab 'em, Gov'nor--grab 'em when you come by!" he sang out over the
+roar of the waters. "They'll hold you, sir--hold a dozen like you; and
+if--Well played! Got 'em the first grab! Hang on! Get a tight grip! Now
+then, sir, hand over hand till you're at the bank! Good biz! Good biz!
+Blest if you won't be goin' in for the circus trade next! Steady does
+it, sir--steady, steady! Goal, by Jupiter! Now then, hand me up the
+nipper--I should say the young gent--and in two minutes' time--Right!
+Got him! 'Ere you are, Miss Lorne--lay hold of his little lordship, will
+you? I've got me blessed hands full a keepin' to me perch whilst the
+guv'nor's a-wobbling of the branch like this. Good biz! Now then, sir,
+another 'arf a yard. That's the call! Hands on this bough and foot on
+the bank there. One, two, three--knew you'd do it! Safe as houses, Gawd
+bless yer bully heart!"
+
+And then as Cleek, wet, white, panting, dragged himself out of the
+clutch of the whirlpool and lay breathing heavily on the ground:
+
+"By gums, Gov'nor," Dollops added as he looked down on the whirling
+waters, "what an egg-beater it would make, wouldn't it, sir? Ain't got
+such a thing as a biscuit about yer, have you? Me spine's a rasping
+holes in me necktie, and I'm so flat you could slip me into a pillar box
+and they'd take me home for a penny stamp."
+
+But Cleek made no reply. Wet and spent after his fierce struggle with
+the whirling fury he had just escaped, he lay looking up into Ailsa's
+eyes as she came to him with the sobbing child close pressed to her
+bosom and all heaven in her beaming face.
+
+"It is not the 'funeral wreath' after all, you see, Miss Lorne," he
+said. "It came near to being it; but--it is not, it is not. I wonder,
+oh, I wonder!"
+
+Then he laughed the foolish, vacuous laugh of a man whose thoughts are
+too happy for the banality of words.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+It was midnight and after. In the close-curtained library of Chepstow
+House, Cleek, with his little lordship sleeping in his arms, sat in
+solemn conclave with Lady Chepstow, Captain Hawksley, and Maverick
+Narkom; and while they talked, Ailsa, like a restless spirit, wandered
+to and fro, now lifting the curtains to peep out into the darkness, now
+listening as if her whole life's hope lay in the coming of some expected
+sound. And in her veins there burned a fever of suspense.
+
+"So you failed to get the rascals, did you, Mr. Narkom?" Cleek was
+saying. "I feared as much; but I couldn't get word to you sooner. We
+injured the machine in that mad race to the mill, and of course we had
+to come at a snail's pace afterwards. I'm sorry we didn't get
+Margot--sorrier still that that hound Merode got away. They are bound to
+make more trouble before the race is run. Not for her ladyship, however,
+and not for this dear little chap. Their troubles are at an end, and the
+sacred son will be a sacred son no longer."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Cleek, do tell me what you mean," implored Lady Chepstow. "Do
+tell me how--"
+
+"Doctor Fordyce, at last!" struck in Ailsa excitedly, as the door-bell
+and knocker clashed and the butler's swift footsteps went along the
+hall. "Now we shall know, Mr. Cleek--oh, now we shall know for certain!"
+
+"And so shall all the world," he replied as the door opened and the
+doctor was ushered into the room. "I don't think you were ever so
+welcome anywhere or at any time before, doctor," he added with a smile.
+"Come and look at this little chap. Bonny little specimen of a
+Britisher, isn't he?"
+
+"Yes; but my dear sir, I--I was under the impression that I was called
+to a scene of excitement; and you seem as peaceful as Eden here. The
+constable who came for me said it was something to do with Scotland
+Yard."
+
+"So it is, doctor. I had Mr. Narkom send for you to perform a very
+trifling but most important operation upon his little lordship here."
+
+"Upon Cedric!" exclaimed Lady Chepstow, rising in a panic of alarm. "An
+operation to be performed upon my baby boy? Oh, Mr. Cleek, in the name
+of Heaven--"
+
+"No, your ladyship, in the name of Buddha. Don't be alarmed. It is only
+to be a trifling cut--a mere re-opening of that little wound in the
+thigh which you dressed and healed so successfully at Trincomalee. You
+made a mistake, all of you, that night when the boy was shot. The native
+poor Ferralt saw skulking along with the gun was not a mere tribesman
+and had not the very faintest thought of discharging that weapon at your
+little son, or, indeed, at anybody else in the world. He was the High
+Priest Seydama, guardian of the Holy Tooth--the one living being who
+dared by right to touch it or to lay hands upon the shrine that
+contained it. Fearful, when the false rumour of that intended loot was
+circulated, that infidel eyes should look upon it, infidel hands profane
+the sacred relic, he determined to remove it from Dambool to the
+rock-hewn temple of Galwihara and to enshrine it there. For the purpose
+of giving no clue to his movements, he chose to abandon his priestly
+vestments, to disguise himself as a common tribesman, and, the better to
+defeat the designs of any who might penetrate that disguise and
+endeavour to take the sacred relic from him and hold it for ransom, he
+hid the Holy Tooth in the barrel of a gun. That gun was in his hands,
+your ladyship, when Ferralt rushed out and brained him."
+
+"In his hands? Oh, Mr. Cleek, then--then--" Her voice all but failed her
+as a sudden realization came. "That relic, that fetish! If it was in
+that gun at that time, then it is now--"
+
+"Embedded in the fleshy part of the boy's thigh," said Cleek, finishing
+the sentence for her. "Inclosed, doubtless, in a sac or cyst which
+Mother Nature has wrapped round it, the tooth is there--in your little
+son's body; and for five whole years he has been the living shrine that
+held it!"
+
+It was quite true--as events rapidly and completely proved.
+
+Ten minutes later, the trifling operation was concluded; the boy lay
+whimpering in his mother's arms and the long-lost relic was on the
+surgeon's palm.
+
+"Take it, Captain Hawksley," said Cleek, lifting it between his thumb
+and forefinger and carrying it to him. "There is a man in Soho--one
+Arjeeb Noosrut--who will know it when he sees it; and there is a vast
+reward. Five lacs of rupees will pay off no end of debts, my friend; and
+a man with that balance at his banker's can't be thought a mere
+fortune-hunter when he asks for the hand of the woman he loves."
+
+The Captain didn't ask for _his_, however--he simply jumped up and
+grabbed it.
+
+"By George, you're a brick!" he said, with something uneven in his
+voice--something that was like laughter and tears all jumbled up
+together; then he glanced over at Lady Chepstow, and flushed, and
+floundered, and stammered confusedly, but went on shaking Cleek's hand
+all the time. "It's ripping of you--it's bully, dear chap, but--I say,
+you know, it isn't fair. It's jolly uneven. _You_ found out. You ought
+at least to have a share in the reward."
+
+"Not I," said Cleek, with an airy laugh. "Like the fellow who was born
+with a third leg, 'I have no use for it,' Captain. But if you really
+want to give any part of it away, bank a thousand to the credit of my
+boy Dollops to be turned over to him when he's twenty-one. And you might
+make Mr. Narkom, and, if she will accept the post, Miss Lorne, his
+trustees."
+
+Miss Lorne faced round and looked at him; and even from that distance he
+could see that her mouth was moving tremulously and there was something
+shining in the corner of her eye.
+
+"I accept that position with pleasure, Mr. Cleek," she said. "It is the
+act of a man and--a gentleman. Thank you! Thank you." And came down the
+long length of the room with her hand outstretched to take his.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+He took it with that grave courtesy, that gentle dignity of bearing
+which at times distinguished his deportment and was, indeed, as puzzling
+to her as it was to Mr. Maverick Narkom. It came but rarely, that
+peculiar air, but it was very noticeable when it did come, although the
+man himself seemed totally oblivious of it. Miss Lorne noticed it now,
+just as she had noticed it that day in the train when she had said
+banteringly: "I am not used to Court manners. Where, if you please, did
+you acquire yours?"
+
+"I can't say how deeply indebted I feel--you must imagine that, Miss
+Lorne," he said, bending over the hand that lay in his, with an air that
+made Lady Chepstow lift her eyebrows and look at him narrowly. "It is
+one of the kindest things you could do for the boy and--for me. I thank
+you very, very much indeed. My thanks are due to you, too, Captain; for
+I feel that you will gladly do the favour I have asked."
+
+"Do it? Yes, like a shot, old chap. What a ripping fellow you are!"
+
+"I'm a tired one at all events," replied Cleek. "So, if you--and the
+ladies"--bowing to them--"will kindly excuse me, I'll be off home for a
+needed rest. Lady Chepstow, my very best respects. I feel sure that his
+little lordship will be quite all right in a day or two, although I
+shall, of course, be glad to learn how he progresses. May I? Perhaps
+Miss Lorne might be persuaded to send me a word or two through--Mr.
+Narkom."
+
+Lady Chepstow was still looking at him as she had been from the moment
+he had taken Ailsa's hand. Now she put out her own to him.
+
+"Why wait for written reports, Mr. Cleek? Why not call in person and
+see?" she asked. "It will be more satisfactory than writing; and you
+will be welcome always."
+
+"I thank your ladyship," he said gravely--though all the soul of him
+rioted and laughed and longed to shout out for sheer joy. "It is a
+privilege I shall be happy to enjoy."
+
+But afterward, when he came to take his leave, a dearer one was granted
+him; for Ailsa herself accompanied him to the door.
+
+"I couldn't let the butler show you out, Mr. Cleek," she said, as they
+stood together in the wide entrance hall. "I couldn't let you go until I
+had said something that is on my mind--something that has been pricking
+my conscience all evening. I want to tell you that from this night on I
+am going to forget those other nights: that one in the mist at
+Hampstead, that other on the stairway at Wyvern House--forget them
+utterly and entirely, Mr. Cleek. Whatever you may have been _once_, I
+know that now you are indeed a man!"
+
+Then gave him her hand again, smiled at him, and sent him home feeling
+that he was as near to the threshold of heaven as any mortal thing may
+hope to be.
+
+Followed a time of such happiness as only they may know who having lived
+in darkness first know that there is such a thing as Light; followed
+days and weeks that went like magic things, blest to the uttermost
+before they go. For now he was a welcome visitor at the house that
+sheltered her; now the armour of reserve had dropped from her, and they
+were finding out between them that they had many tastes in common.
+
+It was in August when the first interruption to this happy state of
+affairs occurred and they came to know that separation was to be endured
+again. Lady Chepstow, planning already for a wedding that was to take
+place in the early winter, decided to spend the last few months of her
+widowhood at her country house in Devonshire, and retired to it taking
+her servants, her little son, and her son's governess with her.
+
+For a day or two, Cleek "mooned" about--restless, lonely despite
+Dollops's presence, finding no savour in anything; and it came as a
+positive relief when a call from The Yard sent him to a modest little
+house in the neighbourhood of Wandsworth Common. The "call" in question
+took the shape of a letter from Mr. Narkom.
+
+"My dear Cleek," it ran, "a most amazing case--probably _the_ most
+amazing you have yet tackled--has just cropped up. The client is one
+Captain Morrison, a retired Army officer living solely on his half pay.
+His daughter is involved in the astonishing affair. Indeed, it is at her
+earnest appeal that the matter has been brought to my notice. As the
+Captain is in too weak a state of health to journey any distance, I am
+going to ask you to meet me at No. 17, Sunnington Crescent,
+Wandsworth--a house kept by one Mrs. Culpin, widow of one of my Yard
+men, at three o'clock this afternoon. Knowing your reluctance to have
+your identity disclosed, I have taken the liberty of giving you the name
+you adopted in the Bawdrey affair, to wit: 'George Headland.' I have
+also taken the same precaution with regard to the Morrisons, leaving you
+to disclose your identity or not, as you see fit."
+
+Glad enough for anything to distract his thoughts from the brooding
+state of melancholy into which they had sunk, Cleek looked up a
+time-table, caught the 2:47 train from Victoria Station; and Narkom,
+walking into Mrs. Culpin's modest little drawing-room at two minutes
+past three, found him standing in the window and looking thoughtfully
+out at the groups of children romping on the near-by common.
+
+"Well, here I am at last, you see, my dear fellow," he said, as he
+crossed the room and shook hands with him. "Ripping day, isn't it? What
+are you doing? Admiring the view or taking stock of Mrs. Culpin's
+roses?"
+
+"Neither. I was speculating in futures," replied Cleek, glancing back at
+the sunlit common, and then glancing away again with a faintly audible
+sigh. "How happy, how care-free they are, those merry little beggars,
+Mr. Narkom. What you said in your letter set my thoughts harking
+backward, and ... I was wondering what things the coming years might
+hold for them and for their parents. At one time, you know, Philip
+Bawdrey was as innocent and guileless as any of those little shavers;
+and yet, in after years he proved a monster of iniquity, a beast of
+ingratitude, and--Oh, well, let it pass. He paid, as thankless children
+always do pay under God's good rule. I wonder what his thoughts were
+when his last hour came."
+
+"It did come, then?"
+
+"Yes. Got playing some of his games with those short-tempered chaps out
+in Buenos Ayres and got knifed a fortnight after his arrival. I had a
+letter from Mrs. Bawdrey yesterday. His father never knew of--well, the
+other thing; and never will now, thank God. The longer I live, Mr.
+Narkom, the surer I become that straight living always pays; and that
+the chap who turns into the other lane gets what he deserves before the
+game is played out."
+
+"Ten years of Scotland Yard have enabled me to endorse that statement
+emphatically," replied Narkom. "'The riddle of the ninth finger' was no
+different in that respect from nine hundred other riddles that have come
+my way since I took office. Now sit down, old chap, and let us take up
+the present case. But I say, Cleek; speaking of rewards reminds me of
+what I wrote you. There's very little chance of one in this affair. All
+the parties connected with it are in very moderate circumstances. The
+sculptor fellow, Van Nant, who figures in it, was quite well-to-do at
+one time, I believe, but he ran through the greater part of his money,
+and a dishonest solicitor did him out of the rest. Miss Morrison herself
+never did have any, and, as I have told you, the Captain hasn't anything
+in the world but his pension; and it takes every shilling of that to
+keep them. In the circumstances, I'd have made it a simple 'Yard'
+affair, chargeable to the Government, and put one of the regular staff
+upon it. But--well, it's such an astounding, such an unheard-of-thing, I
+knew you'd fairly revel in it. And besides, after all the rewards you
+have won you must be quite a well-to-do man by this time, and able to
+indulge in a little philanthropy."
+
+Cleek smiled.
+
+"I will indulge in it, of course," he said, "but not for that reason,
+Mr. Narkom. I wonder how much it will surprise you to learn that, at the
+present moment, I have just one hundred pounds in all the world?"
+
+"My dear fellow!" Narkom exclaimed, with a sort of gasp, staring at him
+in round-eyed amazement. "You fairly take away my breath. Why, you must
+have received a fortune since you took up these special cases. Fifty or
+sixty thousand pounds at the smallest calculation."
+
+"More! To be precise, I have received exactly seventy-two thousand
+pounds, Mr. Narkom. But, as I tell you, I have to-day but one hundred
+pounds of that sum left. Lost in speculation? Oh, dear no! I've not
+invested one farthing in any scheme, company, or purchase since the
+night you gave me my chance and helped me to live an honest life."
+
+"Then in the name of Heaven, Cleek, what has become of the money?"
+
+"It has gone in the cause of my redemption, Mr. Narkom," he answered in
+a hushed voice. "My good friend--for you really _have_ been a good
+friend to me, the best I ever had in all the world--my good friend, let
+us for only just this one minute speak of the times that lie behind. You
+know what redeemed me--a woman's eyes, a woman's rose-white soul! I
+said, did I not, that I wanted to win her, wanted to be worthy of her,
+wanted to climb up and stand with her in the light? You remember that,
+do you not, Mr. Narkom?"
+
+"Yes, I remember. But, my dear fellow, why speak of your 'vanishing
+cracksman' days when you have so utterly put them behind you, and since
+lived a life beyond reproach? Whatever you did in those times you have
+amply atoned for. And what can that have to do with your impoverished
+state?"
+
+"It has everything to do with it. I said I would be worthy of that one
+dear woman, and--I can never be, Mr. Narkom, until I have made
+restitution; until I can offer her a clean hand as well as a clean life.
+I can't restore the actual things that the 'vanishing cracksman' stole;
+for they are gone beyond recall, but--I can, at least, restore the value
+of them, and--that I have been secretly doing for a long time."
+
+"Man alive! God bless my soul! Cleek, my dear fellow, do you mean to
+tell me that all the rewards, all the money you have earned--"
+
+"Has gone to the people from whom I stole things in the wretched old
+days that lie behind me," he finished very gently. "It goes back, in
+secret gifts, as fast as it is earned, Mr. Narkom. Don't you see the
+answers, the acknowledgments, in the 'Personal' columns of the papers
+now and again? Wheresoever I robbed in those old days, I am repaying in
+these. When the score is wiped off, when the last robbery is paid for,
+my hand will be clean, and--I can offer it; never before."
+
+"Cleek! My dear fellow! What a man! What a _man_! Oh, more than ever am
+I certain _now_ that old Sir Horace Wyvern was right that night when he
+said that you were a gentleman. Tell me--I'll respect it--tell me, for
+God's sake, man, who are you? _What_ are you, dear friend?"
+
+"Cleek," he made reply. "Just Cleek! The rest is my secret and--God's!
+We've never spoken of the past since _that_ night, Mr. Narkom, and, with
+your kind permission, we never will speak of it again. I'm Cleek, the
+detective--at your service once more. Now, then, let's have the new
+strange case on which you called me here. What's it all about?"
+
+"Necromancy--wizardry--fairy-lore--all the stuff and nonsense that goes
+to the making of 'The Arabian Nights'!" said Narkom, waxing excited as
+his thoughts were thus shoved back to the amazing affair he had in hand.
+"All your 'Red Crawls' and your 'Sacred Sons' and your 'Nine-fingered
+Skeletons' are fools to it for wonder and mystery. Talk about
+witchcraft! Talk about wizards and giants and enchanters and the things
+that witches did in the days of Macbeth! God bless my soul, they're
+nothing to it. Those were the days of magic, anyhow, so you can take it
+or leave it, as you like; but this--look here, Cleek, you've heard of a
+good many queer things and run foul of a good many mysteries, I'll
+admit, but did you ever--in this twentieth century, when witchcraft and
+black magic are supposed to be as dead as Queen Anne--did you ever, my
+dear fellow, hear of such a marvel as a man putting on a blue leather
+belt that was said to have the power of rendering the wearer invisible
+and then forthwith melting into thin air and floating off like a cloud
+of pipe smoke?"
+
+"Gammon!"
+
+"Gammon nothing! Facts!"
+
+"Facts? You're off your head, man. The thing couldn't possibly happen.
+Somebody's having you!"
+
+"Well, somebody had _him_, at all events. Young Carboys, I mean--the
+chap that's engaged, or, rather was engaged, to Captain Morrison's
+daughter; and the poor girl's half out of her mind over it. He put the
+belt on in the presence of her and her father--in their own house, mind
+you--walked into a bedroom, and vanished like smoke. Doors locked,
+windows closed, room empty, belt on the floor, and man gone. Not a trace
+of him from that moment to this; and yesterday was to have been his
+wedding-day. There's a 'mystery,' if you like. What do you make of
+that?"
+
+Cleek looked at him for an instant. Then:
+
+"My dear Mr. Narkom, for the moment I thought you were fooling," he said
+in a tone of deep interest. "But I see now that you are quite in
+earnest, although the thing sounds so preposterous, a child might be
+expected to scoff at it. A man to get a magic belt, to put it on, and
+then to melt away? Why, the 'Seven-league Boots' couldn't be a greater
+tax on one's credulity. Sit down and tell me all about it."
+
+"The dickens of it is there doesn't seem to be much to tell," said
+Narkom, accepting the invitation. "Young Carboys, who appears to have
+been a decent sort of chap, had neither money, position, nor enemies, so
+that's an end to any idea of somebody having a reason for wishing to get
+rid of him; and, as he was devotedly attached to Miss Morrison, and was
+counting the very hours to the time of their wedding, and, in addition,
+had no debts, no entanglements of any sort, and no possible reason for
+wishing to disappear, there isn't the slightest ground for suspecting
+that he did so voluntarily."
+
+"Suppose you tell me the story from the beginning, and leave me to draw
+my own conclusions regarding that," said Cleek. "Who and what was the
+man? Was he living in the same house with his fiancée, then? You say the
+disappearance occurred there, at night, and that he went into a bedroom.
+Was the place his home, as well as Captain Morrison's, then?"
+
+"On the contrary. His home was a matter of three or four miles distant.
+He was merely stopping at the Morrison's on that particular night; I'll
+tell you presently why and how he came to do that. For the present,
+let's take things in their proper order. Once upon a time this George
+Carboys occupied a fair position in the world, and his parents--long
+since dead--were well to do. The son, being an only child, was well
+looked after--sent to Eton and then to Brasenose, and all that sort of
+thing--and the future looked very bright for him. Before he was
+twenty-one, however, his father lost everything through unlucky
+speculations, and that forced the son to make his own living. At the
+'Varsity he had fallen in with a rich young Belgian--fellow named
+Maurice Van Nant--who had a taste for sculpture and the fine arts
+generally, and they had become the warmest and closest of friends."
+
+"Maurice Van Nant? That's the sculptor fellow you said in the beginning
+had gone through his money, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes. Well, when young Carboys was thrown on the world, so to speak,
+this Van Nant came to the rescue, made a place for him as private
+secretary and companion, and for three or four years they knocked round
+the world together, going to Egypt, Persia, India, _et cetera_, as Van
+Nant was mad on the subject of Oriental art, and wished to study it at
+the fountain-head. In the meantime both Carboys' parents went over to
+the silent majority, and left him without a relative in the world,
+barring Captain Morrison, who is an uncle about seven times removed and
+would, of course, naturally be heir-at-law to anything he left if he had
+anything to leave, poor beggar, which he hadn't. But that's getting
+ahead of the story.
+
+"Well, at the end of four years or so Van Nant came to the bottom of his
+purse--hadn't a stiver left; and from dabbling in art for pleasure, had
+to come down to it as a means of earning a livelihood. And he and
+Carboys returned to England, and, for purposes of economy, pooled their
+interests, took a small box of a house over Putney way, set up a regular
+'bachelor establishment,' and started in the business of bread-winning
+together. Carboys succeeded in getting a clerk's position in town; Van
+Nant set about modelling clay figures and painting mediocre pictures,
+and selling both whenever he could find purchasers.
+
+"Naturally, these were slow in coming, few and far between; but with
+Carboys' steady two pounds a week coming in, they managed to scrape
+along and to keep themselves going. They were very happy, too, despite
+the fact that Carboys had got himself engaged to Miss Morrison, and was
+hoarding every penny he could possibly save in order to get enough to
+marry on; and this did not tend to make Van Nant overjoyed, as such a
+marriage would, of course, mean the end of their long association and
+the giving up of their bachelor quarters."
+
+"To say nothing of leaving Van Nant to rub along as best he could
+without any assistance from Carboys," commented Cleek. "I think I can
+guess a portion of what resulted, Mr. Narkom. Van Nant did not, of
+course, in these circumstances have any tender regard for Miss
+Morrison."
+
+"No, he did not. In point of fact, he disliked her very much indeed, and
+viewed the approaching wedding with extreme disfavour."
+
+"And yet you say that nobody had an interest in doing Carboys some sort
+of mischief in order to prevent that wedding from being consummated, Mr.
+Narkom," said Cleek with a shrug of the shoulders. "Certainly, Van Nant
+would have been glad to see a spoke put in that particular wheel; though
+I freely confess I do not see what good could come of preventing it by
+doing away with Carboys, as he would then be in as bad a position as if
+the marriage had been allowed to proceed as planned. Either way he loses
+Carboys' companionship and assistance; and his one wish would be to
+preserve both. Well, go on. What next? I'm anxious to hear about the
+belt. Where and how does that come in?"
+
+"Well, it appears that Miss Morrison got hold of a humorous book called
+'The Brass Bottle,' a fantastic, farcical thing, about a genie who had
+been sealed up in a bottle for a thousand years getting out and causing
+the poor devil of a hero no end of worry by heaping riches and honours
+upon him in the most embarrassing manner. It happened that on the night
+Miss Morrison got this book, and read it aloud for the amusement of her
+father and lover, Carboys had persuaded Van Nant to spend the evening
+with them. Apparently he enjoyed himself, too, for he laughed as
+boisterously as any of them over the farcical tale, and would not go
+home until he had heard the end of it. When it was finished Miss
+Morrison tells me, Carboys, after laughing fit to split his sides over
+the predicament of the hero of the book, cried out: 'By George! I wish
+some old genie would take it into his head to hunt me up, and try the
+same sort of a dodge with me. He wouldn't find this chicken shying his
+gold and his gems back at his head, I can tell you. I'd accept all the
+Arab slaves and all the palaces he wanted to thrust on me; and then I'd
+make 'em all over to you, Mary dear, so you'd never have to do another
+day's worrying or pinching in all your life. But never you nor anybody
+else depend upon an Arab's gratitude or an Arab's generosity. He'll
+promise you the moon, and then wriggle out of giving you so much as a
+star--just as Abdul ben Meerza did with me.' And upon Miss Morrison
+asking what he meant by that, he replied, laughingly: 'Ask Van, he knew
+the old codger better than I--knew his whole blessed family, blow
+him!--and was able to talk to the old skinflint in his own outlandish
+tongue.'
+
+"Upon Miss Morrison's acting on this suggestion, Van Nant told of an
+adventure Carboys had had in Persia some years previously. It appears
+that he saved the life of a miserly old Arab called Abdul ben Meerza at
+the risk of his own; that the old man was profuse in his expressions of
+gratitude, and, on their parting, had said: 'By the Prophet, thou shalt
+yet find the tree of this day's planting bear rich fruit for thee and
+thy feet walk upon golden stones.' But, in spite of this promise, he had
+walked away, and Carboys had never heard another word from nor of him
+from that hour until three nights ago."
+
+"Oho!" said Cleek, with a strong, rising inflection. "And he did hear of
+him, then?"
+
+"Yes," replied Narkom. "Quite unexpectedly, and while he was preparing
+to spend a dull evening at home with Van Nant--for the night was, as you
+must recollect, my dear fellow, a horribly wet and stormy one--a message
+came to him from Miss Morrison asking him to come over to Wandsworth
+without delay, as a most amazing thing had happened. A box marked 'From
+Abdul ben Meerza' had been delivered there, of all astonishing places.
+The message concluded by saying that as it was such a horrible night,
+the Captain, her father, would not hear of his returning, so begged him
+to bring his effects, and come prepared to remain until morning.
+
+"He went, of course, carrying with him a small bag containing his
+pyjamas, his shaving tackle, and such few accessories as would be
+necessary, since, if he stopped, he must start from there to business in
+the morning; and on his arrival was handed a small leather case
+addressed as he had been told. Imagining all sorts of wonders, from
+jewels of fabulous value to documents entitling him to endless wealth,
+he unfastened the case, and found within it a broad belt of blue
+enamelled leather secured with a circular brass clasp, on which was
+rudely scratched in English the words, 'The wizards of the East grew
+rich by being unseen. Whoso clasps this belt about his waist may become
+invisible for the wishing. So does ben Meerza remember.'
+
+"Of course, Carboys treated it as the veriest rubbish--who wouldn't?
+Indeed, suspected Van Nant of having played a joke upon him, and
+laughingly threw it aside; and, finding that he had taken an
+uncomfortable journey for nothing, got some good out of it by spending a
+pleasant evening with the Captain and his daughter. A room had been made
+ready for him--in fact, although he did not know it, Miss Morrison had
+given him hers, and had herself gone to a less attractive one--and in
+due time he prepared to turn in for the night. As they parted Miss
+Morrison, in a bantering spirit, picked up the belt and handed it to
+him, remarking that he had better keep it, as, after marriage, he might
+some time be glad to creep into the house unseen; and, in the same
+bantering spirit, he had replied that he had better begin learning how
+the thing worked in case of necessity, and taking the belt, clasped it
+round his waist, said good-night, and stepped into the room prepared for
+him. Miss Morrison and her father heard him close the door and pull down
+the blind, and--that was the last that was seen or heard of him.
+
+"In the morning the bed was found undisturbed, his locked bag on a
+chair, and in the middle of the floor the blue leather belt; but of the
+man himself there was not one trace to be found. There, that's the
+story, Cleek. Now what do you make of it?"
+
+"I shall be able to tell you better after I have seen the parties
+concerned," said Cleek, after a moment's pause. "You have brought your
+motor, of course? Let us step into it, then, and whizz round to Captain
+Morrison's house. What's that? Oh, undoubtedly a case of foul play, Mr.
+Narkom. But as to the motive and the matter of who is guilty, it is
+impossible to decide until I have looked further into the evidence. Do
+me a favour, will you? After you have left me at the Captain's house,
+'phone up The Yard, and let me have the secret cable code with the East;
+also, if you can, the name of the chief of the Persian police."
+
+"My dear chap, you can't really place any credence in that absurd
+assertion regarding the blue belt? You can't possibly think that Abdul
+ben Meerza really sent the thing?"
+
+"No, I can't," said Cleek in reply. "Because, to the best of my belief,
+it is impossible for a dead man to send anything; and, if my memory
+doesn't betray me, I fancy I read in the newspaper accounts of that big
+Tajik rising at Khotour a couple of months ago, that the leader, one
+Abdul ben Meerza, a rich but exceedingly miserly merchant of the
+province of Elburz, was, by the Shah's command, bastinadoed within an
+inch of his life, and then publicly beheaded."
+
+"By Jove! I believe you are right, my dear fellow," asserted Narkom. "I
+thought the name had a familiar sound--as if I had, somewhere, heard it
+before. I suppose there is no likelihood, by any chance, that the old
+skinflint could have lived up to his promise and left poor Carboys
+something, after all, Cleek? Because, you know, if he did--"
+
+"Captain Morrison would, as heir-at-law, inherit it," supplemented
+Cleek, dryly. "Get out the motor, Mr. Narkom, and let's spin round and
+see him. I fancy I should like a few minutes' conversation with the
+Captain. And--Mr. Narkom!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"We'll stick to the name 'George Headland,' if you please. When you are
+out for birds it doesn't do to frighten them off beforehand."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+It did not take more than five minutes to cover the distance between
+Sunnington Crescent and the modest little house where Captain Morrison
+and his daughter lived; so in a very brief time Cleek had the
+satisfaction of interviewing both.
+
+Narkom's assertion, that Miss Morrison was "half out of her mind over
+the distressing affair" had prepared him to encounter a weeping,
+red-eyed, heart-broken creature of the most excitable type. He found
+instead a pale, serious-faced, undemonstrative girl of somewhat
+uncertain age--sweet of voice, soft of step, quiet of demeanour--who was
+either one of those persons who repress all external evidence of
+internal fires, and bear their crosses in silence, or was as
+cold-blooded as a fish and as heartless as a statue. He found the father
+the exact antithesis of the daughter, a nervous, fretful, irritable
+individual (gout had him by the heels at the time), who was as full of
+"yaps" and snarls as any Irish terrier, and as peevish and fussy as a
+fault-finding old woman. Added to this, he had a way of glancing all
+round the room, and avoiding the eye of the person to whom he was
+talking. And if Cleek had been like the generality of people, and hadn't
+known that some of the best and "straightest" men in the world have been
+afflicted in this manner, and some of the worst and "crookedest" could
+look you straight in the eyes without turning a hair, he might have
+taken this for a bad sign. Then, too, he seemed to have a great many
+more wrappings and swaddlings about his gouty foot than appeared to be
+necessary--unless it was done to make his helpless state very apparent,
+and to carry out his assertion that he hadn't been able to walk a foot
+unassisted for the past week, and could not, therefore, be in any way
+connected with young Carboys' mysterious vanishment. Still, even that
+had its contra aspect. He might be one of those individuals who make a
+mountain out of a molehill of pain, and insist upon a dozen poultices
+where one would do.
+
+But Cleek could not forget that, as Narkom had said, there was not the
+shadow of doubt that in the event of Carboys having died possessed of
+means, the Captain would be the heir-at-law by virtue of his kinship;
+and it is a great deal more satisfactory to be rich oneself than to be
+dependent upon the generosity of a rich son-in-law. So, after adroitly
+exercising the "pump" upon other matters:
+
+"I suppose, Miss Morrison," said Cleek in a casual off-hand sort of way,
+"you don't happen to know if Mr. Carboys ever made a will, do you? I am
+aware, from what Mr. Narkom has told me of his circumstances, that he
+really possessed nothing that would call for the execution of such a
+document; but young men have odd fancies sometimes--particularly when
+they become engaged--so it is just possible that he might have done such
+a thing; that there was a ring or something of that sort he wanted to
+make sure of your getting should anything happen to him. Of course, it
+is an absurd suggestion, but--"
+
+"It is not so absurd as you think, Mr. Headland," she interrupted. "As
+it happens, Mr. Carboys did make a will. But that was a very long time
+ago--in fact, before he knew me, so my name did not figure in it at all.
+He once told me of the circumstances connected with it. It was executed
+when he was about three-and-twenty. It appears that there were some
+personal trinkets, relics of his more prosperous days: a set of jewelled
+waistcoat buttons, a scarf-pin, a few choice books and things like that,
+which he desired Mr. Van Nant to have in the event of his death (they
+were then going to the Orient, and times there were troublous); so he
+drew up a will, leaving everything that he might die possessed of to Mr.
+Van Nant, and left the paper with the latter's solicitor when they bade
+good-bye to England. So far as I know, that will still exists, Mr.
+Headland; so"--here the faintest suggestion of a quiver got into her
+voice--"if anything of a tragical nature had happened to him, and--and
+the trinkets hadn't disappeared with him, Mr. Van Nant could claim them
+all, and I should have not even one poor little token to cherish in
+memory of him. And I am sure--I am very sure--that if he had known--if
+he had thought--"
+
+"Mary, for goodness' sake, don't begin to snivel!" chimed in her father
+querulously. "It gets on my nerves. And you know very well how I am
+suffering! Of course, it was most inconsiderate of Carboys not to
+destroy that will as soon as you and he were engaged; but he knew that
+marriage invalidates any will a man may have made previously, and--well,
+you can't suppose that he ever expected things to turn out as they have
+done. Besides, Van Nant would have seen that you got something to
+treasure as a remembrance. He's a very decent chap, is Van Nant, Mr.
+Headland, although my daughter has never appeared to think so. But
+there's no arguing with a woman any way."
+
+Cleek glanced at Narkom. It was a significant glance, and said as
+plainly as so many words: "What do you think of it? You said there was
+no motive, and, provided Carboys fell heir to something of which we know
+nothing as yet, here are _two_! If that will was destroyed, one man
+would, as heir-at-law, inherit; ditto the other man if it was not
+destroyed and not invalidated by marriage. And here's the 'one' man
+singing the praises of the 'other' one!"
+
+"Collusion?" queried Narkom's answering look. "Perhaps," said Cleek's in
+response, "one of these two men has made away with him. The question is,
+which? and, also, why? when? where?" Then he turned to the Captain's
+daughter, and asked quietly: "Would you mind letting me see the room
+from which the young man disappeared? I confess I haven't the ghost of
+an idea regarding the case, Captain; but if you don't mind letting your
+daughter show me the room--"
+
+"Mind? Good Lord, no!" responded the Captain. "All I want to know is,
+what became of the poor boy, and if there's any likelihood of his ever
+coming back alive. I'd go up with you myself, only you see how helpless
+I am. Mary, take Mr. Headland to the room. And please don't stop any
+longer than is necessary. I'm suffering agonies and not fit to be left
+alone."
+
+Miss Morrison promised to return as expeditiously as possible, and then
+forthwith led the way to the room in question.
+
+"This is it, Mr. Headland," she said as she opened the door and ushered
+Cleek in. "Everything is just exactly as it was when George left it. I
+couldn't bring myself to touch a thing until after a detective had seen
+it. Father said it was silly and sentimental of me to go on sleeping in
+a little box of a hall bedroom when I could be so much more comfortable
+if I returned to my own. But--I couldn't! I felt that I might possibly
+be unconsciously destroying something in the shape of a clue if I moved
+a solitary object, and so--Look! there is the drawn blind just as he
+left it; there his portmanteau on that chair by the bedside, and
+there--" Her voice sank to a sort of awed whisper, her shaking finger
+extended in the direction of a blue semi-circle in the middle of the
+floor. "There is the belt! He had it round his waist when he crossed
+this threshold that night. It was lying there just as you see it when
+the servant brought up his tea and his shaving-water the next morning,
+and found the room empty and the bed undisturbed."
+
+Cleek walked forward and picked up the belt.
+
+"Humph! Unfastened!" he said as he took it up; and Miss Morrison,
+closing the door, went below and left them. "Our wonderful wizard does
+not seem to have mastered the simple matter of making a man vanish out
+of the thing without first unfastening the buckle, it appears. I should
+have thought he could have managed that, shouldn't you, Mr. Narkom, if
+he could have managed the business of making him melt into thin air?
+Hur-r-r!" reflectively, as he turned the belt over and examined it. "Not
+seen much use, apparently; the leather's quite new, and the inside quite
+unsoiled. British manufactured brass, too, in the buckle. Shouldn't have
+expected that in a Persian-made article. Inscription scratched on with
+the point of a knife, or some other implement not employed in metal
+engraving. May I trouble you for a pin? Thank you. Hum-m-m! Thought so.
+Some dirty, clayey stuff rubbed in to make the letters appear old and of
+long standing. Look here, Mr. Narkom: metal quite bright underneath when
+you pick the stuff out. Inscription very recently added; leather,
+American tanned; brass, Birmingham; stitching, by the Blake shoe and
+harness machine; wizard--probably born in Tottenham Court Road, and his
+knowledge of Persia confined to Persian powder in four-penny tins."
+
+He laid the belt aside, and walked slowly round the room, inspecting its
+contents before turning his attention to the portmanteau.
+
+"Evidently the vanishing qualities of the belt did not assert themselves
+very rapidly, Mr. Narkom," he said, "for Mr. Carboys not only prepared
+to go to bed, but had time to get himself ready to hurry off to business
+in the morning with as little delay as possible. Look here; here are his
+pyjamas on the top of this chest of drawers, neatly folded, just as he
+lifted them out of his portmanteau; and as a razor has been wiped on
+this towel (see this slim line of dust-like particles of hair), he
+shaved before going to bed in order to save himself the trouble of doing
+so in the morning. But as there is no shaving-mug visible, and he
+couldn't get hot water at that hour of the night, we shall probably
+discover a spirit-lamp and its equipment when we look into the
+portmanteau. Now, as he had time to put these shaving articles away
+after using, and as no man shaves with his collar and necktie on, if we
+do not find those, too, in the portmanteau, we may conclude that he put
+them on again; and, as he wouldn't put them on again if he were going to
+bed, the inference is obvious--something caused him to dress and prepare
+to leave the house voluntarily. That 'something' must have manifested
+itself very abruptly, and demanded great haste--either that, or he
+expected to return; for you will observe that, although he replaced his
+shaving tackle in the portmanteau, he did not put his sleeping-suit back
+with it. While I am poking about, do me the favour of looking in the
+bag, Mr. Narkom; and tell me if you find the collar and necktie there."
+
+"Not a trace of them," announced the superintendent a moment or two
+later. "Here are the shaving-mug, the brush, and the spirit-lamp,
+however, just as you suggested; and--Hallo! what have you stumbled upon
+now?" For Cleek, who had been "poking about," as he termed it, had
+suddenly stooped, picked up something, and was regarding it fixedly as
+it lay in the palm of his hand.
+
+"A somewhat remarkable thing to discover in a lady's bed-chamber, Mr.
+Narkom, unless--Just step downstairs, and ask Miss Morrison to come up
+again for a moment, will you?" And then held out his hand so that Narkom
+could see, in passing, that a hempseed, two grains of barley, and an oat
+lay upon his palm. "Miss Morrison," he inquired as Mary returned in
+company with the superintendent, "Miss Morrison, do you keep pigeons?"
+
+She gave a little cry, and clasped her hands together, as if reproaching
+herself for some heartless act.
+
+"Oh!" she said, moving hastily forward toward the window. "Poor dears!
+How good of you to remind me. To think that I should forget to feed them
+for three whole days. They may be dead by now. But at such a time I
+could think of nothing but this hideous mystery. My pigeons--my poor,
+pretty pigeons!"
+
+"Oh, then you do keep them?"
+
+"Yes; oh, yes. In a wire-enclosed cote attached to the house just
+outside this window. Homing pigeons, Mr. Headland. George bought them
+for me. We had an even half dozen each. We used to send messages to each
+other that way. He would bring his over to me, and take mine away with
+him at night when he went home, so we could correspond at any moment
+without waiting for the post. That's how I sent him the message about
+the arrival of the belt. Oh, do unlock the window, and let me see if the
+pretty dears are still alive."
+
+"It doesn't need to be unlocked, Miss Morrison," he replied, as he
+pulled up the blind. "See, it can be opened easily--the catch is not
+secured."
+
+"Not secured? Why, how strange. I myself fastened it after I despatched
+the bird with the message about the belt. And nobody came into the room
+after that until George did so that night. Oh, do look and see if the
+pretty creatures are dead. They generally coo so persistently; and now I
+don't hear a sound from them."
+
+Cleek threw up the sash and looked out. A huge wistaria with tendrils as
+thick as a man's wrist covered the side of the house, and made a
+veritable ladder down to the little garden; and, firmly secured to this,
+on a level with the window-sill and within easy reach therefrom, was the
+dovecote in question. He put in his hand, and slowly drew out four
+stiff, cold, feathered little bodies, and laid them on the
+dressing-table before her; then, while she was grieving over them, he
+groped round in all corners of the cote and drew forth still another.
+
+"Five?" she exclaimed in surprise. "Five? Oh, but there should be only
+four, Mr. Headland. It is true that George brought over all six the day
+before; but I 'flew' one to him in the early morning, and I 'flew' a
+second at night, with the message about the belt; so there should be but
+four."
+
+"Oh, well, possibly one was 'flown' by him to you, and it 'homed'
+without your knowledge."
+
+"Yes, but it couldn't get inside the wired enclosure unassisted, Mr.
+Headland. See! that spring-door has to be opened when it is returned to
+the cote after it has carried its message home. You see, I trained them,
+by feeding them in here, to come into this room when they were flown
+back to me. They always flew directly in if the window was opened, or
+gave warning of their presence by fluttering about and beating against
+the panes if the sash was closed. And for a fifth pigeon to be inside
+the enclosure--I can't understand the thing at all. Oh, Mr. Headland, do
+you think it is anything in the nature of a clue?"
+
+"It may be," he replied evasively. "Clues are funny things, Miss
+Morrison; you never know when you may pick one up, nor how. I shouldn't
+say anything to anybody about this fifth pigeon if I were you. Let that
+be our secret for awhile; and if your father wants to know why I sent
+for you to come up here again--why, just say I have discovered that your
+pigeons are dead for want of food." And for a moment or two, after she
+had closed the door and gone below again, he stood looking at Mr. Narkom
+and slowly rubbing his thumb and forefinger up and down his chin. Then,
+of a sudden:
+
+"I think, Mr. Narkom, we can fairly decide, on the evidence of that
+fifth pigeon, that George Carboys left this room voluntarily," returned
+Cleek; "that the bird brought him a message of such importance it was
+necessary to leave this house at once, and that, not wishing to leave it
+unlocked while he was absent, and not--because of the Captain's
+inability to get back upstairs afterward--having anybody to whom he
+could appeal to get up and lock it after him, he chose to get out of
+this window, and to go down by means of that wistaria. I think, too, we
+may decide that, as he left no note to explain his absence, he expected
+to return before morning, and that, as he never did return, he has met
+with foul play. Of course, it is no use looking for footprints in the
+garden in support of this hypothesis, for the storm that night was a
+very severe one and quite sufficient to blot out all trace of them;
+but--Look here, Mr. Narkom, put two and two together. If a message was
+sent him by a carrier pigeon, where must that pigeon have come from,
+since it was one of Miss Morrison's?"
+
+"Why, from Van Nant's place, of course. It couldn't possibly come from
+any other place."
+
+"Exactly. And as Van Nant and Carboys lived together--kept Bachelor
+Hall--and there was never anybody but their two selves in the house at
+any time, why, nobody but Van Nant himself could have despatched the
+bird. Look at that fragment of burnt paper lying in the basin of that
+candlestick on the washstand. If that isn't all that's left of the paper
+that was tied under the pigeon's wing, and if Carboys didn't use it for
+the purpose of lighting the spirit-lamp by which he heated his
+shaving-water, depend upon it that, in his haste and excitement, he
+tucked it into his pocket, and if ever we find his body we shall find
+that paper on it."
+
+"His body? My dear Cleek, you don't believe that the man has been
+murdered?"
+
+"I don't know--yet. I shall, however, if this Van Nant puts anything in
+the way of my searching that house thoroughly or makes any pretence to
+follow me whilst I am doing so. I want to meet this Maurice Van Nant
+just as soon as I can, Mr. Narkom, just as soon as I can."
+
+And it was barely two minutes after he had expressed this wish that Miss
+Morrison reappeared upon the scene, accompanied by a pale, nervous,
+bovine-eyed man of about thirty-five years of age, and said in a tone of
+agitation: "Pardon me for interrupting, Mr. Headland, but this is Mr.
+Maurice Van Nant. He is most anxious to meet you, and father would have
+me bring him up at once."
+
+Narkom screwed round on his heel, looked at the Belgian, and lost faith
+in Miss Morrison's powers of discrimination instantly. On the
+dressing-table stood Carboys' picture--heavy-jowled, sleepy-eyed,
+dull-looking--and on the threshold stood a man with the kindest eyes,
+the sweetest smile, and the handsomest and most sympathetic countenance
+he had seen in many a day. If the eyes are the mirror of the soul, if
+the face is the index of the character, then here was a man weak as
+water, as easily led as any lamb, and as guileless.
+
+"You are just the man I want to see, Mr. Van Nant," said Cleek, after
+the first formalities were over, and assuming, as he always did at such
+times, the heavy, befogged expression of incompetence. "I confess this
+bewildering affair altogether perplexes me; but you, I understand, were
+Mr. Carboys' close friend and associate, and as I can find nothing in
+the nature of a clue here, I should like, with your permission, to look
+over his home quarters and see if I can find anything there."
+
+If he had looked for any sign of reluctance or of embarrassment upon Van
+Nant's part when such a request should be made, he was wholly
+disappointed, for the man, almost on the point of tears, seized his
+hand, pressed it warmly, and said in a voice of eager entreaty: "Oh, do,
+Mr. Headland, do. Search anywhere, do anything that will serve to find
+my friend and to clear up this dreadful affair. I can't sleep for
+thinking of it; I can't get a moment's peace night or day. You didn't
+know him or you would understand how I am tortured--how I miss him. The
+best friend, the dearest and the lightest-hearted fellow that ever
+lived. If I had anything left in this world, I'd give it all--all, Mr.
+Headland, to clear up the mystery of this thing and to get him back. One
+man could do that, I believe, could and would if I had the money to
+offer him."
+
+"Indeed? And who may he be, Mr. Van Nant?"
+
+"The great, the amazing, the undeceivable man, Cleek. He'd get at the
+truth of it. Nothing could baffle and bewilder him. But--oh, well, it's
+the old, old tale of the power of money. He wouldn't take the case--a
+high-and-mighty 'top-notcher' like that--unless the reward was a
+tempting one, I'm sure."
+
+"No, I'm afraid he wouldn't," agreed Cleek, with the utmost composure.
+"So you must leave him out of your calculations altogether, Mr. Van
+Nant. And now, if you don't mind accompanying us and showing the
+chauffeur the way, perhaps Mr. Narkom will take us over to your house in
+his motor."
+
+"Mind? No, certainly I don't mind. Anything in the world to get at a
+clue to this thing, Mr. Headland, anything. Do let us go at once."
+
+Cleek led the way from the room. Halfway down the stairs, however, he
+excused himself on the plea of having forgotten his magnifying glass,
+and ran back to get it. Two minutes later he rejoined them in the little
+drawing-room, where the growling Captain was still demanding the whole
+time and attention of his daughter, and, the motor being ready, the
+three men walked out, got into it, and were whisked away to the house
+which once had been the home of the vanished George Carboys.
+
+It proved to be a small, isolated brick house in very bad condition,
+standing in an out-of-the-way road somewhere between Putney and
+Wimbledon. It stood somewhat back from the road, in the midst of a
+little patch of ground abounding in privet and laurel bushes, and it was
+evident that its cheapness had been its chief attraction to the two men
+who had rented it, although, on entering, it was found to possess at the
+back a sort of extension, with top and side lights, which must have
+appealed to Van Nant's need of something in the nature of a studio. At
+all events, he had converted it into a very respectable apology for one;
+and Cleek was not a little surprised by what it contained.
+
+Rich stuffs, bits of tapestry, Persian draperies, Arabian
+prayer-mats--relics of his other and better days and of his Oriental
+wanderings--hung on the walls and ornamented the floor; his rejected
+pictures and his unsold statues, many of them life-sized and all of
+clay, coated with a lustreless paint to make them look like marble, were
+disposed about the place with an eye to artistic effect, and near to an
+angle, where stood (on a pedestal, half concealed, half revealed by
+artistically arranged draperies) the life-size figure of a Roman
+senator, in toga and sandals, there was the one untidy spot, the one
+utterly inartistic thing the room contained.
+
+It was the crude, half-finished shape of a recumbent female figure, of
+large proportions and abominable modelling, stretched out at full length
+upon a long, low, trestle-supported "sculptor's staging," on which also
+lay Van Nant's modelling tools and his clay-stained working blouse.
+Cleek looked at the huge unnatural thing--out of drawing, anatomically
+wrong in many particulars--and felt like quoting Angelo's famous remark
+anent his master Lorenzo's faun: "What a pity to have spoilt so much
+expensive material," and Van Nant, observing, waved his hand toward it.
+
+"A slumbering nymph," he explained. "Only the head and shoulders
+finished as yet, you see. I began it the day before, yesterday, but my
+hand seems somehow to have lost its cunning. Here are the keys of all
+the rooms, Mr. Headland. Carboys' was the one directly at the head of
+the stairs, in the front. Won't you and Mr. Narkom go up and search
+without me? I couldn't bear to look into the place and see the things
+that belonged to him and he not there. It would cut me to the heart if I
+did. Or, maybe, you would sooner go alone, and leave Mr. Narkom to
+search round this room. We used to make a general sitting-room of it at
+nights when we were alone together, and some clue may have been
+dropped."
+
+"A good suggestion, Mr. Narkom," commented Cleek, as he took the keys.
+"Look round and see what you can find whilst I poke about upstairs."
+Then he walked out of the studio and searching every nook and corner,
+whilst Van Nant, for the want of something to occupy his mind and his
+hands, worked on the nymph, and could hear him moving about overhead in
+quest of possible clues.
+
+For perhaps twenty minutes Cleek was away; then he came down and walked
+into the room looking the very picture of hopeless bewilderment.
+
+"Mr. Narkom," he said, "this case stumps me. I believe there's magic in
+it, if you ask me; and as the only way to find magic is with magic, I am
+going to consult a clairvoyante, and if one of those parties can't give
+me a clue, I don't believe the mystery will ever be solved. I know of a
+ripping one, but she is over in Ireland, and as it's a dickens of a way
+to go, I shan't be able to get back before the day after to-morrow at
+the earliest. But--look here, sir, I'll tell you what! This is Tuesday
+evening, isn't it? Now if you and Mr. Van Nant will be at Captain
+Morrison's house on Thursday evening at seven o'clock, and will wait
+there until I come, I'll tell you what that clairvoyante says, and
+whether there's any chance of this thing being solved or not. Is that
+agreeable, Mr. Van Nant?"
+
+"Quite, Mr. Headland. I'll be there promptly."
+
+"And stop until you hear from me?"
+
+"And stop until I hear from you--yes."
+
+"Right you are, sir. Now then, Mr. Narkom, if you'll let the chauffeur
+whisk me over to the station, I'll get back to London and on to the
+earliest possible train for Holyhead so as to be on hand for the first
+Irish packet to-morrow. And while you're looking for your hat, sir--good
+evening, Mr. Van Nant--I'll step outside and tell Lennard to start up."
+
+With that, he passed out of the studio, walked down the hall, and went
+out of the house. And half a minute later, when the superintendent
+joined him, he found him sitting in the limousine and staring at his
+toes.
+
+"My dear Cleek, did you find anything?" he queried, as he took a seat
+beside him, and the motor swung out into the road and whizzed away. "Of
+course, I know you've no more idea of going to Ireland than you have of
+taking a pot-shot at the moon: but there's something on your mind. I
+know the signs, Cleek. What is it?"
+
+The response to this was rather startling.
+
+"Mr. Narkom," said Cleek, answering one question with another, "what's
+the best thing to make powdered bismuth stick--lard, cold cream, or
+cocoa butter?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+If punctuality is a virtue, then Mr. Maurice Van Nant deserved to go on
+record as one of the most virtuous men in existence. For the little
+Dutch clock in Captain Morrison's drawing-room had barely begun to
+strike seven on the following Thursday evening when he put in an
+appearance there, and found the Captain and his daughter anxiously
+awaiting him. But, as virtue is, on most excellent authority, its own
+reward, he had to be satisfied with the possession of it, since neither
+Narkom nor Cleek was there to meet him.
+
+But the reason for this defection was made manifest when Miss Morrison
+placed before him a telegram which had arrived some ten minutes earlier
+and read as follows: "Unavoidably delayed. Be with you at nine-thirty.
+Ask Mr. Van Nant to wait. Great and welcome piece of news for
+him.--NARKOM."
+
+Van Nant smiled.
+
+"Great and welcome news," he repeated. "Then Mr. Headland must have
+found something in the nature of a clue in Ireland, captain, though what
+he could find there I can't imagine. Frankly, I thought him a stupid
+sort of fellow, but if he has managed to find a clue to poor George's
+whereabouts over in Ireland, he must be sharper than I believed. Well,
+we shall know about that at half-past nine, when Mr. Narkom comes. I
+hope nothing will happen to make him disappoint us again."
+
+Nothing did. Promptly at the hour appointed, the red limousine whizzed
+up to the door, and Mr. Narkom made his appearance. But, contrary to the
+expectations of the three occupants of the little drawing-room, he was
+quite alone.
+
+"So sorry I couldn't come earlier," he said, as he came in, looking and
+acting like the bearer of great good news; "but you will appreciate the
+delay when I tell you what caused it. What's that, Mr. Van Nant?
+Headland? No, he's not with me. As a matter of fact, I've dispensed with
+his services in this particular case. Fancy, Miss Morrison, the muff
+came back from Ireland this evening, said the clairvoyante he consulted
+went into a trance, and told him that the key to the mystery could only
+be discovered in Germany, and he wanted me to sanction his going over
+there on no better evidence than that. Of course, I wouldn't; so I took
+him off the case forthwith, and set out to get another and a better man
+to handle it. That's what delayed me. And now, Mr. Van Nant"--fairly
+beaming, and rubbing his palms together delightedly--"here's where the
+great and welcome news I spoke of comes in. I remembered what you said
+the other day--I remembered how your heart is wrapped up in the solving
+of this great puzzle--what you said about it being a question of money
+alone; and so, what do you think I did? I went to that great man, Cleek.
+I laid the matter before him, told him there was no reward, that it was
+just a matter of sheer humanity--the consciousness of doing his duty and
+helping another fellow in distress--and, throw up your hat and cheer, my
+dear fellow, for you've got your heart's desire: Cleek's consented to
+take the case!"
+
+A little flurry of excitement greeted this announcement. Miss Morrison
+grabbed his hand and burst into tears of gratitude; the Captain,
+forgetting in his delight the state of his injured foot, rose from his
+chair, only to remember suddenly and sit down again, his half-uttered
+cheer dying on his lips; and Van Nant, as if overcome by this unexpected
+boon, this granting of a wish he had never dared to hope would be
+fulfilled, could only clap both hands over his face and sob
+hysterically.
+
+"Cleek!" he said, in a voice that shook with nervous catches and the
+emotion of a soul deeply stirred, "Cleek to take the case? The great,
+the amazing, the undeceivable Cleek! Oh, Mr. Narkom, can this be true?"
+
+"As true as that you are standing here this minute, my dear sir. Not so
+much of a money grabber as that muff Headland wanted you to believe, is
+he--eh? Waived every hope of a reward, and took the case on the spot.
+He'll get at the root of it--Lord, yes! Lay you a sovereign to a
+sixpence, Mr. Van Nant, he gets to the bottom of it and finds out what
+became of George Carboys in forty-eight hours after he begins on the
+case."
+
+"And when will he begin, Mr. Narkom? To-morrow? The next day? Or not
+this week at all? When, sir--when?"
+
+"When? Why, bless your heart, man, he's begun already--or, at least,
+will do so in another hour and a half. He's promised to meet us at your
+house at eleven o'clock to-night. Chose that place because he lives at
+Putney, and it's nearer. Eleven was the hour he set, though, of course,
+he may arrive sooner; there's no counting on an erratic fellow like that
+chap. So we'll make it eleven, and possess our souls in patience until
+it's time to start."
+
+"But, my dear Mr. Narkom, wouldn't it be better, or, at least, more
+hospitable if I went over to meet him, in case he does come earlier?
+There's no one in the house, remember, and it's locked up."
+
+"Lord bless you, that won't bother him! Never travels without his tools,
+you know--skeleton keys, and all that--and he'll be in the house before
+you can wink an eye. Still, of course, if you'd rather be there to admit
+him in the regulation way--"
+
+"It would at least be more courteous, Mr. Narkom," Miss Morrison
+interposed. "So great a man doing so great a favour--Oh, yes, I really
+think that Mr. Van Nant should."
+
+"Oh, well, let him then, by all means," said Narkom. "Go, if you choose,
+Mr. Van Nant. I'd let you have my motor, only I must get over to the
+station and 'phone up headquarters on another affair in five minutes."
+
+"It doesn't matter, thank you all the same. I can get a taxi at the top
+of the road," said Van Nant; and then, making his excuses to Miss
+Morrison and her father, he took up his hat and left the house. As a
+matter of fact, it was only courtesy that made him say that about the
+taxi, for there is rarely one to be found waiting about in the
+neighbourhood of Wandsworth Common after half-past nine o'clock at
+night, and nobody could have been more surprised than he when he
+actually did come across one, loitering about aimlessly and quite empty,
+before he had gone two dozen yards.
+
+He engaged it on the spot, jumped into it, gave the chauffeur his
+directions, and a minute later was whizzing away to the isolated house.
+It was eight minutes past ten when he reached it, standing as black and
+lightless as when he left it four hours ago, and, after paying off the
+chauffeur and dismissing the vehicle, he fumbled nervously for his
+latchkey, found it, unlocked the door, and went hurriedly in.
+
+"Have you come yet, Mr. Cleek?" he called out, as he shut the door and
+stood in the pitch-black hall. "Mr. Cleek! Mr. Cleek, are you here? It
+is I--Maurice Van Nant. Mr. Narkom has sent me on ahead."
+
+Not a sound answered him, not even an echo. He sucked in his breath with
+a sort of wheezing sound, then groped round the hall table till he found
+his bedroom candle, and, striking a match, lit it. The staircase leading
+to the upper floors gaped at him out of the partial gloom, and he fairly
+sprang at it--indeed, was halfway up it when some other idea possessed
+him, brought him to a sudden standstill, and, facing round abruptly, he
+went back to the lower hall again, glimmering along it like a shadow,
+with the inadequate light held above him, and moving fleetly to the
+studio in the rear.
+
+The door stood partly open, just as he had left it. He pushed it inward
+and stepped over the threshold.
+
+"Mr. Cleek!" he called again. "Mr. Cleek! Are you here?"
+
+And again the silence alone answered him. The studio was as he had seen
+it last, save for those fantastic shadows which the candle's wavering
+flame wreathed in the dim corners and along the pictured walls. There,
+on its half-draped pedestal, the Roman senator stood--dead white against
+the purple background--and there, close to the foot of it, the great
+bulk of the disproportionate nymph still sprawled, finished and
+whitewashed now, and looking even more of a monstrosity than ever in
+that waving light.
+
+He gave one deep gulping sigh of relief, flashed across the room on
+tiptoe, and went down on his knees beside the monstrous thing, moving
+the candle this way and that along the length of it, as if searching for
+something, and laughing in little jerky gasps of relief when he found
+nothing that was not as it had been--as it should be--as he wanted it to
+be. And then, as he rose and patted the clay, and laughed aloud as he
+realised how hard it had set, then, at that instant, a white shape
+lurched forward and swooped downward, carrying him down with it. The
+candle slipped from his fingers and clattered on the floor, a pair of
+steel handcuffs clicked as they closed round his wrists, a voice above
+him said sharply: "You wanted Cleek I believe? Well, Cleek's got you,
+you sneaking murderer. Gentlemen, come in! Allow me to turn over to you
+the murderer of George Carboys! You'll find the body inside that
+slumbering nymph!"
+
+And the last thing that Mr. Maurice Van Nant saw, as he shrieked and
+fainted, the last thing he realised, was that lights were flashing up
+and men tumbling in through the opening windows; that the Roman
+senator's pedestal was empty, and the figure which once had stood upon
+it was bending over him--alive!
+
+And just at that moment the red limousine flashed up out of the
+darkness, the outer door whirled open and Narkom came pelting up.
+
+"He took the bait, then, Cleek?" he cried, as he saw the manacled figure
+on the floor, with the "Roman senator" bending over and the policemen
+crowding in about it. "I guessed it when I saw the lights flash up. I've
+been on his heels ever since he snapped at that conveniently placed taxi
+after he left Miss Morrison and her father."
+
+"You haven't brought them with you, I hope, Mr. Narkom? I wouldn't have
+that poor girl face the ordeal of what's to be revealed here to-night
+for worlds."
+
+"No, I've not. I made a pretext of having to 'phone through to
+headquarters, and slipped out a moment after him. But, I say, my dear
+chap"--as Cleek's hands made a rapid search of the pockets of the
+unconscious man, and finally brought to light a folded paper--"what's
+that thing? What are you doing?"
+
+"Compounding a felony in the interest of humanity," he made reply as he
+put the end of the paper into the flame of the candle and held it there
+until it was consumed. "We all do foolish things sometimes when we are
+young, Mr. Narkom, and--well, George Carboys was no exception when he
+wrote the little thing I have just burned. Let us forget all about
+it--Captain Morrison is heir-at-law, and that poor girl will benefit."
+
+"There was an estate, then?"
+
+"Yes. My cable yesterday to the head of the Persian police set all doubt
+upon that point at rest. Abdul ben Meerza, parting with nothing while he
+lived, after the manner of misers in general, left a will bequeathing
+something like £12,000 to George Carboys, and his executor communicated
+that fact to the supposed friend of both parties--Mr. Maurice Van Nant;
+and exactly ten days ago, so his former solicitor informed me, Mr.
+Maurice Van Nant visited him unexpectedly, and withdrew from his keeping
+a sealed packet which had been in the firm's custody for eight years. If
+you want to know why he withdrew it--Dollops!"
+
+"Right you are, Gov'nor."
+
+"Give me the sledge-hammer. Thanks! Now, Mr. Narkom, look!" And,
+swinging the hammer, he struck at the nymph with a force that shattered
+the monstrous thing to atoms; and Narkom, coming forward to look when
+Cleek bent over the ruin he had wrought, saw in the midst of the dust
+and rubbish the body of a dead man, fully clothed, and with the gap of a
+bullet-hole in the left temple.
+
+Again Cleek's hands began a rapid search, and again, as before, they
+brought to light a paper, a little crumpled ball of paper that had been
+thrust into the right-hand pocket of the dead man's waistcoat, as though
+jammed there under the stress of strong excitement and the pressure of
+great haste. He smoothed it out and read it carefully, then passed it
+over to Mr. Narkom.
+
+"There!" he said, "that's how he lured him over to his death. That's the
+message the pigeon brought. Would any man have failed to fly to face the
+author of a foul lie like that?"
+
+"Beloved Mary," the message ran, "come to me again to-night. How sweet
+of you to think of such a thing as the belt to get him over and to make
+him stop until morning! Steal out after he goes to bed, darling. I'll
+leave the studio window unlocked, as usual. With a thousand kisses.
+
+"Your own devoted,
+
+"MAURICE."
+
+"The dog!" said Narkom fiercely. "And against a pure creature like Mary
+Morrison! Here, Smathers, Petrie, Hammond, take him away. Hanging's too
+good for a beastly cur like that!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"How did I know that the body was inside the statue?" said Cleek,
+answering Narkom's query, as they drove back in the red limousine toward
+London and Clarges Street. "Well, as a matter of fact, I never did know
+for certain until he began to examine the thing to-night. From the first
+I felt sure he was at the bottom of the affair, that he had lured
+Carboys back to the house, and murdered him; but it puzzled me to think
+what could possibly have been done with the body. I felt pretty certain,
+however, when I saw that monstrous statue."
+
+"Yes, but why?"
+
+"My dear Mr. Narkom, you ought not to ask that question. Did it not
+strike you as odd that a man who was torn with grief over the
+disappearance of a loved friend should think of modelling any sort of a
+statue on that very first day, much less such an inartistic one as that?
+Consider: the man has never been a first-class sculptor, it is true, but
+he knew the rudiments of his art, he had turned out some fairly
+presentable work; and that nymph was as abominably conceived and as
+abominably executed as if it had been the work of a raw beginner. Then
+there was another suspicious circumstance. Modelling clay is not exactly
+as cheap as dirt, Mr. Narkom. Why, then, should this man, who was
+confessedly as poor as the proverbial church mouse, plunge into the wild
+extravagance of buying half a ton of it--and at such a time? Those are
+the things that brought the suspicion into my mind; the certainty,
+however, had to be brought about beyond dispute before I could act.
+
+"I knew that George Carboys had returned to that studio by the dry marks
+of muddy footprints, that were nothing like the shape of Van Nant's,
+which I found on the boards of the verandah and on the carpet under one
+of the windows; I knew, too, that it was Van Nant who had sent that
+pigeon. You remember when I excused myself and went back on the pretext
+of having forgotten my magnifying glass the other day? I did so for the
+purpose of looking at that fifth pigeon. I had observed something on its
+breast feathers which I thought, at first glance, was dry mud, as though
+it had fallen or brushed against something muddy in its flight. As we
+descended the stairs I observed that there was a similar mark on Van
+Nant's sleeve. I brushed against him and scraped off a fleck with my
+finger-nails. It was the dust of dried modelling clay. That on the
+pigeon's breast proved to be the same substance. I knew then that the
+hands of the person who liberated that pigeon were the hands of someone
+who was engaged in modelling something or handling the clay of the
+modeller, and--the inference was clear.
+
+"As for the rest; when Van Nant entered that studio to-night, frightened
+half out of his wits at the knowledge that he would have to deal with
+the one detective he feared, I knew that if he approached that statue
+and made any attempts to examine it I should have my man, and that the
+hiding-place of his victim's body would be proved beyond question. When
+he did go to it, and did examine it--Clarges Street at last, thank
+fortune; for I am tired and sleepy. Stop here, Lennard; I'm getting out.
+Come along, Dollops. Good-night, Mr. Narkom! 'And so, to bed,' as good
+old Pepys says."
+
+And passed on, up the street, with his hand on the boy's shoulder and
+the stillness and the darkness enfolding them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+For the next five or six weeks life ran on merrily enough for Cleek; so
+merrily, in fact, that Dollops came to be quite accustomed to hear him
+whistling about the house and to see him go up the stairs two steps at a
+time whenever he had occasion to mount them for any purpose whatsoever.
+
+It would not have needed any abnormally acute mind, any process of
+subtle reasoning, to get at the secret of all this exuberance, this
+perennial flow of high spirits; indeed, one had only to watch the letter
+box at Number 204, Clarges Street, to get at the bottom of it instantly;
+for twice a week the postman dropped into it a letter addressed in an
+undoubtedly feminine "hand" to Captain Horatio Burbage, and invariably
+postmarked "Lynhaven, Devon."
+
+Dollops had made that discovery long ago and had put his conclusions
+regarding it into the mournfully-uttered sentence: "A skirt's got him!"
+But, after one violent pang of fierce and rending jealousy, was grateful
+to that "skirt" for bringing happiness to the man he loved above all
+other things upon earth and whose welfare was the dearest of his heart's
+desires. Indeed, he grew, in time, to watch as eagerly for the coming of
+those letters as did his master himself; and he could have shouted with
+delight whenever he heard the postman's knock, and saw one of the
+regulation blue-grey envelopes drop through the slit into the wire cage
+on the door.
+
+Cleek, too, was delighted when he saw them. It was nothing to him that
+the notes they contained were of the briefest--mere records of the state
+of the weather, the progress of his little lordship, the fact that Lady
+Chepstow wished to be remembered and that the writer was well "and hoped
+he, too, was." They were written by _her_--that was enough. He gave so
+much that very little sufficed him in return; and the knowledge that he
+had been in her mind for the five or ten minutes which it had taken to
+write the few lines she sent him, made him exceedingly happy.
+
+But she was not his only correspondent in these days--not even his most
+frequent one. For a warm, strong friendship--first sown in those
+ante-Derby days--had sprung up between Sir Henry Wilding and himself and
+had deepened steadily into a warm feeling of comradeship and mutual
+esteem. Frequent letters passed between them; and the bond of fellowship
+had become so strong a thing that Sir Henry never came to town without
+their meeting and dining together.
+
+"Gad! you know, I can't bring myself to think of you as a
+police-officer, old chap!" was the way Sir Henry put it on the day when
+he first invited him to lunch with him at his club. "I'd about as soon
+think of sitting down with one of my grooms as breaking bread with one
+of that lot; and I shall never get it out of my head that you're a
+gentleman going in for this sort of thing as a hobby--never b'Gad! if I
+live to be a hundred."
+
+"I hope you will come nearer to doing that than you have to guessing the
+truth about me," replied Cleek, with a smile. "Take my word for it,
+won't you?--this thing is my profession. I don't do it as a mere hobby:
+I live by it--I have no other means of living _but_ by it. I am--what I
+am, and nothing more."
+
+"Oh, gammon! Why not tell me at once that you are a winkle stall-keeper
+and be done with it? You can't tell a fish that another fish is a
+turnip--at least you can't and expect him to believe it. Own up, old
+chap. I know a man of birth when I meet him. Tell me who you are,
+Cleek--I'll respect it."
+
+"I don't doubt that--the addition is superfluous."
+
+"Then who are you? What are you, Cleek? Eh?"
+
+"What you have called me--'Cleek.' Cleek the detective, Cleek of the
+Forty Faces, if you prefer it; but just 'Cleek' and nothing more. Don't
+get to building romances about me merely because I have the _instincts_
+of a gentleman, Sir Henry. Just simply remember that Nature _does_ make
+mistakes sometimes; that she has been known to put a horse's head on a
+sheep's shoulders and to make a navvy's son look more royal than a
+prince. I am Cleek, the detective--simply Cleek. Let it go at that."
+
+And as there was no alternative, Sir Henry did.
+
+It made no difference in their friendship, however. Police officer or
+not, he liked and he respected the man, and made no visit to town
+without meeting and entertaining him.
+
+So matters stood between them when on a certain Thursday in mid
+September he came up unexpectedly from Wilding Hall and 'phoned through
+to Clarges Street, asking Cleek to dine with him that night at the Club
+of the Two Services.
+
+Cleek accepted the invitation gladly and was not a little surprised on
+arriving to find that, in this instance, dinner was to be served in a
+little private room and that a third party was also to partake of it.
+
+"Dear chap, pardon me for taking you unawares," said Sir Henry, as Cleek
+entered the private room and found himself in the presence of a
+decidedly military-looking man long past middle life, "but the fact is
+that immediately after I had telephoned you, I encountered a friend and
+a--er--peculiar circumstance arose which impelled me to secure a private
+room and to--er--throw myself upon your good graces as it were. Let me
+have the pleasure, dear chap, of introducing you to my friend, Major
+Burnham-Seaforth. Major, you are at last in the presence of the
+gentleman of whom I spoke--Mr. Cleek."
+
+"Mr. Cleek, I am delighted," said the Major, offering his hand. "I have
+heard your praises sung so continuously the past two hours that I feel
+as if I already knew you."
+
+"Ah, you mustn't mind all that Sir Henry says," replied Cleek, as he
+shook hands with him. "He makes mountains out of millstones, and would
+panegyrize the most commonplace of men if he happened to take a fancy to
+him. You mustn't believe all that Sir Henry says and thinks, Major."
+
+"I shall be happy, Mr. Cleek, if I can really hope to believe the half
+of it," replied the Major, enigmatically--and was prevented from saying
+more by the arrival of the waiter and the serving of dinner.
+
+It was not until the meal was over and coffee and cigars had been served
+and the too attentive waiter had taken his departure that Cleek
+understood that remark or realised what it portended. But even then, it
+was not the Major who explained.
+
+"My dear Cleek," said Sir Henry, lowering his voice and leaning over the
+table, "I hope you will not think I have taken a mean advantage of you,
+but I have brought the Major here to-night for a purpose. He has, in
+fact, come to consult you professionally; and upon my recommendation. Do
+you object to that, or may I go on?"
+
+"Go on by all means," replied Cleek. "I fancy you know very well that
+there is nothing you might ask of me that I would not at least attempt
+to do, dear chap."
+
+"Thanks very much. Well then, the Major has come, my dear Cleek, to ask
+you to help in unravelling a puzzle of singular and mystifying interest.
+Now you may or may not have heard of a Music Hall artiste--a sort of
+conjurer and impersonator combined--called Zyco the Magician, who was
+once very popular and was assisted in his illusions by a veiled but
+reputedly beautiful Turkish lady who was billed on the programmes and
+posters as 'Zuilika, the Caliph's Daughter.'"
+
+"I remember the pair very well indeed," said Cleek. "They toured the
+Music Halls for years, and I saw their performance frequently. They were
+among the first, I believe, to produce that afterwards universal
+illusion known as 'The Vanishing Lady.' As I have not heard anything of
+them nor seen their names billed for a couple of years past, I fancy
+they have either retired from the profession or gone to some other part
+of the world. The man was not only a very clever magician, but a master
+of mimicry. I always believed, however, that in spite of his name he was
+of English birth. The woman's face I never saw, of course, as she was
+always veiled to the eyes after the manner of Turkish ladies. But
+although a good many persons suspected that her birthplace was no nearer
+Bagdad than Peckham, I somehow felt that she was, after all, a genuine,
+native-born Turk."
+
+"You are quite right in both suspicions, Mr. Cleek," put in the Major
+agitatedly. "The man _was_ an Englishman; the lady _is_ a Turk."
+
+"May I ask, Major, why you speak of the lady in the present tense and of
+the man in the past? Is he dead?"
+
+"I hope so," responded the Major fervently. "God knows I do, Mr. Cleek.
+My every hope in life depends upon that."
+
+"May I ask why?"
+
+"I am desirous of marrying his widow!"
+
+"My dear Major, you cannot possibly be serious! A woman of that class?"
+
+"Pardon me, sir, but you have, for all your cleverness, fallen a victim
+to the prevailing error. The lady is in every way my social equal--in
+her own country my superior. She _is_ a caliph's daughter. The title
+which the playgoing public imagined was of the usual bombastic,
+just-on-the-programme sort, is hers by right. Her late father, Caliph Al
+Hamid Sulaiman, was one of the richest and most powerful Mohammedans in
+existence. He died five months ago, leaving an immense fortune to be
+conveyed to England to his exiled but forgiven child."
+
+"Ah, I see. Then, naturally, of course--"
+
+"The suggestion is unworthy of you, Sir Henry, and anything but
+complimentary to me. The inheritance of this money has had nothing
+whatever to do with my feelings for the lady. That began two years ago,
+when, by accident, I was permitted to look upon her face for the first,
+last, and only time. I should still wish to marry her if she were an
+absolute pauper. I know what you are saying to yourself, sir: 'There is
+no fool like an old fool.' Well, perhaps there isn't. But--" he turned
+to Cleek--"I may as well begin at the beginning and confess that even if
+I did not desire to marry the lady I should still have a deep interest
+in her husband's death, Mr. Cleek. He is--or was, if dead--the only son
+of my cousin, the Earl of Wynraven, who is now over ninety years of age.
+I am in the direct line, and if this Lord Norman Ulchester, whom you and
+the public know only as 'Zyco the Magician,' were in his grave there
+would only be that one feeble old man between me and the title."
+
+"Ah, I see!" said Cleek, in reply; then, seating himself at the table,
+he arranged the shade of the lamp so that the light fell full upon the
+Major's face while leaving his own in the shadow. "Then your interest in
+the affair, Major, may be said to be a double one."
+
+"More, sir--a triple one. I have a rival in the shape of my own son. He,
+too, wishes to marry Zuilika--is madly enamoured of her, in fact; so
+wildly that I have always hesitated to confess my own desires to him for
+fear of the consequences. He is almost a madman in his outbursts of
+temper; and where Zuilika is concerned--Perhaps you will understand, Mr.
+Cleek, when I tell you that once when he thought her husband had
+ill-used her, he came within an ace of killing the man. There was bad
+blood between them always--even as boys--and, as men, it was bitterer
+than ever because of _her_."
+
+"Suppose you begin at the beginning and tell me the whole story, Major,"
+suggested Cleek, studying the man's face narrowly. "How did the Earl of
+Wynraven's son come to meet this singularly fascinating lady, and
+where?"
+
+"In Turkey--or Arabia--I forget which. He was doing his theatrical
+nonsense in the East with some barn-storming show or other, having been
+obliged to get out of England to escape arrest for some shady
+transaction a year before. He was always a bad egg--always a disgrace to
+his name and connections. That's why his father turned him off and never
+would have any more to do with him. As a boy he was rather clever at
+conjuring tricks and impersonations of all sorts--he could mimic
+anything or anybody he ever saw, from the German Emperor down to a
+Gaiety chorus girl, and do it to absolute perfection. When his father
+kicked him out he turned these natural gifts to account, and, having
+fallen in with some professional dancing-woman, joined her for a time
+and went on the stage with her.
+
+"It was after he had parted from this dancer and was knocking about
+London and leading a disgraceful life generally that he did the thing
+which caused him to hurry off to the East and throw in his lot with the
+travelling company I have alluded to. He was always a handsome fellow
+and had a way with him that was wonderfully taking with women, so I
+suppose that that accounts as much as anything for Zuilika's infatuation
+and her doing the mad thing she did. I don't know when nor where nor how
+they first met; but the foolish girl simply went off her head over him,
+and he appears to have been as completely infatuated with her. Of
+course, in that land, the idea of a woman of her sect, of her standing,
+having anything to do with a Frank was looked upon as something
+appalling, something akin to sacrilege; and when they found that her
+father had got wind of it and that the fellow's life would not be safe
+if he remained within reach another day, they flew to the coast
+together, shipped for England, and were married immediately after their
+arrival."
+
+"A highly satisfactory termination for the lady," commented Cleek. "One
+could hardly have expected that from a man so hopelessly unprincipled as
+you represent him to have always been. But there's a bit of good in even
+the devil, we are told."
+
+"Oh, be sure that he didn't marry her from any principle of honour, my
+dear sir," replied the Major. "If it were merely a question of that,
+he'd have cut loose from her as soon as the vessel touched port.
+Consideration of self ruled him in that as in all other things. He knew
+that the girl's father fairly idolised her; knew that, in time, his
+wrath would give way to his love, and, sooner or later, the old man--who
+had been mad at the idea of any marriage--would be moved to settle a
+large sum upon her so that she might never be in want. But let me get on
+with my story. Having nothing when he returned to England, and being
+obliged to cover up his identity by assuming another name, Ulchester,
+after vainly appealing to his father for help on the plea that he was
+now honourably married and settled down, turned again to the stage, and,
+repugnant though such a thing was to the delicately-nurtured woman he
+had married, compelled Zuilika to become his assistant and to go on the
+boards with him. That is how the afterwards well-known music-hall 'team'
+of 'Zyco and the Caliph's Daughter' came into existence.
+
+"The novelty of their 'turn' caught on like wild fire, and they were a
+success from the first, not a little of that success being due to the
+mystery surrounding the identity and appearance of Zuilika; for, true to
+the traditions of her native land, she never appeared, either in public
+or in private, without being closely veiled. Only her 'lord' was ever
+permitted to look upon her uncovered face; all that the world at large
+might ever hope to behold of it was the low, broad forehead and the two
+brilliant eyes that appeared above the close-drawn line of her yashmak.
+Of course she shrank from the life into which she was forced; but it had
+its reward, for it kept her in close contact with her husband, whom she
+almost worshipped. So, for a time, she was proportionately happy;
+although, as the years passed by and her father showed no inclination to
+bestow the coveted 'rich allowance' upon his daughter, Ulchester's
+ardour began to cool. He no longer treated her with the same
+affectionate deference; he neglected her, in fact, and, in the end, even
+began to ill-use her.
+
+"About two years ago, matters assumed a worse aspect. He again met Anita
+Rosario, the Spanish dancer, under whose guidance he had first turned to
+the halls for a livelihood, and once more took up with her. He seemed to
+have lost all thought or care for the feelings of his wife, for, after
+torturing her with jealousy over his attentions to the dancer, he took a
+house adjoining my own--on the borders of the most unfrequented part of
+the common at Wimbledon--established himself and Zuilika there, and
+brought the woman Anita home to live with them. From that period matters
+went from bad to worse. Evidently having tired of the stage, both
+Ulchester and Anita abandoned it, and turned the house into a sort of
+club where gambling was carried on to a disgraceful extent.
+Broken-hearted over the treatment she was receiving, Zuilika appealed to
+me and to my son to help her in her distress--to devise some plan to
+break the spell of Ulchester's madness and to get that woman out of the
+house. It was then that I first beheld her face. In her excitement she
+managed, somehow, to snap or loosen the fastening which held her
+yashmak, and it fell--fell, and let my son realise, as I realised, how
+wondrously beautiful it is possible for the human face to be!"
+
+"Steady, Major, steady! I can quite understand your feelings--can
+realise better than most men!" said Cleek with a sort of sigh. "You
+looked into heaven, and--well, what then? Let's have the rest of the
+story."
+
+"I think my son must have put it into her head to give Ulchester a taste
+of his own medicine--to attempt to excite his jealousy by pretending to
+find interests elsewhere. At any rate, she began to show him a great
+deal of attention--or, at least, so he says, although I never saw it.
+All I know is that she--she--well, sir, she deliberately led _me_ on
+until I was half insane over her, and--that's all!"
+
+"What do you mean by 'that's all'? The matter couldn't possibly have
+ended there, or else why this appeal to me?"
+
+"It ended for me, so far as her affectionate treatment of me was
+concerned; for in the midst of it the unexpected happened. Her father
+died, forgiving her, as Ulchester had hoped, but doing more than his
+wildest dreams could have given him cause to imagine possible. In a
+word, sir, the caliph not only bestowed his entire earthly possessions
+upon her, but had them conveyed to England by trusted allies and placed
+in her hands. There were coffers of gold pieces, jewels of fabulous
+value--sufficient, when converted into English money, as they were
+within the week, and deposited to her credit in the Bank of England, to
+make her the sole possessor of nearly three million pounds."
+
+"Phew!" whistled Cleek. "When these Orientals do it they certainly do it
+properly. That's what you might call 'giving with both hands,' Major,
+eh?"
+
+"The gift did not end with that, sir," the Major replied with a gesture
+of repulsion. "There was a gruesome, ghastly, appalling addition in the
+shape of two mummy cases--one empty, the other filled. A parchment
+accompanying these stated that the caliph could not sleep elsewhere but
+in the land of his fathers, nor sleep _there_ until his beloved child
+rested beside him. They had been parted in life, but they should not be
+parted in death. An Egyptian had, therefore, been summoned to his
+bedside, had been given orders to embalm him after death, to send the
+mummy to Zuilika, and with it a case in which, when her own death should
+occur, _her_ body should be deposited; and followers of the prophet had
+taken oath to see that both were carried to their native land and
+entombed side by side. Until death came to relieve her of this ghastly
+duty, Zuilika was charged to be the guardian of the mummy and daily to
+make the orisons of the faithful before it, keeping it always with its
+face towards the East."
+
+"By George! it sounds like a page from the 'Arabian Nights,'" exclaimed
+Cleek. "Well, what next? Did Ulchester take kindly to this housing of
+the mummy of his father-in-law and the eventual coffin of his wife? Or
+was he willing to stand for anything so long as he got possession of the
+huge fortune the old man left?"
+
+"He never did get it, Mr. Cleek--he never touched so much as one
+farthing of it. Zuilika took nobody into her confidence until everything
+had been converted into English gold and deposited in the bank to her
+credit. Then she went straight to him and to Anita, showed them proof of
+the deposit, reviled them for their treatment of her, and swore that not
+one farthing's benefit should accrue to Ulchester until Anita was turned
+out of the house in the presence of their guests and the husband took
+oath on his knees to join the wife in those daily prayers before the
+caliph's mummy. Furthermore, Ulchester was to embrace the faith of the
+Mohammedans that he might return with her at once to the land and the
+gods she had offended by marriage with a Frankish infidel."
+
+"Which, of course, he declined to do?"
+
+"Yes. He declined utterly. But it was a case of the crushed worm, with
+Zuilika. Now was _her_ turn; and she would not abate one jot or tittle.
+There was a stormy scene, of course. It ended by Ulchester and the woman
+Anita leaving the house together. From that hour Zuilika never again
+heard his living voice, never again saw his living face! He seems to
+have gone wild with wrath over what he had lost and to have plunged
+headlong into the maddest sort of dissipation. It is known--positively
+known, and can be sworn to by reputable witnesses--that for the next
+three days he did not draw one sober breath. On the fourth, a note from
+him--a note which he was _seen_ to write in a public house--was carried
+to Zuilika. In that note he cursed her with every conceivable term; told
+her that when she got it he would be at the bottom of the river, driven
+there by her conduct, and that if it was possible for the dead to come
+back and haunt people he'd do it. Two hours after he wrote that note he
+was seen getting out of the train at Tilbury and going towards the
+docks; but from that moment to this every trace of him is lost."
+
+"Ah, I see!" said Cleek reflectively. "And you want to find out if he
+really carried out that threat and did put an end to himself, I suppose?
+That's why you have come to me, eh? Frankly, I don't believe that he
+did, Major. That sort of a man never commits suicide upon so slim a
+pretext as that. If he commits it at all, it's because he is at the end
+of his tether--and our friend 'Zyco' seems to have been a long way from
+the end of his. How does the lady take it? Seriously?"
+
+"Oh, very, sir, very. Of course, to a woman of her temperament and with
+her Oriental ideas regarding the supernatural, _et cetera_, that threat
+to haunt her was the worst he could have done to her. At first she was
+absolutely beside herself with grief and horror; swore that she had
+killed him by her cruelty; that there was nothing left her but to die,
+and all that sort of thing; and for three days she was little better
+than a mad woman. At the end of that time, after the fashion of her
+people, she retired to her own room, covered herself with sackcloth and
+ashes, and remained hidden from all eyes for the space of a fortnight,
+weeping and wailing constantly and touching nothing but bread and
+water."
+
+"Poor wretch! She suffers like that, then, over a rascally fellow not
+worth a single tear. It's marvellous, Major, what women do see in men
+that they can go on loving them. Has she come out of her retirement
+yet?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Cleek. She came out of it five days ago, to all appearances a
+thoroughly heart-broken woman. Of course as she was all alone in the
+world, my son and I considered it our duty, during the time of her
+wildness and despair, to see that a thoroughly respectable female was
+called in to take charge of the house and to show respect for the
+proprieties, and for us to take up our abode there in order to prevent
+her from doing herself an injury. We are still domiciled there, but it
+will surprise you to learn that a most undesirable person is there also.
+In short, sir, that the woman Anita Rosario, the cause of all the
+trouble, is again an inmate of the house; and what is more remarkable
+still, this time by Zuilika's own request."
+
+"What's that? My dear Major, you amaze me! What can possibly have caused
+the good lady to do a thing like that?"
+
+"She hopes, she says, to appease the dead and to avert the threatened
+'haunting.' At all events, she sent for Anita some days ago. Indeed, I
+believe it is her intention to take the Spaniard with her when she
+returns to the East."
+
+"She intends doing that, then? She is so satisfied of her husband's
+death that she deems no further question necessary. Intends to take no
+further step toward proving it?"
+
+"It has been proved to her satisfaction. His body was recovered the day
+before yesterday."
+
+"Oho! then he is dead, eh? Why didn't you say so in the beginning? When
+did you learn of it?"
+
+"This very evening. That is what brings me here. I learned from Zuilika
+that a body answering the description of his had been fished from the
+water at Tilbury and carried to the mortuary. It was horribly
+disfigured--by contact with the piers and passing vessels--but she and
+Anita--and--and my son--"
+
+"Your son, Major? Your son?"
+
+"Yes!" replied the Major in a sort of half-whisper. "They--they took him
+with them when they went, unknown to me. He has become rather friendly
+with the Spanish woman of late. All three saw the body; all three
+identified it as being Ulchester's beyond a doubt."
+
+"And you? Surely when you see it you will be able to satisfy any
+misgivings you may have?"
+
+"I shall never see it, Mr. Cleek. It was claimed when identified and
+buried within twelve hours," said the Major, glancing up sharply as
+Cleek, receiving this piece of information, blew out a soft, low
+whistle. "I was not told anything about it until this evening, and what
+I have done--in coming to you, I mean--I have done with nobody's
+knowledge. I--I am so horribly in the dark--I have such fearful thoughts
+and--and I want to be sure. I must be sure or I shall go out of my mind.
+That's the 'case,' Mr. Cleek--tell me what you think of it."
+
+"I can do that in a very few words, Major," he replied. "It is either a
+gigantic swindle or it is a clear case of murder. If a swindle, then
+Ulchester himself is at the bottom of it and it will end in murder just
+the same. Frankly, the swindle theory strikes me as being the more
+probable; in other words, that the whole thing is a put-up game between
+Ulchester and the woman Anita; that they played upon Zuilika's fear of
+the supernatural for a purpose; that a body was procured and sunk in
+that particular spot for the furtherance of that purpose; and if the
+widow attempts to put into execution this plan--no doubt instilled into
+her mind by Anita--of returning with her wealth to her native land, she
+will simply be led into some safe place and then effectually put out of
+the way for ever. That is what I think of the case if it is to be
+regarded in the light of a swindle; but if Ulchester is really dead,
+murder, not suicide, is at the back of his taking off, and--Oh, well, we
+won't say anything more about it just yet awhile. I shall want to look
+over the ground before I jump to any conclusions. You are still stopping
+in the house, you and your son, I think you remarked? If you could
+contrive to put up an old army friend's son there for a night, Major,
+give me the address. I'll drop in on you to-morrow and have a little
+look round."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+When, next morning, Major Burnham-Seaforth announced the dilemma in
+which, through his own house being temporarily closed, he found himself
+owing to the proposed visit of Lieutenant Rupert St. Aubyn, son of an
+old army friend, Zuilika was the first to suggest the very thing he was
+fishing for.
+
+"Ah, let him come here, dear friend," she said in that sad, sweetly
+modulated voice which so often wrung this susceptible old heart. "There
+is plenty of room!--plenty, alas now--and any friend of yours can only
+be a friend of mine. He will not annoy. Let him come here."
+
+"Yes, let him," supplemented young Burnham-Seaforth, speaking with his
+eyes on Señorita Rosario, who seemed nervous and ill-pleased by the news
+of the expected arrival. "He won't have to be entertained by us if he
+only comes to see the pater; and we can easily crowd him aside if he
+tries to thrust himself upon us--a fellow with a name like 'Rupert St.
+Aubyn' is bound to be a silly ass." And when, in the late afternoon,
+"Lieutenant Rupert St. Aubyn," in the person of Cleek, arrived with his
+snubnosed manservant, a kit-bag, several rugs and a bundle of golf
+sticks, young Burnham-Seaforth saw no reason to alter that assertion.
+For, a "silly ass"--albeit an unusually handsome one with his fair,
+curling hair and his big blonde moustache--he certainly was; a lisping
+"ha-ha-ing" "don't-cher-knowing" silly ass, whom the presence of ladies
+seemed to cover with confusion and drive into a very panic of shy
+embarrassment.
+
+"_Dios!_ but he is handsome, this big, fair lieutenant!" whispered the
+Spaniard to young Burnham-Seaforth. "A great, handsome fool--all beauty
+and no brains, like a doll of wax!" Then she bent over and murmured
+smilingly to Zuilika: "I shall make a bigger nincompoop of this big,
+fair sap-head than Heaven already has done before he leaves here, just
+for the sake of seeing him stammer and blush!"
+
+Only the sad expression of Zuilika's eyes told that she so much as
+heard, as she rose to greet the visitor. Garbed from head to foot in the
+deep violet-coloured stuff which is the mourning of Turkish women, her
+little pointed slippers showing beneath the hem of her frock, and only
+her dark, mournful eyes visible between the top of the shrouding yashmak
+and the edge of her sequined snood, she made a pathetic picture as she
+stood there waiting to greet the unknown visitor.
+
+"Sir, you are welcome--you are most welcome," she said in a voice whose
+modulations were not lost upon Cleek's ears as he put forth his hand and
+received the tips of her little, henna-stained fingers upon his palm.
+"Peace be with you, who are of his people--he that I loved and mourn!"
+Then, as if overcome with grief at the recollection of her widowhood,
+she plucked away her hand, covered her eyes, and moved staggeringly out
+of the room. And Cleek saw no more of her that day; but he knew when she
+performed her orisons before the mummy case--as she did each morning and
+evening--by the strong, pungent odour of incense drifting through the
+house and filling it with a sickly scent.
+
+Her absence seemed to make but little impression upon him, however; for,
+following up a well-defined plan of action, he devoted himself wholly to
+the Spanish woman, and both amazed her and gratified her vanity by
+allowing her to learn that a man may be the silliest ass imaginable and
+yet quite understand how to flirt and to make love to a woman. And so it
+fell out that instead of "Lieutenant Rupert St. Aubyn" being elbowed out
+by young Burnham-Seaforth, it was "Lieutenant St. Aubyn" who elbowed
+_him_ out; and without being in the least aware of it, the flattered
+Anita, like an adroitly hooked trout, was being "played" in and out and
+round about the eddies and the deeps until the angler had her quite
+ready for the final dip of the net at the landing point.
+
+All this was to accomplish exactly what it _did_ accomplish, namely, the
+ill temper, the wrath, the angry resentment of young Burnham-Seaforth.
+And when the evening had passed and bedtime arrived, Cleek took his
+candle and retired in the direction of the rooms set apart for him, with
+the certainty of knowing that he had done that which would this very
+night prove beyond all question the guilt or innocence of one person at
+least who was enmeshed in this mysterious tangle. He was not surprised,
+therefore, at what followed his next step.
+
+Reaching the upper landing he blew out the light of his candle, slammed
+the door to his own room, noisily turned the key, and shot the bolt of
+another, then tiptoed his way back to the staircase and looked down the
+well-hole into the lower hall.
+
+Zuilika had retired to her room, the Major had retired to his, and now
+Anita was taking up her candle to retire to hers. She had barely touched
+it, however, when there came a sound of swift footsteps and young
+Burnham-Seaforth lurched out of the drawing-room door and joined her. He
+was in a state of great excitement and was breathing hard.
+
+"Anita--Miss Rosario!" he began, plucking her by the sleeve and
+uplifting a pale, boyish face--he was not yet twenty-two--to hers with a
+look of abject misery. "I want to speak to you--I simply must speak to
+you. I've been waiting for the chance, and now that it's come--Look
+here! You're not going back on me, are you?"
+
+"Going back on you?" repeated Anita, showing her pretty white teeth in
+an amused smile. "What shall you mean by that 'going back on you'--eh?
+You are a stupid little donkey, to be sure. But then I do not care to
+get on the back of one--so why?"
+
+"Oh, you know very well what I mean," he rapped out angrily. "It is not
+fair the way you have been treating me ever since that yellow-headed
+bounder came. I've had a night of misery--Zuilika never showing herself;
+you doing nothing, absolutely nothing, although you promised--you _know_
+you did!--and I heard you, I absolutely heard you persuade that St.
+Aubyn fool to stop at least another night."
+
+"Yes, of course you did. But what of it? He is good company--he talks
+well, he sings well, he is very handsome and--well, what difference can
+it make to you? You are not interested in _me, amigo_?"
+
+"No, no; of course I'm not. You are nothing to me at all--you--Oh, I beg
+your pardon; I didn't quite mean that. I--I mean you are nothing to me
+in that way. But you--you're not keeping to your word. You promised, you
+know, that you'd use your influence with Zuilika; that you'd get her to
+be more kind to me--to see me alone and--and all that sort of thing. And
+you've not made a single attempt--not one. You've just sat round and
+flirted with that tow-headed brute and done nothing at all to help me
+on; and--and it's jolly unkind of you, that's what!"
+
+Cleek heard Anita's soft rippling laughter; but he waited to hear no
+more. Moving swiftly away from the well-hole of the staircase he passed
+on tiptoe down the hall to the Major's rooms, and, opening the door,
+went in. The old soldier was standing, with arms folded, at the window
+looking silently out into the darkness of the night. He turned at the
+sound of the door's opening and moved toward Cleek with a white,
+agonised face and a pair of shaking, outstretched hands.
+
+"Well?" he said with a sort of gasp.
+
+"My dear Major," said Cleek quietly. "The wisest of men are sometimes
+mistaken--that is my excuse for my own short-sightedness. I said in the
+beginning that his was either a case of swindling or a case of murder,
+did I not? Well, I now amend my verdict. It is a case of swindling _and_
+murder; and your son has had nothing to do with either!"
+
+"Oh, thank God! thank God!" the old man said; then sat down suddenly and
+dropped his face between his hands and was still for a long time. When
+he looked up again his eyes were red, but his lips were smiling.
+
+"If you only knew what a relief it is," he said. "If you only knew how
+much I have suffered, Mr. Cleek. His friendship with that Spanish woman;
+his going with her to identify the body--even assisting in its hurried
+burial! These things all seemed so frightfully black--so utterly without
+any explanation other than personal guilt."
+
+"Yet they are all easily explained, Major. His friendship for the
+Spanish woman is merely due to a promise to intercede for him with
+Zuilika. She is his one aim and object, poor little donkey! As for his
+identification of the body--well, if the widow herself could find points
+of undisputed resemblance, why not he? A nervous, excitable, impetuous
+boy like that--and anxious, too, that the lady of his heart should be
+freed from the one thing, the one man, whose existence made her
+everlastingly unattainable--why, in the hands of a clever woman like
+Anita Rosario such a chap could be made to identify anything and to
+believe it as religiously as he believes. Now, go to bed and rest easy,
+Major. I'm going to call up Dollops and do a little night prowling. If
+it turns out as I hope, this little riddle will be solved to-morrow."
+
+"But how, Mr. Cleek? It seems to me that it is as dark as ever. You put
+my poor old head in a whirl. You say there is swindling; you hint one
+moment that the body was not that of Ulchester, and in the next that
+murder has been done. Do, pray, tell me what it all means--what you make
+of this amazing case."
+
+"I'll do that to-morrow, Major; not to-night. The answer to the
+riddle--the answer that's in my mind, I mean--is at once so simple and
+yet so appallingly awful that I'll hazard no guess until I'm sure. Look
+here"--he put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a gold piece--"do
+you know what that is, Major?"
+
+"It looks like a spade guinea, Mr. Cleek."
+
+"Right; it is a spade guinea--a pocket piece I've carried for years.
+You've heard, no doubt, of vital things turning upon the tossing of a
+coin. Well, if you see me toss this coin to-morrow, something of that
+sort will occur. It will be tossed up in the midst of a riddle, Major;
+when it comes down it will be a riddle no longer."
+
+Then he opened the door, closed it after him, and, before the Major
+could utter a word, was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+The promise was so vague, so mystifying, indeed, so seemingly absurd,
+that the Major did not allow himself to dwell upon it. As a matter of
+fact, it passed completely out of his mind; nor did it again find
+lodgment there until it was forced back upon his memory in a most
+unusual manner.
+
+Whatsoever had been the result of what Cleek had called his "night
+prowling," he took nobody into his confidence when he and the Major and
+the Major's son and Señorita Rosario met at breakfast the next day
+(Zuilika, true to her training and the traditions of her people, never
+broke morning bread save in the seclusion of her own bed-chamber, and
+then on her knees with her face towards the east) nor did he allude to
+it at any period throughout the day.
+
+He seemed, indeed, purposely, to avoid the Major, and to devote himself
+to the Spanish woman with an ardour that was positively heartless,
+considering that as they two sang and flirted and played several sets of
+singles on the tennis court, Zuilika, like a spirit of misery, kept
+walking, walking, walking through the halls and the rooms of the house,
+her woeful eyes fixed on the carpet, her henna-stained fingers
+constantly locking and unlocking, and moans of desolation coming now and
+again from behind her yashmak as her swaying body moved restlessly to
+and fro. For to-day was memorable. Five weeks ago this coming nightfall
+Ulchester had flung himself out of this house in a fury of wrath, and
+this time of bitter regret and ceaseless mourning had begun.
+
+"She will go out of her mind, poor creature, if something cannot be done
+to keep her from dwelling on her misery like this," commented the
+housekeeper, coming upon that restless figure pacing the darkened hall,
+moaning, moaning--seeing nothing, hearing nothing, doing nothing but
+walk and sorrow, sorrow and walk, hour in and hour out. "It's enough to
+tear a body's heart to hear her, poor dear. And that good-for-nothing
+Spanish piece racing and shrieking round the tennis court like a she
+tom-cat, the heartless hussy. Her and that simpering silly that's
+trotting round after her had ought to be put in a bag and shaken up,
+that they ought. It's downright scandalous to be carrying on like that
+at such a time."
+
+And so both the Major and his son thought too, and tried their best to
+solace the lonely mourner and to persuade her to sit down and rest.
+
+"Zuilika, you will wear yourself out, child, if you go on walking like
+this," said the Major solicitously. "Do rest and be at peace for a
+little time at least."
+
+"I can never have peace in this land--I can never forget the day!" she
+answered drearily. "Oh, my beloved! Oh, my lord, it was I who sent thee
+to it--it was I, it was I! Give me my own country--give me the gods of
+my people; here there is only memory and pain, and no rest, no rest
+ever!"
+
+She could not be persuaded to sit down and rest until Anita herself took
+the matter into her own hands and insisted that she should. That was at
+tea-time. Anita, showing some little trace of feeling now that Cleek had
+gone to wash his hands and was no longer there to occupy her thoughts,
+placed a deep, soft chair near the window, and would not yield until the
+violet-clad figure of the mourner sank down into the depths of it and
+leaned back with its shrouded face drooping in silent melancholy.
+
+And it was while she was so sitting that Cleek came into the room and
+did a most unusual, a most ungentlemanly thing, in the eyes of the Major
+and his son.
+
+Without hesitating, he walked to within a yard or two of where she was
+sitting, and then, in the silliest of silly tones, blurted out suddenly:
+"I say, don't you know, I've had a jolly rum experience. You know that
+blessed room at the angle just opposite the library--the one with the
+locked door?"
+
+The drooping, violet figure straightened abruptly, and the Major felt
+for the moment as if he could have kicked Cleek with pleasure. Of course
+they knew the room. It was there that the two mummy cases were kept,
+sacred from the profaning presence of any but this stricken woman. No
+wonder that she bent forward, full of eagerness, full of the dreadful
+fear that Frankish feet had crossed the threshold, Frankish eyes looked
+within the sacred shrine.
+
+"Well, don't you know," went on Cleek, without taking the slightest
+notice of anything, "just as I was going past that door I picked up a
+most remarkable thing. Wonder if it's yours, madam?" glancing at
+Zuilika. "Just have a look at it, will you? Here, catch!" And not until
+he saw a piece of gold spin through the air and fall into Zuilika's lap
+did the Major remember that promise of last night.
+
+"Oh, come, I say, St. Aubyn, that's rather thick!" sang out young
+Burnham-Seaforth indignantly, as Zuilika caught the coin in her lap.
+"Blest if I know what you call manners, but to throw things at a lady is
+a new way of passing them in this part of the world, I can assure you."
+
+"Awfully sorry, old chap, no offence, I assure you," said Cleek, more
+asinine than ever, as Zuilika, having picked up the piece and looked at
+it, disclaimed all knowledge of it, and laid it on the edge of the table
+without any further interest in it or him. "Just to show, you know, that
+I--er--couldn't have meant anything disrespectful, why--er--you all
+know, don't you know, how jolly much I respect Señorita Rosario, by
+Jove! and so--Here, señorita, you catch, too, and see if the blessed
+thing's yours." And, picking up the coin, tossed it into her lap just as
+he had done with Zuilika.
+
+She, too, caught it and examined it, and laughingly shook her head.
+
+"No--not mine!" she said. "I have not seen him before. To the finder
+shall be the keep. Come, sit here. Will you have the tea?"
+
+"Yes, thanks," said Cleek; then dropped down on the sofa beside her, and
+took tea as serenely as though there were no such things in the world as
+murder and swindling and puzzling police-riddles to solve.
+
+And the Major, staring at him, was as amazed as ever. He had said, last
+night, that when the coin fell the answer would be given--and yet it had
+fallen, and nothing had happened, and he was laughing and flirting with
+Señorita Rosario as composedly and as persistently as ever. More than
+that; after he had finished his second cup of tea, and immediately
+following the sound of someone just beyond the verandah rail whistling
+the lively, lilting measures of "There's a Girl Wanted There"--the
+"silly ass" seemed to become a thousand times sillier than ever; for he
+forthwith set down his cup, and, turning to Anita, said with an inane
+sort of giggle, "I say, you know, here's a lark. Let's have a game of
+'Slap Hand,' you and I--what? Know it, don't you? You try to slap my
+hands, and I try to slap yours, and whichever succeeds in doing it first
+gets a prize. Awful fun, don't you know. Come on--start her up."
+
+And, Anita agreeing, they fell forthwith to slapping away at the backs
+of each other's hands with great gusto, until, all of a sudden, the
+whistler outside gave one loud, shrill note, and--there was a great and
+mighty change.
+
+Those who were watching saw Anita's two hands suddenly caught, heard a
+sharp, metallic "click," and saw them as suddenly dropped again to the
+accompaniment of a shrill little scream from her ashen lips, and the
+next moment Cleek had risen and jumped away from her side--clear across
+to where Zuilika was; and those who were watching saw Anita jump up with
+a pair of steel handcuffs on her wrists, just as Dollops vaulted up over
+the verandah rail and appeared at one window, whilst Petrie appeared at
+another, Hammond poked his body through a third, and the opening door
+gave entrance to Superintendent Narkom.
+
+"The police!" shrilled out Anita in a panic of fright. "_Madre de Dios_,
+the police!"
+
+The Major and his son were on their feet like a shot; Zuilika, with a
+faint, startled cry, bounded bolt upright, like an imp shot through a
+trap-door; but before the little henna-stained hands could do more than
+simply move, Cleek's arms went round her from behind, tight and fast as
+a steel clamp, there was another metallic "click," another shrill cry,
+and another pair of wrists were in gyves.
+
+"Come in, Mr. Narkom; come in, constables," said Cleek, with the utmost
+composure. "Here are your promised prisoners--nicely trussed, you see,
+so that they can't get at the little popguns they carry--and a worse
+pair of rogues never went into the hands of Jack Ketch!"
+
+"And Jack Ketch will get them, Cleek, if I know anything about it. Your
+hazard was right. I've examined the caliph's mummy-case; the mummy
+itself has been removed--destroyed--done away with utterly--and the poor
+creature's body is there!"
+
+And here the poor, dumfounded, utterly bewildered Major found voice to
+speak at last.
+
+"Mummy-case! Body! Dear God in heaven, Mr. Cleek, what are you hinting
+at?" he gasped. "You--you don't mean that she--that Zuilika--killed
+him?"
+
+"No, Major, I don't," he made reply. "I simply mean that he killed her!
+The body in the mummy-case is the body of Zuilika, the caliph's
+daughter! This is the creature you have been wasting your pity on--see!"
+
+With that he laid an intense grip on the concealing yashmak, tore it
+away, and so revealed the close-shaven, ghastly-hued countenance of the
+cornered criminal.
+
+"My God!--Ulchester--Ulchester himself!" said the Major in a voice of
+fright and surprise.
+
+"Yes, Ulchester himself, Major. In a few more days he'd have withdrawn
+the money, and got out of the country, body and all, if he hadn't been
+nabbed, the rascal. There'd have been no tracing the crime then; and he
+and the Señorita here would have been in clover for the rest of their
+natural lives. But there's always that bright little bit of Bobby Burns
+to be reckoned with. You know: 'The best laid schemes of mice and men,'
+_et cetera_--that bit. But the Yard's got them, and--they'll never leave
+the country now. Take them, Mr. Narkom, they're yours!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"How did I guess it?" said Cleek, replying to the Major's query, as they
+sat late that night discussing the affair. "Well, I think the first
+faint inkling of it came when I arrived here yesterday, and smelt the
+overpowering odour of the incenses. There was so much of it, and it was
+used so frequently--twice a day--that it seemed to suggest an attempt to
+hide other odours of a less pleasant kind. When I left you last night,
+Dollops and I went down to the mummy-chamber, and a skeleton key soon
+let us in. The unpleasant odour was rather pronounced in there. But even
+that didn't give me the cue, until I happened to find in the fireplace a
+considerable heap of fine ashes, and in the midst of them small lumps of
+gummy substance, which I knew to result from the burning of myrrh. I
+suspected from that and from the nature of the ashes that a mummy had
+been burnt, and as there was only one mummy in the affair, the inference
+was obvious. I laid hands on the two cases and tilted them. One was
+quite empty. The weight of the other told me that it contained something
+a little heavier than any mummy ought to be. I came to the conclusion
+that there was a body in it, injected full of arsenic, no doubt, to
+prevent as much as possible the processes of decay, the odour of which
+the incense was concealing. I didn't attempt to open the thing; I left
+that until the arrival of the men from The Yard, for whom I sent Dollops
+this afternoon. I had a vague notion that it would not turn out to be
+Ulchester's, and I had also a distinct recollection of what you said
+about his being able to mimic a Gaiety chorus-girl and all that sort of
+thing, and the more I thought over it, the more I realized what an
+excellent thing to cover a bearded face a yashmak is. Still, it was all
+hazard. I wasn't sure--indeed, I never was sure--until tea-time, when I
+caught this supposed 'Zuilika' sitting at last, and gave the spade
+guinea its chance to decide it."
+
+"But, Mr. Cleek, how could it have decided it? That's the thing which
+amazes me most of all. How could the tossing of that coin have decided
+the sex of the wearer of those garments?"
+
+"My dear Major, it is an infallible test. Did you ever notice that if
+you throw anything for a man to catch in his lap, he pulls his knees
+together to _make_ a lap in order to catch it; whereas a woman--used to
+wearing skirts and, thereby, having a lap already prepared--immediately
+broadens that lap by the exactly opposite movement, knowing that
+whatever is thrown has no chance of slipping through and falling to the
+floor. When I tossed the coin to Ulchester, he instinctively jerked his
+knees together. That settled it, of course. And now, if you won't mind
+my saying it, I'm a bit sleepy and it is about time I took myself off to
+home and bed."
+
+"But not at this late hour, surely? You will never catch a train."
+
+"I shan't need one, Major. They are holding a horse and trap ready for
+me at the stables of the 'Coach and Horses.' Mr. Narkom promised to look
+out for that, and--I beg pardon? No, I can't stop over night. Thank you
+for the invitation, but Dollops would raise half London if I didn't turn
+up after promising to do so."
+
+"I should have thought you might have simplified matters and obviated
+that by keeping the boy when you had him here," said the Major. "We
+could easily have found a place to put him up for the night."
+
+"Thanks very much, but I wouldn't interrupt the course of his studies
+for the world," replied Cleek. "I've found an old chap--an
+ex-schoolmaster, down on his luck and glad for the chance to turn an
+honest penny--who takes him on every night from eight to ten; and the
+young monkey is so eager and is absorbing knowledge at such a rate that
+he positively amazes me. But now, really, it must be good-night. The boy
+will be waiting and I must hear his lessons before I go to bed."
+
+"Not surely when you are so tired as you say?"
+
+"Never too tired for that, Major. It makes me sleep better and sounder
+to know that the lad's getting on and that I've cheated the Devil in
+just one more instance. Good-night and good luck to you. It's a bully
+old world after all, isn't it, Major?" Then laughed and shook hands with
+him and fared forth into the starlight, whistling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+Who feeds on Hope alone makes but a sorry banquet; and for the next few
+weeks Hope was all--or nearly all--that came Cleek's way.
+
+For some unexplained reason, Miss Lorne's letters--never very frequent,
+and always very brief--had, of late been gradually growing briefer: as
+if written in haste and from a mere sense of duty and at odd moments
+snatched from the call of more absorbing things; and, finally, there
+came a dropping off altogether and a week that brought no message from
+her at all.
+
+The old restlessness, the almost outlived sense of personal injury and
+rebellion against circumstances, took hold of Cleek again when that time
+came; and the soul of him drank deep of the waters of bitterness.
+
+So, then, it was all to be in vain, was it, this long struggle with the
+Devil of Circumstances, this long striving for a Goal? And after all,
+"Thou shalt not enter" was to be written over the gateway of his
+ambition? He had been lifted only to be dropped again, redeemed only to
+let him see how vain it was for the leopard, even though he achieved the
+impossible and changed his spots, to be other than a leopard always; how
+impossible it was for a man to override the decrees of Nature or evade
+the edicts of Providence? That was what it meant, eh?
+
+To a nature such as his, Life was always a picture drawn out of
+perspective. There was never any Middle Distance; never any proper
+gradation. It was always either the Highest Heights or the Lowest
+Depths; the glare of fierce light or the black of deepest darkness. He
+could not plod; he must either fly or fall; either loll at the Gates of
+Paradise or groan in the depths of Hell. And the failure of Ailsa
+Lorne's letters sent him to the darkest and most hopeless corner of it.
+
+Not that he blamed her--wholly; but that he blamed that Fate which had
+so persistently dogged him from childhood on. For now that the letters
+had ceased altogether, he recalled things which otherwise would have
+been forgotten; and, his sense of proportion being distorted, made
+mountains out of sand dunes.
+
+In one of those letters, he recollected, she had spoken of meeting
+unexpectedly an old friend whom she had not seen since the days of his
+boyhood; in another, she had casually remarked, "I met Captain Morford
+again to-day and we spent a very pleasant half hour together," and in a
+third had written, "The Captain promised to call and take tea to-day but
+didn't. I rather fancy he divines the fact that Lady Chepstow does not
+care for him. Indeed, she dislikes him immensely. Why, I wonder?
+Personally, I think him exceedingly pleasant, and there are things in
+his character for which I have the deepest respect and admiration."
+
+And out of these trifling circumstances--lo! the darkest corner that
+darkest Hell contained.
+
+So that was how it was to end, was it? That was the card which Fate had
+all along kept up her sleeve while she stood off laughing at his
+endeavours, his hopes, his struggles against the inevitable? In the end,
+another man was to appear, another man was to win her, and the dream was
+to turn out nothing more than a dream after all.
+
+Once again the voices of the Wild called out to the Caged Wolf; once
+again, the old things beckoned and the new things lost their savour and
+the Devil said, as before, "What is the use? What _is_ the use?" and the
+Savage cried out to be stripped and flung back into the wilderness as
+God made him, and called and called and called for an end to the things
+that stank in his nostrils and for the fierce companionship of his kind.
+And but that Time had staled these things a little and blunted the keen
+edge of them so that they could not endure for long, and there was
+Dollops and the lessons and Dollops' future to recollect, the Wolf and
+the Savage and the Devil might not have hungered in vain.
+
+Followed a period of intense depression when all things seemed to lose
+their savour and when Narkom, amazed, said to himself that the man had
+come to the end of his usefulness and had lost every attribute of the
+successful criminologist. For the next three cases he brought him Cleek
+botched in a manner that would have disgraced the merest tyro. Two, he
+failed utterly to solve, although the solutions were eventually worked
+out by the ordinary forces of the Yard; and in the third he let his man
+get away under his very nose and convey Government secrets to a foreign
+Power. It was but natural that these three dismal failures should find
+their way to the newspapers and that, in the hysterical condition of
+modern journalism, they should be flung out to the world at large with
+all the ostentation of leaded type and panicky scare heads, and that
+learned editors should discourse knowingly of "the limitations of
+mentality" and "the well-authenticated cases of the sudden warping of
+abnormal intelligences resulting in the startling termination of amazing
+careers," or snivel dismally over "the complete collapse of that
+imaginative power which, hitherto, had been this detective's greatest
+asset, and which now, on the principle that however deep a well may be
+if a force-pump be put into it it must some time suck gravel, seemed to
+have come to its end."
+
+These things, when Cleek heard of them, affected him not at all. He
+seemed not to care whether his career was ended or not, whether the
+world praised or censured. Neither his pride nor his vanity was stirred
+even to the very smallest degree.
+
+But Narkom, loyal still, took these gloomy prophecies and editorial
+vapourings much to heart and strove valiantly to confound the man's
+detractors and to put the spur to the man himself. He would not believe
+that the end had come, that his mental powers had run suddenly against a
+dead wall beyond which there was no possibility of proceeding. Something
+was weighing upon his mind and damping his spirits that was all; and it
+must be the business of those who were his friends to take steps to
+discover what that something was and, if possible, to eliminate it. He
+therefore sought out Dollops and held secret conclave with him; and
+Dollops dolefully epitomized the difficulty thus: "A skirt--that's
+what's at the bottom of it, sir. No letter at all these ten days past.
+She's chucked him, I'm afraid." And with this brief preface told all
+that he was able to tell; which, after all, was not much.
+
+He could only explain about the letter that used to come off and on in
+the other days and which brought such a flow of high spirits to the man
+for whom it was intended; he could only say that it was addressed in a
+woman's hand and bore always the one postmark; and when Narkom heard
+what that postmark was and recollected where Lady Chepstow's country
+seat lay, and who was with her, he puckered up his lips as if he were
+about to whistle and made two slim arches with his uplifted eyebrows.
+
+"Sir, if only you could sneak off and run down there without his knowing
+of it--it wouldn't do to write a letter, Mr. Narkom: he'd be on to that
+before you could turn round, sir," the boy ventured hopefully; "but if
+only you could run down there and give her a tip what she's a doing of
+and what she's a chuckin' away, what a Man she's a throwin' down, maybe,
+sir, maybe--"
+
+"Yes, 'maybe,'" agreed the superintendent, after a moment's reflection.
+"At any rate it's worth a trial." And went, forthwith.
+
+Not that it was a prudent thing to do; not that it is wise for any man
+at any time to interfere, even with the best intentions, with the course
+of another man's love affairs; and, finally, not that it was at all
+necessary or had any influence whatsoever upon the events which
+succeeded the step. Indeed, he might have spared himself the trouble,
+for he had barely covered a fifth of the distance when the country post
+was delivered in London, and Cleek, rocketing up in one sweep from the
+Pit to the Gateway, stood laughing huskily with a letter from Ailsa in
+his hand.
+
+He ripped off the envelope and read it greedily.
+
+"Dear Friend," she wrote, "I cannot imagine what you must think of my
+silence; but whatsoever you do think cannot be half so terrible as the
+actual cause of it. I have been in close touch with misery and death,
+with things so appalling that heart and mind have had room to hold
+nothing else. Indeed, I am still so horribly nervous and upset that I
+scarcely know how to think coherently much less write. I can only
+remember that you once said that if ever I needed your help I was to
+ask; and oh, Mr. Cleek, I need it very very much indeed now. Not for
+myself--let me find time to add that--but for a dear, dear friend--the
+friend I have so often written about: Captain Morford--who is involved
+in an affair of the most distressing and mysterious character and whose
+only hope lies, I feel, in you. Will you come to the rescue, for my
+sake? That is what I am asking. Let me say, however, that there is no
+possibility of a reward, for the captain is in no position to offer one;
+but I seem to feel that that will not weigh with you. Neither can I ask
+you to call at the house, for, as I have already told you, Lady Chepstow
+does not care for the Captain and under those circumstances it would be
+embarrassing to ask him there to meet you. So then, if no other case
+intervenes, and you really _can_ grant me this great favour, will you be
+in the neighbourhood of the lich-gate of Lyntonhurst Old Church at nine
+o'clock in the morning of Thursday, you will win the everlasting
+gratitude of, Your sincere friend--AILSA LORNE."
+
+Would he be there? He laughed aloud as he put the question to himself. A
+Bradshaw was on his table. He caught it up, found that there was a train
+that could be caught in thirty-five minutes' time, and clapped on his
+hat and--caught it.
+
+That night he slept at the inn of the Three Desires--which, as you may
+possibly know, lies but a gunshot beyond the boundary wall of the glebe
+of Lyntonhurst Old Church--slept with an alarm clock at his head and
+every servant at the inn from the boots to the barmaid tipped a shilling
+to see that he did not oversleep himself.
+
+He was up before any of them, however--up and out into the pearl-dusk of
+the morning before ever the alarm-clock shrilled its first note, or the
+sun's sheen slid lower than the spurs of the weather-cock on the spire
+of Lyntonhurst Old Church--and twice he had walked past the big gates
+and looked up the still avenue to the windows of the huge house whose
+roof covered her before Lyntonhurst Old Church spoke up through the
+dawn-hush and told the parish it was half-past four o'clock.
+
+By five, he had found a pool cupped in the beech woods with mallows and
+marsh marigolds and a screen of green things all round it and a tent of
+blue sky over the sun-touched tree tops; and had stripped and splashed
+into it and set all the birds to flight with the harsher song of human
+things; by seven he was back at the Three Desires; by eight he had
+shaved and changed and breakfasted and was out again in the fields and
+the leafy lanes, and by nine he was at the lich-gate of the church.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+She was there already; sitting far back at the end of one of the narrow
+wooden side benches with the shadow of the gate's moss-grown roof and of
+the big cypress above it partly screening her, her shrinking position
+evincing a desire to escape general observation as clearly as her pale
+face and nervously drumming hand betrayed a state of extreme agitation.
+
+She rose as Cleek lifted the latch and came in, and advanced to meet him
+with both hands outstretched in greeting and a rich colour staining all
+her face.
+
+"I knew that you would come--I was as certain of it as I am now this
+minute," she said with a little embarrassed laugh, then dropped her eyes
+and said no more, for he had taken those two hands in his and was
+holding them tightly and looking at her with an expression that was half
+a reproach and half a caress.
+
+"I am glad you did not doubt," he said, with an odd, wistful little
+smile. "It is good to know one's friends have faith in one, Miss Lorne.
+I had almost come to believe that you had forgotten me."
+
+"Because I did not write? Oh, but I could not--indeed I could not. I
+have been spending days and nights in a house of mourning--Lady Chepstow
+gave me leave of absence; and my heart was so full I did not write even
+to her. I have been trying to soothe and to comfort a distracted girl, a
+half-crazed old man, a bereft and horribly smitten family. I have been
+doing all in my power to put hope and courage into the heart of a
+despairing and most unhappy lover."
+
+"Meaning Captain Morford?"
+
+"Yes. He has been almost beside himself. And since this last blow
+fell.... Oh, I had been so sure that it would not, that between us all
+we would manage to avert it; yet in spite of everything it did fall--it
+did!--and if I live to be a hundred I shall never forget it."
+
+"Calm yourself, Miss Lorne. You are shaking like a leaf. Try to tell me
+plainly what it is that has happened; what the danger is that threatens
+this--er--Captain Morford."
+
+"Oh, nothing threatens _him_, personally," she replied. "He says he
+could stand it better if it were only that; and I believe him--I truly
+do. The thing that nearly drives him out of his mind is the thought that
+one day she--the girl he loves--the girl he is to marry--the girl for
+whose dear sake he stands ready to give up so much--the thought that one
+day _her_ turn will come, that one day she, too, will be stricken down
+as mother and brothers have been is almost driving him frantic."
+
+"Mother and brothers?--_brothers_?" Cleek looked up sharply, and there
+was a curious break in his voice, a yet more curious brightening of his
+eyes. "Miss Lorne, am I to understand that this Captain Morford is
+engaged to a girl who has _brothers_?"
+
+"Yes. That is--no. She has 'brothers' no longer. There is only one left
+living now, Mr. Cleek, only one. Ah, think of it! of that whole family
+of six persons, but three are left: Miriam, Flora, and Ronald."
+
+"Miriam, Flora, and ... Miss Lorne, will you tell me please the name of
+the lady to whom Captain Morford is engaged?"
+
+"Why Miriam Comstock, of course--did I forget to mention it?"
+
+"I think so," said Cleek; and shook out a little jerky laugh, and stood
+looking at her foolishly; not quite knowing what to do with his feet and
+hands. But suddenly--"Oh come, let's have the case--let's have it at
+once," he broke out impetuously. "Tell me what it is, what I'm to do for
+this Captain Morford, and I'll do it if mortal man can."
+
+"And no mortal man can if you cannot--I've faith enough in you for
+that," she began, then stopped short and sucked in her breath, and crept
+back to the extreme end of the lich-gate and stood shaking and very
+pale. Someone had come suddenly round the angle of the church and was
+moving up the road that ran past the gate.
+
+"Please--no--let me get away as quickly as possible," she said in a
+swift whisper as Cleek, startled by the change in her, made an eager
+step forward. "It is known that I have been with them--the
+Comstocks--and it is all so mysterious and awful.... Oh, who can tell
+whose hand it may be? who may be spying? or what? It is best that I
+should give no hint that assistance has been asked for; best that nobody
+should see me talking with _you_--Mr. Narkom says that it is."
+
+"Mr. Narkom?"
+
+"Yes. He was in the neighbourhood accidentally. He called last night. I
+told him and he was glad that I had sent for you. He is over there, on
+the other side of the churchyard. Oh, please will you go to him? Captain
+Morford is within easy call and has agreed to come when he is wanted. Do
+go, do go quickly, Mr. Cleek. There's someone coming up the road and I
+am horribly frightened."
+
+"But why? It is merely a farm labourer," said Cleek, glancing through
+the open side of the lich-gate and down the road. "You can see that for
+yourself."
+
+"Yes, but--who knows? who can tell? There is no clue to the actual
+person and he is so cunning, so crafty--Oh, please, will you go?
+Afterward, if you like, we can meet here again. To-day I am too
+frightened to stay."
+
+He saw that she was in a state of extreme nervous terror; that it would
+be cruel to subject her to any further suffering, and without one more
+word, walked past her into the Churchyard and made his way over the
+green ridge that rose immediately behind the building and down the slope
+beyond until he came to the extreme other side. And there in the shade
+of a thickly grown spinney, he found Mr. Marverick Narkom sitting with
+his back against a beech-tree smoking a nerve-soothing cigar and
+expectantly awaiting him.
+
+"My dear fellow, I never was so glad," he said, tossing away his smoke
+and jumping up as Cleek appeared. "Happy coincidence my motoring down
+here--eh, what? Wife in these parts visiting. Rum, my turning up just
+after Miss Lorne had written you and at a time when we both are needed,
+wasn't it?"
+
+"Very," said Cleek, pulling out a cigarette and stretching himself full
+length upon the ground. "Would as soon have expected to run foul of a
+specimen of the Great Auk endeavouring to rear a family in the
+neighbourhood of Trafalgar Square. Well, what's it now, Mr. Narkom?--I'm
+told you know the details. A match please, if you have one. Thanks very
+much. Now then let's have the facts. What sort of a case is it?"
+
+"The knottiest in all my experience, the strangest that even you have
+ever handled," replied the Superintendent, impressively. "It's a
+murder--three murders, in fact, with a possible fourth and a fifth in
+the near future if the diabolical rascal who is at the bottom of it
+isn't pulled up sharp and his amazing _modus operandi_ discovered.
+
+"The case will interest you, my dear chap; it is so startlingly original
+in its methods of procedure, so complex, so weird, and so appallingly
+mysterious. Conceive if you can, my dear fellow, an individual so
+supernaturally cunning that he not only kills without a trace, but kills
+in the presence of watchers--kills whilst the victim is in the very arms
+of those watchers! And yet escapes, unseen, unknown, without a clue to
+tell when, where, or how he entered the room or left it; when, where, or
+how he struck the blow, or why; yet did strike it, despite the sleepless
+vigil of a man who not only sat up all night with the victim, but held
+him in his arms to be sure that nobody could get at him; nobody so much
+as approach him without his guardian's knowledge!"
+
+Cleek twitched round sharply and sat up, leaning upon his elbow and
+looking at Narkom as though he doubted his sanity.
+
+"Let me have that again!" he said in sharp, crisp tones. "A man killed
+whilst another man held him--held him in his arms--and watched over him,
+and yet the other man saw nothing of the murderer? Is that what you
+said?"
+
+"That's it, precisely. Only I must tell you that, in the instance when
+the victim was held in the arms of the person watching him, it was not a
+man that was killed, but a boy. There had been a man killed, however,
+four weeks previously in the same house, in the same mysterious manner,
+and by the same unknown agency. A month earlier a woman, too, had been
+done to death there in the same way. The man was the brother of that
+boy, and the woman was the mother of both."
+
+Cleek moved so quickly that he might fairly have been said to flash from
+a sitting to a standing position, and then began to feel round in his
+pockets for his cigarette case with a nervous sort of haste, which
+Narkom knew and understood.
+
+"Ah," he said, in a tone of satisfaction, "I thought the case would
+interest you. You've been down in the dumps lately and needed something
+to buck you up a bit. I told Captain Morford that this would be sure to
+do it. Heard of him, haven't you? Extremely nice chap. Home on leave
+from Bombay. Only recently got his captaincy. Grandson and heir to that
+fine old snob, Sir Gilbert Morford, who's known everywhere as 'The
+Titled Teapot.' You know, 'Morford & Morford's Unrivalled Tea.' Knighted
+for something or other--the Lord knows what or why--and puts on more
+side over his tin-plate title than Royalty itself. The Captain is a
+decent sort, however. He'll give you the full particulars of this
+astounding case. Wait a bit. I'll call him"--pausing a moment to put the
+first two fingers of each hand into his mouth and blow out a shrill,
+ear-splitting whistle. "That'll fetch him! He'll be here before you can
+say Jack Robinson!"
+
+He wasn't, of course; but you couldn't have said it half a hundred times
+before he was; or, at least, before Cleek, startled by a rustling of the
+boughs, glanced round and saw a tall, fairish young man who had no more
+the appearance of a soldier than a currant has of a gooseberry. He
+looked more like a bank clerk than anything else that Cleek could think
+of at the minute, and a none too prepossessing bank clerk at that, for
+Nature had not been any too lavish of her gifts as regards personal
+attractiveness, seeming to prefer to make up for her miserliness in the
+bestowal of good looks by an absolute prodigality in the gifts of
+ears--ears as big as an oyster-shell and so prominent that they seemed
+even larger than they were, and that is saying a great deal.
+
+Still, unprepossessing as the man was, there was a certain charm of
+manner about him and a certain attractiveness in his voice Cleek
+discovered when he was introduced to him and found himself being "sized
+up," so to speak, by a pair of keen grey eyes.
+
+"Now let us have the details of the case, if you please, Captain," said
+Cleek, coming to the point of the interview with as little beating about
+the bush as possible. "Mr. Narkom has given me a vague idea of the
+nature of it, but I want something more than that, of course. I am told
+that three persons in one family have been done to death in a most
+mysterious manner, and without any clue to the assassin or his motive;
+indeed that the hand which strikes strikes even in the presence of
+others, yet remains unknown and invisible. Frankly, I never heard of but
+one instance which at all resembles this or--No, Mr. Narkom, it is
+nothing that ever came your way, no affair that has happened since you
+and I first met, sir. It was a long time ago--eight or ten years, to be
+exact--and a good many miles from England. The cases were somewhat
+similar, judging from the scanty outline you have given me, and--What's
+that? No, the criminal was never apprehended. He got away, and his
+methods were never generally known. Even if they had been, they were not
+those which any desperado might have emulated, any tyro practised. They
+required a certain knowledge of anatomy, chemical action--even surgery.
+I don't believe that ten people in the world knew about the thing at
+that time. I stumbled upon what I believed was the solution of the
+mystery whilst I was taking a course of chemistry for--well, for the
+purpose of demonstrating the possibility of manufacturing precious
+stones of a size and weight to make them a profitable--er--speculation.
+The science in medicine was not so advanced in those days as it is now,
+and when I ventured to suggest to certain doctors what I believed to
+have been the cause of the mysterious deaths and the _modus operandi_ of
+the murderer, I simply got laughed at for my pains. I felt pretty
+certain of my facts, however, and pretty certain of the man who was
+guilty. Pardon? No, not alive now; that fellow had his brains blown out
+in a bar-room brawl before I left New Zealand."
+
+"New Zealand?" struck in Captain Morford agitatedly. "I say, that's a
+rum go, isn't it, Mr. Narkom. New Zealand is where the Comstocks come
+from--or, rather, the father and mother did."
+
+"By Jove! Cleek, that looks suspicious, old chap," chimed in Narkom.
+"Don't think, do you, that there can possibly be any connection between
+the two cases? In other words, that that fellow you suspected in New
+Zealand didn't really die after all?"
+
+"Shortly, the chemist? Not a doubt about his death, Mr. Narkom. I was in
+the bar-room when he was killed. Three bullets went through his head,
+and he was as dead as Napoleon Bonaparte by the time he struck the
+floor. The methods may be the same, but not the man--there is not the
+ghost of possibility of there being any connection between the two. But
+let us give the Captain a chance to explain the case. When, where, and
+how did these mysterious murders begin, Captain, if you please?"
+
+"At Lilac Lodge, over Windsor way," replied the Captain, trying to
+answer all three questions at once. "They started about a week after the
+Comstocks went to live there. And the thing was so appalling, the place
+seemed so certainly under a curse, that although he had paid a good
+round sum for it, and had spent a pot of money having the house
+decorated and the garden laid out just as Miriam and her mother fancied
+it--Miriam is Miss Comstock, my fiancée, Mr. Cleek--nothing would induce
+Mr. Harmstead to stop in it another hour after the second murder
+occurred."
+
+"Mr. Harmstead! Who is Mr. Harmstead, Captain?"
+
+"The late Mrs. Comstock's bachelor uncle--a very rich old chap, who was
+once a sheep-farmer in New Zealand, and afterwards in Australia. Mrs.
+Comstock hadn't seen him since she was a very little girl until he came
+to England some few months ago to settle down and to take care of her
+children and her."
+
+"How did it happen that she hadn't seen him in all that time? I take it
+there must have been some good reason, Captain?"
+
+"Yes, rather. You see it was like this: The Harmsteads--Mrs. Comstock
+was a Harmstead by birth, and Uncle Phil was her father's only
+brother--the Harmsteads had never been well to-do as a family: indeed
+none of them but dear old Uncle Phil ever had a hundred pounds they
+could call their own, so when Miss Harmstead's father died, which was
+about eight months after his brother left New Zealand and went to
+Australia, she married a young joiner and cabinet-maker, George
+Comstock, to whom she had long been engaged, and a few weeks later,
+fancying there would be a better chance for advancement in his trade in
+England than out there, Mr. Comstock sold out what few belongings he had
+in the world and brought his wife over here."
+
+"Oh, I see. Then of course she had no opportunity of seeing her uncle
+until he came here?"
+
+"No, not a ghost of one. She corresponded with him for a time,
+however--wrote him after the first child was born--and christened
+'Philip' in honour of him. In those days it used to take six months to
+get a letter to Australia, and another six to get word back, so the baby
+was more than a year old when Uncle Phil wrote that if he didn't marry
+in the meantime and have a son of his own--which was very unlikely--he
+would make young Phil his heir and come out after him, too, one of these
+fine days."
+
+"One moment. Was the person you allude to as 'Young Phil' one of the
+sons that was murdered?"
+
+"Yes. He was the first victim, poor, chap!"
+
+"Oh, I see!" said Cleek. "I see! So there is money in the background,
+eh? Well go on. What next? Hear any more from Uncle Phil after that?"
+
+"Oh, yes--for a long time. Miriam and Flora were born, and word of their
+arrival in the world was sent out to him before the final letter for
+years and years reached them. In that letter he wrote that he was doing
+better and better every year, and getting so rich that he didn't have
+time to do anything but just stop where he was and 'gather in the
+shekels.' There'd be enough for all when he did come, however, and he
+was altering his will so that in case anything should happen to young
+Phil--'which God forbid,' he wrote--the girls would come next, and so on
+to all the heirs of his niece. After that letter years went by, and
+never another one. They, thinking that he had married after all--for in
+his last letter he had spoken of a young widow who had lately been
+engaged to fill the post of housekeeper at his ranch--gave up all hope
+when after three times writing no reply came, and finally desisted
+entirely. He says, however, that it was just the other way about. That
+he did write--wrote six or seven times--but could get no reply; and as
+he afterwards found the housekeeper in question a designing and
+deceitful person, and shipped her off about her business, he makes no
+doubt that she received and destroyed Mrs. Comstock's letter to him and
+burnt his to her, hoping, no doubt, to inveigle him into marrying her."
+
+"Quite likely, if she were a designing woman," commented Cleek. "But go
+on, please. What next?"
+
+"Oh, years of hardship, during which Mr. Comstock died and his widow had
+to earn their own living unaided. Young Phil got a post as bookkeeper,
+Flora taught music and painting, Mrs. Comstock did needlework, and
+Miriam became a governess in the family of a distant connection of my
+grandfather, Sir Gilbert Morford. That's where and how I met her, Mr.
+Cleek, and--Well, that's another story!" his cheeks reddening and a
+flash of fire coming into his eyes. "My grandfather says he will 'chuck
+me out neck and crop' if I marry her; but it does not matter--I will!"
+
+"Yes, you will--if the cut of that chin stands for anything," commented
+Cleek. "Well, to get on: the Comstocks were down in the deeps, and no
+hope of hearing any more from Australia and Uncle Phil, eh? What next?"
+
+"Why, all of a sudden he dropped in on them, bless his bully old
+heart!--and then good-bye to hard times and any more struggling for
+them. He'd been in England searching for them for seven months before he
+found them; but when he did find them there was a time! Inside of ten
+hours, the whole world was changed for them. Made the boys and the girls
+give up their positions and come home to live with him and their mother,
+poured money out by the handful, bought Lilac Lodge and fitted it up
+like a little palace, dressed his niece and her daughters like queens,
+and settled down with them to what seemed about to be a life of glorious
+and luxurious ease, and in the midst of all this peace and plenty,
+brightness and hope, the first blow fell. Mrs. Comstock, going to bed at
+night in perfect health, was found in the morning stone-dead! Of course,
+as no doctor could give a death certificate when none had been in
+attendance upon her, the Law stepped in, the coroner held an inquest, an
+autopsy was decided upon, and the result of it was a deeper and more
+amazing mystery than ever. She had died--but from what? Every organ was
+found to be in a thoroughly healthy condition. The heart was sound, the
+lungs betrayed no sign of an anesthetic, the blood and kidneys not the
+faintest trace of poison--everything about her was perfectly normal. She
+had not died through drugs, she had not died through strangulation,
+suffocation, electrical shock, or failure of the heart. She had not been
+stabbed, she had not been shot, she had not succumbed to any mortal
+disease--yet there she was, stone-dead, slain by something which no one
+could trace and for which Science could find no name."
+
+Narkom opened his lips to speak, but Cleek signalled him to silence, and
+stood studying the Captain from under down-drawn brows, looking and
+listening and thoughtfully rubbing his thumb and forefinger up and down
+his chin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+"Of course the family was horribly shocked and upset by this sudden and
+mysterious interruption to the dream of peace," went on the Captain;
+"but nothing was left but to accept the verdict of 'Death from unknown
+causes,' and to believe it the will of God. The body was buried a few
+days later, and, comforting each other as best they could, the sorrowing
+uncle and heart-broken nieces and nephews settled down to living their
+lives without the one who had been the sunshine of the home, and whose
+loss seemed the greatest blow that could have been dealt them. A month
+passed and they were just beginning to forget details of the tragedy
+when a second and equally mysterious and horrifying one occurred, and
+the eldest son of the dead woman--Philip--was stricken down precisely as
+his mother had been, and, as his horrified brother, sisters, and uncle
+now recalled, like her, on the tenth day of the month!"
+
+"Hum-m-m!" said Cleek, reflectively. "Rather significant, that. It was,
+I assume, that circumstance which first suggested the idea of something
+more than mere chance being at the back of these sudden and mysterious
+deaths?"
+
+"That and one other circumstance. The condition of the bedclothing, Mr.
+Cleek, showed that in Philip's case there had been something in the
+nature of a struggle before he had succumbed to the Power which had
+assailed him. In other words, he had not been, as doubtless the poor
+mother had, so infinitely inferior in point of strength to the murderer
+as to be absolutely powerless in the wretch's grip from the very first
+instant of the attack. He had fought for his life, poor fellow, but it
+must have been a brief fight and death itself almost instantaneous; for
+although the bedclothing was tangled round his feet in a manner which
+could only have occurred in a struggle, he did not live long enough to
+get off the bed itself or slide so much as one foot to the floor. He
+died as his mother had died, and the verdict of the doctors and of the
+coroner's jury was the same: 'Death from unknown causes'!"
+
+"Hm-m-m!" said Cleek again. "And were all the symptoms--or, rather, the
+absence of symptoms--the same?"
+
+"Precisely. All the organs were discovered to be in a normal condition,
+the blood was untainted by any suggestion of either mineral or animal
+poison, the heart was sound, the lungs healthy--there was neither an
+internal disturbance nor an external wound, unless one could call a
+'wound' a slight, a very slight, swelling upon the left side of the
+neck; a small thing, not so big as a sixpence."
+
+"And appearing very much like the inflammation resulting from the bite
+of a gnat or a spider, Captain?"
+
+"Exactly like it, Mr. Cleek. In fact, the doctors fancied at first that
+it was the result of his having been bitten by some poisonous insect,
+and were for accounting for his death that way. But, of course, the
+entire absence of poison in the blood soon put an end to that idea, so
+it was certain that whatever he died from, it was not from a bite or a
+sting of any sort."
+
+"Clever chaps, those doctors," commented Cleek with a curious one-sided
+smile. "However, they were quite correct in that, I imagine, poison,
+either animal, vegetable, or mineral, was not the means of destruction.
+Still, I should have thought that at this second post-mortem the
+likeness of the son's case to that of the mother's would have impelled
+them to extra vigilance, and resulted in a much more careful searching,
+and minute examination of the viscera. If my theory is correct, I do not
+suppose they would have found anything in the contents of the thorax or
+the abdomen, but it is just possible that analysis of the matter removed
+from the cranial cavity might have revealed a small blood-clot in the
+brain."
+
+The Captain twitched up his eyebrows and stared at him in open-mouthed
+amazement.
+
+"Of all the--By Jove! you know, this beats me! To think of your guessing
+that!" he said. "As a matter of fact, that's precisely what they did do,
+Mr. Cleek. But as they couldn't arrive at any conclusion nor trace a
+probable cause of its origin they were more in the dark than ever.
+Selwin, the local practitioner, was for putting it down as a case of
+apoplexy on the strength of that small blood-clot, but as there was an
+entire absence of every other symptom of apoplectic conditions the other
+doctors scouted the suggestion as preposterous--pointed out the
+generally healthy state of the brain and of the heart, lungs, arterial
+walls, _et cetera_, as utterly refuting such a theory--and in the end
+the verdict on the son was the verdict given on the mother: 'Death from
+unknown causes'; and he was buried as she had been buried, with the
+secret of the murder undiscovered."
+
+"And then what, Captain?"
+
+"What I have already told you, Mr. Cleek. Nothing under God's heaven
+would or could persuade Mr. Harmstead to let his nieces and their two
+surviving brothers remain another hour in that house of disaster. He
+removed them from it instantly--fled the very neighbourhood, hired a
+house down here--at Dalehampton; a dozen miles or so on the other side
+of the Tor, yonder--and carried them there to live. The family now
+consisted of Miriam and Flora, the two girls, Paul, a boy of
+thirteen--old Mr. Harmstead's special pride and pet--and Ronald, a
+little chap of eleven. In this new home they hoped and prayed to be free
+from the horrible visitant who had made the memory of the old one a
+nightmare to them, but--they couldn't forget, Mr. Cleek, what the Tenth
+of each month had taken from them, and grew sick with dread at the
+steady approach of the Tenth of this one."
+
+"And as this is the Twelfth," said Cleek, "the day before yesterday
+_was_ the Tenth. Did anything happen?"
+
+"Yes," replied the Captain, his voice dropping until it was little more
+than a whisper. "I tried to cheer them; Miss Lorne tried to cheer them.
+We sat with them, tried to make them think that our presence there would
+act as a shield and a guard--and tried to think so ourselves. But old
+Mr. Harmstead took even stronger measures. 'Nothing shall touch
+Paul--nothing that lives and breathes,' he said, desperately. 'I'll take
+him into my room; I'll sit up with him in my arms all night!'"
+
+"And did so?"
+
+"Yes. At twelve o'clock, Miss Lorne, Miss Comstock, and I went in to say
+good-night to him. He was sitting in a deep chair with the boy fast
+asleep in his arms--sitting and looking all about him with the dumb
+agony of a trapped mouse. I'll never forget how he clutched the boy to
+him nor the cry he gave when the door opened to admit us, the sob of
+relief when he saw it was only us. His cry and his movement awoke the
+boy, but he dropped off to sleep again before I left, and was breathing
+healthily and peacefully. The last look I had at the picture as I went
+out, Mr. Cleek, the dear old chap was holding his pet in his arms and
+smiling down into his boyish face. So he was still sitting, Miss
+Comstock tells me, when she came down this morning. 'Look,' he said to
+her, 'I watched him--I held him--the tenth day is past and the death
+didn't get him, my bonnie!' Then called her to his side and shook the
+little fellow to awaken him. It was then only that he discovered the
+truth. The boy was stone-dead!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+"There, Mr. Cleek," resumed the Captain, after he could master his
+emotion. "That is the case--that is the riddle I am praying to Heaven
+that you may be able to solve. What the mysterious power is, when,
+where, or how it got into the room and got at the boy, God alone knows.
+Mr. Harmstead will swear that he never let the little fellow out of his
+arms for one solitary instant between the time of our leaving him just
+after midnight, and Miss Comstock's coming in in the morning. He admits,
+however, that twice during that period he fell asleep, but it was only
+for a few minutes each time; and long years of being constantly alert
+for possible marauders--out there in the wilds of Australia--have tended
+to make his sleep so light that anything heavier than a cat's footfall
+wakes him on the instant. Yet last night something--man or spirit--came
+and went, and he neither heard nor saw either sound or shape from
+midnight until morning. One thing I must tell you, however, which may
+throw some light upon the movements of the appalling thing. Whereas Mr.
+Harmstead not only closed, but locked, both of the two windows in the
+room, and pinned the thick plushette curtains of them together--as Miss
+Comstock and I saw them pinned when we left the room last night--when
+those curtains came to be drawn this morning one of the windows was
+found to be partly open, and there was a smear of something that looked
+like grease across the sill and the stone coping beyond."
+
+"Of course, of course!" commented Cleek enigmatically. "Provided my
+theory is correct, I should have expected that. A thing that comes and
+goes through windows must, at some period, leave some mark of its
+passage. Of course that particular window opened upon a balcony or
+something of that sort, didn't it?"
+
+"No, it is a perfectly unbroken descent from the window sill to the
+ground. But there's a big tree close by, and the branches of that brush
+the pane of glass."
+
+"Ah! I see! I see! All the soap dishes in the house left filled last
+night and found filled this morning, captain?"
+
+"Good heavens! I don't know. What on earth can soap dishes have to do
+with it, man?"
+
+"Possibly nothing, probably a great deal--particularly if there's found
+to be a cake of soap in each. But that we can discover later. Now one
+word more. Was that same minute swelling--the mark like a gnat's
+bite--on the neck of the boy's body, too? And had it been on that of the
+mother's as well?"
+
+"I can't answer either question, Mr. Cleek. I don't remember to have
+heard about it being remarked in the case of Mrs. Comstock's death; and
+the murder of little Paul was such a horrible thing and so upset
+everybody that none of us thought to look."
+
+"An error of judgment that; however, it is one easily rectified, since
+the body is not yet interred," said Cleek. "Ever read Harvey's
+'Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Sanguinis,' Captain?--the volume in which
+William Harvey first gave to the world at large his discovery regarding
+the circulation of the blood."
+
+"Good heavens, no! What would I be doing reading matters of that kind?
+I'm not a medico, Mr. Cleek--I'm a soldier."
+
+"I know. But, still--well, I thought it just possible that you might
+have read the work, or, at least, heard something regarding the contents
+of the volume. Men who have a hobby are rather given to riding it and
+boring other people with discussions and dissertations upon it; and I
+seem to think that I have heard it said that Sir Gilbert Morford's
+greatest desire in the time of his youth was to become a medical man. In
+fact, that he put in two or three years as a student at St.
+Bartholomew's, and would have qualified, but that the sudden death of
+his father compelled him to abandon the hope and to assume the
+responsibilities of the head of the house of Morford & Morford, tea
+importers, of Mincing Lane."
+
+"Yes; that's quite correct. He bitterly resented the compulsion--the
+'pitchforking of a man out of a profession into the abomination of
+trade,' as he always expresses it--but of course, he was obliged to
+yield, and the 'dream of his life' dropped off into nothing but a dream.
+But the old love and the old recollection still linger, and, although he
+no longer personally follows either trade or profession, he keeps up his
+laboratory work, subscribes to every medical journal in Christendom, and
+if you want to tickle his vanity or to get on the right side of him all
+you have to do is to address him as 'doctor.' With all due respect to
+him, he's a bit of a prig, Mr. Cleek, and hates people of no
+position--'people of the lower order,' as he always terms them--as the
+gentleman down under is said to hate holy water."
+
+"So that he, naturally, would move heaven and earth to prevent his
+grandson and heir from marrying a young woman of that class? I see!"
+supplemented Cleek. "The dear gentleman would like the name of Morford
+to go down to posterity linked to duchesses or earls' daughters, and
+surrounded by a blaze of glory. Ah, it's a queer world, Captain. There
+is no bitterer hater of the 'common herd' than the snob who has climbed
+up from it! The snob and the sneak are closely allied, Captain, and men
+of that stamp have been known to do some pretty ugly things to uphold
+their pinchbeck dignity, and to keep the tinsel of the present over the
+cheap gingerbread of the past."
+
+"Good God, man! You don't surely mean to suggest--"
+
+"Gently, gently, Captain. Your indignation does you credit; but it is
+never well to have a shot at a rabbit before he's fairly out of the
+hole, and you are sure that it isn't the ferret you sent in after him.
+Anything in the way of a conveyance handy, Mr. Narkom?"
+
+"Yes--the limousine. I came down in it yesterday. It's over at the Rose
+and Crown."
+
+"Good! Then perhaps Captain Morford will meet us there in a half hour's
+time. Meanwhile, I've got a few things to throw into my kit-bag, and as
+that's over at the Three Desires, perhaps you won't mind coming along
+and giving me a hand. Then we'll run over to that house at Dalehampton
+and have a look at the body of that poor little shaver as expeditiously
+as possible. Will you come?"
+
+"Yes, certainly," said Narkom; and having given a few necessary
+directions to the Captain walked on and followed Cleek. He knew very
+well the suggestion that he should do so was merely an excuse to have a
+few words with him in private--for no man would be likely to need
+another man's assistance in simply putting a few things into a bag--and
+he was rather puzzled to account for Cleek's desire to say anything to
+him which the Captain was not to hear. However, he kept his curiosity in
+check and his tongue behind his teeth until they were on the other side
+of the lich-gate and in the road leading to the Three Desires.
+
+"There's something you want to say to me, isn't there?" he inquired.
+"Something you want attended to on the quiet?"
+
+"Yes," admitted Cleek, tersely. "There's a public telephone station a
+mile or two on the other side of this place--I saw it this morning when
+I was out tramping. Slip off down there, ring up the head of the
+Dalehampton Constabulary, and tell him to have a man at the house ready
+to pop up when wanted. I'll be long enough over my supposed 'packing' to
+cover the time of your going and returning without the Captain's
+knowledge."
+
+"Without--Good Heaven! My dear Cleek, you were serious, then? You meant
+it? You--you really believe that suspicion points to Sir Gilbert
+Morford?"
+
+"Not any more than it points to Sir Gilbert Morford's grandson, Mr.
+Narkom."
+
+"Good Lord! To him? To that boy? Why, man alive, what possible motive
+could he have for bringing grief and anguish to Miss Comstock when he's
+willing to give up a fortune to marry her?"
+
+"Ah, but don't forget that another fortune descends to all the heirs,
+male and female alike, of the late Mrs. Comstock, Mr. Narkom, and that
+if the Captain's fiancée becomes, in course of time, the only surviving
+child of that unfortunate lady, the Captain's sacrifice will not be such
+an overpowering hardship for him, after all."
+
+"Great Scott! I never thought of that before, Cleek--never."
+
+"Didn't you? Well, don't think too much of it now that you have. For
+circumstantial evidence is tricky and treacherous, and he mayn't be the
+man, after all!"
+
+"Mayn't be? What a beggar you are for damping a man's ardour after
+you've fanned it up to the blazing point. Any light in the darkness, old
+chap? Any idea of what--and how?"
+
+"Yes," said Cleek, quietly. "If there's a mark on that poor little
+shaver's neck, Mr. Narkom, I shall know the means. And if there's soap
+on the window sill I shall know the man!" And then, having reached the
+doorway of the inn, he dived into it and went up the staircase two steps
+at a time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+The little house of Dalehampton was something more than a mere house of
+grief, they found, when the long drive came to an end and Cleek and his
+two companions entered it, for the very spirit of desolation and despair
+seemed to have taken up its abode there; and, like an Incarnate Woe,
+Miss Comstock paced through the hush and darkness, hour in and hour out,
+as she had been doing since daybreak.
+
+"My darling, you mustn't--you really mustn't, dear. You'll lose your
+mind if you brood over the thing like this," said the Captain, flying to
+her the very instant they arrived; and, disregarding the presence of his
+two companions, caught her in his arms and kissed her. "Miriam, dearest,
+don't! It breaks my heart. I know it's awful; but do try to have
+strength and hope. I am sure we shall get at the bottom of the thing
+now--sure that there will be no more--that this is truly the end. These
+gentlemen are from Scotland Yard, dearest, and they say it surely will
+be."
+
+"Heaven knows I hope so," replied Miss Comstock, acknowledging the
+introduction to Cleek and Narkom by a gentle inclination of the head.
+"But indeed, I can't hope, Jim--indeed, I cannot, gentlemen. The tenth
+of next month will take its toll as the tenth of this one has done. I
+feel persuaded that it will. For who can fight a thing unseen and
+unknown?"
+
+Her grief was so great, her despair so hopeless, that Cleek forbore
+attempting to assuage either by any words of sympathy or promise. He
+seemed to feel that hers was an anguish upon which even the kindliest
+words must fall only as an intrusion, and the heart of the man--that
+curiously created heart, which at times could be savage even to the
+point of brutality, and again tender and sympathetic as any
+woman's--went out to her in one great surge of human feeling. And two
+minutes later--when all the Law's grim business of inquiry and inquest
+had been carried out by Narkom, and she, in obedience to his expressed
+desire, led them to the room where the dead boy lay--that wave of
+sympathetic feeling broke over his soul again. For the gentle opening of
+the door had shown him a small, dimly lit room, a kneeling figure, bent
+of back and bowed of head, that leant over a little white bed in a very
+agony of tearless woe.
+
+"He can hardly tear himself away for an instant--he loved him so!" she
+said in a quavering whisper to Cleek. "Must we disturb him? It seems
+almost cruel."
+
+"I know it," he whispered back; "but the place must be searched in quest
+of possible clues, Miss Comstock. The--the little boy, too, must be
+examined, and it would be crueller still if he were to stay and see
+things like that. Lead him out if you can. It will be for a few minutes
+only. Tell him so--tell him he can come back then." And turned his face
+away from that woeful picture as she went over and spoke to the
+sorrowing old man.
+
+"Uncle!" she said softly. "Uncle Phil! You must come away for a little
+time, dear. It is necessary."
+
+"Oh, I can't, Mirry--I can't, lovie, dear!" he answered without lifting
+his head or loosening his folded hands. "My bonnie, my bonnie, that I
+loved so well! Ah, let me have him while I may, Mirry--they'll take him
+from me soon enough--soon enough, my bonnie boy!"
+
+"But, dearest, you must. The--the Law has stepped in. Gentlemen from
+Scotland Yard are here. Jim has brought them. They must have the room
+for a little time. There--there's the window to be examined, you know;
+and if they can find out anything--"
+
+"I'll give them the half of all I have in the world!" broke in the old
+man with a little burst of tears. "Tell them that. The half of
+everything--everything--if they can get at the creature. If they can
+find out. But"--collapsing suddenly, with his elbows on his knees and
+his face between his hands--"they can't, they can't; nobody can! It
+kills and kills and kills; and God help us! we all shall go the same
+way! It will be my turn, too, some time soon. I wish it were mine now. I
+wish it had been mine long ago--before I lost my bonnie own!"
+
+"Takes it hard, poor old chap, doesn't he?" whispered Narkom, glancing
+round and getting something of a shock when he saw that Cleek, who a
+moment before had appeared to be almost on the verge of tears, was now
+fumbling in his coat pockets, and, with indrawn lips and knotted brows,
+was scowling--absolutely scowling--in the direction where Captain
+Morford stood, biting his lips and drumming with his finger nails upon
+the edge of the washstand. But Cleek made no reply. Instead, he walked
+quickly across to the Captain's side, stretched forth his hand, took up
+a tablet of soap, turned it over, laid it down again, stepped to the
+window, stepped back, and laid a firm hand on the young man's shoulder.
+
+"Captain," he said suddenly, in sharp, crisp tones, that sounded
+painfully harsh after the old man's broken cries, "Captain, there's a
+little game of cards called 'Bluff,' and it's an excellent amusement if
+you don't get caught at it. We shan't have to go any further with the
+search for clues in this case; but I think I shall have to ask you, my
+friend, a few little questions in private, and in the interests of a
+gentleman called Jack Ketch!"
+
+This unexpected outburst produced something like a panic. Miss Comstock,
+hearing the words, cried out, put both hands to her temples, as though
+her head were reeling; old Mr. Harmstead straightened suddenly and flung
+a look of blank amazement across the room; and the Captain, twitching
+away from the man who gripped him, went first deathly white and then red
+as any beet.
+
+"Good God!" he gulped. "You--I--Look here, I say now, what does this
+mean? What the dickens are you talking about?"
+
+"Bluff, Captain! Simply 'bluff'!" responded Cleek serenely. "And as I
+said before, it's a clever little game. Stand where you are--keep an eye
+on him, Mr. Narkom. What I've got to say to you, my friend, we'll talk
+about in private, and after I have assisted Miss Comstock to lead her
+uncle out of the room."
+
+With that he swung away from the Captain's side and went over to that of
+the old man.
+
+"Come, Mr. Harmstead, let me help you to rise," he began; then stopped
+as the old man put up a knotted and twisted hand in supplication and
+protested agitatedly: "But--but, sir, I do not want to go. Good Heaven!
+What can you be hinting against that poor, dear boy? Surely you do not
+mean--you cannot mean--"
+
+"That the little game of 'Bluff' has worked, Dr. Finch, and you'll never
+draw a revolver on me," rapped in Cleek, giving him a backward push that
+carried him to the floor, and in the twinkling of an eye he had pounced
+upon him like a cat and was saying, as he snapped the handcuffs upon his
+wrists: "Got you, you brute-beast; got you tight and fast! Do you
+remember Hamilton, the medical student, in New Zealand, eight years ago?
+Do you? Well, that's the man you're dealing with now!"
+
+The man, struggling and kicking, biting and clawing like any other
+cornered wild cat, flung out a cry of utter despair at this, and
+collapsed suddenly; and in the winking of an eye Cleek's hands had
+flashed into the two pockets of the dressing-gown the fellow was
+wearing, and flashed out again with a revolver in one and a shining
+nickel thing in the other.
+
+"Got your 'bark,' doctor, and got your 'bite' as well!" he said, as he
+rose to his feet. "You'd have put a bullet through me at the first word,
+wouldn't you, but for that little 'bluff' of suspecting and arresting
+another man? Captain, look to Miss Comstock--I think she has fainted.
+You wanted the murderer of Mrs. Comstock and her children, didn't you?
+Well, here he is, the rascal!"
+
+"Good God! Then it--it's not a mistake? You mean it--mean it? And Uncle
+Phil! You accuse Uncle Phil?"
+
+"Uncle Nothing!" flung back Cleek with a sort of laugh--and, hazarding a
+guess which afterwards was proved to be the truth--"I'll lay my life,
+Captain, that when you apply to the Australian authorities you will find
+that old Mr. Philip Harmstead is in his grave; that he was attended in
+his last illness by one Dr. Frederick Finch, to whom his fortune would
+revert in the event of Mrs. Comstock and her children dying. Finch is
+the fellow's name--isn't it, doctor, eh?"
+
+"Finch?" repeated the Captain. "Good Heaven! Why that was the name of
+the woman who was old Mr. Harmstead's housekeeper--you know, the widow I
+told you about to-night."
+
+"Oho!" said Cleek. "That's possibly where the threads join and this
+little game begins. Or perhaps it may really be said to begin again
+where Shorty, the chemist, died, and the celebrated Spofford mystery
+ended--eh, doctor? Look here, Captain, look here, Mr. Narkom, you
+remember what I told you this morning about that case in New Zealand
+which so strongly resembled this one? That was the Spofford mystery. Do
+you remember what I said about hitting upon a theory and offering it to
+the medical fraternity, only to get laughed at for my pains? Well, it
+was to this man, Dr. Frederick Finch, I advanced that theory, and it was
+Dr. Frederick Finch who jeered at it, but has now made deadly use of it,
+the hound. Do you want to know how he killed his victims, and what he
+used? Look at this thing that you saw me take from the pocket of his
+dressing-gown. It is a hypodermic syringe, but there is nothing in
+it--there never has been anything in it. Air was his poison--air his
+shaft of death; and he killed by injecting it into the veins of his
+victims. The result of air coming into contact with the circulating
+blood of a human being is the formation of a blood-clot, and death is
+instantaneous the instant the clot reaches either the brain or the
+heart! That was his method. But thank God it's done with for ever now,
+and the next tenth day of the month will pass over this stricken family
+and leave it unscathed!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"How did I know the man?" said Cleek, answering Narkom's query, as they
+came down the Tor-side afoot and forged on in the direction of
+Lyntonhurst Old Church--whither Captain Morford and the limousine had
+long ago preceded them--with the low-dropped sun behind them and
+lengthening shadows streaming on before. "Well, as a matter of fact, I
+never did know him until I actually touched him. I was certain of the
+method, of course; but the man--no. I got my first suspicion of 'Uncle
+Phil' when I heard him speak. I knew I had heard that voice somewhere,
+and I realised that it was much too young a voice for a man who
+appeared--and must be, if he were the real 'Uncle Phil'--extremely old;
+but it was only when I saw his hand, and the peculiar knotted and
+twisted little finger that I really knew who he was. What's that? The
+soap? Well, of course I knew that if, as I suspected, someone in the
+house was the real culprit, an attempt would be made to make it look as
+though the criminal entered from without, so naturally the window would
+be opened, and something of some sort would be smeared on the
+sill--something that wouldn't blow away and wouldn't wash off in the
+event of a sudden rainstorm coming up. Soap would do--and soap is always
+handy in a bedroom. I knew whose hand had made the smear as soon as I
+looked at the cake of soap in 'Uncle Phil's' room--it was badly rubbed
+on one side where it had been scraped over the stone coping and along
+the outer edge of the sill where--Pardon me: this is the turning--I
+leave you here. Pick me up at the inn of the Three Desires in an hour's
+time, please, and we'll motor back to town together. So long!"
+
+And swung round into the branching lane and down the green slope, and
+round under the shadow of Lyntonhurst Old Church to the quiet country
+road and the lich-gate where Ailsa Lorne was waiting.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+She was sitting in the very same place she had occupied when first he
+saw her this morning, with the cypress tree and the roof making shadows
+above and about her; and now, as then, she rose when she heard the latch
+click and came toward him with hands outstretched and eyes aglow and
+little gusts of colour sweeping in rose waves over throat and cheeks.
+
+"Oh, to think that you have solved it! To think that it is the end! And
+to think that it was he--that dear, kind 'uncle' of whom they all were
+so fond!" she said. "I could scarcely believe it when Captain Morford
+brought the news. It made me quite faint for the moment--it was so
+unexpected, so horrible!"
+
+"And after all, there was nothing to fear from that farm labourer who
+frightened you so this morning, you see," he smiled, holding her two
+hands in his and looking down at her from his greater height. "Yet I
+find your crouching back in the shadow as if you were still frightened
+to be seen. Are you?"
+
+"A little," she admitted. "You see, the road is a public one. People are
+always passing, and--How good it was of you to come all this long
+distance out of your way. Indeed, I am very, very grateful, Mr. Cleek."
+
+"Thank you," he said gravely. "But you need not be. Indeed, the
+gratitude should be all on my side. I said I would come if ever you
+wanted me, and you gave me an opportunity to keep my word. As for it
+being out of my way to come here, it is but a little distance to the
+Three Desires and a long one to Lady Chepstow's place, so it is you, not
+I, that have 'gone out of the way!' It was good of you to give me this
+grace--I should have been sorry to go back to town without saying
+good-bye."
+
+"But need you go so soon?" she asked. "Lady Chepstow will feel slighted,
+I know, if she hears that you have been in the neighbourhood and have
+not called. She is a friend, you know, a warm, true friend--always
+grateful for what you did, always glad to see you. Why not stop on a day
+or two and call and see her?"
+
+A robin flicked down out of the cypress tree and perched on the gate
+top, looked up at Cleek with bright, sharp eyes, flung out a wee little
+trill, and was off again.
+
+"I'm afraid it is out of the question--I'm afraid I'm not so deeply
+interested in Lady Chepstow as, perhaps, I ought to be," said Cleek,
+noticing in a dim subconscious way that the robin had flown on to the
+church door and perched there, and was in full song now. "Besides, she
+does not know of me what you do. Perhaps, if she did.... Oh, well, it
+doesn't matter. Thank you for coming to say good-bye, Miss Lorne. It was
+kind of you. Now I must emulate Poor Jo, and 'move on' again."
+
+"And without any reward!" said Ailsa with a smile and a sigh. "Without
+expecting any; without asking any; without wanting any!"
+
+He stood a moment, twisting his heel round and round in the gravel of
+the pathway, and breathing hard, his eyes on the ground, and his lips
+indrawn. Then, of a sudden--"Perhaps I did want one. Perhaps I've always
+wanted one. And hoped to get it some day perhaps from--you!" he said.
+And looked up at her as a man looks but once at one woman ever.
+
+She had come a step nearer; she was standing there with the shadows
+behind her and the light on her face, warm colour in her cheeks, and a
+smile on her lips and in her eyes. She spoke no word, made no sound;
+merely stood there and smiled and, somehow, he seemed to know what the
+smile of her meant and what the bird's note said.
+
+"Miss Lorne--Ailsa," he said, very, very gently, "if some day ... when
+all the wrongs I did in those other days are righted, and all that a man
+can do on this earth to atone for such a past as mine has been done ...
+if then, in that time, I come to you and ask for that reward, do you
+think, oh, do you think that you can find it in your heart to give it?"
+
+"When that day dawns, come and see," she said, "if you wish to wait so
+long!"
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+THE AFFAIR OF THE MAN WHO HAD BEEN CALLED HAMILTON CLEEK
+
+
+"Note for you, sir--messenger just fetched it. Addressed to 'Captain
+Burbage,' so it'll be from The Yard," said Dollops, coming into the room
+with a doughnut in one hand and a square envelope in the other.
+
+Cleek, who had been sitting at his writing-table, with a litter of
+folded documents, bits of antique jewellery, and what looked like odds
+and ends of faded ribbon lying before him, swept the whole collection
+into the table drawer as Dollops spoke and stretched forth his hand for
+the letter.
+
+It was one of Narkom's characteristic communications, albeit somewhat
+shorter than those communications usually were--a fact which told Cleek
+at once that the matter was one of immense importance.
+
+"My dear Cleek," it ran. "For the love of goodness don't let anything
+tempt you into going out to-night. I shall call about ten. Foreign
+government affair--reward simply enormous. Look out for me. Yours, in
+hot haste--MAVERICK NARKOM."
+
+"Be on the lookout for the red limousine," said Cleek, glancing over at
+Dollops, who stood waiting for orders. "It will be along about ten.
+That's all. You may go."
+
+"Right you are, Gov'nor. I'll keep my eyes peeled, sir. Lor'! I do hope
+it's summink to do with a restaurant or a cookshop this time. I could do
+with a job of that sort--my word, yes! I'm fair famishin'. And, beggin'
+pardon, but you don't look none too healthy yourself this evening,
+Gov'nor. Ain't et summink wot's disagreed with you, have you, sir?"
+
+"I? What nonsense! I'm as fit as a fiddle. What could make you think
+otherwise?"
+
+"Oh, I dunno, sir--only--Well, if you don't mind my sayin' of it, sir,
+whenever you gets to unlocking of that draw and lookin' at them things
+you keep in there--wotever they is--you always gets a sort of
+solemncholy look in the eyes; and you gets white about the gills, and
+your lips has a pucker to 'em that I don't like to see."
+
+"Tommy rot! Imagination's a splendid thing for a detective to possess,
+Dollops, but don't let yours run away with you in this fashion, my lad,
+or you'll never rise above what you are. Toddle along now, and look out
+for Mr. Narkom's arrival. It's after nine already, so he'll soon be
+here."
+
+"Anybody a-comin' with him, sir?"
+
+"I don't know--he didn't say. Cut along, now; I'm busy!" said Cleek.
+Nevertheless, when Dollops had gone and the door was shut and he had the
+room to himself again, and, if he really did have any business on hand,
+there was no reason in the world why he should not have set about it, he
+remained sitting at the table and idly drumming upon it with his finger
+tips, a deep ridge between his brows and a far-away expression in his
+fixed, unwinking eyes. And so he was still sitting when, something like
+twenty minutes later, the sharp "Toot-toot!" of a motor horn sounded.
+
+Narkom's note lay on the table close to his elbow. He took it up,
+crumpled it into a ball, and threw it into his waste basket. "A foreign
+government affair," he said with a curious one-sided smile. "A strange
+coincidence, to be sure!" Then, as if obeying an impulse, he opened the
+drawer, looked at the litter of things he had swept into it, shut it up
+again and locked it securely, putting the key into his pocket and rising
+to his feet. Two minutes later, when Narkom pushed open the door and
+entered the room, he found Cleek leaning against the edge of the
+mantelpiece and smoking a cigarette with the air of one whose feet trod
+always upon rose petals, and who hadn't a thought beyond the affairs of
+the moment, nor a care for anything but the flavour of Egyptian tobacco.
+
+"Ah, my dear fellow, you can't think what a relief it was to catch you.
+I had but a moment in which to dash off the note, and I was on thorns
+with fear that it would miss you; that on a glorious night like this
+you'd be off for a pull up the river or something of that sort," said
+the superintendent, as he bustled in and shook hands with him. "You are
+such a beggar for getting off by yourself and mooning."
+
+"Well, to tell you the truth, Mr. Narkom, I came within an ace of doing
+the very thing you speak of," replied Cleek. "It's full moon, for one
+thing, and it's primrose time for another. Happily for your desire to
+catch me, however, I--er--got interested in the evening paper, and that
+delayed me."
+
+"Very glad, dear chap; very glad, indeed," began Narkom. Then, as his
+eye fell upon the particular evening paper in question lying on the
+writing-table, a little crumpled from use, but with a certain
+"displayed-headed" article of three columns length in full view, he
+turned round and stared at Cleek with an air of awe and mystification.
+"My dear fellow, you must be under the guardianship of some uncanny
+familiar. You surely must, Cleek!" he went on. "Do you mean to tell me
+that is what kept you at home? That you have been reading about the
+preparations for the forthcoming coronation of King Ulric of
+Mauravania?"
+
+"Yes; why not? I am sure it makes interesting reading, Mr. Narkom. The
+kingdom of Mauravania has had sufficient ups and downs to inspire a
+novelist, so its records should certainly interest a mere reader. To be
+frank, I found the account of the amazing preparations for the
+coronation of his new Majesty distinctly entertaining. They are an
+excitable and spectacular people, those Mauravanians, and this time they
+seem bent upon outdoing themselves."
+
+"But, my dear Cleek, that you should have chosen to stop at home and
+read about that particular affair! Bless my soul man, it's--it's
+amazing, abnormal, uncanny! Positively uncanny, Cleek!"
+
+"My dear Narkom, I don't see where the uncanny element comes in, I must
+confess," replied Cleek with an indulgent smile. "Surely an Englishman
+must always feel a certain amount of interest in Mauravian affairs. Have
+the goodness to remember that there should be an Englishman upon that
+particular throne. Aye, and there would be, too, but for one of those
+moments of weak-backed policy, of a desire upon the part of the
+'old-woman' element which sometimes prevails in English politics to keep
+friendly relations with other powers at any cost. Brush up your history,
+Mr. Narkom, and give your memory a fillip. Eight-and-thirty years ago
+Queen Karma of Mauravania had an English consort and bore him two
+daughters, and one son. You will perhaps recall the mad rebellion, the
+idiotic rising which disgraced that reign. That was the time for England
+to have spoken. But the peace party had it by the throat; they, with
+their mawkish cry for peace--peace at any price!--drowned the voices of
+men and heroes, and the end was what it was! Queen Karma was
+deposed--she and her children fled, God knows how, God knows where--fled
+and left a dead husband and father, slain like a hero and an Englishman,
+fighting for his own, and with his face to the foe. Avenge his death?
+Nonsense, declared the old women. He had no right to defy the will of
+Heaven, no right to stir up strife with a friendly people and expect his
+countrymen to embroil themselves because of his lust for power. It would
+be a lasting disgrace to the nation if England allowed a lot of howling,
+bloodthirsty meddlers to persuade it to interfere.
+
+"The old women had their way. Queen Karma and her children vanished; her
+uncle Duke Sforza came to the throne as Alburtus III., and eight months
+ago his son, the present King Ulric, succeeded him. The father had been
+a bad king, the son a bad crown-prince. Mauravania has paid the price.
+Let her put up with it! I don't think in the light of these things, Mr.
+Narkom, there is any wonder that an Englishman finds interest in reading
+of the affairs of a country over which an Englishman's son might, and
+ought to, have ruled. As for me, I have no sympathy, my friend, with
+Mauravania or her justly punished people."
+
+"Still, my dear fellow, that should not count when the reward for taking
+up this case is so enormous--and I dare say it will not."
+
+"Reward? Case?" repeated Cleek. "What do you mean by that?"
+
+"That I am here to enlist your services in the cause of King Ulric of
+Mauravania," replied Narkom, impressively. "Something has happened,
+Cleek, which, if not cleared up before the coronation day--now only one
+month hence, as you must have read--will certainly result in his
+Majesty's public disgrace, and may result in his overthrow and death!
+His friend and chief adviser, Count Irma, has come all the way from
+Mauravania, and is at this moment downstairs in this house, to put the
+case in your hands and to implore you to help and to save his royal
+master!"
+
+"His royal master? The son of the man who drove an Englishman's wife and
+an Englishman's children into exile--poverty--misery--despair?" said
+Cleek, pulling himself up. "I won't take it, Mr. Narkom! If he offers me
+millions, I'll lift no hand to help or to save Mauravania's king!"
+
+The response to this came from an unexpected quarter.
+
+"But to save Mauravania's queen, monsieur? Will you do nothing for her?"
+said an excited and imploring voice. And as Cleek, startled by the
+interruption, switched round and glanced in the direction of the sound,
+the half-dosed door swung inward and a figure, muffled to the very eyes,
+moved over the threshold into the room. "Have pardon, monsieur--I could
+not but overhear," went on the newcomer, turning to Narkom. "I should
+scarcely be worthy of his Majesty's confidence and favour had I remained
+inactive. I simply had to come up unbidden. _Had_ to, monsieur"--turning
+to Cleek--"and so--" His words dropped off suddenly. A puzzled look
+first expanded and then contracted his eyes, and his lips tightened
+curiously under the screen of his white, military moustache. "Monsieur,"
+he said, presently putting into words the sense of baffling familiarity
+which perplexed him. "Monsieur, you then are the great, the astonishing
+Cleek? You, monsieur? Pardon, but surely I have had the pleasure of
+meeting monsieur before? No, not here, for I have never been in England
+until to-day; but in my own country--in Mauravania. Surely, monsieur, I
+have seen you there?"
+
+"On the contrary," said Cleek, speaking the simple truth. "I have never
+set foot in Mauravania in all my life, sir. And as you have overheard my
+words you may see that I do not intend to even now. The difficulties of
+Mauravania's king do not in the least appeal to me."
+
+"Ah, but Mauravania's queen, monsieur--Mauravania's queen."
+
+"The lady interests me no more than does her royal spouse."
+
+"But, monsieur, she must--she really must--if you are honest in what you
+say, and your sympathies are all with the deposed and exiled ones--the
+ex-queen Karma and her children. Surely, monsieur, you who seem to know
+so well the history of that sad time cannot be ignorant of what has
+happened since to her ex-Majesty and her children?"
+
+"I know only that Queen Karma died in France, in extreme poverty,
+befriended to the last by people of the very humblest birth and of not
+too much respectability. What became of her son I do not know; but her
+daughters, the two princesses, mere infants at the time, were sent, one
+to England, where she subsequently died, and the other to Persia, where,
+I believe, she remained up to her ninth year, and then went no one seems
+to know where."
+
+"Then, monsieur, let me tell you what became of her. The late King
+Alburtus discovered her whereabouts, and, to prevent any possible
+trouble in the future, imprisoned her in the Fort of Sulberga up to the
+year before his death. Eleven months ago she became the Crown Prince
+Ulric's wife. She is now his consort. And by saving her, monsieur, you
+who feel so warmly upon the subject of the rights of her family's
+succession, will be saving her, helping Mauravania's queen, and
+defeating those who are her enemies."
+
+Cleek sucked in his breath and regarded the man silently, steadily, for
+a long time. Then:
+
+"Is that true, Count?" he asked. "On your word of honour as a soldier
+and a gentleman, is that true?"
+
+"As true as Holy Writ, monsieur. On my word of honour. On my hopes of
+heaven!"
+
+"Very well, then," said Cleek quietly. "Tell me the case, Count. I'll
+take it."
+
+"Monsieur, my eternal gratitude. Also the reward is--"
+
+"We will talk about that afterward. Sit down, please, and tell me what
+you want me to do."
+
+"Oh, monsieur, almost the impossible," said the Count despairfully. "The
+outwitting of a woman who must in very truth be the devil's own
+daughter, so subtle, so appalling are the craft and cunning of her.
+That, for one thing. For another, the finding of a paper, which, if
+published--as the woman swears it shall be if her terms are not acceded
+to--will be the signal for his Majesty's overthrow. And, for the
+third"--emotion mastered him; his voice choked up and failed; he
+deported himself for a moment like one afraid to let even his own ears
+hear the thing spoken of aloud, then governed his cowardice and went
+on--"For the third thing, monsieur," he said, lowering his tone until it
+was almost a whisper, "the recovery--the restoration to its place of
+honour before the coronation day arrives--of that fateful gem,
+Mauravania's pride and glory--'the Rainbow Pearl!'"
+
+Cleek clamped his jaws together like a bloodhound snapping and over his
+hardening face there came a slow-creeping, unnatural pallor.
+
+"Has that been lost?" he said in a low, bleak voice. "Has he, this
+precious royal master of yours, this usurper--has he parted with that
+thing--the wondrous Rainbow Pearl?"
+
+"Monsieur knows of the gem, then?"
+
+"Know of it? Who does not? Its fame is world-wide. Wars have been fought
+for it, lives sacrificed for it. It is more valuable than England's
+Koh-i-noor, and more important to the country and the crown that possess
+it. The legend runs, does it not, that Mauravania falls when the Rainbow
+Pearl passes into alien hands. An absurd belief, to be sure, but who can
+argue with a superstitious people or hammer wisdom into the minds of
+babies? And _that_ has been lost--that gem so dear to Mauravania's
+people, so important to Mauravania's crown?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur--ah, the good God help my country!--yes!" said the Count
+brokenly. "It has passed from his Majesty's hands; it is no longer among
+the crown jewels of Mauravania--a Russian has it."
+
+"A Russian?" Cleek's cry was like to nothing so much as the snarl of a
+wild animal. "A Russian to hold it--a Russian?--the sworn enemy of
+Mauravania--the race most hated of her people! God help your wretched
+king, Count Irma, if this were known to his subjects."
+
+"Ah, monsieur, it is that we dread--it is that against which we
+struggle," replied the Count. "If that jewel were missing on the
+coronation day, if it were known that a Russian holds it--Dear God! the
+populace would rise--rise, monsieur, and tear his Majesty to pieces."
+
+"He deserves no better!" said Cleek, through his close-shut teeth. "To a
+Russian--a Russian! As heaven hears me, but for his queen--Well, let it
+pass. Tell me, how did this Russian get the jewel, and when?"
+
+"Oh, long ago, monsieur--long ago; many months before King Alburtus
+died."
+
+"Was it his hand that gave it up?"
+
+"No, monsieur. He died without knowing of its loss, without suspecting
+that the stone in the royal parure is but a sham and an imitation,"
+replied the count. "It all came of the youth, the recklessness, the
+folly of the crown prince. Monsieur may have heard of his--his many wild
+escapades--his thoughtless acts, his--his--"
+
+"Call them dissipations, Count, and give them their real name. His acts
+as crown prince were a scandal and a disgrace. To whom did he part with
+this gem--a woman?"
+
+"Monsieur, yes! It was during the time he was stopping in
+Paris--incognito to all but a trusted few. He--he met the woman there,
+became fascinated with her--bound to her--an abject slave to her."
+
+"A slave to a Russian? Mauravania's heir and--a Russian?"
+
+"Monsieur, he did not know that until afterward. In a mad freak--there
+was to be a masked ball--he yielded to the lady's persuasions to let her
+wear the famous Rainbow Pearl for that one night. He journeyed back to
+Mauravania and abstracted it from among the royal jewels--putting a mere
+imitation in its place so that it should not be missed until he could
+return the original. Monsieur, he was never able to return it at any
+time, for, once she had got it, the Russian made away with it in some
+secret manner and refused to give it up. Her price for returning it was
+his royal father's consent to ennoble her, to receive her at the
+Mauravanian Court, and so to alter the constitution that it would be
+possible for her to become the crown prince's wife."
+
+"The proposition of an idiot. The thing could not possibly be done."
+
+"No, monsieur, it could not. So the crown prince broke from her and bent
+all his energies upon the recovery of the pearl and the keeping of its
+loss a secret from the king and his people. Bravos, footpads,
+burglars--all manner of men--were employed before he left Paris. The
+woman's house was broken into, the woman herself waylaid and searched,
+but nothing came of it--no clue to the lost jewel could be found."
+
+"Why then did he not appeal to the police?"
+
+"Monsieur, he--he dared not. In one of his moments of madness
+he--she--that is--Oh, monsieur, remember his youth! It appears that the
+woman had got him to put into writing something which, if made public,
+would cause the people of Mauravania to rise as one man and to do with
+him as wolves do with things that are thrown to them in their fury."
+
+"The dog! Some treaty with a Russian, of course!" said Cleek
+indignantly. "Oh, fickle Mauravania, how well you are punished for your
+treasonable choice! Well, go on, Count. What next?"
+
+"Of a sudden, monsieur, the woman disappeared. Nothing was heard of her,
+no clue to her whereabouts discovered for two whole years. She was as
+one dead and gone until last week."
+
+"Oho! She returned, then?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur. Without hint or warning she turned up in Mauravania,
+accompanied by a disreputable one-eyed man who has the manner and
+appearance of one bred in the gutters of Paris, albeit he is well
+clothed, well-looked after, and she treats him and his wretched
+collection of parakeets with the utmost consideration."
+
+"Parakeets?" put in Narkom excitedly. "My dear Cleek, couldn't a
+parakeet be made to swallow a pearl?"
+
+"Perhaps; but not this one, Mr. Narkom," he made reply. "It is quite the
+size of a pigeon's egg, I believe; is it not, Count?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur, quite. To see it is to remember it always. It has the
+changing lights of the rainbow, and--"
+
+"Never mind that; go on with the story, please. This woman and this
+one-eyed man appeared last week in Mauravania, you say?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur; and with them a bodyguard of at least ten servants. Her
+demand now is that his Majesty make her his morganatic wife; that he
+establish her at the palace under the same roof with his queen; and that
+she be allowed to ride with them in the state carriage on the coronation
+day. Failing that, she swears that she will not only publish the
+contents of that dreadful letter, but send the original to the chief of
+the Mauravanian police and appear in public with the Rainbow Pearl upon
+her person."
+
+"The Jezebel! What steps have you taken, Count, to prevent this?"
+
+"All that I can imagine, monsieur. To prevent her from getting into
+close touch with the public, I have thrown open my own house to her, and
+received her and her retinue under my own roof rather than allow them to
+be quartered at an hotel. Also, this has given me the opportunity to
+have her effects and those of her followers secretly searched; but no
+clue to the letter, no clue to the pearl has anywhere been discovered."
+
+"Still she must have both with her, otherwise she could not carry out
+her threat. No doubt she suspects what motive you had in taking her into
+your own house, Count--a woman like that is no fool. But tell me, does
+she show no anxiety, no fear of a search?"
+
+"None, monsieur. She knows that my people search her effects; indeed,
+she has told me so. But it alarms her not a whit. As she told me two
+days ago, I shall find nothing; but if I did it would be useless, for,
+on the moment anything of hers was touched, her servants would see that
+the finder never carried it from the house."
+
+"Oho!" said Cleek, with a strong rising inflection. "A little searching
+party of her own, eh? The lady is clever, at all events. The moment
+either pearl or letter should be removed from its hiding-place her
+servants would allow nobody to leave the house without being searched to
+the very skin?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur. So if by any chance you were to discover either--"
+
+"My friend, set your mind at rest," interposed Cleek. "If I find either,
+or both, they will leave the house with me, I promise you. Mr. Narkom--"
+he turned to the superintendent--"keep an eye on Dollops for me, will
+you? There are reasons why I can't take him--can't take anybody--with me
+in the working out of this case. I may be a couple of days or I may be a
+week--I can't say as yet; but I start with Count Irma for Mauravania in
+the morning. And, Mr. Narkom!"
+
+"Yes, old chap?"
+
+"Do me a favour, please. Be at Charing Cross station when the first
+boat-train leaves to-morrow morning, will you, and bring me a small pot
+of extract of beef--a very small pot, the smallest they make--not bigger
+than a shilling nor thicker than one if they make them that size. What's
+that? Hide the pearl in it? What nonsense! I don't want one half big
+enough for that. Besides, they'd be sure to find it when they searched
+me if I tried any such fool's trick as that. Dollops isn't the only
+creature in the world that gets hungry, my friend, and beef extract is
+very sustaining, very, I assure you, sir."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+"A beautiful city, Count--an exceedingly beautiful city," said Cleek, as
+the carriage which had been sent to meet them at the station rolled into
+the broad Avenue des Arcs, which is at once the widest and most ornate
+thoroughfare the capital city of Mauravania boasts. "Ah, what a
+heritage! No wonder King Ulric is so anxious to retain his sovereignty;
+no wonder this--er--Madame Tcharnovetski, I think you said the name
+is--"
+
+"Yes, monsieur. It is oddly spelled, but it is pronounced a little
+broader than you give it--quite as though it were written
+Shar-no-vet-skee, in fact, with the accent on the third syllable."
+
+"Ah, yes. Thanks very much. No wonder she is anxious to become a power
+here. Mauravania is a fairyland in very truth; and this beautiful avenue
+with its arches, its splendid trees, its sculpture, its--Ah! _cocher_,
+pull up at once. Stop, if you please, stop!"
+
+"Oui, monsieur," replied the driver, reining in his horses and glancing
+round. "_Dix mille pardons, M'sieur_, there is something amiss?"
+
+"Yes; very much amiss--from the dog's point of view," replied Cleek,
+indicating by a wave of the hand a mongrel puppy which crouched, forlorn
+and hungry, in the shadow of an imposing building. "He should be a
+Socialist among dogs, that little fellow, Count. The mere accident of
+birth has made him what he is, and that poodled monstrosity the lady
+yonder is leading the pet and pride of a thoughtless mistress. I want
+that little canine outcast, Count, and with your permission I will
+appropriate him, and give him his first carriage ride." With that, he
+stepped down from the vehicle, whistled the cur to him, and taking it up
+in his arms, returned with it to his seat.
+
+"Monsieur, you are to me the most astonishing of men," said the Count,
+noticing how he patted the puppy and settled it in his lap as the
+carriage resumed its even rolling down the broad, beautiful avenue. "One
+moment upholding the rights of birth, the next rebelling against the
+injustice of it. Are your sympathies with the unfortunate so keen,
+monsieur, that even this stray cur may claim them?"
+
+"Perhaps," replied Cleek enigmatically. "You must wait and see, Count.
+Just now I pity him for his forlornity; to-morrow--next day--a week
+hence--I may hold it a better course to put an end to his hopeless lot
+by chloroforming him into a painless and peaceful death."
+
+"Monsieur, I cannot follow you--you speak in riddles."
+
+"I deal in riddles, Count; you must wait for the solution of them, I'm
+afraid."
+
+"I wish I could grasp the solution of one which puzzles me a great deal,
+monsieur. What is it that has happened to your countenance? You have
+done nothing to put on a disguise; yet, since we left the train and
+entered the landau, some subtle change has occurred. What is it? How has
+it come about? The night before last, when I saw you for the first time,
+your face was one that impressed me with a sense of familiarity--now,
+monsieur, you are like a different man."
+
+"I am a different man, Count. Like puppy, here, I am a waif and a stray;
+yet, at the same time, I have my purpose and am part of a carefully-laid
+scheme."
+
+The Count made no reply. He could not comprehend the man at all, and at
+times--but for the world-wide reputation of him--he would have believed
+him insane. Not a question as to the great and important case he was on,
+but merely incomprehensible remarks, trifling fancies, apparently
+aimless whims! Two nights ago a pot of beef extract; to-day a mongrel
+puppy; and all the time the hopes of a kingdom, the future of a monarch
+resting in his hands!
+
+For twenty minutes longer the landau rolled on; then it came to a halt
+under the broad _porte cochère_ of the Villa Irma, and two minutes after
+that Cleek and the Count stood in the presence of Madame Tcharnovetski,
+her purblind associate, and her retinue of servant-guards.
+
+A handsome woman, this madame, a woman of about two-and-thirty, with the
+tar-black eyes and the twilight coloured tresses of Northern Russia;
+bold as brass, flippant as a French cocotte, steel-nerved and
+calm-blooded as a professional gambler. It had been her whim that all
+the women of the Count's family should be banished from the house during
+her stay; that the great salon of the villa--a wondrous apartment, hung
+in blue and silver, and lit by a huge crystal chandelier--should be put
+at her disposal night and day; that the electric lights should be
+replaced with dozens of wax candles (after the manner of the ballrooms
+of her native Russia), and that her one-eyed companion, with his wicker
+cage of screeching parakeets, should come and go when and where and how
+he listed, and that an electric alarm bell be connected with her
+sleeping apartment and his.
+
+"Your hirelings will tamper with his birds and his effects in the
+night--I know that, Monsieur le Comte," she had said when she demanded
+this. "He is a nervous fellow, this poor Clopin; I wish him to be able
+to ring for help if you and your men go too far."
+
+Clopin was sitting by the window chattering to his birds when Cleek
+entered, and a glance at him was sufficient to decide two points: first,
+he was not disguised, nor was his partial blindness in any way a sham,
+for an idiot could have seen that the droop of the left eyelid over the
+staring, palpably artificial eye which glazed over the empty socket
+beneath was due to perfectly natural causes; and, second, that the man
+was indeed what the Count had said he resembled, namely, a gutter-bred
+outcast.
+
+"French!" was Cleek's silent comment upon him. "One of those charlatans
+who infest the streets of Paris with their so-called 'fortune-telling
+birds,' who, for ten centimes, pick out an envelope with their beaks as
+a means of telling you what the future is supposed to hold. What has
+made a woman like this pick up a fellow of his stamp? Hum-m-m! Puppy, I
+think you are a good move," stroking the ears of the mongrel dog; "a
+very much better move than a cage of useless parakeets that are meant to
+throw suspicion in the wrong direction and have a seed-cup so large and
+so obviously overfilled that it is safe to say there is nothing hidden
+in it and never has been! And madame has a fancy for waxlights," his
+gaze travelling upward to the glittering chandelier. "Hum-m-m! How well
+they know, these women whose beauty is going off, that waxlights show
+less of Time's ravages than gas or electricity. Candles in the
+chandelier; candles in the sconces, candles on the mantelpieces. This
+room should be very charming when it is lighted at night."
+
+It was--as he learned later. Just now things not quite so charming
+filled the bill, for madame was jeering at him in a manner not to be
+understood.
+
+"A police spy--that is what you are, monsieur!" she said, coming up to
+him and impudently snapping her fingers under his nose. "Such a fool,
+this white-headed old dotard of a Count, to think that he can take me in
+with a silly yarn about going to visit a nephew and bringing him back
+here to stay. Monsieur, you are a police spy. Well, good luck to you.
+Get what the Mauravanian king wants, if--you--can!"
+
+"Madame," replied Cleek, with a deeply deferential bow and with an
+accent that seemed born of Paris, "madame, that is what I mean to do, I
+assure you."
+
+"Ah, do you?" she answered, with a scream of laughter. "You hear that,
+Clopin? You hear that, my good servitors? This silly French noodle is
+going to get the things in spite of us. Oho, but you have a fine opinion
+of yourself, monsieur. You need work fast, too, pretty boaster, I can
+tell you. For the royal jewellers will require the Rainbow Pearl very
+soon to fix it in its place in the crown for the coronation ceremony,
+and if that thing his Majesty holds is offered to them, how long, think
+you, will it be before all Mauravania knows that it is an imitation?
+Look you," waxing suddenly vicious, "I'll make it shorter still, the
+time you have to strive. Monsieur le Comte, take this message to his
+Majesty from me: If in three days he does not promise to accede to my
+demands and give me a public proof of it over his royal seal, I leave
+Mauravania--the pearl and letter leave with me, and they shall not come
+back until I return with them for the coronation."
+
+"For the love of God, madame," said the Count, "don't make it harder
+still. Oh, wait, wait, I beseech you!"
+
+"Not an hour longer than I have now said!" she flung back at him. "I
+have waited until I am tired of it, and my patience is worn out. Three
+days, Count; three days, monsieur with the puppy dog; three days, and
+not an instant longer, do you hear?"
+
+"Quite enough, madame," replied Cleek, with a courtly bow, "I promise to
+have them in two!"
+
+She threw back her head and fairly shook with laughter.
+
+"Of a truth, monsieur, you are a candid boaster!" she cried. "Look you,
+my good fellows, and you too, my poor dumb Clopin, pretty monsieur here
+will have the letter and the pearl in two days' time. Look to it that he
+never leaves this house at any minute from this time forth that you do
+not search him from top to toe. If he resists--ah, well, a pistol may go
+off accidentally, and things that Mauravania's king would give his life
+to keep hidden will come to light if any charge of murder is preferred.
+Monsieur the police spy, I wish you joy of your task."
+
+"Madame, I shall take joy in it," Cleek replied. "But why should we talk
+of unpleasant things when the future looks so bright? Come, may we not
+give ourselves a pleasant evening? Look, there is a piano, and--Count,
+hold my puppy for me, and please see that no one feeds him at any time.
+I am starving him so that he may devour some of Clopin's parakeets,
+because I hate the sight of the little beasts. Thank you. Madame, do you
+like music? Listen, then: I'll sing you Mauravania's national anthem:
+'God guard the throne; God shield the right!'" and, dropping down upon
+the seat before the open instrument, he did so.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night was ever memorable at the Villa Irma, for the detective
+seemed somehow to have given place to the courtier, and so merry was his
+mood, so infectious his good nature, that even madame came under the
+spell of it. She sang with him, she even danced a Russian polka with
+him; she sat with him at dinner, and flirted with him in the salon
+afterward; and when the time came for her to retire, it was he who took
+her bedroom candle from the shelf and put it into her hand.
+
+"Of a truth, you are a charming fellow, monsieur," she said, when he
+bent and kissed her hand. "What a pity you should be a police spy and
+upon so hopeless a case."
+
+"Hopeless cases are my delight, madame. Believe me, I shall not fail."
+
+"Only three days, remember, _cher ami_--only three days!"
+
+"Madame is too kind. I have said it: two will do. On the morning of the
+third madame's passport will be ready and the Rainbow Pearl be in the
+royal jeweller's hands. A thousand pleasant dreams--_bon soir_!" And
+bowed her out and kissed his hand to her as she went up the stairs to
+bed.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Thrice during the next twenty-four hours Cleek, who seemed to have
+become so attached to the mongrel dog that he kept it under his arm
+continually, had reason to leave the house, and thrice was he seized by
+madame's henchmen, bundled unceremoniously into a convenient room, and
+searched to the very skin before he was suffered to pass beyond the
+threshold. And if so much as a pin had been hidden upon his person, it
+must have been discovered.
+
+"You see, monsieur, how hopeless it is!" said the Count despairfully.
+"One dare not rebel: one dare not lift a finger, or the woman speaks and
+his Majesty's ruin falls. Oh, the madness of that boast of yours! Only
+another twenty-four hours--only another day--and then God help his
+Majesty!"
+
+"God has helped him a great deal better than he deserves, Count,"
+replied Cleek. "By to-morrow night at ten o'clock be in the square of
+the Aquisola, please. Bring with you the passports of madame and her
+companions, also a detachment of the Royal Guard, and his Majesty's
+cheque for the reward I am to receive."
+
+"Monsieur! You really hope to get the things? You really do?"
+
+"Oh, I do more than 'hope,' Count--I have succeeded. I knew last night
+where both pearl and letter were. To-morrow night--ah, well, let
+to-morrow tell its own tale. Only be in the square at the hour I
+mention, and when I lift a lighted candle and pass it across the salon
+window, send the guard here with the passports. Let them remain
+outside--within sight, but not within range of hearing what is said and
+done. You are alone to enter--remember that."
+
+"To receive the jewel and the letter?" eagerly. "Or, at least, to have
+you point out the hiding-place of them?"
+
+"No; we should be shot down like dogs if I undertook a mad thing like
+that."
+
+"Then, monsieur, how are we to seize them? How get them into our
+possession, his Majesty and I?"
+
+"From my hand, Count; this hand which held them both before I went to
+bed last night."
+
+"Monsieur!" The Count fell back from him as if from some supernatural
+presence. "You found them? You held them? You took possession of them
+last night? How did you get them out of the house?"
+
+"I have not done so yet."
+
+"But can you? Oh, monsieur, wizard though you are, can you get them past
+her guards? Can you, monsieur--can you?"
+
+"Watch for the light at the window, Count. It will not be waved unless
+it is safe for you to come and the pearl is already out of the house."
+
+"And the letter, monsieur--the damning letter?"
+
+Cleek smiled one of his strange, inscrutable smiles.
+
+"Ask me that to-morrow, Count," he said. "You shall hear something, you
+and madame, that will surprise you both," then twisted round on his heel
+and walked hurriedly away.
+
+And all that day and all that night he danced attendance upon madame,
+and sang to her, and handed her bedroom candle to her as he had done the
+night before, and gave back jest for jest and returned her merry
+badinage in kind.
+
+Nor did he change in that when the fateful to-morrow came. From morning
+to night he was at her side, at her beck and call, doing nothing that
+was different from the doings of yesterday, save that at evening he
+locked the mongrel dog up in his room instead of carrying him about. And
+the dog, feeling its loneliness, or, possibly, famishing--for he had
+given it not a morsel of food since he found it--howled and howled until
+the din became unbearable.
+
+"Monsieur, I wish you would silence that beast or else feed it," said
+madame pettishly. "The howling of the wretched thing gets on my nerves.
+Give it some food for pity's sake."
+
+"Not I," said Cleek. "Do you remember what I said, madame? I am getting
+it hungry enough to eat one--or perhaps all--of Clopin's wretched little
+parakeets."
+
+"You think they have to do with the hiding of the paper or the pearl,
+cher ami? Eh?"
+
+"I am sure of it. He would not carry the beastly little things about for
+nothing."
+
+"Ah, you are clever--you are very, very clever, monsieur," she made
+answer, with a laugh. "But he must begin his bird-eating quickly, that
+nuisance-dog, or it will be too late. See, it is already half-past nine;
+I retire to my bed in another hour and a half, as always, and then your
+last hope he is gone--z-zic! like that; for it will be the end of the
+second day, monsieur, and your promise not yet kept. Pestilence,
+monsieur," with a little outburst of temper, "do stop the little beast
+his howl. It is unbearable! I would you to sing to me like last night,
+but the noise of the dog is maddening."
+
+"Oh, if it annoys you like that, madame," said Cleek, "I'll take him
+round to the stable and tie him up there, so we may have the song
+undisturbed. Your men will not want to search me of course, when I am
+merely popping out and popping in again like that, I am sure?"
+
+Nevertheless they did, for although they had heard and did not stir when
+he left the room and ran up for the dog, when he came down with it under
+his arm and made to leave the house, he was pounced upon, dragged into
+an adjoining apartment by half a dozen burly fellows, stripped to the
+buff, and searched, as the workers in a diamond mine are searched,
+before they suffered him to leave the house. There was neither a sign of
+a pearl nor a scrap of a letter to be found upon him--they made sure of
+that before they let him go.
+
+"An enterprising lot, those lackeys of yours, madame," he said, when he
+returned from tying the dog up in the stable and rejoined her in the
+salon. "It will be an added pleasure to get the better of them, I can
+assure you."
+
+"Oui! if you can!" she answered, with a mocking laugh. "Clopin, cher
+ami, your poor little parakeets are safe for the night--unless monsieur
+grows desperate and eats them for himself."
+
+"Even that, if it were necessary to get the pearl, madame," said Cleek,
+with the utmost sang-froid. "Faugh!" looking at his watch, "a good
+twenty minutes wasted by the zealousness of those idiotic searchers of
+yours. Ten minutes to ten! Just time for one brief song. Let us make hay
+while the sun lasts, madame, for it goes down suddenly in Mauravania;
+and for some of us--it never comes up again!" Then, throwing himself
+upon the piano-seat, he ran his fingers across the keys and broke into
+the stately measures of the national anthem. And, of a sudden, while the
+song was yet in progress, the clock in the corridor jingled its musical
+chimes and struck the first note of the hour.
+
+He jumped to his feet and lifted both hands above his head.
+
+"Mauravania!" he cried. "Oh, Mauravania! For you! For you!" Then jumped
+to the mantelpiece, and catching up a lighted candle, flashed it twice
+across the window's width, and broke again into the national hymn.
+
+"Monsieur," cried out madame, "monsieur, what is the meaning of that?
+Have you lost your wits? You give a signal! For what? To whom?"
+
+"To the guards of Mauravania's king, madame, in honour of his safe
+escape from you!" he made reply; then twitched back the window curtains
+until the whole expanse of glass was bared. "Look! do you see them--do
+you, madame? His Majesty of Mauravania sends Madame Tcharnovetski a
+command to leave his kingdom, since he no longer has cause to fear a
+wasp whose sting has been plucked out."
+
+Her swift glance flashed to the fireplace, then to the corner where
+Clopin still sat with his jabbering parakeets, then flashed back to
+Cleek, and--she laughed in his face.
+
+"I think not, monsieur," she said, with a swaggering air. "Truly, I
+think not, my excellent friend."
+
+"What a pity you only think so, madame! As for me--Ah, welcome, Count,
+welcome a thousand times. The paper, my friend; you have brought it?
+Good! Give it to me. Madame, your passport--yours and your associates'.
+You leave Mauravania by the midnight train, and you have but little time
+to pack your effects. Your passport, madame, and--your bedroom candle.
+Oh, yes, the paper is still round it--see!" slipping off a sheet of note
+paper that was wrapped round the full length of the candle from top to
+bottom, "but if you will examine it, madame, you will find it is blank.
+I burned the real letter the night before last when I put this in its
+place."
+
+"You what?" she snapped; then caught the tube-shaped covering he had
+stripped from the candle, uncurled it, and--screamed.
+
+"Blank, madame, quite blank, you see," said Cleek serenely. "For one so
+clever in other things, you should have been more careful. A little
+pinch of powder in the punch at dinner-time--just that--and on the first
+night, too! It was so easy afterward to get into your room, remove the
+real paper, and wrap the candle in a blank piece while you slept."
+
+"You--you dog!" she snapped out viciously. "You drugged me?"
+
+"Yes, madame; you and the one-eyed man as well! Oh, don't excite
+yourself--don't pull at the poor wretch like that. The glass eye will
+come out quite easily, but--I assure you there is only a small lump of
+beeswax in the socket now. I removed the Rainbow Pearl from poor
+Monsieur Clopin's blind eye ten minutes after I burnt the letter,
+madame, and--it passed out of this house to-night! A clever idea to pick
+up a one-eyed pauper, madame, and hide the pearl in the empty socket of
+the lost eye, but--it was too bad, you had to supply a glass eye to keep
+it in, after the lid and the socket had withered and shrunk from so many
+years of emptiness. It worried the poor man, madame; he was always
+feeling it, always afraid that the lump behind would force it out; and,
+what is an added misfortune for your plans, the glass shell did not
+allow you to see the change when the pearl vanished and the bit of
+beeswax took its place. Madame Tcharnovetski, your passport. I know
+enough of the King of Mauravania to be sure that your life will not be
+safe if you are not past the frontier before daybreak!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Monsieur le comte--no! I thank you, but I cannot wait to be presented
+to his Majesty, for I, too, leave Mauravania to-night, and, like Madame
+yonder, return to other and more promising fields," said Cleek, an hour
+later, as he stood on the terrace of the Villa Irma and watched the slow
+progress down the moonlit avenue of the carriage which was bearing
+Madame Tcharnovetski and her effects to the railway station. "Give me
+the cheque, please; I have earned that, and--there is good use for it. I
+thank you, Count. Now do an act of charity, my friend: give the little
+dog in the stable a good meal, and then have a surgeon chloroform him
+into a peaceful and merciful death. They will find the Rainbow Pearl in
+his intestines when they come to dissect the body. I starved him,
+Count--starved him purposely, poor little wretch, so that he could be
+hungry enough to snap at anything in the way of food and bolt it
+instantly. To-night, when I went up to take him out to the stable, a
+thick smearing of beef extract over the surface of the pearl was
+sufficient; he swallowed it in a gulp! For a double reason, Count, there
+should be a cur quartered on the royal arms of this country after
+to-night."
+
+His voice dropped off into silence. The carriage containing madame had
+swung out through the gateway, and its shadow no longer blotted the
+broad, unbroken space of moonlit avenue. He turned and looked far out,
+over the square of the Aquisola, along the light-lined esplanade, to the
+palace gates and the fluttering flag that streamed against the sky above
+and beyond them.
+
+"Oh, Mauravania!" he said. "An Englishman's heritage! Dear country, how
+beautiful! My love to your Queen--my prayers for you."
+
+"Monsieur!" exclaimed the Count, "monsieur, what juggle is this? Your
+face is again the face of that other night--the face that stirs memory
+yet does not rivet it. Monsieur, speak, I beg of you. What are you? Who
+are you?"
+
+"Cleek," he made answer. "Just Cleek! It will do. Oh, Mauravania, dear
+land of desolated hopes, dear grave of murdered joys!"
+
+"Monsieur!"
+
+"Hush! Let me alone. There are things too sacred; and this--" His hands
+reached outward as if in benediction; his face, upturned, was as a face
+transfigured, and something that shone as silver gleamed in the corner
+of his eye. "Mauravania!" he said. "Oh, Mauravania! My country--my
+people--good-bye!"
+
+"Monsieur! Dear Heaven--_Majesty!_"
+
+Then came a rustling sound, and when Cleek had mastered himself and
+looked down, a figure with head uncovered knelt on one knee at his feet.
+
+"Get up, Count," he said, with a little shaky laugh. "I appreciate the
+honour, but--your fancy is playing you a trick. I tell you I never set
+foot in Mauravania before, my friend."
+
+"I know--I know. How should you. Majesty, when it was as a child at
+Queen Karma's breast Mauravania last saw--Don't leave like this!
+Majesty! Majesty! 'God guard the right'--the pearl and the kingdom are
+here."
+
+"Wrong, my good friend. The kingdom is there--where you found me--in
+England; and so, too, is the pearl. For there is no kingdom like the
+kingdom of love, no pearl like a good woman. Good night, Count, and many
+thanks for your hospitality. You are a little upset to-night, but no
+doubt you will be all right again in the morning. I will walk to the
+station and--alone, if it is all the same to you."
+
+"Majesty!"
+
+"Dreams, Count, dreams. The riddle is solved, my friend. Good luck to
+your country and--good-bye!"
+
+And, setting his back to the palace and the lights and the fluttering
+flag, and his face to the land that held her, turned and went his
+way--to the West--to England--and to those things which are higher than
+crowns and better than sceptres and more precious than thrones and
+ermine.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces
+by Thomas W. Hanshew
+
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+Project Gutenberg's Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces, by Thomas W. Hanshew
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces
+
+Author: Thomas W. Hanshew
+
+Release Date: December 12, 2004 [EBook #14332]
+[Last updated: November 17, 2012]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLEEK: THE MAN OF THE FORTY FACES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Beginners Projects, Mary Meehan, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                  CLEEK: The Man of the Forty Faces
+
+                        By THOMAS W. HANSHEW
+
+AUTHOR OF "Cleek of Scotland Yard," "The Riddle of the Night," Etc.
+
+                                1912
+
+
+
+CLEEK: THE MAN OF THE FORTY FACES
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+THE AFFAIR OF THE MAN WHO CALLED HIMSELF HAMILTON CLEEK
+
+
+The thing wouldn't have happened if any other constable than Collins had
+been put on point duty at Blackfriars Bridge that morning. For Collins
+was young, good-looking, and--knew it. Nature had gifted him with a
+susceptible heart and a fond eye for the beauties of femininity. So when
+he looked round and saw the woman threading her way through the maze of
+vehicles at "Dead Man's Corner," with her skirt held up just enough to
+show two twinkling little feet in French shoes, and over them a
+graceful, willowy figure, and over that an enchanting, if rather too
+highly tinted face, with almond eyes and a fluff of shining hair under
+the screen of a big Parisian hat--that did for him on the spot.
+
+He saw at a glance that she was French--exceedingly French--and he
+preferred English beauty, as a rule. But, French or English, beauty is
+beauty, and here undeniably was a perfect type, so he unhesitatingly
+sprang to her assistance and piloted her safely to the kerb, revelling
+in her voluble thanks, and tingling as she clung timidly but rather
+firmly to him.
+
+"Sair, I have to give you much gratitude," she said in a pretty, wistful
+sort of way, as they stepped on to the pavement. Then she dropped her
+hand from his sleeve, looked up at him, and shyly drooped her head, as
+if overcome with confusion and surprise at the youth and good looks of
+him. "Ah, it is nowhere in the world but Londres one finds these
+delicate attentions, these splendid sergeants de ville," she added, with
+a sort of sigh. "You are wonnerful--you are mos' wonnerful, you Anglais
+poliss. Sair, I am a stranger; I know not ze ways of this city of
+amazement, and if monsieur would so kindly direct me where to find the
+Abbey of the Ves'minster--"
+
+Before P.C. Collins could tell her that if that were her destination,
+she was a good deal out of her latitude; indeed, even before she
+concluded what she was saying, over the rumble of the traffic there rose
+a thin, shrill piping sound, which to ears trained to the call of it
+possessed a startling significance.
+
+It was the shrilling of a police whistle, far off down the Embankment.
+
+"Hullo! That's a call to the man on point!" exclaimed Collins, all alert
+at once. "Excuse me, mum. See you presently. Something's up. One of my
+mates is a-signalling me."
+
+"Mates, monsieur? Mates? Signalling? I shall not understand the vords.
+But yes, vat shall that mean--eh?"
+
+"Good Lord, don't bother me now! I--I mean, wait a bit. That's the call
+to 'head off' someone, and--By George! There he is now, coming head on,
+the hound, and running like the wind!"
+
+For of a sudden, through a break in the traffic, a scudding figure had
+sprung into sight--the figure of a man in a grey frock-coat and a
+shining "topper," a well-groomed, well-set-up man, with a small,
+turned-up moustache and hair of that peculiar purplish-red one sees only
+on the shell of a roasted chestnut. As he swung into sight, the distant
+whistle shrilled again; far off in the distance voices sent up cries of
+"Head him off!" "Stop that man!" _et cetera_; then those on the pavement
+near to the fugitive took up the cry, joined in pursuit, and in a
+twinkling, what with cabmen, tram-men, draymen, and pedestrians
+shouting, there was hubbub enough for Hades.
+
+"A swell pickpocket, I'll lay my life," commented Collins, as he squared
+himself for an encounter and made ready to leap on the man when he came
+within gripping distance. "Here! get out of the way, madmazelly.
+Business before pleasure. And, besides, you're like to get bowled over
+in the rush. Here, chauffeur!"--this to the driver of a big, black
+motor-car which swept round the angle of the bridge at that moment, and
+made as though to scud down the Embankment into the thick of the
+chase--"pull that thing up sharp! Stop where you are! Dead still. At
+once, at once, do you hear? We don't want you getting in the way. Now,
+then"--nodding his head in the direction of the running man--"come on
+you bounder; I'm ready for you!"
+
+And, as if he really heard that invitation, and really was eager to
+accept it, the red-headed man did "come on" with a vengeance. And all
+the time, "madmazelly," unheeding Collins's advice, stood calmly and
+silently waiting.
+
+Onward came the runner, with the whole roaring pack in his wake, dodging
+in and out among the vehicles, "flooring" people who got in his way,
+scudding, dodging, leaping, like a fox hard pressed by the
+hounds--until, all of a moment he spied a break in the traffic, leapt
+through it, and--then there was mischief. For Collins sprang at him like
+a cat, gripped two big, strong-as-iron hands on his shoulders, and had
+him tight and fast.
+
+"Got you, you ass!" snapped he, with a short, crisp, self-satisfied
+laugh. "None of your blessed squirming now. Keep still. You'll get out
+of your coffin, you bounder, as soon as out of my grip. Got you--got
+you! Do you understand?"
+
+The response to this fairly took the wind out of him.
+
+"Of course I do," said the captive, gaily; "it's part of the programme
+that you should get me. Only, for Heaven's sake, don't spoil the film by
+remaining inactive, you goat! Struggle with me--handle me roughly--throw
+me about. Make it look real; make it look as though I actually did get
+away from you, not as though you let me. You chaps behind there, don't
+get in the way of the camera--it's in one of those cabs. Now, then,
+Bobby, don't be wooden! Struggle--struggle, you goat, and save the
+film!"
+
+"Save the what?" gasped Collins. "Here! Good Lord! Do you mean to
+say--?"
+
+"Struggle--struggle--struggle!" cut in the man impatiently. "Can't you
+grasp the situation? It's a put-up thing: the taking of a kinematograph
+film--a living picture--for the Alhambra to-night! Heavens above,
+Marguerite, didn't you tell him?"
+
+"Non, non! There was not ze time. You come so quick, I could not. And
+he--ah, le bon Dieu!--he gif me no chance. Officair, I beg, I entreat of
+you, make it real! Struggle, fight, keep on ze constant move.
+Zere!"--something tinkled on the pavement with the unmistakable sound of
+gold--"zere, monsieur, zere is the half-sovereign to pay you for ze
+trouble, only, for ze lof of goodness, do not pick it up while the
+instrument--ze camera--he is going. It is ze kinematograph, and you
+would spoil everything!"
+
+The chop-fallen cry that Collins gave was lost in a roar of laughter
+from the pursuing crowd.
+
+"Struggle--struggle! Don't you hear, you idiot?" broke in the red-headed
+man irritably. "You are being devilishly well paid for it, so for
+goodness' sake make it look real. That's it! Bully boy! Now, once more
+to the right, then loosen your grip so that I can push you away and make
+a feint of punching you off. All ready there, Marguerite? Keep a clear
+space about her, gentlemen. Ready with the motor, chauffeur? All right.
+Now, then, Bobby, fall back, and mind your eye when I hit out, old chap.
+One, two, three--here goes!"
+
+With that he pushed the chop-fallen Collins from him, made a feint of
+punching his head as he reeled back, then sprang toward the spot where
+the Frenchwoman stood, and gave a finish to the adventure that was
+highly dramatic and decidedly theatrical. For "mademoiselle," seeing him
+approach her, struck a pose, threw out her arms, gathered him into
+them--to the exceeding enjoyment of the laughing throng--then both
+looked back and behaved as people do on the stage when "pursued,"
+gesticulated extravagantly, and, rushing to the waiting motor, jumped
+into it.
+
+"Many thanks, Bobby; many thanks, everybody!" sang out the red-headed
+man. "Let her go, chauffeur. The camera men will pick us up again at
+Whitehall, in a few minutes' time."
+
+"Right you are, sir," responded the chauffeur gaily. Then "toot-toot"
+went the motor-horn as the gentleman in grey closed the door upon
+himself and his companion, and the vehicle, darting forward, sped down
+the Embankment in the exact direction whence the man himself had
+originally come, and, passing directly through that belated portion of
+the hurrying crowd to whom the end of the adventure was not yet known,
+flew on and--vanished.
+
+And Collins, stooping to pick up the half-sovereign that had been thrown
+him, felt that after all it was a poor price to receive for all the
+jeers and gibes of the assembled onlookers.
+
+"Smart capture, Bobby, wasn't it?" sang out a deriding voice that set
+the crowd jeering anew. "You'll git promoted, you will! See it in all
+the evenin' papers--oh, yus! ''Orrible hand-to-hand struggle with a
+desperado. Brave constable has 'arf a quid's worth out of an infuriated
+ruffin!' My hat! won't your missis be proud when you take her to see
+that bloomin' film?"
+
+"Move on, now, move on!" said Collins, recovering his dignity, and
+asserting it with a vim. "Look here, cabby, I don't take it kind of you
+to laugh like that; they had you just as bad as they had me. Blow that
+Frenchy! She might have tipped me off before I made such an ass of
+myself. I don't say that I'd have done it so natural if I had known,
+but--Hullo! What's that? Blowed if it ain't that blessed whistle again,
+and another crowd a-pelting this way; and--no!--yes, by Jupiter!--a
+couple of Scotland Yard chaps with 'em. My hat! what do you suppose that
+means?"
+
+He knew in the next moment. Panting and puffing, a crowd at their heels,
+and people from all sides stringing out from the pavement and trooping
+after them, the two "plain-clothes" men came racing through the grinning
+gathering and bore down on P.C. Collins.
+
+"Hullo, Smathers, you in this, too?" began he, his feelings softened by
+the knowledge that other arms of the law would figure on that film with
+him at the Alhambra to-night. "Now, what are you after, you goat? That
+French lady, or the red-headed party in the grey suit?"
+
+"Yes, yes, of course I am. You heard me signal you to head him off,
+didn't you?" replied Smathers, looking round and growing suddenly
+excited when he realized that Collins was empty-handed, and that the
+red-headed man was not there. "Heavens! you never let him get away, did
+you? You grabbed him, didn't you--eh?"
+
+"Of course I grabbed him. Come out of it. What are you giving me, you
+josser?" said Collins with a wink and a grin. "Ain't you found out even
+yet, you silly? Why, it was only a faked-up thing--the taking of a
+kinematograph picture for the Alhambra. You and Petrie ought to have
+been here sooner and got your wages, you goats. I got half a quid for my
+share when I let him go."
+
+Smathers and Petrie lifted up their voices in one despairing howl.
+
+"When you what?" fairly yelled Smathers. "You fool! You don't mean to
+tell me that you let them take you in like that--those two? You don't
+mean to tell me that you had him--had him in your hands--and then let
+him go? You did? Oh! you seventy-seven kinds of a double-barrelled ass!
+Had him--think of it!--had him, and let him go! Did yourself out of a
+share in a reward of two hundred quid when you'd only to shut your hands
+and hold on to it!"
+
+"Two hundred quid? Two hun--W-what are you talking about? Wasn't it
+true? Wasn't it a kinematograph picture, after all?"
+
+"No, you fool, no!" howled Smathers, fairly dancing with despair. "Oh,
+you blithering idiot! You ninety-seven varieties of a fool! Do you know
+who you had in your hands? Do you know who you let go? It was that devil
+'Forty Faces'--'The Vanishing Cracksman'--the man who calls himself
+'Hamilton Cleek'; and the woman was his pal, his confederate, his
+blessed stool-pigeon--'Margot, the Queen of the Apache'; and she came
+over from Paris to help him in that clean scoop of Lady Dresmer's jewels
+last week!"
+
+"Heavens!" gulped Collins, too far gone to say anything else, too deeply
+dejected to think of anything but that he had had the man for whom
+Scotland Yard had been groping for a year--the man over whom all
+England, all France, all Germany wondered--close shut in the grip of his
+hands and then had let him go. The biggest and boldest criminal the
+police had ever had to cope with, the almost supernatural genius of
+crime, who defied all systems, laughed at all laws, mocked at all the
+Vidocqs, and Dupins, and Sherlock Holmeses, whether amateur or
+professional, French or English, German or American, that ever had been
+or ever could be pitted against him, and who, for sheer devilry, for
+diabolical ingenuity and for colossal impudence, as well as for a
+nature-bestowed power that was simply amazing, had not his match in all
+the universe.
+
+Who or what he really was, whence he came, whether he was English,
+Irish, French, German, Yankee, Canadian, Italian or Dutchman, no man
+knew and no man might ever hope to know unless he himself chose to
+reveal it. In his many encounters with the police he had assumed the
+speech, the characteristics, and, indeed, the facial attributes of each
+in turn, and assumed them with an ease and a perfection that were simply
+marvellous, and had gained for him the sobriquet of "Forty Faces" among
+the police, and of "The Vanishing Cracksman" among the scribes and
+reporters of newspaperdom. That he came, in time, to possess another
+name than these was due to his own whim and caprice, his own bald,
+unblushing impudence; for, of a sudden, whilst London was in a fever of
+excitement and all the newspapers up in arms over one of the most daring
+and successful coups, he chose to write boldly to both editors and
+police complaining that the title given him by each was both vulgar and
+cheap.
+
+"You would not think of calling Paganini a 'fiddler,'" he wrote; "why,
+then, should you degrade me with the coarse term of 'cracksman'? I claim
+to be as much an artist in my profession as Paganini was in his, and I
+claim also a like courtesy from you. So, then, if in the future it
+becomes necessary to allude to me--and I fear it often will--I shall be
+obliged if you do so as 'The Man Who Calls Himself Hamilton Cleek.' In
+return for that courtesy, gentlemen, I promise to alter my mode of
+procedure, to turn over a new leaf, as it were, to give you at all times
+hereafter distinct information, in advance, of such places as I elect
+for the field of my operations, and of the time when I shall pay my
+respects to them, and, on the morning after each such visit, to bestow
+some small portion of the loot upon Scotland Yard as a souvenir of the
+event."
+
+And to that remarkable programme he rigidly adhered from that time
+forth--always giving the police twelve hours' notice, always evading
+their traps and snares, always carrying out his plans in spite of them,
+and always, on the morning after, sending some trinket or trifle to
+Superintendent Narkom at Scotland Yard, in a little pink cardboard box,
+tied up with rose-coloured ribbon, and marked "With the compliments of
+The Man Who Calls Himself Hamilton Cleek."
+
+The detectives of the United Kingdom, the detectives of the Continent,
+the detectives of America--each and all had measured swords with him,
+tried wits with him, spread snares and laid traps for him, and each and
+all had retired from the field vanquished.
+
+And this was the man that he--Police Constable Samuel James Collins--had
+actually had in his hands; nay, in his very arms, and then had given up
+for half a sovereign and let go!
+
+"Oh, so help me! You make my head swim, Smathers, that you do!" he
+managed to say at last. "I had him--I had the Vanishing Cracksman--in my
+blessed paws--and then went and let that French hussy--But look here; I
+say, now, how do you know it was him? Nobody can go by his looks; so how
+do you know?"
+
+"Know, you footler!" growled Smathers, disgustedly. "Why shouldn't I
+know when I've been after him ever since he left Scotland Yard half an
+hour ago?"
+
+"Left what? My hat! You ain't a-going to tell me that he's been there?
+When? Why? What for?"
+
+"To leave one of his blessed notices, the dare-devil. What a detective
+he'd a made, wouldn't he, if he'd only a-turned his attention that way,
+and been on the side of the law instead of against it? He walked in bold
+as brass, sat down, and talked with the superintendent over some
+cock-and-bull yarn about a 'Black Hand' letter that he said had been
+sent to him, and asked if he couldn't have police protection whilst he
+was in town. It wasn't until after he'd left that the super he sees a
+note on the chair where the blighter had been sitting, and when he
+opened it, there it was in black and white, something like this:
+
+"'The list of presents that have been sent for the wedding to-morrow of
+Sir Horace Wyvern's eldest daughter make interesting reading,
+particularly that part which describes the jewels sent--no doubt as a
+tribute to her father's position as the greatest brain specialist in the
+world--from the Austrian Court and the Continental principalities. The
+care of such gems is too great a responsibility for the bride. I
+propose, therefore, to relieve her of it to-night, and to send you the
+customary souvenir of the event to-morrow morning. Yours faithfully,
+
+"'The Man Who Calls Himself Hamilton Cleek.
+
+"That's how I know, dash you! Superintendent sent me out after him, hot
+foot; and after a bit I picked him up in the Strand, toddling along with
+that French hussy as cool as you please. But, blow him! he must have
+eyes all round his head, for he saw me just as soon as I saw him, and he
+and Frenchy separated like a shot. She hopped into a taxi and flew off
+in one direction; he dived into a crowd and bolted in another, and
+before you could say Jack Robinson he was doubling and twisting, jumping
+into cabs and jumping out again--all to gain time, of course, for the
+woman to do what he'd put her up to doing--and leading me the devil's
+own chase through the devil's own tangle till he was ready to bunk for
+the Embankment. And you let him go, you blooming footler! Had him and
+let him go, and chucked away a third of £200 for the price of half a
+quid!"
+
+And long after Smathers and Petrie had left him, and the wondering crowd
+had dispersed, and point duty at "Dead Man's Corner" was just point duty
+again and nothing more, P.C. Collins stood there, chewing the cud of
+bitter reflection over those words, and trying to reckon up just how
+many pounds and how much glory had been lost to him.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+"But, damme, sir, the thing's an outrage! I don't mince my words, Mr.
+Narkom--I say plump and plain the thing's an outrage, a disgrace to the
+police, an indignity upon the community at large; and for Scotland Yard
+to permit itself to be defied, bamboozled, mocked at in this appalling
+fashion by a paltry burglar--"
+
+"Uncle, dear, pray don't excite yourself in this manner. I am quite sure
+that if Mr. Narkom could prevent the things--"
+
+"Hold your tongue, Ailsa--I will not be interfered with! It's time that
+somebody spoke out plainly and let this establishment know what the
+public has a right to expect of it. What do I pay my rates and taxes
+for--and devilish high ones they are, too, b'gad--if it's not to
+maintain law and order and the proper protection of property? And to
+have the whole blessed country terrorised, the police defied, and
+people's houses invaded with impunity by a gutter-bred brute of a
+cracksman is nothing short of a scandal and a shame! Call this sort of
+tomfoolery being protected by the police? God bless my soul! one might
+as well be in charge of a parcel of doddering old women and be done with
+it!"
+
+It was an hour and a half after that exciting affair at "Dead Man's
+Corner." The scene was Superintendent Narkom's private room at
+headquarters, the dramatis personae, Mr. Maverick Narkom himself, Sir
+Horace Wyvern, and Miss Ailsa Lorne, his niece, a slight, fair-haired,
+extremely attractive girl of twenty, the only and orphaned daughter of a
+much-loved sister, who, up till a year ago, had known nothing more
+exciting in the way of "life" than that which is to be found in a small
+village in Suffolk, and falls to the lot of an underpaid vicar's only
+child. A railway accident had suddenly deprived her of both parents,
+throwing her wholly upon her own resources, without a penny in the
+world. Sir Horace had gracefully come to the rescue and given her a home
+and a refuge, being doubly repaid for it by the affection and care she
+gave him and the manner in which she assumed control of a household
+which hitherto had been left wholly to the attention of servants, Lady
+Wyvern having long been dead, and her two daughters of that type which
+devotes itself entirely to the pleasures of society and the demands of
+the world. A regular pepper-box of a man--testy, short-tempered,
+exacting--Sir Horace had flown headlong to Superintendent Narkom's
+office as soon as that gentleman's note, telling him of the Vanishing
+Cracksman's latest threat, had been delivered, and, on Miss Lorne's
+advice, had withheld all news of it from the members of his household
+and brought her with him.
+
+"I tell you that Scotland Yard must do something--must! must! must!"
+stormed he as Narkom, resenting that stigma upon the institution,
+puckered up his lips and looked savage. "That fellow has always kept his
+word--always, in spite of your precious band of muffs--and if you let
+him keep it this time, when there's upwards of £40,000 worth of jewels
+in the house, it will be nothing less than a national disgrace, and you
+and your wretched collection of bunglers will be covered with deserved
+ridicule."
+
+Narkom swung round, smarting under these continued taunts, these
+"flings" at the efficiency of his prided department, his nostrils
+dilated, his temper strained to the breaking-point.
+
+"Well, he won't keep it this time--I promise you that!" he rapped out
+sharply. "Sooner or later every criminal, no matter how clever, meets
+his Waterloo--and this shall be his! I'll take this affair in hand
+myself, Sir Horace. I'll not only send the pick of my men to guard the
+jewels, but I'll go with them; and if that fellow crosses the threshold
+of Wyvern House to-night, by the Lord, I'll have him. He will have to be
+the devil himself to get away from me! Miss Lorne"--recollecting himself
+and bowing apologetically--"I ask your pardon for this strong
+language--my temper got the better of my manners."
+
+"It does not matter, Mr. Narkom, so that you preserve my cousin's
+wedding-gifts from that appalling man," she answered with a gentle
+inclination of the head and with a smile that made the superintendent
+think she must certainly be the most beautiful creature in all the
+world, it so irradiated her face and added to the magic of her glorious
+eyes. "It does not matter what you say, what you do, so long as you
+accomplish that."
+
+"And I will accomplish it--as I'm a living man, I will! You may go home
+feeling assured of that. Look for my men some time before dusk, Sir
+Horace--I will arrive later. They will come in one at a time. See that
+they are admitted by the area door, and that, once in, not one of them
+leaves the house again before I put in an appearance. I'll look them
+over when I arrive to be sure that there's no wolf in sheep's clothing
+amongst them. With a fellow like that--a diabolical rascal with a
+diabolical gift for impersonation--one can't be too careful. Meantime,
+it is just as well not to have confided this news to your daughters,
+who, naturally, would be nervous and upset; but I assume that you have
+taken some one of the servants into your confidence in order that nobody
+may pass them and enter the house under any pretext whatsoever?"
+
+"No, I have not. Miss Lorne advised against it, and, as I am always
+guided by her, I said nothing of the matter to anybody."
+
+"Was that wrong, do you think, Mr. Narkom?" queried Ailsa anxiously. "I
+feared that if they knew they might lose their heads, and that my
+cousins, who are intensely nervous and highly emotional, might hear of
+it, and add to our difficulties by becoming hysterical and demanding our
+attention at a time when we ought to be giving every moment to watching
+for the possible arrival of that man. And as he has always lived up to
+the strict letter of his dreadful promises heretofore, I knew that he
+was not to be expected before nightfall. Besides, the jewels are locked
+up in the safe in Sir Horace's consulting-room, and his assistant, Mr.
+Merfroy, has promised not to leave it for one instant before we return."
+
+"Oh, well, that's all right, then. I dare say there is very little
+likelihood of our man getting in whilst you and Sir Horace are here, and
+taking such a risk as stopping in the house until nightfall to begin his
+operations. Still, it was hardly wise, and I should advise hurrying back
+as fast as possible and taking at least one servant--the one you feel
+least likely to lose his head--into your confidence, Sir Horace, and
+putting him on the watch for my men. Otherwise, keep the matter as quiet
+as you have done, and look for me about nine o'clock. And rely upon this
+as a certainty: the Vanishing Cracksman will never get away with even
+one of those jewels if he enters that house to-night, and never get out
+of it unshackled!"
+
+With that, he suavely bowed his visitors out and rang up the pick of his
+men without an instant's delay.
+
+Promptly at nine o'clock he arrived, as he had promised, at Wyvern
+House, and was shown into Sir Horace's consulting-room, where Sir Horace
+himself and Miss Lorne were awaiting him, and keeping close watch before
+the locked door of a communicating apartment in which sat the six men
+who had preceded him. He went in and put them all and severally through
+a rigid examination--pulling their hair and beards, rubbing their faces
+with a clean handkerchief in quest of any trace of "make-up" or disguise
+of any sort, examining their badges and the marks on the handcuffs they
+carried with them to make sure that they bore the sign which he himself
+had scratched upon them in the privacy of his own room a couple of hours
+ago.
+
+"No mistake about this lot," he announced, with a smile. "Has anybody
+else entered or attempted to enter the house?"
+
+"Not a soul," replied Miss Lorne. "I didn't trust anybody to do the
+watching, Mr. Narkom--I watched myself."
+
+"Good. Where are the jewels? In that safe?"
+
+"No," replied Sir Horace. "They are to be exhibited in the
+picture-gallery for the benefit of the guests at the wedding breakfast
+to-morrow, and as Miss Wyvern wished to superintend the arrangement of
+them herself, and there would be no time for that in the morning, she
+and her sister are in there laying them out at this moment. As I could
+not prevent that without telling them what we have to dread, I did not
+protest against it; but if you think it will be safer to return them to
+the safe after my daughters have gone to bed, Mr. Narkom--"
+
+"Not at all necessary. If our man gets in, their lying there in full
+view like that will prove a tempting bait, and--well, he'll find there's
+a hook behind it. I shall be there waiting for him. Now go and join the
+ladies, you and Miss Lorne, and act as though nothing out of the common
+was in the wind. My men and I will stop here, and you had better put out
+the light and lock us in, so that there may be no danger of anybody
+finding out that we are here. No doubt Miss Wyvern and her sister will
+go to bed earlier than usual on this particular occasion. Let them do
+so. Send the servants to bed, too. You and Miss Lorne go to your beds at
+the same time as the others--or, at least, let them think that you have
+done so; then come down and let us out."
+
+To this Sir Horace assented, and, taking Miss Lorne with him, went at
+once to the picture-gallery and joined his daughters, with whom they
+remained until eleven o'clock. Promptly at that hour, however, the house
+was locked up, the bride-elect and her sister went to bed--the servants
+having already gone to theirs--and stillness settled down over the
+darkened house. At the end of a dozen minutes, however, it was faintly
+disturbed by the sound of slippered feet coming along the passage
+outside the consulting-room, then a key slipped into the lock, the door
+was opened, the light switched on, and Sir Horace and Miss Lorne
+appeared before the eager watchers.
+
+"Now, then, lively, my men--look sharp!" whispered Narkom. "A man to
+each window and each staircase, so that nobody may go up or down or in
+or out without dropping into the arms of one of you. Confine your
+attention to this particular floor, and if you hear anybody coming, lay
+low until he's within reach, and you can drop on him before he bolts. Is
+this the door of the picture-gallery, Sir Horace?"
+
+"Yes," answered Sir Horace, as he fitted a key to the lock. "But surely
+you will need more men than you have brought, Mr. Narkom, if it is your
+intention to guard every window individually, for there are four to this
+room--see!"
+
+With that he swung open the door, switched on the electric light, and
+Narkom fairly blinked at the dazzling sight that confronted him. Three
+long tables, laden with crystal and silver, cut glass and jewels, and
+running the full length of the room, flashed and scintillated under the
+glare of the electric bulbs which encircled the cornice of the gallery,
+and clustered in luminous splendour in the crystal and frosted silver of
+a huge central chandelier, and spread out on the middle one of these--a
+dazzle of splintered rainbows, a very plain of living light--lay caskets
+and cases, boxes and trays, containing those royal gifts of which the
+newspapers had made so much and the Vanishing Cracksman had sworn to
+make so few.
+
+Mr. Narkom went over and stood beside the glittering mass, resting his
+hand against the table and feasting his eyes upon all that opulent
+splendour.
+
+"God bless my soul! it's superb, it's amazing," he commented. "No wonder
+the fellow is willing to take risks for a prize like this. You are a
+splendid temptation; a gorgeous bait, you beauties; but the fish that
+snaps at you will find that there's a nasty hook underneath in the shape
+of Maverick Narkom. Never mind the many windows, Sir Horace. Let him
+come in by them, if that's his plan. I'll never leave these things for
+one instant between now and the morning. Good night, Miss Lorne. Go to
+bed and to sleep--you do the same, Sir Horace. My lay is here!"
+
+With that he stooped and, lifting the long drapery which covered the
+table and swept down in heavy folds to the floor, crept out of sight
+under it, and let it drop back into place again.
+
+"Switch off the light and go," he called to them in a low-sunk voice.
+"Don't worry yourselves, either of you. Go to bed, and to sleep if you
+can."
+
+"As if we could," answered Miss Lorne agitatedly. "I shan't be able to
+close an eyelid. I'll try, of course, but I know I shall not succeed.
+Come, uncle, come! Oh, do be careful, Mr. Narkom; and if that horrible
+man does come--"
+
+"I'll have him, so help me God!" he vowed. "Switch off the light, and
+shut the door as you go out. This is 'Forty Faces'' Waterloo at last."
+
+And in another moment the light snicked out, the door closed, and he was
+alone in the silent room.
+
+For ten or a dozen minutes not even the bare suggestion of a noise
+disturbed the absolute stillness; then of a sudden, his trained ear
+caught a faint sound that made him suck in his breath and rise on his
+elbow, the better to listen--a sound which came, not without the house,
+but from within, from the dark hall where he had stationed his men, to
+be exact. As he listened he was conscious that some living creature had
+approached the door, touched the handle, and by the swift, low rustle
+and the sound of hard breathing, that it had been pounced upon and
+seized. He scrambled out from beneath the table, snicked on the light,
+whirled open the door, and was in time to hear the irritable voice of
+Sir Horace say, testily: "Don't make an ass of yourself by your
+over-zealousness. I've only come down to have a word with Mr. Narkom,"
+and to see him standing on the threshold, grotesque in a baggy suit of
+striped pyjamas, with one wrist enclosed as in a steel band by the
+gripped fingers of Petrie.
+
+"Why didn't you say it was you, sir?" exclaimed that crestfallen
+individual, as the flashing light made manifest his mistake. "When I
+heard you first, and see you come up out of that back passage, I made
+sure it was him; and if you'd a struggled, I'd have bashed your head as
+sure as eggs."
+
+"Thank you for nothing," he responded testily. "You might have
+remembered, however, that the man's first got to get into the place
+before he can come downstairs. Mr. Narkom," turning to the
+superintendent, "I was just getting into bed when I thought of something
+I'd neglected to tell you; and as my niece is sitting in her room with
+the door open, and I wasn't anxious to parade myself before her in my
+night clothes, I came down by the back staircase. I don't know how in
+the world I came to overlook it, but I think you ought to know that
+there's a way of getting into the picture gallery without using either
+the windows or the stairs, and that way ought to be both searched and
+guarded."
+
+"Where is it? What is it? Why in the world didn't you tell me in the
+first place?" exclaimed Narkom irritably, as he glanced round the place
+searchingly. "Is it a panel? a secret door? or what? This is an old
+house, and old houses are sometimes a very nest of such things."
+
+"Happily, this one isn't. It's a modern innovation, not an ancient
+relic, that offers the means of entrance in this case. A Yankee occupied
+this house before I bought it from him--one of those blessed shivery
+individuals his country breeds, who can't stand a breath of cold air
+indoors after the passing of the autumn. The wretched man put one of
+those wretched American inflictions, a hot-air furnace, in the cellar,
+with huge pipes running to every room in the house--great tin
+monstrosities bigger round than a man's body, ending in openings in the
+wall, with what they call 'registers,' to let the heat in, or shut it
+out as they please. I didn't have the wretched contrivance removed or
+those blessed 'registers' plastered up. I simply had them papered over
+when the rooms were done up (there's one over there near that settee),
+and if a man got into this house, he could get into that furnace thing
+and hide in one of those flues until he got ready to crawl up it as
+easily as not. It struck me that perhaps it would be as well for you to
+examine that furnace and those flues before matters go any further."
+
+"Of course it would. Great Scott! Sir Horace, why didn't you think to
+tell me of this thing before?" said Narkom, excitedly. "The fellow may
+be in it at this minute. Come, show me the wretched thing."
+
+"It's below--in the cellar. We shall have to go down the kitchen stairs,
+and I haven't a light."
+
+"Here's one," said Petrie, unhitching a bull's-eye from his belt and
+putting it into Narkom's hand. "Better go with Sir Horace at once, sir.
+Leave the door of the gallery open and the light on. Fish and me will
+stand guard over the stuff till you come back, so in case the man is in
+one of them flues and tries to bolt out at this end, we can nab him
+before he can get to the windows."
+
+"A good idea," commented Narkom. "Come on, Sir Horace. Is this the way?"
+
+"Yes, but you'll have to tread carefully, and mind you don't fall over
+anything. A good deal of my paraphernalia--bottles, retorts and the
+like--is stored in the little recess at the foot of the staircase, and
+my assistant is careless and leaves things lying about."
+
+Evidently the caution was necessary, for a minute or so after they had
+passed on and disappeared behind the door leading to the kitchen
+stairway, Petrie and his colleagues heard a sound as of something being
+overturned and smashed, and laughed softly to themselves. Evidently,
+too, the danger of the furnace had been grossly exaggerated by Sir
+Horace, for when, a few minutes later, the door opened and closed, and
+Narkom's men, glancing toward it, saw the figure of their chief
+reappear, it was plain that he was in no good temper, since his features
+were knotted up into a scowl, and he swore audibly as he snapped the
+shutter over the bull's-eye and handed it back to Petrie.
+
+"Nothing worth looking into, superintendent?"
+
+"No--not a thing!" he replied. "The silly old josser! pulling me down
+there amongst the coals and rubbish for an insane idea like that! Why,
+the flues wouldn't admit the passage of a child; and even then, there's
+a bend--an abrupt 'elbow'--that nothing but a cat could crawl up. And
+that's a man who's an authority on the human brain! I sent the old silly
+back to bed by the way he came, and if--"
+
+There he stopped, stopped short, and sucked in his breath with a sharp,
+wheezing sound. For, of a sudden, a swift pattering footfall and a
+glimmer of moving light had sprung into being and drawn his eyes upward;
+and there, overhead, was Miss Lorne coming down the stairs from the
+upper floor in a state of nervous excitement, and with a bedroom candle
+in her shaking hand, a loose gown flung on over her nightdress, and her
+hair streaming over her shoulders in glorious disarray.
+
+He stood and looked at her, with ever-quickening breath, with
+ever-widening eyes, as though the beauty of her had wakened some dormant
+sense whose existence he had never suspected; as though, until now, he
+had never known how fair it was possible for a woman to be, how fair,
+how lovable, how much to be desired; and whilst he was so looking she
+reached the foot of the staircase and came pantingly toward him.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Narkom, what was it--that noise I heard?" she said in a tone of
+deepest agitation. "It sounded like a struggle--like the noise of
+something breaking--and I dressed as hastily as I could and came down.
+Did he come? Has he been here? Have you caught him? Oh! why don't you
+answer me, instead of staring at me like this? Can't you see how
+nervous, how frightened, I am? Dear Heaven! will no one tell me what has
+happened?"
+
+"Nothing has happened, miss," answered Petrie, catching her eye as she
+flashed round on him. "You'd better go back to bed. Nobody's been here
+but Sir Horace. The noise you heard was me a-grabbing of him, and he and
+Mr. Narkom a-tumbling over something as they went down to look at the
+furnace."
+
+"Furnace? What furnace? What are you talking about?" she cried
+agitatedly. "What do you mean by saying that Sir Horace came down?"
+
+"Only what the superintendent himself will tell you, miss, if you ask
+him. Sir Horace came downstairs in his pyjamas a few minutes ago to say
+as he'd recollected about the flues of the furnace in the cellar being
+big enough to hold a man, and then him and Mr. Narkom went below to have
+a look at it."
+
+She gave a sharp and sudden cry, and her face went as pale as a dead
+face.
+
+"Sir Horace came down?" she repeated, moving back a step and leaning
+heavily against the bannister. "Sir Horace came down to look at the
+furnace? We have no furnace!"
+
+"What!"
+
+"We have no furnace, I tell you, and Sir Horace did not come down. He is
+up there still. I know--I know, I tell you--because I feared for his
+safety, and when he went to his room I locked him in!"
+
+"Superintendent!" The word was voiced by every man present, and six
+pairs of eyes turned toward Narkom with a look of despairing
+comprehension.
+
+"Get to the cellar. Head the man off! It's he--the Cracksman!" he
+shouted out. "Find him! Get him! Nab him, if you have to turn the house
+upside down!"
+
+They needed no second bidding, for each man grasped the situation
+instantly, and in a twinkling there was a veritable pandemonium.
+Shouting and scrambling like a band of madmen, they lurched to the door,
+whirled it open, and went flying down the staircase to the kitchen and
+so to a discovery which none might have foreseen. For, almost as they
+entered they saw lying on the floor a suit of striped pyjamas, and close
+to it, gagged, bound, helpless, trussed up like a goose that was ready
+for the oven, gyves on his wrists, gyves on his ankles, their chief,
+their superintendent, Mr. Maverick Narkom, in a state of collapse, and
+with all his outer clothing gone!
+
+"After him! After that devil, and a thousand pounds to the man that gets
+him!" he managed to gasp as they rushed to him and ripped loose the gag.
+"He was here when we came! He has been in the house for hours. Get him!
+get him! get him!"
+
+They surged from the room and up the stairs like a pack of stampeded
+animals; they raced through the hall and bore down on the
+picture-gallery in a body, and, whirling open the now closed door, went
+tumbling headlong in.
+
+The light was still burning. At the far end of the room a window was
+wide open, and the curtains of it fluttered in the wind. A collection of
+empty cases and caskets lay on the middle table, but man and jewels were
+alike gone! Once again the Vanishing Cracksman had lived up to his
+promise, up to his reputation, up to the very letter of his name, and
+for all Mr. Maverick Narkom's care and shrewdness, "Forty Faces" had
+"turned the trick" and Scotland Yard was "done!"
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Through all the night its best men sought him, its dragnets fished for
+him, its tentacles groped into every hole and corner of London in quest
+of him, but sought and fished and groped in vain. They might as well
+have hoped to find last summer's partridges or last winter's snow as any
+trace of him. He had vanished as mysteriously as he had appeared, and no
+royal jewels graced the display of Miss Wyvern's wedding gifts on the
+morrow.
+
+But it was fruitful of other "gifts," fruitful of an even greater
+surprise, that "morrow." For the first time since the day he had given
+his promise, no "souvenir" from "The Man Who Called Himself Hamilton
+Cleek," no part of last night's loot came to Scotland Yard; and it was
+while the evening papers were making screaming "copy" and glaring
+headlines out of this that the surprise in question came to pass.
+
+Miss Wyvern's wedding was over, the day and the bride had gone, and it
+was half-past ten at night, when Sir Horace, answering a hurry call from
+headquarters, drove post haste to Superintendent Narkom's private room,
+and passing in under a red and green lamp which burned over the doorway,
+entered and met that "surprise."
+
+Maverick Narkom was there alone, standing beside his desk, with the
+curtains of his window drawn and pinned together, and at his elbow an
+unlighted lamp of violet-coloured glass, standing and looking
+thoughtfully down at something which lay before him. He turned as his
+visitor entered and made an open-handed gesture toward it.
+
+"Look here," he said laconically, "what do you think of this?"
+
+Sir Horace moved forward and looked; then stopped and gave a sort of
+wondering cry. The electric bulbs overhead struck a glare of light down
+on the surface of the desk, and there, spread out on the shining oak,
+lay a part of the royal jewels that had been stolen from Wyvern House
+last night.
+
+"Narkom! You got him, then--got him after all?"
+
+"No, I did not get him. I doubt if any man could, if he chose not to be
+found," said Narkom bitterly. "I did not recover these jewels by any act
+of my own. He sent them to me; gave them up voluntarily."
+
+"Gave them up? After he had risked so much to get them? God bless my
+soul, what a man! Why, there must be quite half here of what he took."
+
+"There is half--an even half. He sent them to-night, and with them this
+letter. Look at it, and you will understand why I sent for you and asked
+you to come alone."
+
+"There's some good in even the devil, I suppose, if one but knows how to
+reach it and stir it up," Sir Horace read. "I have lived a life of crime
+from my very boyhood because I couldn't help it, because it appealed to
+me, because I glory in risks and revel in dangers. I never knew where it
+would lead me--I never thought, never cared--but I looked into the
+gateway of heaven last night, and I can't go down the path to hell any
+longer. Here is an even half of Miss Wyvern's jewels. If you and her
+father would have me hand over the other half to you, and would have
+'The Vanishing Cracksman' disappear forever, and a useless life
+converted into a useful one, you have only to say so to make it an
+accomplished thing. All I ask in return is your word of honour (to be
+given to me by signal) that you will send for Sir Horace Wyvern to be at
+your office at eleven o'clock to-night, and that you and he will grant
+me a private interview unknown to any other living being. A red and
+green lantern hung over the doorway leading to your office will be the
+signal that you agree, and a violet light in your window will be the
+pledge of Sir Horace Wyvern. When these two signals, these two pledges,
+are given, I shall come in and hand over the remainder of the jewels,
+and you will have looked for the first time in your life upon the real
+face of 'The Man Who Calls Himself Hamilton Cleek.'"
+
+"God bless my soul! What an amazing creature--what an astounding
+request!" exclaimed Sir Horace, as he laid the letter down. "Willing to
+give up £20,000 worth of jewels for the mere sake of a private
+interview! What on earth can be his object? And why should he include
+me?"
+
+"I don't know," said Narkom in reply. "It's worth something, at all
+events, to be rid of 'The Vanishing Cracksman' for good and all; and he
+says that it rests with us to do that. It's close to eleven now. Shall
+we give him the pledge he asks, Sir Horace? My signal is already hung
+out; shall we agree to the conditions and give him yours?"
+
+"Yes, yes, by all means," Sir Horace made answer. And lighting the
+violet lamp, Narkom flicked open the pinned curtains and set it in the
+window.
+
+For ten minutes nothing came of it, and the two men, talking in whispers
+while they waited, began to grow nervous. Then somewhere in the distance
+a clock started striking eleven, and without so much as a warning sound,
+the door flashed open, flashed shut again, a voice that was undeniably
+the voice of breeding and refinement said quietly: "Gentlemen, my
+compliments. Here are the diamonds and here am I!" and the figure of a
+man, faultlessly dressed, faultlessly mannered, with the slim-loined
+form, the slim-walled nose, and the clear-cut features of the born
+aristocrat, stood in the room.
+
+His age might lie anywhere between twenty-five and thirty-five, his eyes
+were straight-looking and clear, his fresh, clean-shaven face was
+undeniably handsome, and, whatever his origin, whatever his history,
+there was something about him, in look, in speech, in bearing, that
+mutely stood sponsor for the thing called "birth."
+
+"God bless my soul!" exclaimed Sir Horace, amazed and appalled to find
+the reality so widely different from the image he had drawn. "What
+monstrous juggle is this? Why, man alive, you're a gentleman! Who are
+you? What's driven you to a dog's life like this?"
+
+"A natural bent, perhaps; a supernatural gift, certainly, Sir Horace,"
+he made reply. "Look here! Could any man resist the temptation to use it
+when he was endowed by Nature with the power to do this?" His features
+seemed to writhe and knot and assume in as many moments a dozen
+different aspects. "I've had the knack of doing that since the hour I
+could breathe. Could any man 'go straight' with a fateful gift like that
+if the laws of Nature said that he should not?"
+
+"And do they say that?"
+
+"That's what I want you to tell me--that's why I have requested this
+interview. I want you to examine me, Sir Horace, to put me through those
+tests you use to determine the state of mind of the mentally fit and
+mentally unfit; I want to know if it is my fault that I am what I am,
+and if it is myself I have to fight in future, or the devil that lives
+within me. I'm tired of wallowing in the mire. A woman's eyes have lit
+the way to heaven for me. I want to climb up to her, to win her, to be
+worthy of her, and to stand beside her in the light."
+
+"Her? What 'her'?"
+
+"That's my business, Mr. Narkom, and I'll take no man into my confidence
+regarding that."
+
+"Yes, my friend, but 'Margot'--how about her?"
+
+"I'm done with her! We broke last night, when I returned and she
+learned--never mind what she learned! I'm done with her--done with the
+lot of them. My life is changed forever."
+
+"In the name of Heaven, man, who and what are you?"
+
+"Cleek--just Cleek; let it go at that," he made reply. "Whether it's my
+name or not is no man's business; who I am, what I am, whence I came, is
+no man's business either. Cleek will do--Cleek of the Forty Faces. Never
+mind the past; my fight is with the future, and so--examine me, Sir
+Horace, and let me know if I or Fate's to blame for what I am."
+
+Sir Horace did.
+
+"Absolutely Fate," he said, when, after a long examination, the man put
+the question to him again. "It is the criminal brain fully developed,
+horribly pronounced. God help you, my poor fellow; but a man simply
+could not be other than a thief and a criminal with an organ like that.
+There's no hope for you to escape your natural bent except by death. You
+can't be honest. You can't rise--you never will rise; it's useless to
+fight against it!"
+
+"I will fight against it! I will rise! I will! I will! I will!" he cried
+out vehemently. "There is a way to put such craft and cunning to
+account; a way to fight the devil with his own weapons and crush him
+under the weight of his own gifts, and that way I'll take!"
+
+"Mr. Narkom"--he whirled and walked toward the superintendent, his hand
+outstretched, his eager face aglow--"Mr. Narkom, help me! Take me under
+your wing. Give me a start--give me a chance--give me a lift on the way
+up!"
+
+"Good heaven, man, you--you don't mean--?"
+
+"I do--I do! So help me heaven, I do. All my life I've fought against
+the law--now let me switch over and fight with it. I'm tired of being
+Cleek, the thief; Cleek, the burglar. Make me Cleek, the detective, and
+let us work together, hand in hand, for a common cause and for the
+public good. Will you, Mr. Narkom? Will you?"
+
+"Will I? Won't I!" said Narkom, springing forward and gripping his hand.
+"Jove! what a detective you will make. Bully boy! Bully boy!"
+
+"It's a compact, then?"
+
+"It's a compact--Cleek."
+
+"Thank you," he said in a choked voice. "You've given me my chance; now
+watch me live up to it. The Vanishing Cracksman has vanished forever,
+Mr. Narkom, and it's Cleek, the detective--Cleek of the Forty Faces from
+this time on. Now, give me your riddles--I'll solve them one by one."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The sound came again--so unmistakably, this time, the sound of a
+footstep in the soft, squashy ooze on the Heath, there could be no
+question regarding the nature of it. Miss Lorne came to an instant
+standstill and clutched her belongings closer to her with a shake and a
+quiver; and a swift prickle of goose-flesh ran round her shoulders and
+up and down the backs of her hands. There was good, brave blood in her,
+it is true; but good, brave blood isn't much to fall back upon if you
+happen to be a girl without escort, carrying a hand-bag containing
+twenty-odd pounds in money, several bits of valuable jewellery--your
+whole earthly possessions, in fact--and have lost your way on Hampstead
+Heath at half-past eight o'clock at night, with a spring fog shutting
+you in like a wall and shutting out everything else but a "mackerel"
+collection of clouds that looked like grey smudges on the greasy-silver
+of a twilit sky.
+
+She looked round, but she could see nothing and nobody. The Heath was a
+white waste that might have been part of the scenery in Lapland for all
+there was to tell that it lay within reach of the heart and pulse of the
+sluggish leviathan London. Over it the vapours of night crowded, an
+almost palpable wall of thick, wet mist, stirred now and again by some
+atmospheric movement which could scarcely be called a wind, although, at
+times, it drew long, lacey filaments above the level of the denser mass
+of fog and melted away with them into the calm, still upper air.
+
+Miss Lorne hesitated between two very natural impulses--to gather up her
+skirts and run, or to stand her ground and demand an explanation from
+the person who was undoubtedly following her. She chose the latter.
+
+"Who is there? Why are you following me? What do you want?" she flung
+out, keeping her voice as steady as the hard, sharp hammering of her
+heart would permit.
+
+The question was answered at once--rather startlingly, since the
+footsteps which caused her alarm, had all the while proceeded from
+behind, and slightly to the left of her. Now there came a hurried rush
+and scramble on the right; there was the sound of a match being
+scratched, a blob of light in the grey of the mist, and she saw standing
+in front of her, a ragged, weedy, red-headed youth, with the blazing
+match in his scooped hands.
+
+He was thin to the point of ghastliness. Hunger was in his pinched face,
+his high cheekbones, his gouged jaws; staring like a starved wolf,
+through the unnatural brightness of his pale eyes, from every gaunt
+feature of him.
+
+"'Ullo!" he said with a strong Cockney accent, as he came up out of the
+fog, and the flare of the match gave him a full view of her, standing
+there with her lips shut hard, and, the hand-bag clutched up close to
+her with both hands. "You wot called, was it? Wot price me for
+arnswerin' of you, eh?"
+
+"Yes, it was I that called," she replied, making a brave front of it.
+"But I do not think it was you that I called to. Keep away, please.
+Don't come any nearer. What do you want?" "Well, I'll take that blessed
+'and-bag to go on with; and if there aren't no money in it--tumble it
+out--let's see--lively now! I'll feed for the rest of this week--Gawd,
+yuss!"
+
+She made no reply, no attempt to obey him, no movement of any sort. Fear
+had absolutely stricken every atom of strength from her. She could do
+nothing but look at him with big, frightened eyes, and shake.
+
+"Look 'ere, aren't you a-goin' to do it quiet, or are you a-goin' to
+mike me tike the blessed thing from you?" he asked.
+
+"I'll do it if you put me to it--my hat! yuss! It aren't my gime--I'm
+wot you might call a hammer-chewer at it, but when there's summink
+inside you, wot tears and tears and tears, any gime's worth tryin' that
+pulls out the claws of it."
+
+She did not move even yet. He flung the spent match from him, and made a
+sharp step toward her, and he had just reached out his hand to lay hold
+of her, when another hand--strong, sinewy, hard-shutting as an iron
+clamp--reached out from the mist, and laid hold of him; plucking him by
+the neckband and intruding a bunch of knuckles and shut fingers between
+that and his up-slanted chin.
+
+"Now, then, drop that little game at once, you young monkey!" struck in
+the sharp staccato of a semi-excited voice. "Interfering with young
+ladies, eh? Let's have a look at you. Don't be afraid, Miss
+Lorne--nobody's going to hurt you."
+
+Then a pocket torch spat out a sudden ray of light; and by it both the
+half-throttled boy and the wholly frightened girl could see the man who
+had thus intruded himself upon their notice.
+
+"Oh, it is you--it is you again, Mr. Cleek?" said Ailsa with something
+between a laugh and a sigh of relief as she recognized him.
+
+"Yes, it is I. I have been behind you ever since you left the house in
+Bardon Road. It was rash of you to cross the heath at this time and in
+this weather. I rather fancied that something of this kind would be
+likely to happen, and so took the liberty of following you."
+
+"Then it was you I heard behind me?"
+
+"It was I--yes. I shouldn't have intruded myself upon your notice if you
+hadn't called out. A moment, please. Let's have a look at this young
+highwayman, who so freely advertises himself as an amateur."
+
+The light spat full into the gaunt, starved face of the young man and
+made it stare forth doubly ghastly. He had made no effort to get away
+from the very first. Perhaps he understood the uselessness of it, with
+that strong hand gripped on his ragged neckband. Perhaps he was, in his
+way, something of a fatalist--London breeds so many among such as he:
+starved things that find every boat chained, every effort thrust back
+upon them unrewarded. At any rate, from the moment he had heard the girl
+give to this man a name which every soul in England had heard at one
+time or another during the past two years, he had gone into a sort of
+mild collapse, as though realising the utter uselessness of battling
+against fate, and had given himself up to what was to be.
+
+"Hello," said Cleek, as he looked the youth over. "Yours is a face I
+don't remember running foul of before, my young beauty. Where did you
+come from?"
+
+"Where I seem like to be goin' now you've got your currant-pickers on
+me--Hell," answered the boy, with something like a sigh of despair.
+"Leastways, I been in Hell ever since I can remember anyfink, so I
+reckon I must have come from there."
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+"Dollops. S'pose I must a had another sometime, but I never heard of it.
+Wot's that? Yuss--most nineteen. _Wot?_ Oh, go throw summink at
+yourself! I aren't too young to be 'ungry, am I? And where's a cove
+goin' to _find_ this 'ere 'honest work' you're a-talkin' of? I'm fair
+sick of the gime of lookin' for it. Besides, you don't see parties as
+goes in for the other thing walkin' round with ribs on 'em like
+bed-slats, and not even the price of a cup of corfy in their pockets, do
+you? No fear! I wouldn't've 'urt the young lydie; but I tell you strite,
+I'd a took every blessed farthin' she 'ad on her if you 'adn't've
+dropped on me like this."
+
+"Got down to the last ditch--down to the point of desperation, eh?"
+
+"Yuss. So would you if you 'ad a fing inside you tearin' and tearin'
+like I 'ave. Aren't et a bloomin' crumb since the day before yusterday
+at four in the mawnin' when a gent in an 'ansom--drunk as a lord, he
+was--treated me and a parcel of others to a bun and a cup of corfy at a
+corfy stall over 'Ighgate way. Stood out agin bein' a crook as long as
+ever I could--as long as ever I'm goin' to, I reckon, now _you've_ got
+your maulers on me. I'll be on the list after this. The cops 'ull know
+me; and when you've got the nime--well, wot's the odds? You might as
+well 'ave the gime as well, and git over goin' empty. All right, run me
+in, sir. Any'ow, I'll 'ave a bit to eat and a bed to sleep in to-night,
+and that's one comfort--"
+
+Cleek had been watching the boy closely, narrowly, with an
+ever-deepening interest; now he loosened the grip of his fingers and let
+his hand drop to his side.
+
+"Suppose I don't 'run you in,' as you put it? Suppose I take a chance
+and lend you five shillings, will you do some work and pay it back to me
+in time?" he asked.
+
+The boy looked up at him and laughed in his face.
+
+"Look 'ere, Gov'nor, it's playin' it low down to lark wiv a chap jist
+before you're goin' to 'ang 'im," he said. "You come off your blessed
+perch."
+
+"Right," said Cleek. "And now you get up on yours and let us see what
+you're made of." Then he put his hand into his trousers pocket; there
+was a chink of coins and two half-crowns lay on his outstretched palm.
+"There you are--off with you now, and if you are any good, turn up some
+time to-night at No. 204, Clarges Street, and ask for Captain Horatio
+Burbage. He'll see that there's work for you. Toddle along now and get a
+meal and a bed. And mind you keep a close mouth about this."
+
+The boy neither moved nor spoke nor made any sound. For a moment or two
+he stood looking from the man to the coins and from the coins back to
+the man; then, gradually, the truth of the thing seemed to trickle into
+his mind and, as a hungry fox might pounce upon a stray fowl, he grabbed
+the money and--bolted.
+
+"Remember the name and remember the street," Cleek called after him.
+
+"You take your bloomin' oath I will!" came back through the enfolding
+mist; "Gawd, yuss!"--Just that; and the youth was gone.
+
+"I wonder what you will think of me, Miss Lorne," said Cleek, turning to
+her; "taking a chance like this; and, above all, with a fellow who would
+have stripped you of every jewel and every penny you have with you if
+things hadn't happened as they have?"
+
+"And I can very ill afford to lose anything _now_--as I suppose you
+know, Mr. Cleek. Things have changed sadly for me since that day Mr.
+Narkom introduced us at Ascot," she said, with just a shadow of
+seriousness in her eyes. "But as to what I think regarding your action
+toward that dreadful boy.... Oh, of course, if there is a chance of
+saving him from a career of crime, I think one owes him that as a duty.
+In the circumstances, the temptation was very great. It must be a
+horrible thing to be so hungry that one is driven to robbery to satisfy
+the longing for food."
+
+"Yes, very horrible--very, very indeed. I once knew a boy who stood as
+that boy stands--at the parting of the ways; when the good that was in
+him fought the last great fight with the Devil of Circumstances. If a
+hand had been stretched forth to help that boy at that time ... Ah,
+well! it wasn't. The Devil took the reins and the game went _his_ way.
+If five shillings will put the reins into that boy's hands to-night and
+steer him back to the right path, so much the better for him and--for
+me. I'll know if he's worth the chance I took to-morrow. Now let us talk
+about something else. Will you allow me to escort you across the heath
+and see you safely on your way home? Or would you prefer that I should
+remain in the background as before?"
+
+"How ungrateful you must think me, to suggest such a thing as that," she
+said with a reproachful smile. "Walk with me if you will be so kind. I
+hope you know that this is the third time you have rendered me a service
+since I had the pleasure of meeting you. It is very nice of you; and I
+am extremely grateful. I wonder you find the time or--well, take the
+trouble," rather archly; "a great man like you."
+
+"Shall I take off my hat and say 'thank you, ma'am'; or just the
+hackneyed 'Praise from Sir Hubert is praise indeed'?" he said with a
+laugh as he fell into step with her and they faced the mist and the
+distance together. "I suppose you are alluding to my success in the
+famous Stanhope Case--the newspapers made a great fuss over that, Mr.
+Narkom tells me. But--please. One big success doesn't make a 'great man'
+any more than one rosebush makes a garden."
+
+"Are you fishing for a compliment? Or is that really natural modesty? I
+had heard of your exploits and seen your name in the papers, oh, dozens
+of times before I first had the pleasure of meeting you; and since then
+... No, I shan't flatter you by saying how many successes I have seen
+recorded to your credit in the past two years. Do you know that I have a
+natural predilection for such things? It may be morbid of me--is
+it?--but I have the strongest kind of a leaning toward the tales of
+Gaboriau; and I have always wanted to know a really great
+detective--like Lecocq, or Dupin. And that day at Ascot when Mr. Narkom
+told me that he would introduce me to the famous 'Man of the Forty
+Faces' ... Mr. Cleek, why do they call you 'the Man of the Forty Faces'?
+You always look the same to me."
+
+"Perhaps I shan't, when we come to the end of the heath and get into the
+public street, where there are lights and people," he said. "That I
+always look the same in your eyes, Miss Lorne, is because I have but one
+face for you, and that is my real one. Not many people see it, even
+among the men of The Yard whom I occasionally work with. You do,
+however; so does Mr. Narkom, occasionally. So did that boy,
+unfortunately. I had to show it when I came to your assistance, if only
+to assure you that you were in friendly hands and to prevent you taking
+fright and running off into the mist in a panic and losing yourself
+where even I might not be able to find you. That is why I told the boy
+to apply for work to 'Captain Burbage of Clarges Street.' _I_ am Captain
+Burbage, Miss Lorne. Nobody knows that but my good friend Mr. Narkom
+and, now, you."
+
+"I shall respect it, of course," she said. "I hope I need not assure you
+of that, Mr. Cleek."
+
+"You need assure me of nothing, Miss Lorne," he made reply. "I owe so
+much more to you than you are aware, that--Oh, well, it doesn't matter.
+You asked me a question a moment ago. If you want the answer to it--look
+here."
+
+He stopped short as he spoke; the pocket-torch clicked faintly and from
+the shelter of a curved hand, the glow of it struck upward to his face.
+It was not the same face for ten seconds at a time. What Sir Horace
+Wyvern had seen in Mr. Narkom's private office at Scotland Yard on that
+night of nights more than two years ago, Sir Horace Wyvern's niece saw
+now.
+
+"Oh!" she said, with a sharp intaking of the breath as she saw the
+writhing features knot and twist and blend. "Oh, don't! It is uncanny!
+It is amazing. It is awful!" And, after a moment, when the light had
+been shut off and the man beside her was only a shape in the mist: "I
+hope I may never see you do it again," she merely more than whispered.
+"It is the most appalling thing. I can't think how you do it--how you
+came by the power to do such a thing."
+
+"Perhaps by inheritance," said Cleek, as they walked on again. "Once
+upon a time, Miss Lorne, there was a--er--lady of extremely high
+position who, at a time when she should have been giving her thoughts
+to--well, more serious things, used to play with one of those curious
+little rubber faces which you can pinch up into all sorts of distorted
+countenances--you have seen the things, no doubt. She would sit for
+hours screaming with laughter over the droll shapes into which she
+squeezed the thing. Afterward, when her little son was born, he
+inherited the trick of that rubber face as a birthright. It may have
+been the same case with me. Let us say it was, and drop the subject,
+since you have not found the sight a pleasing one. Now tell me
+something, please, that I want to know about you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+"About me, Mr. Cleek?"
+
+"Yes. You spoke about there being a change in your circumstances--spoke
+as though you thought I knew. I do not; but I should like to if I may.
+It will perhaps explain why you are out alone and in this neighbourhood
+at this time of night."
+
+"It will," she said, with just a shadow of deeper colour coming into her
+cheeks. "The house you saw me coming out of is the residence of a friend
+and former schoolmate. I went there to inquire if she could help me in
+any way to secure a position; and stopped later than I realised."
+
+"Procure you a position, Miss Lorne? A position as what?"
+
+"Companion, amanuensis, governess--anything that," with a laugh and a
+blush, "'respectable young females' may do to earn a living when they
+come down in the world. You may possibly have heard that my uncle, Sir
+Horace, has married again. I think you must have done so, for the papers
+were full of it at the time. But I forget"--quizzically--"you don't read
+newspapers, do you, even when they contain accounts of your own
+greatness."
+
+"I wonder if I deserve that? At any rate, I got it," said Cleek with a
+laugh. "Yes, I heard all about Sir Horace's wedding. Some four or five
+months ago, wasn't it?"
+
+"No, three--three, last Thursday, the fourteenth. A woman doesn't forget
+the date of her enforced abdication. The new Lady Wyvern soon let me
+know that I was a superfluous person in the household. To-day, I came to
+the conclusion to leave it; and have taken the first actual step toward
+doing so. A lucky step, too, I fancy; or, at least, it promises to be."
+
+"As how?"
+
+"My friend knows of two people who would be likely to need me: one, a
+titled lady here in England, who might be 'very glad to have me'--I am
+quoting that, please--as governess to her little boy. The other, a young
+French girl who is returning shortly to Paris, who also might be 'glad
+to have me' as companion. Of course, I would sooner remain in England,
+but--well, it is nicer to be a companion than a governess; and the young
+lady is very nearly my own age. Indeed, we were actually at the same
+school together when we were very little girls."
+
+"I see," said Cleek, a trifle gloomily. "So then it is possible that it
+will, eventually, be the young French lady and--Paris, in future. When,
+do you fancy? Soon?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know about that. I haven't quite made up my mind as yet
+which of the two it will be. And then there's the application to be sent
+afterwards."
+
+"Still, it will be one of the two certainly?"
+
+"Oh, yes. I shall have to earn my living in future, you know; so,
+naturally, of course--" She gave her shoulder an eloquent upward
+movement, and let the rest go by default.
+
+Cleek did not speak for a moment: merely walked on beside her--a ridge
+between his eyebrows and his lower lip sucked in; as if he were mentally
+debating upon something and was afraid he might speak incautiously. But
+of a sudden:
+
+"Miss Lorne," he said, in a curiously tense voice, "may I ask you
+something? Let us say that you had set your heart upon obtaining one or
+the other of these two positions--set it so entirely that life wouldn't
+be worth a straw to you if you didn't get it. Let us say, too, that
+there was something you had done, something in your past which, if
+known, might utterly preclude the possibility of your obtaining what you
+wanted--it is an absurd hypothesis, of course: but let us use it for the
+sake of argument. We will say you had done your best to live down that
+offensive 'something' done, and were still doing all that lay in your
+power to atone for it; that nobody but one person shared the knowledge
+of that 'something' with you, and upon his silence you could rely. Now
+tell me: would you feel justified in accepting the position upon which
+you had set your heart _without_ confessing the thing; or would you feel
+in duty bound to speak, well knowing that it would in all human
+probability be the end of all your hopes? I should like to have your
+opinion upon that point, please."
+
+"I can't see that I or anybody else could have other than the one," she
+replied. "It is an age-old maxim, is it not, Mr. Cleek, that two wrongs
+cannot by any possibility constitute a right? I should feel in duty
+bound, in honour bound, to speak, of course. To do the other would be to
+obtain the position by fraud--to steal it, as a thief steals things that
+_he_ wants. No sort of atonement is possible, is even worth the name, if
+it is backed up by deceit, Mr. Cleek."
+
+"Even though that deceit is the only thing that could give you your
+heart's desire? The only thing that could open the Gates of Heaven for
+you?"
+
+"The 'Gates of Heaven,' as you put it, can never be opened with a lie,
+Mr. Cleek. They might be opened by the very thing of which you
+speak--confession. I think I should take my chances upon that. At any
+rate, if I failed, I should at least have preserved my self-respect and
+done more to merit what I wanted than if I had secured it by treachery.
+Think of the boy you helped a little while ago. How much respect will
+you have for him if he never lives up to his promise; never goes to
+Clarges Street at all? Yet if he does live up to it, will he not be
+doubly worth the saving? But please!" with a sudden change from
+seriousness to gaiety, "if I am to be led into sermonizing, might I not
+know what it is all about? I shall be right, shall I not, in supposing
+that all this is merely the preface to something else?"
+
+"Either the Preface or--the Finis," said Cleek, with a deeply drawn
+breath. "Still, as you say, no atonement is worth calling an atonement
+if it is based upon fraud; and so--Miss Lorne, I am going to ask you to
+indulge in yet another little flight of fancy. Carry your mind back,
+will you, to the night when your cousin--to the night two years ago when
+Sir Horace Wyvern's daughter had her wedding presents stolen and you, I
+believe, had rather a trying moment with that fellow who was known as
+'The Vanishing Cracksman.' You can remember it, can you not?"
+
+"Remember it? I shall never forget it. I thought, when the police ran
+down stairs and left me with him, that I was talking to Mr. Narkom. I
+think I nearly went daft with terror when I found out that it was he."
+
+"And you found it out only through his telling you, did you not?
+Afterward, I am told, the police found you lying fainting at the foot of
+the stairs. The man had touched you, spoken to you, even caught up your
+hand and put it to his lips? Can you remember what he said when he did
+that? Can you?"
+
+"Yes," she answered, with a little shudder of recollection. "For weeks
+afterward I used to wake up in the middle of the night thinking of it
+and going cold all over. He said, 'You have come down into Hell and
+lifted me out. Under God, you shall lift me into Heaven as well!'"
+
+"And perhaps you shall," said Cleek, stopping short and uncovering his
+head. "At any rate, I'll not attempt to win it by fraud. Miss Lorne, I
+am that man. I am the 'Vanishing Cracksman' of those other days. I've
+walked the 'straight path' since the moment I kissed your hand."
+
+She said nothing, made no faintest sound. She couldn't--all the
+strength, all the power to do anything but simply stand and look at him
+had gone out of her. But even so, she was conscious--dimly but yet
+conscious--of a feeling of relief that they had come at last close to
+the end of the heath, that there was the faint glow of lights dimly
+observable through the enfolding mist, and that there was the rumble of
+wheels, the pulse of life, the law-guarded paths of the city's streets
+beyond.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+She could not herself have been more conscious of that feeling of relief
+than he was of its coming. It spoke to him in the swift glance she gave
+toward those distant, fog-blurred lights, in the white, drained face of
+her, in the shrinking backward movement of her body when he spoke again;
+and something within him voiced "the exceeding bitter cry."
+
+"I am not sure that I even hoped you would take the revelation in any
+other way than this," he said. "A hawk--even a tamed one--must be a
+thing of terror in the eyes of a dove. Still, I am not sorry that I have
+made the confession, Miss Lorne. When the worst has been told, a burden
+rolls away."
+
+"Yes," she acquiesced faintly, finding her voice; but finding it only to
+lose it again. "But that you--that _you_...." And was faint and very
+still again.
+
+"Shall we go on? It isn't more than fifty paces to the road; and you may
+rely upon finding a taxicab there. Would you like me to show you the
+way?"
+
+"Yes, please. I--oh, don't think me unsympathetic, unkind, severe. It is
+such a shock; it is all so horrible--I mean--that is.... Let me get used
+to it. I shall never tell, of course--no, never! Now, please, may we not
+walk faster? I am very, very late as it is; and they will be worrying at
+home."
+
+They did walk faster, and in a minute more were at the common's end.
+Cleek stopped and again lifted his hat.
+
+"We will part here, Miss Lorne," he said. "I won't force my company on
+you any further. From here, you are quite beyond all danger, and I am
+sure you would rather I left you to find a taxi for yourself. Good
+night." He did not even offer to put out his hand. "May I say again,
+that I am not sorry I told you? Nor did I ever expect you would, take it
+other than like this. It is only natural. Try to forgive me; or, at the
+least, believe that I have not tried to keep your friendship by a lie,
+or to atone in seeming only. Good night."
+
+He gave her no chance to reply, no time to say one single word. Deep
+wounds require time in which to heal. He knew that he had wounded the
+white soul of her so that it was sick with uncertainty, faint with
+dread; and, putting on his hat, stepped sharply back and let the mist
+take him and hide him from her sight.
+
+But, though she did not see, he was near her even then.
+
+He knew when she walked out into the light-filled street; he knew when
+she found a taxicab; and he did not make an effort to go his way until
+he was sure that she was safely started upon hers. Then he screwed round
+on his heel and went back into the mist and loneliness of the heath, and
+walked, and walked, and walked. Afterward--long afterward: when the
+night was getting old and the town was going to sleep, he, too, fared
+forth in quest of a taxi, and finding one went _his_ way as she had gone
+hers.
+
+In the neighbourhood of Bond Street--now a place of darkness and
+slow-tramping policemen--he dismissed the taxi and continued the journey
+along Piccadilly afoot. It was close to one o'clock when he came at
+length to Clarges Street and swung into it from the Piccadilly end, and
+moved on in the direction of the house which sheltered him and his
+secrets together. But, though he walked with apparent indifference, his
+eye was ever on the lookout for some chance watcher in the windows of
+the other houses; for "Captain Horatio Burbage" was supposed, in the
+neighbourhood, to be a superannuated seaman who maintained a bachelor
+establishment with the aid of an elderly housekeeper and a deaf-and-dumb
+maid of all work.
+
+But no one was on the watch to-night; and it was only when he came at
+last to the pillared portico of his own residence that he found any sign
+of life from one end of the street to the other. He did find it then,
+however; for the boy, Dollops, was sitting huddled up on the top step
+with the thick shadow of the portico making a safe screen for him.
+
+He had made good use of the two half-crowns, for he had not only
+feasted--and was feasting still: on a bag of winkles and a saveloy--but
+was washed and brushed and had gone to the length of a shoe-shine and a
+collar.
+
+"Been waitin' since eleven o'clock, sir," he said, getting up and
+pulling his forelock as Cleek appeared. "Didn't knock and arsk for no
+one, though--not me. Twigged as it would be you, sir, on account of your
+sayin' to-night. I've read summink of the ways of 'tecs. Wot ho!"
+
+"You seem a sharp little customer, at all events," said Cleek with a
+curious one-sided smile--a smile that was peculiar to him. "I somehow
+fancy that I've made a good investment, Dollops. Filled up, eh?"
+
+"No, sir--never filled. Born 'ungry, I reckon. But filled as much as you
+could fill me, bless your 'eart. I aren't never goin' to forget that,
+Gov'nor--no fear. An eater and a scrapper I am, sir; and I'll scrap for
+_you_, sir, while there's a bloomin' breff left in my blessed body!
+Gimme the tip wot kind of work I _can_ do for you, Gov'nor, will you? I
+want to get them two 'arf-crowns off my conscience as quick as I can."
+
+Cleek looked at him and smiled again.
+
+"Yes, I'm _sure_ I made a good bargain, Dollops," he said. "Come in."
+And in this way the attachment which existed between them ever afterward
+had its beginning.
+
+He took the boy in and up to the little room on the second floor which
+he called his den; and, turning on the light, motioned him to a chair,
+laid aside his hat and gloves, and was just about to pull up a chair for
+himself when he caught sight of an unstamped letter lying upon his
+writing-table.
+
+"Sit down there and wait a moment until I read this, my lad," he said;
+and forthwith tore the letter open.
+
+It was from Superintendent Narkom. He had known that from the first,
+however. No one but Narkom ever wrote him letters. This one was
+exceedingly brief. It simply contained these two lines:
+
+"My dear Cleek. The Three Jolly Fishermen, Richmond, at tea-time
+to-morrow. An astonishing affair. Yours, M. N."
+
+"Dollops, my lad, I think I'm going to make a man of you," he said as he
+tore the letter into a dozen pieces and tossed the fragments into a
+waste-basket. "At any rate, I'm going to have a try. Know anything about
+Richmond?"
+
+"Yuss, sir."
+
+"Good. Well, we'll have a half-hour's talk and then I'll find a
+temporary bed for you for the night, and to-morrow we'll take a pull on
+the river at Richmond and see what we shall see."
+
+The half-hour, however, developed into a full one; for it was after two
+o'clock when the talk was finished and a bed improvised for the boy; but
+Cleek, saying good night to him at last and going to his own bedroom,
+felt that it was a long, long way from being time wasted.
+
+What Dollops thought is, perhaps, best told by the fact that he burst
+out crying when Cleek came in in the morning to ask how he had slept.
+
+"Slept, Gov'nor!" he said. "Why, bless your 'eart, sir, I couldn't a
+slept better on a bed of roses, nor 'ad 'arf such comfort. Feel like I
+needed someone to lend me a biff on the coco, sir, to make sure as I
+aren't a dreamin'--it's so wot a cove fancies 'Eaven to be like, sir."
+
+And afterward, when the day was older, and they had gone to Richmond,
+and Cleek--in his boating flannels--was pulling him up the shining river
+and talking to him again as he had talked last night, he felt that it
+was even more like Heaven than ever.
+
+It was after four--long after--when they finally separated and Cleek,
+leaving the boy in charge of the boat, stepped ashore in the
+neighbourhood of the inn of the Three Jolly Fishermen and went to keep
+his appointment with Narkom.
+
+He found him enjoying tea at a little round table in the niche of a big
+bay window in the small private parlour which lay immediately behind the
+bar-room.
+
+"My dear chap, do forgive me for not waiting," said the superintendent
+contritely, as Cleek came in, looking like a college-bred athlete in his
+boating-flannels and his brim-tilted panama. "But the fact is you are a
+little later than I anticipated; and I was simply famishing."
+
+"Share the blame of my lateness with me, Mr. Narkom," said Cleek as he
+tossed aside his hat and threw the fag-end of his cigarette through the
+open window. "You merely said 'tea-time,' not any particular hour; and I
+improved the opportunity to take another spin up the river and to talk
+like a Dutch uncle to a certain young man whom I shall introduce to your
+notice in due time. It isn't often that duty calls me to a little Eden
+like this. The air is like balm to-day; and the river--oh, the river is
+a sheer delight."
+
+Narkom rang for a fresh pot of tea and a further supply of buttered
+toast, and, when these were served, Cleek sat down and joined him.
+
+"I dare say," said the superintendent, opening fire at once, "that you
+wonder what in the world induced me to bring you out here to meet me, my
+dear fellow, instead of following the usual course and calling at
+Clarges Street? Well, the fact is, Cleek, that the gentleman with whom I
+am now about to put you in touch lives in this vicinity, and is so
+placed that he cannot get away without running the risk of having the
+step he is taking discovered."
+
+"Humph! He is closely spied upon, then?" commented Cleek. "The trouble
+arises from someone or something in his own household?"
+
+"No--in his father's. The 'trouble,' so far as I can gather, seems to
+emanate from his stepmother, a young and very beautiful woman, who was
+born on the island of Java, where the father of our client met and
+married her some two years ago, whither he had gone to probe into the
+truth of the amazing statement that a runic stone had been unearthed in
+that part of the globe."
+
+"Ah, then you need not tell me the gentleman's name, Mr. Narkom,"
+interposed Cleek. "I remember perfectly well the stir which that
+ridiculous and unfounded statement created at the time. Despite the fact
+that scholars of all nations scoffed at the thing, and pointed out that
+the very term 'rune' is of Teutonic origin, one enthusiastic old
+gentleman--Mr. Michael Bawdrey, a retired brewer, thirsting for
+something more enduring than malt to carry his name down the
+ages--became fired with enthusiasm upon the subject, and set forth for
+Java 'hot foot,' as one might say. I remember that the papers made great
+game of him; but I heard, I fancy, that, in spite of all, he was a dear,
+lovable old chap, and not at all like the creature the cartoonists
+portrayed him."
+
+"What a memory you have, my dear Cleek. Yes, that is the party; and he
+_is_ a dear, lovable old chap at bottom. Collects old china, old
+weapons, old armour, curiosities of all sorts--lots of 'em bogus, no
+doubt; catch the charlatans among the dealers letting a chance like that
+slip them--and is never so happy as when showing his 'collection' to his
+friends and being mistaken by the ignorant for a man of deep learning."
+
+"A very human trait, Mr. Narkom. We all are anxious that the world
+should set the highest possible valuation upon us. It is only when we
+are underrated that we object. So this dear, deluded old gentleman,
+having failed to secure a 'rune' in Java, brought back something equally
+cryptic--a woman? Was the lady of his choice a native or merely an
+inhabitant of the island?"
+
+"Merely an inhabitant, my dear fellow. As a matter of fact, she is
+English. Her father, a doctor, long since deceased, took her out there
+in her childhood. She was none too well off, I believe; but that did not
+prevent her having many suitors, among whom was Mr. Bawdrey's own son,
+the gentleman who is anxious to have you take up this case."
+
+"Oho!" said Cleek, with a strong, rising inflection. "So the lady was of
+the careful and calculating kind? She didn't care for youth and all the
+rest of it when she could have papa and the money-chest without waiting.
+A common enough occurrence. Still, this does not make up an 'affair,'
+and especially an 'affair' which requires the assistance of a detective,
+and you spoke of 'a case.' What is the case, Mr. Narkom?"
+
+"I will leave Mr. Philip Bawdrey himself to tell you that," said Narkom,
+as the door opened to admit a young man of about eight-and-twenty,
+clothed in tennis flannels, and looking very much perturbed, a handsome,
+fair-haired, fair-moustached young fellow, with frank, boyish eyes and
+that unmistakable something which stamps the products of the 'Varsities.
+"Come in, Mr. Bawdrey. You said we were not to wait tea, and you see
+that we haven't. Let me have the pleasure of introducing Mr.--"
+
+"Headland," put in Cleek adroitly, and with a look at Narkom as much as
+to say, "Don't give me away. I may not care to take the case when I hear
+it, so what's the use of letting everybody know who I am?" Then he
+switched round in his chair, rose, and held out his hand. "Mr. George
+Headland, of the Yard, Mr. Bawdrey. I don't trust Mr. Narkom's
+proverbially tricky memory for names. He introduced me as Jones once,
+and I lost the opportunity of handling the case because the party in
+question couldn't believe that anybody named Jones would be likely to
+ferret it out."
+
+"Funny idea, that!" commented young Bawdrey, smiling, and accepting the
+proffered hand. "Rum lot of people you must run across in your line, Mr.
+Headland. Shouldn't take you for a detective myself, shouldn't even in a
+room full of them. College man, aren't you? Thought so. Oxon or Cantab?"
+
+"Cantab--Emmanuel."
+
+"Oh, Lord! Never thought I'd ever live to appeal to an Emmanuel man to
+do anything brilliant. I'm an Oxon chap; Brasenose is my alma mater. I
+say, Mr. Narkom, do give me a cup of tea, will you? I had to slip off
+while the others were at theirs, and I've run all the way. Thanks very
+much. Don't mind if I sit in that corner and draw the curtain a little,
+do you?" his frank, boyish face suddenly clouding. "I don't want to be
+seen by anybody passing. It's a horrible thing to feel that you are
+being spied upon, at every turn, Mr. Headland, and that want of caution
+may mean the death of the person you love best in all the world."
+
+"Oh, it's that kind of case, is it?" queried Cleek, making room for him
+to pass round the table and sit in the corner, with his back to the
+window and the loosened folds of the chintz curtain keeping him in the
+shadow.
+
+"Yes," answered young Bawdrey, with a half-repressed shudder and a
+deeper clouding of his rather pale face. "Sometimes I try to make myself
+believe that it isn't, that it's all fancy, that she never could be so
+inhuman, and yet how else is it to be explained? You can't go behind the
+evidence; you can't make things different simply by saying that you will
+not believe." He stirred his tea nervously, gulped down a couple of
+mouthfuls of it, and then set the cup aside. "I can't enjoy anything; it
+takes the savour out of everything when I think of it," he added, with a
+note of pathos in his voice. "My dad, my dear, bully old dad, the best
+and dearest old boy in all the world! I suppose, Mr. Headland, that Mr.
+Narkom has told you something about the case?"
+
+"A little--a very little indeed. I know that your father went to Java,
+and married a second wife there; and I know, too, that you yourself were
+rather taken with the lady at one time, and that she threw you over as
+soon as Mr. Bawdrey senior became a possibility."
+
+"That's a mistake," he replied. "She never threw me over, Mr. Headland;
+she never had the chance. I found her out long before my father became
+anything like what you might call a rival, found her out as a mercenary,
+designing woman, and broke from her voluntarily. I only wish that I had
+known that he had one serious thought regarding her. I could have warned
+him; I could have spoken then. But I never did find out until it was too
+late. Trust her for that. She waited until I had gone up-country to look
+after some fine old porcelains and enamels that the governor had heard
+about; then she hurried him off and tricked him into a hasty marriage.
+Of course, after that I couldn't speak--I wouldn't speak. She was my
+father's wife, and he was so proud of her, so happy, dear old boy, that
+I'd have been little better than a brute to say anything against her."
+
+"What could you have said if you had spoken?"
+
+"Oh, lots of things--the things that made me break away from her in the
+beginning. She'd had more love affairs than one; her late father's
+masquerading as a doctor for another. They had only used that as a
+cloak. They had run a gambling-house on the sly--he as the card-sharper,
+she as the decoy. They had drained one poor fellow dry, and she had
+thrown him over after leading him on to think that she cared for him and
+was going to marry him. He blew out his brains in front of her, poor
+wretch. They say she never turned a hair. You wouldn't believe it
+possible, if you saw her; she is so sweet and caressing, and so young
+and beautiful, you'd almost believe her an angel. But there's Travers in
+the background--always Travers."
+
+"Travers! Who is he?"
+
+"Oh, one of her old flames, the only one she ever really cared for, they
+say. She was supposed to have broken with him out there in Java, because
+they were too poor to marry; and now he's come over to England, and he's
+there, in the house with the dear old dad and me, and they are as thick
+as thieves together. I've caught them whispering and prowling about
+together, in the grounds and along the lanes, after she has said 'Good
+night,' and gone to her room and is supposed to be in bed. There's a
+houseful of her old friends three parts of the time. They come and they
+go, but Travers never goes. I know why"--waxing suddenly excited,
+suddenly vehement--"yes! I know why. He's in the game with her!"
+
+"Game! What game, Mr. Bawdrey? What is it that she is doing?"
+
+"She's killing my old dad!" he answered, with a sort of sob in his
+excited voice. "She's murdering him by inches, that's what she's doing,
+and I want you to help me bring it home to her. God knows what it is
+she's using or how she uses it; but you know what demons they are for
+secret poisons, those Javanese, what means they have of killing people
+without a trace. And she was out there for years and years. So, too, was
+Travers, the brute! They know all the secrets of those beastly
+barbarians, and between them they're doing something to my old dad."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"I don't know it--that's the worst of it. But I couldn't be surer of it
+if they took me into their secrets. But there's the evidence of his
+condition; there's the fact that it didn't begin until after Travers
+came. Look here, Mr. Headland, you don't know my dad. He's got the
+queerest notions sometimes. One of his fads is that it's unlucky to make
+a will. Well, if he dies without one, who will inherit his money, as I
+am an only child?"
+
+"Undoubtedly you and his widow."
+
+"Exactly. And if I die at pretty nearly the same time--and they'll see
+to that, never fear; it will be my turn the moment they are sure of
+him--she will inherit everything. Now, let me tell you what's happening.
+From being a strong, healthy man, my father has, since Travers's
+arrival, begun to be attacked by a mysterious malady. He has periodical
+fainting-fits, sometimes convulsions. He'll be feeling better for a day
+or so; then, without a word of warning, whilst you're talking to him,
+he'll drop like a shot bird and go into the most horrible convulsions.
+The doctors can't stop it; they don't even know what it is. They only
+know that he's fading away--turning from a strong, virile old man into a
+thin, nervous, shivering wreck. But I know! I know! They're dosing him
+somehow with some diabolical Javanese thing, those two. And
+yesterday--God help me!--yesterday, I, too, dropped like a shot bird; I,
+too, had the convulsions and the weakness and the fainting-fit. My time
+has begun also!"
+
+"Bless my soul! what a diabolical thing!" put in Narkom agitatedly. "No
+wonder you appealed to me!"
+
+"No wonder!" Bawdrey replied. "I felt that it had gone as far as I dared
+to let it; that it was time to call in the police and to have help
+before it was too late. That's the case, Mr. Headland. I want you to
+find some way of getting at the truth, of looking into Travers's
+luggage, into my stepmother's effects, and unearthing the horrible stuff
+with which they are doing this thing; and perhaps, when that is known,
+some antidote may be found to save the dear old dad and restore him to
+what he was. Can't you do this? For God's sake, say that you can."
+
+"At all events, I can try, Mr. Bawdrey," responded Cleek.
+
+"Oh, thank you, thank you!" said Bawdrey gratefully. "I don't care a
+hang what it costs, what your fees are, Mr. Headland. So long as you run
+those two to earth, and get hold of the horrible stuff, whatever it is,
+that they are using, I'll pay any price in the world, and count it cheap
+as compared with the life of my dear old dad. When can you take hold of
+the case? Now?"
+
+"I'm afraid not. Mysterious things like this require a little thinking
+over. Suppose we say to-morrow noon? Will that do?"
+
+"I suppose it must, although I should have liked to take you back with
+me. Every moment's precious at a time like this. But if it must be
+delayed until to-morrow--well, it must, I suppose. But I'll take jolly
+good care that nobody gets a chance to come within touching distance of
+the pater--bless him!--until you do come, if I have to sit on the mat
+before his door until morning. Here's the address on this card, Mr.
+Headland. When and how shall I expect to see you again? You'll use an
+alias, of course?"
+
+"Oh, certainly! Had you any old friend in your college days whom your
+father only knew by name and who is now too far off for the imposture to
+be discovered?"
+
+"Yes. Jim Rickaby. We were as inseparable as the Siamese twins in our
+undergrad days. He's in Borneo now. Haven't heard from him in a dog's
+age."
+
+"Couldn't be better," said Cleek. "Then 'Jim Rickaby' let it be. You'll
+get a letter from him first thing in the morning saying that he's back
+in England, and about to run down and spend the week-end with you. At
+noon he will arrive, accompanied by his Borneo servant,
+named--er--Dollops. You can put the 'blackie' up in some quarter of the
+house where he can move about at will without disturbing any of your own
+servants, and can get in and out at all hours; he will be useful, you
+know, in prowling about the grounds at night and ascertaining if the
+lady really does go to bed when she retires to her room. As for 'Jim
+Rickaby' himself--well, you can pave the way for his operations by
+informing your father, when you get the letter, that he has gone daft on
+the subject of old china and curios and things of that sort, don't you
+know."
+
+"What a ripping idea!" commented young Bawdrey. "I twig. He'll get
+chummy with you, of course, and you can lead him on and adroitly 'pump'
+him regarding her, and where she keeps her keys and things like that.
+That's the idea, isn't it?"
+
+"Something of that sort. I'll find out all about her, never fear," said
+Cleek in reply. Then they shook hands and parted, and it was not until
+after young Bawdry had gone that either he or Narkom recollected that
+Cleek had overlooked telling the young man that Headland was not his
+name.
+
+"Oh, well, it doesn't matter. Time enough to tell him that when it comes
+to making out the cheque," said Cleek, as the superintendent remarked
+upon the circumstance. Then he pushed back his chair and walked over to
+the window, and stood looking silently out upon the flowing river.
+Narkom did not disturb his reflections. He knew from past experience, as
+well as from the manner in which he took his lower lip between his teeth
+and drummed with his finger-tips upon the window-ledge, that some idea
+relative to the working out of the case had taken shape within his mind,
+and so, with the utmost discretion, went on with his tea and refrained
+from speaking. Suddenly Cleek turned. "Mr. Narkom, do me a favour, will
+you? Look me up a copy of Holman's 'Diseases of the Kidneys' when you go
+back to town. I'll send Dollops round to the Yard to-night to get it."
+
+"Right you are," said Narkom, taking out his pocket-book and making a
+note of it. "But, I say, look here, my dear fellow, you can't possibly
+believe that it's anything of that sort--anything natural, I mean--in
+the face of what we've heard?"
+
+"No, I don't. I think it's something confoundedly unnatural, and that
+that poor old chap is being secretly and barbarously murdered. I think
+that--and--I think, too--" His voice trailed off. He stood silent and
+preoccupied for a moment, and then, putting his thoughts into words,
+without addressing them to anybody: "Ayupee!" he said reflectively;
+"Pohon-Upas, Antjar, Galanga root, Ginger and Black Pepper--that's the
+Javanese method of procedure, I believe. Ayupee!--yes, assuredly,
+Ayupee!"
+
+"What the dickens are you talking about, Cleek? And what does all that
+gibberish and that word 'Ayupee' mean?"
+
+"Nothing--nothing. At least, just yet. I say, put on your hat, and let's
+go for a pull on the river, Mr. Narkom. I've had enough of mysteries for
+to-day and am spoiling for another hour in a boat."
+
+Then he screwed round on his heel and walked out into the brilliant
+summer sunshine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Promptly, at the hour appointed, "Mr. Jim Rickaby" and his black servant
+arrived at Laburnam Villa; and certainly the former had no cause to
+complain of the welcome he received at the hands of his beautiful young
+hostess.
+
+He found her not only an extremely lovely woman to the eye, but one
+whose gentle, caressing ways, whose soft voice and simple girlish charm
+were altogether fascinating, and, judging from outward appearances, from
+the tender solicitude for her elderly husband's comfort and well-being,
+from the look in her eyes when she spoke to him, the gentleness of her
+hand when she touched him, one would have said that she really and truly
+loved him, and that it needed no lure of gold to draw this particular
+May to the arms of this one December.
+
+He found Captain Travers a laughing, rollicking, fun-loving type of
+man--at least, to all outward appearances--who seemed to delight in
+sports and games and to have an almost childish love of card tricks and
+that species of entertainment which is known as parlour magic. He found
+the three other members of the little house-party--to wit: Mrs.
+Somerby-Miles, Lieutenant Forshay, and Mr. Robert Murdock--respectively,
+a silly, flirtatious, little gadfly of a widow; a callow, love-struck,
+lap-dog, young army officer, with a budding moustache and a full-blown
+idea of his own importance; and a dour Scotchman of middle age, with a
+passion for chess, a glowering scorn of frivolities, and a deep and
+abiding conviction that Scotland was the only country in the world for a
+self-respecting human being to dwell in, and that everything outside of
+the Established Church was foredoomed to flames and sulphur and the
+perpetual prodding of red-hot pitchforks. And last, but not least by any
+means, he found Mr. Michael Bawdrey just what he had been told he would
+find him, namely, a dear, lovable, sunny-tempered old man, who fairly
+idolised his young wife and absolutely adored his frank-faced,
+affectionate, big boy of a son, and who ought not, in the common course
+of things, to have an enemy or an evil wisher in all the world.
+
+The news, which, of course, had preceded Cleek's arrival, that this
+whilom college chum of his son's was as great an enthusiast as he
+himself on the subject of old china, old porcelain, bric-a-brac and
+curios of every sort, filled him with the utmost delight, and he could
+scarcely refrain from rushing him off at once to view his famous
+collection.
+
+"Michael, dear, you mustn't overdo yourself just because you happen to
+have been a little stronger these past two days," said his wife, laying
+a gentle hand upon his arm. "Besides, we must give Mr. Rickaby time to
+breathe. He has had a long journey, and I am sure he will want to rest.
+You can take him in to see that wonderful collection after dinner,
+dear."
+
+"Humph! Full of fakes, as I supposed--and she knows it," was Cleek's
+mental comment upon this. And he was not surprised when, finding herself
+alone with him a few minutes later, she said, in her pretty, pleading
+way:
+
+"Mr. Rickaby, if you are an expert, don't undeceive him. I could not let
+you go to see the collection without first telling you. It is full of
+bogus things, full of frauds and shams that unscrupulous dealers have
+palmed off on him. But don't let him know. He takes such pride in them,
+and--and he's breaking down--God pity me, his health is breaking down
+every day, Mr. Rickaby, and I want to spare him every pang, if I can,
+even so little a pang as the discovery that the things he prizes are not
+real."
+
+"Set your mind at rest, Mrs. Bawdrey," promised Cleek. "He will not find
+it out from me. He will not find anything out from me. He is just the
+kind of man to break his heart, to crumple up like a burnt glove, and
+come to the end of all things, even life, if he were to discover that
+any of his treasures, anything that he loved and trusted in, is a sham
+and a fraud."
+
+His eyes looked straight into hers as he spoke, his hand rested lightly
+on her sleeve. She sucked in her breath suddenly, a brief pallor chased
+the roses from her cheeks, a brief confusion sat momentarily upon her.
+She appeared to hesitate, then looked away and laughed uneasily.
+
+"I don't think I quite grasp what you mean, Mr. Rickaby," she said.
+
+"Don't you?" he made answer. "Then I will tell you--some
+time--to-morrow, perhaps. But if I were you, Mrs. Bawdrey--well, no
+matter. This I promise you: that dear old man shall have no ideal
+shattered by me."
+
+And, living up to that promise, he enthused over everything the old man
+had in his collection when, after dinner that night, they went, in
+company with Philip, to view it. But bogus things were on every hand.
+Spurious porcelains, fraudulent armour, faked china were everywhere. The
+loaded cabinets and the glazed cases were one long procession of faked
+Dresden and bogus faience, of Egyptian enamels that had been
+manufactured in Birmingham, and of sixth-century "treasures" whose
+makers were still plying their trade and battening upon the ignorance of
+such collectors as he.
+
+"Now, here's a thing I am particularly proud of," said the gulled old
+man, reaching into one of the cases and holding out for Cleek's
+admiration an irregular disc of dull, hammered gold that had an
+iridescent beetle embedded in the flat face of it. "This scarab, Mr.
+Rickaby, has helped to make history, as one might say. It was once the
+property of Cleopatra. I was obliged to make two trips to Egypt before I
+could persuade the owner to part with it. I am always conscious of a
+certain sense of awe, Mr. Rickaby, when I touch this wonderful thing. To
+think, sir, to think! that this bauble once rested on the bosom of that
+marvellous woman; that Mark Antony must have seen it, may have touched
+it; that Ptolemy Auletes knew all about it, and that it is older, sir,
+than the Christian religion itself!"
+
+He held it out upon the flat of his palm, the better for Cleek to see
+and to admire it, and signed to his son to hand the visitor a magnifying
+glass.
+
+"Wonderful, most wonderful!" observed Cleek, bending over the spurious
+gem and focussing the glass upon it; not, however, for the purpose of
+studying the fraud, but to examine something just noticed--something
+round and red and angry-looking which marked the palm itself, at the
+base of the middle finger.
+
+"No wonder you are proud of such a prize. I think I should go off my
+head with rapture if I owned an antique like that. But, pardon me, have
+you met with an accident, Mr. Bawdrey? That's an ugly place you have on
+your palm."
+
+"That? Oh, that's nothing," he answered, gaily. "It itches a great deal
+at times, but otherwise it isn't troublesome. I can't think how in the
+world I got it, to tell the truth. It came out as a sort of red blister
+in the beginning, and since it broke it has been spreading a great deal.
+But, really, it doesn't amount to anything at all."
+
+"Oh, that's just like you, dad," put in Philip, "always making light of
+the wretched thing. I notice one thing, however, Rickaby, it seems to
+grow worse instead of better. And dad knows as well as I do when it
+began. It came out suddenly about a fortnight ago, after he had been
+holding some green worsted for my stepmother to wind into balls. Just
+look at it, will you, old chap?"
+
+"Nonsense, nonsense!" chimed in the old man, laughingly. "Don't mind the
+silly boy, Mr. Rickaby. He will have it that that green worsted is to
+blame, just because he happened to spy the thing the morning after."
+
+"Let's have a look at it," said Cleek, moving nearer the light. Then,
+after a close examination, "I don't think it amounts to anything, after
+all," he added, as he laid aside the glass. "I shouldn't worry myself
+about it if I were you, Phil. It's just an ordinary blister, nothing
+more. Let's go on with the collection, Mr. Bawdrey; I'm deeply
+interested in it, I assure you. Never saw such a marvellous lot. Got any
+more amazing things--gems, I mean--like that wonderful scarab? I
+say!"--halting suddenly before a long, narrow case, with a glass front,
+which stood on end in a far corner, and, being lined with black velvet,
+brought into ghastly prominence the suspended shape of a human skeleton
+contained within--"I say! What the dickens is this? Looks like a
+doctor's specimen, b'gad. You haven't let anybody--I mean, you haven't
+been buying any prehistoric bones, have you, Mr. Bawdrey?"
+
+"Oh, that?" laughed the old man, turning round and seeing to what he was
+alluding. "Oh, that's a curiosity of quite a different sort, Mr.
+Rickaby. You are right in saying it looks like a doctor's specimen. It
+is--or, rather, it was. Mrs. Bawdrey's father was a doctor, and it once
+belonged to him. Properly, it ought to have no place in a collection of
+this sort, but--well, it's such an amazing thing I couldn't quite refuse
+it a place, sir. It's a freak of nature. The skeleton of a nine-fingered
+man."
+
+"Of a what?"
+
+"A nine-fingered man."
+
+"Well, I can't say that I see anything remarkable in that. I've got nine
+fingers myself, nine and one over, when it comes to that."
+
+"No, you haven't, you duffer!" put in young Bawdrey, with a laugh.
+"You've got eight fingers--eight fingers and two thumbs. This bony
+johnny has nine fingers and two thumbs. That's what makes him a freak. I
+say, dad, open the beggar's box, and let Rickaby see."
+
+His father obeyed the request. Lifting the tiny brass latch which alone
+secured it, he swung open the glazed door of the case, and, reaching in,
+drew forward the flexible left arm of the skeleton.
+
+"There you are," he said, supporting the bony hand upon his palm, so
+that all its fingers were spread out and Cleek might get a clear view of
+the monstrosity. "What a trial he must have been to the glove trade,
+mustn't he?" laughing gaily. "Fancy the confusion and dismay, Mr.
+Rickaby, if a fellow like this walked into a Bond Street shop in a hurry
+and asked for a pair of gloves."
+
+Cleek bent over and examined the thing with interest. At first glance,
+the hand was no different from any other skeleton hand one might see any
+day in any place where they sold anatomical specimens for the use of
+members of the medical profession; but as Mr. Bawdrey, holding it on the
+palm of his right hand, flattened it out with the fingers of his left,
+the abnormality at once became apparent. Springing from the base of the
+fourth finger, a perfectly developed fifth appeared, curling inward
+toward what had once been the palm of the hand, as though, in life, it
+had been the owner's habit of screening it from observation by holding
+it in that position. It was, however, perfectly flexible, and Mr.
+Bawdrey had no difficulty in making it lie out flat after the manner of
+its mates.
+
+The sight was not inspiring--the freaks of mother Nature rarely are. No
+one but a doctor would have cared to accept the thing as a gift, and no
+one but a man as mad on the subject of curiosities and with as little
+sense of discrimination as Mr. Bawdrey would have dreamt for a moment of
+adding it to a collection.
+
+"It's rather uncanny," said Cleek, who had no palate for the abnormal in
+Nature. "For myself, I may frankly admit that I don't like things of
+that sort about me."
+
+"You are very much like my wife in that," responded the old man. "She
+was of the opinion that the skeleton ought to have been destroyed or
+else handed over to some anatomical museum. But--well, it is a
+curiosity, you know, Mr. Rickaby. Besides, as I have said, it was once
+the property of her late father, a most learned man, sir, most learned,
+and as it was of sufficient interest for him to retain it--oh, well, we
+collectors are faddists, you know, so I easily persuaded Mrs. Bawdrey to
+allow me to bring it over to England with me when we took our leave of
+Java. And now that you have seen it, suppose we have a look at more
+artistic things. I have some very fine specimens of neolithic implements
+and weapons which I am most anxious to show you. Just step this way,
+please."
+
+He let the skeleton's hand slip from his own, swing back into the case,
+and forthwith closed the glass door upon it; then, leading the way to
+the cabinet containing the specimens referred to, he unlocked it, and
+invited Cleek's opinion of the flint arrow-heads, stone hatchets, and
+granite utensils within.
+
+For a minute they lingered thus, the old man talking, laughing, exulting
+in his possessions, the detective examining and pretending to be deeply
+impressed. Then, of a sudden, without hint or warning to lessen the
+shock of it, the uplifted lid of the cabinet fell with a crash from the
+hand that upheld it, shivering the glass into fifty pieces, and Cleek,
+screwing round on his heel with a "jump" of all his nerves, was in time
+to see the figure of his host crumple up, collapse, drop like a thing
+shot dead, and lie foaming and writhing on the polished floor.
+
+"Dad! Oh, heavens! Dad!" The cry was young Bawdrey's. He seemed fairly
+to throw himself across the intervening space and to reach his father in
+the instant he fell. "Now you know! Now you know!" he went on wildly, as
+Cleek dropped down beside him and began to loosen the old man's collar.
+"It's like this always; not a hint, not a sign, but just this utter
+collapse. My God, what are they doing it with? How are they managing it,
+those two? They're coming, Headland. Listen! Don't you hear them?"
+
+The crash of the broken glass and the jar of the old man's fall had
+swept through all the house, and a moment later, headed by Mrs. Bawdrey
+herself, all the members of the little house-party came piling excitedly
+into the room.
+
+The fright and suffering of the young wife seemed very real as she threw
+herself down beside her husband and caught him to her with a little
+shuddering cry. Then her voice, uplifting in a panic, shrilled out a
+wild appeal for doctor, servants--help of any kind. And, almost as she
+spoke, Travers was beside her, Travers and Forshay and Robert
+Murdock--yes, and silly little Mrs. Somerby-Miles, too, forgetting in
+the face of such a time as this to be anything but helpful and
+womanly--and all of these gave such assistance as was in their power.
+
+"Help me get him up to his own room, somebody, and send a servant
+post-haste for the doctor," said Captain Travers, taking the lead after
+the fashion of a man who is used to command. "Calm yourself as much as
+possible, Mrs. Bawdrey. Here, Murdock, lend a hand and help him."
+
+"Eh, mon, there is nae help but Heaven's in sic a case as this,"
+dolefully responded Murdock, as he came forward and solemnly stooped to
+obey. "The puir auld laddie! The Laird giveth and the Laird taketh awa',
+and the weel o' mon is as naething."
+
+"Oh, stow your croaking, you blundering old fool!" snapped Travers, as
+Mrs. Bawdrey gave a heart-wrung cry and hid her face in her hands. "You
+and your eternal doldrums! Here, Bawdrey, lend a hand, old chap. We can
+get him upstairs without the assistance of this human trombone, I know."
+
+But "this human trombone" was not minded that they should; and so it
+fell out that, when Lieutenant Forshay led Mrs. Somerby-Miles from the
+room, and young Bawdrey and Captain Travers carried the stricken man up
+the stairs to his own bed-chamber, his wife flying in advance to see
+that everything was prepared for him, Cleek, standing all alone beside
+the shattered cabinet, could hear Mr. Robert Murdock's dismal croakings
+rumbling steadily out as he mounted the staircase with the others.
+
+For a moment after the closing door of a room overhead had shut them
+from his ears, he stood there, with puckered brows and pursed-up lips,
+drumming with his finger-tips a faint tattoo upon the framework of the
+shattered lid; then he walked over to the skeleton case, and silently
+regarded the gruesome thing within.
+
+"Nine fingers," he muttered sententiously, "and the ninth curves inward
+to the palm!" He stepped round and viewed the case from all points--both
+sides, the front, and even the narrow space made at the back by the
+angle of the corner where it stood. And after this he walked to the
+other end of the room, took the key from the lock, slipped it in his
+pocket, and went out, closing the door behind him, that none might
+remember it had not been locked when the master of the place was carried
+above.
+
+It was, perhaps, twenty minutes later that young Bawdrey came down and
+found him all alone in the smoking-room, bending over the table whereon
+the butler had set the salver containing the whiskey decanter, the soda
+siphon, and the glasses that were always laid out there, that the
+gentlemen might help themselves to the regulation "night-cap" before
+going to bed.
+
+"I've slipped away to have a word in private with you, Headland," he
+said, in an agitated voice, as he came in. "Oh, what consummate actors
+they are, those two. You'd think her heart was breaking, wouldn't you?
+You'd think--Hullo! I say! What on earth are you doing?" For, as he came
+nearer, he could see that Cleek had removed the glass stopper of the
+decanter, and was tapping with his finger-tips a little funnel of white
+paper, the narrow end of which he had thrust into the neck of the
+bottle.
+
+"Just adding a harmless little sleeping-draught to the nightly
+beverage," said Cleek, in reply, as he screwed up the paper funnel and
+put it in his pocket. "A good sound sleep is an excellent thing, my dear
+fellow, and I mean to make sure that the gentlemen of this house-party
+have it--one gentleman in particular: Captain Travers."
+
+"Yes; but--I say! What about me, old chap? I don't want to be drugged,
+and you know I have to show them the courtesy of taking a 'night-cap'
+with them."
+
+"Precisely. That's where you can help me out. If any of them remark
+anything about the whiskey having a peculiar taste, you must stoutly
+assert that you don't notice; and, as they've seen you drinking from the
+same decanter--why, there you are. Don't worry over it. It's a very,
+very harmless draught; you won't even have a headache from it. Listen
+here, Bawdrey. Somebody is poisoning your father."
+
+"I know it. I told you so from the beginning, Headland," he answered,
+with a sort of wail. "But what's that got to do with drugging the
+whiskey?"
+
+"Everything. I'm going to find out to-night whether Captain Travers is
+that somebody or not. Sh-h-h! Don't get excited. Yes, that's my game. I
+want to get into his rooms whilst he is sleeping, and be free to search
+his effects. I want to get into every man's room here, and wherever I
+find poison--well, you understand?"
+
+"Yes," he replied, brightening as he grasped the import of the matter.
+"What a ripping idea! And so simple."
+
+"I think so. Once let me find the poison, and I'll know my man. Now one
+other thing: the housekeeper must have a master-key that opens all the
+bedrooms in the place. Get it for me. It will be easier and swifter than
+picking the locks."
+
+"Right you are, old chap. I'll slip up to Mrs. Jarret's room and fetch
+it to you at once."
+
+"No; tuck it under the mat just outside my door. As it won't do for me
+to be drugged as well as the rest of you. I shan't put in an appearance
+when the rest come down. Say I've got a headache, and have gone to bed.
+As for my own 'night-cap'--well, I can send Dollops down to get the
+butler to pour me one out of another decanter, so that will be all
+right. Now, toddle off and get the key, there's a good chap. And, I say,
+Bawdrey, as I shan't see you again until morning--good-night."
+
+"Good-night, old chap!" he answered in his impulsive, boyish way. "You
+are a friend, Headland. And--you'll save my dad, God bless you! A true,
+true friend--that's what you are. Thank God I ran across you."
+
+Cleek smiled and nodded to him as he passed out and hurried away; then,
+hearing the other gentlemen coming down the stairs, he, too, made haste
+to get out of the room and to creep up to his own after they had
+assembled, and the cigar cabinet and the whiskey were being passed
+round, and the doctor was busy above with the man who was somebody's
+victim.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The big old grandfather clock at the top of the stairs pointed ten
+minutes past two, and the house was hushed of every sound save that
+which is the evidence of deep sleep, when the door of Cleek's room swung
+quietly open, and Cleek himself, in dressing-gown and wadded bedroom
+slippers, stepped out into the dark hall, and, leaving Dollops on guard,
+passed like a shadow over the thick, unsounding carpet.
+
+The rooms of all the male occupants of the house, including that of
+Philip Bawdrey himself, opened upon this. He went to each in turn,
+unlocked it, stepped in, closed it after him, and lit the bedroom
+candle.
+
+The sleeping-draught had accomplished all that was required of it; and
+in each and every room he entered--Captain Travers's, Lieutenant
+Forshay's, Mr. Robert Murdock's--there lay the occupant thereof
+stretched out at full length in the grip of that deep and heavy sleep
+which comes of drugs.
+
+Cleek made the round of the rooms as quietly as any shadow, even
+stopping as he passed young Bawdrey's on his way back to his own to peep
+in there. Yes; he, too, had got his share of the effective draught, for
+there he lay snarled up in the bed-clothes, with his arms over his head
+and his knees drawn up until they were on a level with his waist, and
+his handsome, boyish face a little paler than usual.
+
+Cleek didn't go into the room, simply looked at him from the threshold,
+then shut the door, and went back to Dollops.
+
+"All serene, Gov'nor?" questioned that young man, in an eager whisper.
+
+"Yes, quite," his master replied, as he turned to a writing-table
+whereon there lay a sealed note, and, pulling out the chair, sat down
+before it and took up a pen. "Wait a bit, and then you can go to bed.
+I'll give you still another note to deliver. While I'm writing it you
+may lay out my clothes."
+
+"Slipping off, sir?"
+
+"Yes. You will stop here, however. Now, then, hold your tongue; I'm
+busy."
+
+Then he pulled a sheet of paper to him and wrote rapidly:
+
+"DEAR MR. BAWDREY:
+
+"I've got my man, and am off to consult with Mr. Narkom and to have what
+I've found analysed. I don't know when I shall be back--probably not
+until the day after to-morrow. You are right. It is murder, and Java is
+at the bottom of it. Dollops will hand you this. Say nothing--just wait
+till I get back."
+
+This he slipped, unsigned in his haste, into an envelope, handed it to
+Dollops, and then fairly jumped into his clothes. Ten minutes later, he
+was out of the house, and--the end of the riddle was in sight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+On the morrow, Mrs. Bawdrey made known the rather surprising piece of
+news that Mr. Rickaby had written her a note to say that he had received
+a communication of such vital importance that he had been obliged to
+leave the house that morning before anybody was up, and might not be
+able to return to it for several days.
+
+"No very great hardship in that, my dear," commented Mrs. Somerby-Miles,
+"for a more stupid and uninteresting person I never encountered. Fancy!
+he never even offered to assist the gentlemen to get poor Mr. Bawdrey
+upstairs last night. How is the poor old dear this morning, darling?
+Better?"
+
+"Yes--much," said Mrs. Bawdrey, in reply. "Doctor Phillipson came to the
+house before four o'clock, and brought some wonderful new medicine that
+has simply worked wonders. Of course, he will have to stop in bed and be
+perfectly quiet for three or four days; but, although the attack was by
+far the worst he has ever had, the doctor feels quite confident that he
+will pull him safely through."
+
+Now although, in the light of her apparent affection for her aged
+husband, she ought, one would have thought, to be exceedingly happy over
+this, it was distinctly noticeable that she was nervous and ill at ease,
+that there was a hunted look in her eyes, and that, as the day wore on,
+these things seemed to be accentuated. More than that, there seemed
+added proof of the truth of young Bawdrey's assertion that she and
+Captain Travers were in league with each other, for that day they were
+constantly together, constantly getting off into out-of-the-way places,
+and constantly talking in an undertone of something that seemed to worry
+them.
+
+Even when dinner was over, and the whole party adjourned to the
+drawing-room for coffee, and the lady ought, in all conscience, to have
+given herself wholly up to the entertainment of her guests it was
+observable that she devoted most of her time to whispered confidences
+with Captain Travers, that they kept going to the window and looking up
+at the sky, as if worried and annoyed that the twilight should be so
+long in fading and the night in coming on. But worse than this, at ten
+o'clock Captain Travers made an excuse of having letters to write, and
+left the room, and it was scarcely six minutes later that she followed
+suit.
+
+But the Captain had not gone to write letters, as it had happened.
+Instead, he had gone straight to the morning-room, an apartment
+immediately behind that in which the elder Mr. Bawdrey's collection was
+housed, and from which a broad French window opened out upon the
+grounds, and it might have caused a scandal had it been known that Mrs.
+Bawdrey joined him there one minute after leaving the drawing-room.
+
+"It is the time, Walter, it is the time!" she said, in a breathless sort
+of way, as she closed the door and moved across the room to where he
+stood, a dimly seen figure in the dim light. "God help and pity me! but
+I am so nervous, I hardly know how to contain myself. The note said at
+ten to-night in the morning-room, and it is ten now. The hour is here,
+Walter, the hour is here!"
+
+"So is the man, Mrs. Bawdrey," answered a low voice from the outer
+darkness; then a figure lifted itself above the screening shrubs just
+beyond the ledge of the open window, and Cleek stepped into the room.
+
+She gave a little hysterical cry and reached out her hands to him.
+
+"Oh, I am so glad to see you, even though you hint at such awful things,
+I am so glad, so glad!" she said. "I almost died when I read your note.
+To think that it is murder--murder! And but for you he might be dead
+even now. You will like to know that the doctor brought the stuff you
+sent by him--brought it at once--and my darling is better--better."
+
+Before Cleek could venture any reply to this, Captain Travers stalked
+across the room and gripped his hand.
+
+"And so you are that great man Cleek, are you?" he said. "Bully boy!
+Bully boy! And to think that all the time it wasn't some mysterious
+natural affliction; to think that it was crime--murder--poison. What
+poison, man, what poison--what?"
+
+"Ayupee, or, as it is variously called in the several islands of the
+Eastern Archipelago, Pohon-Upas, Antjar, and Ipo," said Cleek, in reply.
+"The deadly venom which the Malays use in poisoning the heads of their
+arrows."
+
+"What! that awful stuff!" said Mrs. Bawdrey, with a little shuddering
+cry. "And someone in this house--" Her voice broke. She plucked at
+Cleek's sleeve and looked up at him in an agony of entreaty. "Who?" she
+implored. "Who in this house could? You said you would tell
+to-night--you said you would. Oh, who could have the heart? Ah! Who? It
+is true, if you have not heard it, that once upon a time there was bad
+blood between Mr. Murdock and him--that Mr. Murdock is a family
+connection; but even he, oh, even he--Tell me--tell me, Mr. Cleek!"
+
+"Mrs. Bawdrey, I can't just yet," he made reply. "In my heart I am as
+certain of it as though the criminal had confessed; but I am waiting for
+a sign, and, until that comes, absolute proof is not possible. That it
+will come, and may, indeed, come at any moment now that it is quite
+dark, I am very certain. When it does--"
+
+He stopped and threw up a warning hand. As he spoke a queer thudding
+sound struck one dull note through the stillness of the house. He stood,
+bent forward, listening, absolutely breathless; then, on the other side
+of the wall, there rippled and rolled a something that was like the
+sound of a struggle between two voiceless animals, and--the sign that he
+awaited had come!
+
+"Follow me--quickly, as noiselessly as you can. Let no one hear, let no
+one see!" he said in a breath of excitement. Then he sprang cat-like to
+the door, whirled it open, scudded round the angle of the passage to the
+entrance of the room where the fraudulent collection was kept, and went
+in with the silent fleetness of a panther. And a moment later, when
+Captain Travers and Mrs. Bawdrey swung in through the door and joined
+him, they came upon a horrifying sight.
+
+For there, leaning against the open door of the case where the skeleton
+of the nine-fingered man hung, was Dollops, bleeding and faint, and with
+a score of tooth-marks on his neck and throat, and on the floor at his
+feet Cleek was kneeling on the writhing figure of a man, who bit and
+tore and snarled like a cornered wolf and fought with teeth and feet and
+hands alike in the wild effort to get free from the grip of destiny. A
+locked handcuff clamped one wrist, and from it swung, at the end of the
+connecting chain, its unlocked mate; the marks of Dollops' fists were on
+his lips and cheeks, and at the foot of the case, where the hanging
+skeleton doddered and shook to the vibration of the floor, lay a
+shattered phial of deep-blue glass.
+
+"Got you, you hound!" said Cleek, through his teeth as he wrenched the
+man's two wrists together and snapped the other handcuff into place.
+"You beast of ingratitude--you Judas! Kissing and betraying like any
+other Iscariot! And a dear old man like that! Look here, Mrs. Bawdrey;
+look here Captain Travers; what do you think of a little rat like this?"
+
+They came forward at his word, and, looking down, saw that the figure he
+was bending over was the figure of Philip Bawdrey.
+
+"Oh!" gulped Mrs. Bawdrey, and then shut her two hands over her eyes and
+fell away weak and shivering. "Oh, Mr. Cleek, it can't be--it can't! To
+do a thing like that?"
+
+"Oh, he'd have done worse, the little reptile, if he hadn't been pulled
+up short," said Cleek in reply. "He'd have hanged you for it, if it had
+gone the way he planned. You look in your boxes; you, too, Captain
+Travers. I'll wager each of you finds a phial of Ayupee hidden among
+them somewhere. Came in to put more of the cursed stuff on the ninth
+finger of the skeleton, so that it would be ready for the next time,
+didn't he, Dollops?"
+
+"Yes, Gov'nor. I waited for him behind the case just as you told me to,
+sir, and when he ups and slips the finger of the skilligan into the neck
+of the bottle, I nips out and whacks the bracelet on him. But he was too
+quick for me, sir, so I only got one on; and then, the hound, he turns
+on me like a blessed hyena, sir, and begins a-chawin' of me windpipe. I
+say, Gov'nor, take off his silver wristlets, will you, sir, and lemme
+have jist ten minutes with him on my own? Five for me, sir, and five for
+his poor old dad!"
+
+"Not I," said Cleek. "I wouldn't let you soil those honest hands of
+yours on his vile little body, Dollops. Thought you had a noodle to deal
+with, didn't you, Mr. Philip Bawdrey? Thought you could lead me by the
+nose, and push me into finding those phials just where you wanted them
+found, didn't you? Well, you've got a few more thoughts coming. Look
+here, Captain Travers: what do you think of this fellow's little game?
+Tried to take me in about you and Mrs. Bawdrey being lovers, and trying
+to do away with him and his father to get the old man's money."
+
+"Why, the contemptible little hound! Bless my soul, man, I'm engaged to
+Mrs. Bawdrey's cousin. And as for his stepmother--why, she threw the
+little worm over as soon as he began making love to her, and tried to
+make her take up with him by telling her how much he'd be worth when his
+father died."
+
+"I guessed as much. I didn't fancy him from the first moment; and he was
+so blessed eager to have me begin by suspecting you two, that I smelt a
+rat at once. Oh, but he's been crafty enough in other things. Putting
+that devilish stuff on the ninth finger of the skeleton, and never
+losing an opportunity to get his poor old father to handle it and show
+it to people. It's a strong, irritant poison--sap of the upas-tree is
+the base of it--producing first an irritation of the skin, then a
+blister, and, when that broke, communicating the poison directly to the
+blood every time the skeleton hand touched it. A weak solution at first,
+so that the decline would be natural, the growth of the malady gradual.
+But if I'd found that phial in your room last night, as he hoped and
+believed I had done--well, look for yourself. The finger of the skeleton
+is thick with the beastly, gummy stuff to-night. Double strength, of
+course. The next time his father touched it he'd have died before
+morning. And the old chap fairly worshipping him. I suspected him, and
+suspected what the stuff that was being used really was from the
+beginning. Last night I drugged him, and then--I knew."
+
+"Knew, Mr. Cleek? Why, how could you?"
+
+"The most virulent poisons have their remedial uses, Captain," he made
+reply. "You can kill a man with strychnine; you can put him in his grave
+with arsenic; you can also use both these powerful agents to cure and to
+save, in their proper proportions and in the proper way. The same rule
+applies to Ayupee. Properly diluted and properly used, it is one of the
+most powerful agents for the relief, and, in some cases, the cure, of
+Bright's disease of the kidneys. But the Government guards this unholy
+drug most carefully. You can't get a drop of it in Java for love or
+money, unless on the order of a recognized physician; and you can't
+bring it into the ports of England unless backed by that physician's
+sworn statement and the official stamp of the Javanese authorities. A
+man undeniably afflicted with Bright's disease could get these
+things--no other could. Well, I wanted to know who had succeeded in
+getting Ayupee into this country and into this house. Last night I
+drugged every man in it, and--I found out."
+
+"But how?"
+
+"By finding the one who could not sleep stretched out at full length.
+One of the strongest symptoms of Bright's disease is a tendency to draw
+the knees up close to the body in sleep, Captain, and to twist the arms
+above the head. Of all the men under this roof, this man here was the
+only one who slept like that last night!" He paused and looked down at
+the scowling, sullen creature on the floor. "You wretched little cur!"
+he said, with a gesture of unspeakable contempt. "And all for the sake
+of an old man's money! If I did my duty, I'd gaol you. But if I did, it
+would be punishing the innocent for the crimes of the guilty. It would
+kill that dear old man to learn this; and so he's not going to learn it,
+and the law's not going to get its own." He twitched out his hand, and
+something tinkled on the floor. "Get up!" he said sharply. "There's the
+key of the handcuffs; take it and set yourself free. Do you know what's
+going to happen to you? To-morrow morning Dr. Phillipson is going to
+examine you, and to report that you'll be a dead man in a year's time if
+you stop another week in this country. You are going out of it, and you
+are going to stop out of it. Do you understand? _Stop_ out of it to the
+end of your days. For if ever you put foot in it again I'll handle you
+as a terrier handles a rat! Dollops!"
+
+"Yes, Gov'nor?"
+
+"My things packed and ready?"
+
+"Yes, sir. And all waitin' in the arbour, sir, as you told me to have
+'em."
+
+"Good lad! Get them, and we'll catch the first train back. Mrs. Bawdrey,
+my best respects. Captain, all good luck to you," said Cleek--and swung
+out into the darkness and the moist, warm fragrance of the night; his
+mental poise a bit unsteady, his nerves raw. It was not in him to have
+stopped longer, to have remained under the same roof with a monster like
+young Bawdrey and keep his temper in check.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The stillness, the balm, the soothing influences of the night worked
+their own spell; and, after a time, rubbed out the mental wrinkles and
+brought a sense of restfulness and peace. It could not well do otherwise
+with such a nature as his. The night was all a-musk with mignonette and
+roses, the sky all a-glitter with stars. A gunshot distant the river
+ran--a silver thing ribboning along between the dark of bending trees;
+somewhere in the darkness a nightingale shook out the scale of Nature's
+Anthem to the listening Night, and, farther afield, others took up the
+chorus of it and sang and sang with the sheer joy of living.
+
+What a world--God, what a world for parricides to exist in, and for the
+sons of men to forget the Fifth Commandment!
+
+He walked on faster, and made his way to the arbour where Dollops
+waited. The boy rose to meet him.
+
+"Everythink all ready, sir--see!" he said, holding up a kit bag. "Wot's
+it now, Gov'nor?--the railway station? Good enough. Shall I nip off
+ahead or keep with you till we get there?"
+
+"Suit yourself, my lad."
+
+"Thanky, sir; then I'll walk at your heels, if you don't mind. I'd like
+to walk at your heels all the rest of my blessed life. Did I carry it
+off all right, Gov'nor? Did I do it jist as you wanted of it done?"
+
+"To a T, my lad," said Cleek, smiling and patting him on the shoulder.
+"You'll do, Dollops--you'll do finely. I think I did a good job for the
+pair of us, my boy, when I gave you those two half-crowns."
+
+"Advanced, Gov'nor, advanced," corrected Dollops, with a look of sheer
+affection. "Let me work 'em off, sir, like you said I might. I don't
+want nothin' but wot I earns, Gov'nor; nothin' but wot I've got a right
+to have; for when I sees wot wantin' money as don't belong to you leads
+to; when I thinks wot that young Bawdrey chap was willin' to do for the
+love of havin' it--"
+
+"Don't!" struck in Cleek, a trifle roughly. "Drop the man's name--I
+can't trust myself to think of it. That the one world, the one self-same
+world, could hold two such widely dissimilar creations of God as that
+monster and ... No matter. Thank God, I've been able to do something
+to-night for a good woman--I owe so much to another of her kind. No;
+don't speak--just walk quietly and"--jerking his thumb in the direction
+of the fluting nightingales--"listen to that. God! the man who could
+think evil things when a nightingale sings, isn't fit to stand even in
+the Devil's presence."
+
+Dollops looked at him--half-puzzled, half-awed. He could not understand
+the character of the man: there were so many sides to it; and they came
+and went so oddly. One minute, a very brute-beast in his ferocity, the
+next, a woman in his tenderness and a poet in his thoughts. But if the
+boy was puzzled, he was, at least, discreet. He put nothing into words:
+merely walked on in silence, and left the man to his thoughts and the
+nightingales to their melody.
+
+And Cleek was unusually thoughtful from that period onward; speaking
+hardly a word through all the journey home. For now that the events
+which had occupied his mind for the past two or three days were over and
+done with, his memory harked back to those things which had to do with
+his own affairs, and he caught himself wondering how matters had gone
+with Ailsa Lorne; which of the two positions--the English one or the
+French--she had finally elected to apply for; and if time had as yet
+softened the shock of that disclosure made in the mist and darkness at
+Hampstead Heath.
+
+He had, of course, heard nothing of her since that time; and the days he
+had spent at Richmond had utterly precluded the possibility of giving
+himself that small pleasure--so often indulged in--of adopting a safe
+disguise, prowling about the neighbourhood where she lived until she
+should come forth upon one errand or another, and then following her,
+unsuspected.
+
+That she could have taken the knowledge of what he once had been in no
+other way than she had done; that to such a woman, such a man must at
+the first blush be an object of abhorrence--a thing to be put out of her
+life as completely and as expeditiously as possible--he fully realised;
+yet, at bottom, he was conscious of a hope that Time--even so little as
+had passed--might lend a softening influence that should lead eventually
+to Pity, and from that to a day when the word Forgiveness might be
+spoken.
+
+He wanted that forgiveness--the soul of the man needed it, as parched
+plants need water. He had not climbed up out of himself without some
+struggle, some moments when he wavered between what he had become, and
+what Nature had written that he was meant to be; for no Soul is purged
+all in a moment, no man may conquer himself with just one solitary
+fight. He needed her forgiveness, the thought of her, the hope of her,
+to rivet his armour for the long, brave fight. He needed her
+Friendship--if he might never have her love he needed _that_. And if she
+were to pass like this from his life.... If the Light were to go out ...
+and all the long, dark way of the Future still to be faced.... Something
+within him seemed to writhe. He took his lower lip between his thumb and
+forefinger and squeezed it hard.
+
+That he had hoped for some token, some word--forwarded through Mr.
+Narkom--he did not quite realise until he got back to Clarges Street and
+found that there was none.
+
+Followed a sense of despair, a moment of deep dejection, that passed in
+turn and gave place to a feeling of personal injury, of savage
+resentment, and of the ferocity which comes when the half-tamed wolf
+wakes to the realisation that here is nothing before it evermore, but
+the bars of the cage and the goad of the keeper; and that far and away
+in the world there are still the free woods, the naked body of Nature,
+and the savage company of its kind.
+
+Under the stress of that gust of passion, he sent Dollops flying from
+the room. He wrenched open the drawer of his writing-table, and scooped
+up in his hands some trifles of faded ribbon and trinkets of
+gold--things that he treasured, none knew why or for what--and holding
+them thus, looked down on them and laughed, bitterly and savagely, as
+though a devil were within him.
+
+"Me! She scorns me!" he said, and laughed again, and flung them all back
+and shut the drawer upon them. And presently he knew that he held her
+all the higher because she did scorn him; because her life was such that
+she _could_ scorn him; and the bitterness dropped out of him, his eyes
+softened, and though he still laughed, it was for an utterly different
+reason, and in a wholly different way.
+
+Some pots of tulips and mignonette stood on the ledge of his window. He
+walked over to see that they were watered before he went to bed. And
+between the time when he got down on his knees to fish out his
+bath-slippers from beneath the bed-stead and the creak of the springs
+when he lay down for the night, he was so long and so still that one
+might have believed he was doing something else.
+
+He slept long, and rose in the morning soothed and subdued in
+spirit--better and brighter in every way; for now no affair, for The
+Yard hampered his movements and claimed his time. He was free; he was
+back in the Town--beautiful because it contained her--and he might hark
+back to the old trick of watching and following and being close to her
+without her knowledge.
+
+It was a vain hope that, however. For, although he dressed and went out
+and haunted the neighbourhood of Sir Horace Wyvern's house for hours on
+end, he saw nothing of her that day. Nor did he see her the next, nor
+the next, nor yet the next again. At first, he began to think that she
+must come out and return during the times when he was obliged to go off
+guard and get his meal--for he could not bring himself to play the part
+of the spy or the common policeman, and filch news from the
+servants--but when a week had gone by in this manner, he set all
+question upon that point at rest by remaining at his post from sunrise
+to ten o'clock at night. She did not appear. He wondered what that
+meant--whether it indicated that she had already accepted one of the two
+positions, or had gone to stop with her friend on the other side of
+Hampstead Heath.
+
+The result of that wondering was that, for the next five days, the
+gentleman who was known in Clarges Street as "Captain Horatio Burbage,"
+became a regular visitor to the neighbourhood of the house in Bardon
+Road. The issue was exactly the same. Miss Lorne did not appear.
+
+He could no longer doubt that she had accepted one or other of the two
+positions; but steadfastly refrained from making any personal inquiry.
+She would hear of it if anybody called to inquire her whereabouts; and
+she would guess who had done it. He would not have her feel that he was
+thrusting himself upon her, inquiring about her as one might inquire
+about a common servant. If it was her will that he should know, then
+that knowledge should come from her, not be picked up as one picks up
+clues to missing people of the criminal class.
+
+So then, it was good-bye to Bardon Road, just as it had been good-bye to
+Mayfair. He turned his back upon it in the very moment he came to that
+conclusion, and had just set his face in the direction of the heath when
+he was brought to a standstill by the sound of someone calling out
+sharply: "Burbage--I say, Captain Burbage: stop a moment, please." And,
+screwing round instantly, he saw a red limousine pelting toward him, and
+an excited chauffeur waving a gloved hand.
+
+He knew that red limousine, and he knew that chauffeur. Both belonged to
+Mr. Maverick Narkom.
+
+He stood waiting until the motor was abreast of him--had, in fact, come
+to a standstill--then spoke in a guarded tone:
+
+"What is it, Lennard?" he asked. "The Yard?"
+
+"Yessir. Young Dollops told us where to look for you. Hop in quickly,
+sir. Superintendent inside."
+
+Cleek opened the door of the vehicle at once, stepped in, shut it after
+him, and sat down beside Mr. Narkom with the utmost composure.
+
+"My dear fellow, I _have_ had a chase!" said the superintendent, with a
+long deep breath of relief, as the limousine swung out into the roadway,
+and pelted off westward at a pace that brushed the very fringes of the
+speed limit. "I made certain I should find you at home. Fairly floored
+when I discovered that you weren't. If it hadn't been for that boy,
+Dollops--bright young button, that Dollops, Cleek; exceedingly bright,
+b'gad."
+
+"Yes," agreed Cleek, quietly. "Bright, faithful, and--inventive."
+
+"Really? What has the young beggar invented, then?"
+
+"An original appliance which may possibly be of a good deal of service
+one of these days. But, never mind that at present. It is fair to
+suppose, from your rushing out here in quest of me, that you've got
+something on hand, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes--rather! An amazing 'something,' old chap. It's a letter. Arrived
+at headquarters about an hour and a half ago. Not an affair for The Yard
+this time, Cleek, but a thing you must take up on your own, if you take
+it up at all; and I tell you frankly, I don't like it."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"For one thing, it's from Paris; and--well, you know what dangers Paris
+would have for _you_. There's that she-devil you broke with--that woman
+Margot. You know what she swore, what she wrote when you sent her that
+letter telling her that you were done with her and her lot, and warning
+her never to set foot on English soil again? If you were to run foul of
+her--if she were ever to get any hint of your real identity--"
+
+"She can't. She knows no more of my real history than you do; no more
+than I actually know of hers. Our knowledge of each other began when we
+started to 'pal' together--it ended when we split, eighteen months ago.
+But about that letter? What is it? Why do you say that you don't like
+it?"
+
+"Well, to begin with, I'm afraid it is some trap of hers to decoy you
+over there--get you into some unknown place--"
+
+"There are no 'unknown places' in Paris so far as I am concerned. I know
+every hole and corner of it, from the sewers on. I know it as well as I
+know London, as well as I know Berlin--New
+York--Vienna--Edinburgh--Rome. You couldn't lose me or trap me in any
+one of them. Is that the letter in your hand? Good--then read it,
+please."
+
+"To the Superintendent of Police, Scotland Yard," read Narkom, obeying
+the request.
+
+"'DISTINGUISHED MONSIEUR:
+
+"'Of your grace and pity, I implore you to listen to the prayer of an
+unhappy man whose honour, whose reason, whose very life are in deadly
+peril, not alone of "The Red Crawl," but of things he may not even name,
+dare not commit to writing, lest this letter should go astray. It shall
+happen, monsieur, that the whole world shall hear with amazement of that
+most marvellous "Cleek"--that great reader of riddles and unmasker of
+evil-doers who, in the past year, has made the police department of
+England the envy of all nations; and it shall happen also that I who
+dare not appeal to the police of France appeal to the mercy, the
+humanity, of this great man, as it is my only hope. Monsieur, you have
+his ear, you have his confidence, you have the means at your command.
+Ah! ask him, pray him, implore him for the love of God, and the sake of
+a fellow-man, to come alone to the top floor of the house number 7 of
+the Rue Toison d'Or, Paris, at nine hours of the night of Friday, the
+26th inst., to enter into the darkness and say but the one word "Cleek"
+as a signal it is he, and I may come forward and throw myself upon his
+mercy. Oh, save me, Monsieur Cleek--save me! save me!'
+
+"There, that's the lot, and there's no signature," said Narkom, laying
+down the letter. "What do you make of it, Cleek?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+"A very real, a very moving thing, Mr. Narkom," he replied. "The cry of
+a human heart in deep distress; the agonised appeal of a man so wrought
+up by the horrors of his position that he forgets to offer a temptation
+in the way of reward, and speaks of outlandish things as though they
+must be understood of all. As witness his allusion to something which he
+calls 'The Red Crawl,' without attempting to explain the meaningless
+phrase. Whatever it is, it is so real to him that it seems as if
+everybody must understand."
+
+"You think, then, that the thing is genuine?"
+
+"So genuine that I shall answer its call, Mr. Narkom, and be alone in
+the dark on the top floor of No. 7, Rue Toison d'Or, to-morrow night as
+surely as the clock strikes nine."
+
+And that was how the few persons who happened to be in the quiet upper
+reaches of the Rue Bienfaisance at half-past eight o'clock the next
+evening came to see a fat, fussing, red-faced Englishman in a grey
+frock-coat, white spats, and a shining topper, followed by a liveried
+servant with a hat-box in one hand and a portmanteau in the other--so
+conspicuous, the pair of them, that they couldn't have any desire to
+conceal themselves--cross over the square before the Church of St.
+Augustine, fare forth into the darker side passages, and move in the
+direction of the street of the Golden Fleece.
+
+They were, of course, Cleek and the boy Dollops.
+
+"Lumme, Gov'nor," whispered he, as they turned at last into the utter
+darkness and desertion of the narrow Rue Toison d'Or, "if this is wot
+yer calls Gay Paree--this precious black slit between two rows of
+houses--I'll take a slice of the Old Kent Road with thanks. Not even so
+much as a winkle-stall in sight, and me that empty my shirt-bosom's
+a-chafing my blessed shoulder-blades!"
+
+"You'll see plenty of life before the game's over, I warrant you,
+Dollops. Now then, my lad, here's a safe spot. Sit down on the hat-box
+and wait. That's No. 7, that empty house with the open door, just across
+the way. Keep your eye on it. I don't know how long I'll be, but if
+anybody comes out before I do, mind you don't let him get away."
+
+"No fear!" said Dollops sententiously. "I'll be after him as if he was a
+ham sandwich, sir. Look out for my patent 'Tickle Tootsies' when you
+come out, Gov'nor. I'll sneak over and put 'em round the door as soon as
+you've gone in." For Dollops, who was of an inventive turn of mind, had
+an especial "man-trap" of his own, which consisted of heavy brown paper,
+cut into squares, and thickly smeared over with a viscid varnish-like
+substance that would adhere to the feet of anybody incautiously stepping
+upon it, and so interfere with flight that it was an absolute necessity
+to stop and tear the papers away before running with any sort of ease
+and swiftness was possible. This was the "invention" to which Cleek had
+alluded. Dollops, who was rather proud of the achievement, carried with
+him a full supply of ready-cut papers and a big collapsible tube of the
+viscid, ropy, varnish-like glue.
+
+Meantime, Cleek, having left the boy sitting on the hat-box in the
+darkness, crossed the narrow street to the open doorway of No. 7, and,
+without hesitation, stepped in. The place was as black as a pocket, and
+had that peculiar smell which belongs to houses that have long stood
+vacant. The house, nevertheless, was a respectable one, and, like all
+the others, fronted on another street--this dark Toison d'Or being
+merely a back passage used principally by the tradespeople for the
+delivery of supplies. Feeling his way to the first of the three flights
+of stairs which led upward into the stillness and gloom above, Cleek
+mounted steadily until he found himself at length in a sort of
+attic--quite windowless, and lit only by a skylight through which shone
+the ineffectual light of the stars. It was the top at last. Bracing his
+back against the wall, so that nobody could get behind him, and holding
+himself ready for any emergency, he called out in a clear, calm voice:
+"Cleek!"
+
+Almost simultaneously there was a sharp metallic "snick," an electric
+bulb hanging from the ceiling flamed out luminously, a cupboard door
+flashed open, a voice cried out in joyous, perfect English: "Thank God
+for a man!" And, switching round with a cry of amazement, he found
+himself looking into the face and eyes of a woman.
+
+And of all women in the world--Ailsa Lorne!
+
+He sucked in his breath and his heart began to hammer.
+
+"Miss Lorne!" he exclaimed, so carried out of himself that he scarcely
+knew what he did. "It was the French position that you chose, then? It
+is you--_you_--that calls upon me?"
+
+"No, it is not," she made reply, a rush of colour reddening her cheeks,
+a feeling of embarrassment and of a natural restraint making her shake
+visibly. "I am merely the envoy of another. I should not know you,
+disguised as you are, but for that. Yes, I chose the French position, as
+you see, Mr. Cleek. I am now the companion to Mademoiselle Athalie,
+daughter of the Baron de Carjorac."
+
+"Baron de Carjorac? Do you mean the French Minister of the Interior, the
+President of the Board of National Defences, Miss Lorne--that
+enthusiastic old patriot, that rabid old spitfire, whose one dream is
+the wresting back of Alsace-Lorraine, the driving of the hated Germans
+into the sea? Do you mean that ripping old firebrand?"
+
+"Yes. But you'd not call him that if you were to see him now; if you
+could see the wreck, the broken and despairing wreck, that six weeks of
+the Chateau Larouge, six weeks of that horrible 'Red Crawl' have made of
+him."
+
+"'The Red Crawl'! Good heavens! then that letter, that appeal for
+help--"
+
+"Came from him!" she finished excitedly. "It was he who was to have met
+you here to-night, Mr. Cleek. This house is one he owns; he thought he
+might with safety risk coming here, but--he can't! he can't! He knows
+now that there is danger for him everywhere; that his every step is
+tracked; that the snare which is about him has been about him,
+unsuspected, for almost a year; that he dare not, absolutely dare not,
+appeal to the French police, and that if it were known he had appealed
+to you, he would be a dead man inside of twenty-four hours, and not only
+dead, but--disgraced. Oh, Mr. Cleek!"--she stretched out two shaking
+hands and laid them on his arm, lifted a white, imploring face to
+his--"save him! save that dear broken old man! Ah, think! think! They
+are our friends, our dear country's friends, these French people. Their
+welfare is our welfare, ours is theirs. Oh, help him, save him, Mr.
+Cleek--for his own sake--for mine--for France. Save him, and win my
+gratitude for ever!"
+
+"That is a temptation that would carry me to the ends of the earth, Miss
+Lorne. Tell me what the work is, and I will carry it through. What is
+this incomprehensible thing of which both you and Baron de Carjorac have
+spoken--this thing you allude to as 'The Red Crawl'?"
+
+She gave a little shuddering cry and fell back a step, covering her face
+with both hands.
+
+"Oh!" she said, with a shiver of repulsion. "It is loathly--it is
+horrible--it is necromancy--beyond belief! Why, oh, why were we ever
+driven to that horrible Chateau Larouge! Why could not fate have spared
+the Villa de Carjorac? It could not have happened then!"
+
+"Villa de Carjorac? That was the name of the baron's residence, I
+believe. I remember reading in the newspapers some five or six weeks ago
+that it was destroyed by fire, which originated--nobody knew how--in the
+apartments of the late baroness in the very dead of the night. I thought
+at the time it read suspiciously like the work of an incendiary,
+although nobody hinted at such a thing. The Chateau Larouge I also have
+a distinct memory of, as an old historic property in the neighbourhood
+of St. Cloud. Speaking from past experience, I know that, although it is
+in such a state of decay, and supposed to be uninhabitable, it has, in
+fact, often been occupied at a period when the police and the public
+believed it to be quite empty. Gentlemen of the Apache persuasion have
+frequently made it a place of retreat. There is also an underground
+passage--executed by those same individuals--which connects with the
+Paris sewers. That, too, the police are unaware of. What can the ruined
+Chateau Larouge possibly have to do with the affairs of the Baron de
+Carjorac, Miss Lorne, that you connect them like this?"
+
+"They have everything to do with them--everything. The Chateau is no
+longer a ruin, however. It was purchased, rebuilt, refitted by the
+Comtesse Susanne de la Tour, Mr. Cleek, and she and her brother live
+there. So do we--Athalie, Baron de Carjorac, and I. So, also, does the
+creature--the thing--the abominable horror known as 'The Red Crawl.'"
+
+"My dear Miss Lorne, what are you saying?"
+
+"The truth, nothing but the truth!" she answered hysterically. "Oh, let
+me begin at the beginning--you'll never understand unless I do. I'll
+tell you in as few words as possible--as quickly as I can. It all began
+last winter, when Athalie and her father were at Monte Carlo. There they
+met Madame la Comtesse de la Tour and her brother, Monsieur Gaston
+Merode. The baron has position but he has not wealth, Mr. Cleek. Athalie
+is ambitious. She loves luxury, riches, a life of fashion--all the
+things that boundless money can give; and when Monsieur Merode--who is
+young, handsome, and said to be fabulously wealthy--showed a distinct
+preference for her over all the other marriageable girls he met, she was
+flattered out of her silly wits. Before they left Monte Carlo for Paris
+everybody could see that he had only to ask her hand, to have it
+bestowed upon him. For although the baron never has cared for the man,
+Athalie rules him, and her every caprice is humoured.
+
+"But for all he was so ardent a lover, Monsieur Merode was slow in
+coming to the important point. Perhaps his plans were not matured. At
+any rate, he did not propose to Athalie at Monte Carlo; and, although he
+and his sister returned to Paris at the same time as the baron and his
+daughter, he still deferred the proposal."
+
+"Has he not made it yet?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Cleek. He made it six weeks ago--to be exact, two nights
+before the Villa de Carjorac was fired."
+
+"You think it was fired, then?"
+
+"I do now, although I had no suspicion of it at the time. Athalie
+received her proposal on the Saturday, the baron gave his consent on the
+Sunday, and on Monday night the villa was mysteriously burnt, leaving
+all three of us without an immediate refuge. In the meantime, Madame la
+Comtesse had purchased the ruin of the Chateau Larouge, and during the
+period of her brother's deferred proposal was engaged in fitting it up
+as an abode for herself and him. On the very day it was finished,
+Monsieur Merode asked for Athalie's hand."
+
+"Oho!" said Cleek, with a strong rising inflection. "I think I begin to
+smell the toasting of the cheese. Of course, when the villa was burnt
+out, Madame la Comtesse insisted that, as the _fiancee_ of her brother,
+Mlle. de Carjorac must make her home at the Chateau until the necessary
+repairs could be completed; and, of course, the baron had to go with
+her?"
+
+"Yes," admitted Ailsa. "The baron accepted--Athalie would not have
+allowed him to decline had he wished to--so we all three went there and
+have been residing there ever since. On the night after our arrival an
+alarming, a horrifying thing occurred. It was while we were at dinner
+that the conversation turned upon the supernatural--upon houses and
+places that were reputed to be haunted--and then Madame la Comtesse made
+a remarkable statement. She laughingly asserted that she had just
+learned that, in purchasing the Chateau Larouge, she had also become the
+possessor of a sort of family ghost. She said that she had only just
+heard--from an outside source--that there was a horrible legend
+connected with the place; in short, that for centuries it had been
+reputed to be under a sort of spell of evil and to be cursed by a
+dreadful visitant known as 'The Red Crawl'--a hideous and loathsome
+creature, neither spider nor octopus, but horribly resembling
+both--which was supposed to 'appear' at intervals in the middle of the
+night, and, like the fabled giants of fairy tales, carry off 'lovely
+maidens and devour them.'"
+
+"Who is responsible for that ridiculous assertion, I wonder? I think I
+may say that I know as much about the Chateau Larouge and its history as
+anybody, Miss Lorne, but I never heard of this supposed 'legend' before
+in all my life."
+
+"So the baron, too, declared, laughing as derisively as any of us over
+the story, although it is well known that he has a natural antipathy to
+all crawling things--an abhorrence inherited from his mother--and has
+been known to run like a frightened child from the appearance of a mere
+garden spider."
+
+"Oho!" said Cleek again. "I see! I see! The toasted cheese smells
+stronger, and there's a distinct suggestion of the Rhine about it this
+time. There's something decidedly German about that fabulous 'monster'
+and that haunted chateau, Miss Lorne. They are clever and careful
+schemers, those German Johnnies. Of course, this amazing 'Red Crawl' was
+proved to have an absolute foundation in fact, and equally, of course,
+it 'appeared' to the Baron de Carjorac?"
+
+"Yes--that very night. After we had all gone to bed, the house was
+roused by his screams. Everybody rushed to his chamber, only to find him
+lying on the floor in a state of collapse. The thing had been in his
+room, he said. He had seen it--it had even touched him--a horrible,
+hideous red reptile, with squirming tentacles, a huge, glowing body, and
+eyes like flame. It had crept upon him out of the darkness--he knew not
+from where. It had seized him, resisted all his wild efforts to tear
+loose from it, and when he finally sank, overcome and fainting, upon the
+floor, his last conscious recollection was of the loathsome thing
+settling down upon his breast and running its squirming 'feelers' up and
+down his body."
+
+"Of course! Of course! That was part of the game. It was after
+something. Something of the utmost importance to German interests.
+That's why the Chateau Larouge was refitted, why the Villa de Carjorac
+was burnt down, and why this Monsieur Gaston Merode became engaged to
+Mademoiselle Athalie."
+
+"Oh, how could you know that, Mr. Cleek? Nobody ever suspected. The
+baron never confessed to any living soul until he did so to me,
+to-day--and then only because he had to tell somebody, in order that the
+appointment with you might be kept. How, then, could you guess?"
+
+"By putting two and two together, Miss Lorne, and discovering that they
+do not make five. The inference is very clear: Baron de Carjorac is
+President of the Board of National Defences; Germany, in spite of its
+public assurances to the contrary, is known by those who are 'on the
+inside' to harbour a very determined intention of making a secret
+attack, an unwarned invasion, upon England. France is the key to the
+situation. If, without the warning that must come through the delay of
+picking a quarrel and entering into an open war with the Republic, the
+German army can swoop down in the night, cross the frontier, and gain
+immediate possession of the ports of France, in five hours' time it can
+be across the English Channel, and its hordes pouring down upon a
+sleeping people. To carry out this programme, the first step would, of
+course, be to secure knowledge of the number, location, manner of the
+secret defences of France--the plans of fortification, the maps of the
+'danger zone,' the documentary evidence of her strongest and weakest
+points--and who so likely to be the guardian of these as the Baron de
+Carjorac? That is how I know that 'The Red Crawl' was after something of
+vital importance to German interests, Miss Lorne. That he got it, I know
+from the fact that the baron, while hinting at disgrace and speaking of
+peril to his own life, dared not confide in the French authorities and
+ask the assistance of the French police. Moreover, if 'The Red Crawl'
+had failed to secure anything, the baron, with his congenital loathing
+of all crawling things, would have left the Chateau Larouge
+immediately."
+
+"Oh, to think that you guessed it so easily--and it was all such a
+puzzle to me. I could not think, Mr. Cleek, why he did remain--why he
+would not be persuaded to go, although every night was adding to the
+horror of the thing and it seemed clear to me that he was going mad. Of
+course, Madame la Comtesse and her brother tried to reason him out of
+what he declared, tried to make him believe that it was all fancy--that
+he did not really see the fearful thing; it was equally in vain that I
+myself tried to persuade him to leave the place before his reason became
+unsettled. Last night"--she paused, shuddered, put both hands over her
+face, and drew in a deep breath--"last night, I, too, saw 'The Red
+Crawl,' Mr. Cleek--I, too!"
+
+"You, Miss Lorne?"
+
+"Yes. I made up my mind that I would--that, if it existed, I would have
+absolute proof of it. The countess and her brother had scoffed so
+frequently, had promised the baron so often that they would set a
+servant on guard in the corridor to watch, and then had said so often to
+poor, foolish, easily persuaded Athalie that it was useless doing
+anything so silly, as it was absolutely certain that her father only
+imagined the thing, that I--I determined to take the step myself,
+unknown to any of them. After everybody had gone to bed, I threw on a
+loose, dark gown, crept into the corridor, and hid in a niche from which
+I could see the door of the baron's room. I waited until after
+midnight--long after--and then--and then--"
+
+"Calm yourself, Miss Lorne. Then the thing appeared, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes; but not before something equally terrible had happened. I saw the
+door of the countess's room open; I saw the countess herself come out,
+accompanied by the man who up till then I had believed, like everybody
+else, was her brother."
+
+"And who is not her brother, after all?"
+
+"No, he is not. Theirs is a closer tie. I saw her kiss him. I saw her go
+with him to an angle of the corridor, lift a rug, and raise a trap in
+the floor."
+
+"Hullo! Hullo!" ejaculated Cleek. "Then she, too; knows of the passage
+which leads to the sewers. Clearly, then, this Countess de la Tour is
+not what she seems, when she knows secrets that are known only to the
+followers of--well, never mind. Go on, Miss Lorne, go on. You saw her
+lift that trap; and--what then?"
+
+"Then there came up out of it--oh, the most loathsome-looking creature I
+ever saw; a huge, crawling, red shape that was like a blood-red spider,
+with the eyes, the hooked beak, and the writhing tentacles of an
+octopus. It made no sound, but it seemed to know her, to understand her,
+for when she waved her hand toward the open door of her own room it
+crawled away and, obeying that gesture, dragged its huge bulk over the
+threshold, and passed from sight. Then the man she called her brother
+kissed her again, and as he descended into the darkness below the trap I
+heard her say quite distinctly: 'Tell Marise that I will come as soon as
+I can; but not to delay the revel. If I am compelled to forego it
+to-night, there shall be a wilder one to-morrow, when Clodoche
+arrives.'"
+
+"Clodoche! By Jupiter!" Cleek almost jumped as he spoke. "Now I know the
+'lay'! No; don't ask me anything yet. Go on with the story, please. What
+then, Miss Lorne, what then?"
+
+"Then the man below said something which I could not hear--something to
+which she answered in these words: 'No, no; there is no danger. I will
+guard it safely, and it shall go into no hands but Clodoche's. He and
+Count von Hetzler will be there about midnight to-morrow to complete the
+deal and pay over the money. Clodoche will want the fragment, of course,
+to show to the count as a proof that it is the right one, as "an
+earnest" of what the remainder is worth. And you must bring me that
+"remainder" without fail, Gaston--you hear me?--without fail! I shall be
+there, at the rendezvous, awaiting you, and the thing must be in our
+hands when von Hetzler comes. The thing must be finished to-morrow
+night, even if you and Serpice have to throw all caution to the winds
+and throttle the old fool.' Then, as if answering a further question,
+she laughingly added: 'Oh, get that fear out of your head. I'm not a
+bat, to be caught napping. I'll give it to no one but Clodoche--and not
+even to him until he gives the secret sign.' And then, Mr. Cleek, as she
+closed the trap I heard the man call back to her 'Good night' and give
+her a name I had not heard before. We had always supposed that she had
+been christened 'Suzanne,' but as that man left he called her--"
+
+"I know before you tell me--'Margot'!" interjected Cleek. "I guessed the
+identity of this 'Countess de la Tour' from the moment you spoke of
+Clodoche and that secret trap. Her knowledge of those two betrayed her
+to me. Clodoche is a renegade Alsatian, a spy in the pay of the German
+Government, and an old _habitue_ of 'The Inn of the Twisted Arm,' where
+the Queen of the Apaches and her pals hold their frequent revels. I can
+guess the remainder of your story now. You carried this news to the
+Baron de Carjorac, and he, breaking down, confessed to you that he had
+lost something."
+
+"Yes, yes--a dreadful 'something,' Mr. Cleek: the horrible thing that
+has been making life an agony to him ever since. On the night when that
+abominable 'Red Crawl' first overcame him, there was upon his person a
+most important document--a rough draft of the maps of fortification and
+the plan of the secret defences of France, the identical document from
+which was afterwards transcribed the parchment now deposited in the
+secret archives of the Republic. When Baron de Carjorac recovered his
+senses after his horrifying experience--"
+
+"That document was gone?"
+
+"Part of it, Mr. Cleek--thank God, only a part! If it had been the
+parchment itself, no such merciful thing could possibly have happened.
+But the paper was old, much folding and handling had worn the creases
+through, and when, in his haste, the secret robber grabbed it, whilst
+that loathsome creature held the old man down, it parted directly down
+the middle, and he got only a vertical section of each of its many
+pages."
+
+"Victoria! 'And the fool hath said in his heart, There is no God,'"
+quoted Cleek. "So, then, the hirelings of the enemy have only got half
+what they are after; and, as no single sentence can be complete upon a
+paper torn like that, nothing can be made of it until the other half is
+secured, and--our German friends are still 'up a gum-tree.' I know now
+why the baron stayed on at the Chateau Larouge, and why 'The Red Crawl'
+is preparing to pay him another visit to-night: he hoped, poor chap, to
+find a clue to the whereabouts of the fragment he had lost; and that
+thing is after the fragment he still retains. Well, it will be a long,
+long day before either of those two fragments fall into German hands."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Cleek, you think you can get the stolen paper back? You believe
+you can outwit those dreadful people and save the Baron de Carjorac's
+honour and his life?"
+
+"Miss Lorne"--he took her hand in his and lifted it to his lips--"Miss
+Lorne, I thank you for giving me the chance! If you will do what I ask
+you, be where I ask you in two hours' time, so surely as we two stand
+here this minute, I will put back the German calendar by ten years at
+least. They drink 'To the day,' those German Johnnies, but by to-morrow
+morning the English hand you are holding will have given them reason to
+groan over the night!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+It was half-past eleven o'clock. Madame la Comtesse, answering a reputed
+call to the bedside of a dying friend, had departed early, and was not
+to be expected back, she said, until to-morrow noon. The servants--given
+permission by the gentleman known in the house as Monsieur Gaston
+Merode, and who had graciously provided a huge char-a-banc for the
+purpose--had gone in a body to a fair over in the neighbourhood of
+Sevres, and darkness and stillness filled the long, broad corridor of
+the Chateau Larouge. Of a sudden, however, a mere thread of sound
+wavered through the silence, and from the direction of Miss Lorne's room
+a figure in black, with feet muffled in thick, woollen stockings, padded
+to an angle of the passage, lifted a trap carefully hidden beneath a
+huge tiger-skin rug, and almost immediately Cleek's head rose up out of
+the gap.
+
+"Thank God you managed to do it. I was horribly afraid you would not,"
+said Ailsa in a palpitating whisper.
+
+"You need not have been," he answered. "I know a dozen places beside
+'The Inn of the Twisted Arm' from which one can get into the sewers.
+I've screwed a bolt and socket on the inner side of this trap in case of
+an emergency, and I've carried a few things into the passage for
+'afterwards.' I suppose that fellow Merode, as he calls himself, is in
+his room, waiting?"
+
+"Yes; and, although he pretends to be alone to-night, he--he has other
+men with him, hideous, ruffianly looking creatures, whom I saw him admit
+after the servants had gone. The countess has left the house and gone I
+don't know where."
+
+"I do, then. Make certain she's at 'The Twisted Arm,' waiting, first,
+for the coming of Clodoche, and, second, for the arrival of this
+precious 'Merode' with the remaining half of the document. I've sent
+Dollops there to carry out his part of the programme, and when once I
+get the password Margot requires before she will hand over the paper,
+the game will be in my hands entirely. They are desperate to-night, Miss
+Lorne, and will stop at nothing--not even murder. There! the rug's
+replaced. Quick! lead me to the baron's room--there's not a minute to
+waste."
+
+She took his hand and led him tiptoe through the darkness, and in
+another moment he was in the Baron de Carjorac's presence.
+
+"Oh, monsieur, God for ever bless you!" exclaimed the broken old man,
+throwing himself on his knees before Cleek.
+
+"Out with the light--out with the light!" exclaimed he, ducking down
+suddenly. "Were you mad to keep it burning till I came, with
+that"--pointing to a huge bay window opening upon a
+balcony--"uncurtained and the grounds, no doubt, alive with spies?"
+
+Miss Lorne sprang to the table where the baron's reading-lamp stood,
+jerked the cord of the extinguisher, and darkness enveloped the room,
+darkness tempered only by the faint gleams of the moon streaming over
+the balcony, and through the panes of the uncurtained window.
+
+Cleek, on his knees beside the kneeling baron, whipped a tiny electric
+torch from his pocket, and, shielding its flare with his scooped hands,
+flashed it upon the old man's face.
+
+"Simple as rolling off a log--exactly like your pictures," he commented.
+"I'll 'do' you as easily as I 'do' Clodoche--and I could 'do' him in the
+dark from memory. Quick"--snicking off the light of the electric torch
+and rising to his feet--"into your dressing-room, baron. I want that
+suit of clothes; I want that ribbon, that cross--and I want them at
+once. You're a bit thicker-set than me, but I've got my Clodoche rig on
+underneath this, and it will fill out your coat admirably and make us as
+like as two peas. Give me five minutes, Miss Lorne, and I promise you a
+surprise."
+
+He flashed out of sight with the baron as he ceased speaking; and Ailsa,
+creeping to the window and peering cautiously out, was startled
+presently by a voice at her elbow saying, in a tone of extreme
+agitation: "Oh, mademoiselle, I fear, even yet I fear, that this Anglais
+monsieur attempts too much, and that the papier he is gone for ever."
+
+"Oh, no, baron, no!" she soothed, as she laid a solicitous hand upon his
+arm. "Do believe in him; do have faith in him. Ah, if you only knew--"
+
+"Thanks. I reckon I shall pass muster!" interposed Cleek's voice; and it
+was only then she realised. "You'll find the baron in the other room,
+Miss Lorne, looking a little grotesque in that grey suit of mine. In
+with you, quickly; go with him through the other door, and get below
+before those fellows begin to stir. Get out of the house as quietly and
+as expeditiously as you can. With God's help, I'll meet you at the Hotel
+du Louvre in the morning, and put the missing fragment in the baron's
+hands."
+
+"And may God give you that help!" she answered fervently as she moved
+towards the dressing-room door. "Ah, what a man! what a man!"
+
+Then, in a twinkling she was gone, and Cleek stood alone in the silent
+room. Giving her and the baron time to get clear of the other one, he
+went in on tiptoe, locked the door through which they had passed, put
+the key in his pocket, and returned. Going to the door which led from
+the main room into the corridor, he took the key from the lock of that,
+too, replacing it upon the outer side, and leaving the door itself
+slightly ajar.
+
+"Now then for you, Mr. 'The Red Crawl,'" he said, as he walked to the
+baron's table, and, sinking down into a deep chair beside it, leaned
+back with his eyes closed as if in sleep, and the faint light of the
+moon half-revealing his face. "I want that password, and I'll get it, if
+I have to choke it out of your devil's throat! And she said that she
+would be grateful to me all the rest of her life! Only 'grateful,' I
+wonder? Is nothing else possible? What a good, good thing a real woman
+is!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How long was it that he had been reclining there waiting before his
+strained ears caught the sound of something like the rustling of silk
+shivering through the stillness, and he knew that at last it was coming?
+It might have been ten minutes, it might have been twenty--he had no
+means of determining--when he caught that first movement, and, peering
+through the slit of a partly opened eye, saw the appalling thing drag
+its huge bulk along the balcony, and, with squirming tentacles writhing,
+slide over the low sill of the window, and settle down in a glowing red
+heap upon the floor; and--fake though he knew it to be--he could not
+repress a swift rush and prickle of "goose-flesh" at sight of it.
+
+For a few seconds it lay dormant; then one red feeler shot out, then
+another, and another, and it began to edge its way across the carpet to
+the chair. Cleek lay still and waited, his heavy breathing sounding
+regularly, his head thrown back, his limp hands lying loosely, palms
+upward, beside him; and nearer and nearer crept the loathsome, red,
+glowing thing.
+
+It crawled to his feet, and still he was quiet; it slid first one
+tentacle, and then another, over his knees and up toward his breast, and
+still he made no movement; then, as it rose higher--rose until its
+hideous beaked countenance was close to his own, his hands flashed
+upward and clamped together like a vice--clamped on a palpitating human
+throat--and in the twinkling of an eye the tentacles were wrapped about
+him, and he and "The Red Crawl" were rolling over and over on the floor
+and battling together.
+
+"Serpice, you low-bred hound, I know you!" he whispered, as they
+struggled. "You can't utter a cry--you shan't utter a cry--to bring
+help. I'll throttle you, you beastly renegade, that's willing to sell
+his own country--throttle you, do you hear?--before you shall bring any
+of your mates to the rescue. Oh, you've not got a weak old man to fight
+with this time! Do you know me? It's the 'cracksman'--the 'cracksman'
+who went over to the police. If you doubt it, now that we're in the
+moonlight, look up and see my face. Oho! you recognise me, I see. Well,
+you will die looking at me, you dog, if you deny me what I'm after. I'll
+loosen my grip enough for you to whisper, and no more. Now what's the
+password that Clodoche must give to Margot to-night at 'The Twisted
+Arm'? Tell me what it is; if you want your life, tell me what it is."
+
+"I'll see you dead first!" came in a whisper from beneath the hideous
+mask. Then, as Cleek's fingers clamped tight again and the battle began
+anew, one long, thin arm shot out from amongst the writhing tentacles,
+one clutching hand gripped the leg of the table, and, with a wrench and
+a twist, brought it crashing to the ground with a sound that a deaf man
+might have heard.
+
+And in an instant there was pandemonium.
+
+A door flung open, and clashing heavily against the wall, sent an echo
+reeling along the corridor; then came a clatter of rushing feet, a voice
+cried out excitedly: "Come on! come on! He's had to kill the old fool to
+get it!" and Cleek had just time to tear loose from the shape with which
+he was battling, and dodge out of the way when the man Merode lurched
+into the room, with half a dozen Apaches tumbling in at his heels.
+
+"Serpice!" he cried, rushing forward, as he saw the gasping red shape
+upon the floor; "Serpice! Mon Dieu! what is it?"
+
+"The cracksman!" he gulped. "Cleek!--the cracksman who went against us!
+Catch him! stop him!"
+
+"The cracksman!" howled out Merode, twisting round in the darkness and
+reaching blindly for the haft of his dirk. "Nom de Dieu! Where?"
+
+And almost before the last word was uttered a fist like a sledge-hammer
+shot out, caught him full in the face, and he went down with a whole
+smithy of sparks flashing and hissing before his eyes.
+
+"There!" answered Cleek, as he bowled him over. "Gentlemen of the
+sewers, my compliments. You'll make no short cut to 'The Twisted Arm'
+to-night!"
+
+Then, like something shot from a catapult, he sprang to the door,
+whisked through it, banged it behind him, turned the key, and went
+racing down the corridor like a hare.
+
+"It must be sheer luck now!" he panted, as he reached the angle and,
+kicking aside the rug, pulled up the trap. "They'll have that door down
+in a brace of shakes, and be after me like a pack of ravening wolves.
+The race is to the swift this time, gentlemen, and you'll have to take a
+long way round if you mean to head me off."
+
+Then he passed down into the darkness, closed the trap-door after him,
+shot into its socket the bolt he had screwed there, flashed up the light
+of his electric torch, and, _without_ the password, turned toward the
+sewers, and ran, and ran, and ran!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+It lacked but a minute of the stroke of twelve, and the revels at "The
+Twisted Arm"--wild at all times, but wilder to-night than ever--were at
+their noisiest and most exciting pitch. And why not? It was not often
+that Margot could spend a whole night with her rapscallion crew, and she
+had been here since early evening--was to remain here until the dawn
+broke grey over the house-tops and the murmurs of the workaday world
+awoke anew in the streets of the populous city. It was not often that
+each man and each abandoned woman present knew to a certainty that he or
+she would go home through the mists of the grey morning with a fistful
+of gold that had been won without labour or the taking of any personal
+risk; and to-night the half of four hundred thousand francs was to be
+divided among them.
+
+No wonder they had made a carnival of it, and tricked themselves out in
+gala attire; no wonder they had brought a paste tiara and crowned
+Margot--Margot, who was in flaming red to-night, and looked a devil's
+daughter indeed, with her fire-like sequins and her red ankles twinkling
+as she threw herself into the thick of the dance and kicked, and
+whirled, and flung her bare arms about to the lilt of the music and the
+fluting of her own happy laughter.
+
+"Per Bacco! The devil's in her to-night!" grinned old Marise, the
+innkeeper, from her place behind the bar, where the lid of the
+sewer-trap opened. "She has not been like it since the cracksman broke
+with her, Toinette. But that was before your time, _ma fille_. Mother of
+the heavens! but there was a man for you! There was a king that was
+worthy of such a queen. Name of disaster! that she could not hold him,
+that the curse of virtue sapped such a splendid tree, and that she could
+take up with another after him!"
+
+"Why not?" cried Toinette, as she tossed down the last half of her
+absinthe and twitched her flower-crowned head. "A kingdom must have a
+king, _ma mere_; and Dieu: but he is handsome, this Monsieur Gaston
+Merode! And if he carries out his part of the work to-night he will be
+worthy of the homage of all."
+
+"'If' he carries it out--'if'!" exclaimed Marise, with a lurch of the
+shoulders and a flirt of her pudgy hand. "Soul of me! that's where the
+difference lies. Had it been the cracksman, there would have been no
+'if'--it were done as surely as he attempted it. Name of misfortune! I
+had gone into a nunnery had I lost such a man. But she--"
+
+The voice of Margot shrilled out and cut into her words. "Absinthe,
+Marise, absinthe for them all--and set the score down to me!" she cried.
+"Drink up, my bonny boys; drink up, my loyal maids. Drink--drink till
+your skins will hold no more. No one pays to-night but me!"
+
+They broke into a cheer, and bearing down in a body upon Marise, threw
+her into a fever of haste to serve them.
+
+"To Margot!" they shouted, catching up the glasses and lifting them
+high. "_Vive la Reine des Apaches! Vive la compagnie!_ To Margot! To
+Margot!"
+
+She swept them a merry bow, threw them a laughing salute, and drank the
+toast with them.
+
+"Messieurs, my love--mesdames et mademoiselles, my admiration," she
+cried, with a ripple of joy-mad laughter. "To the success of the
+Apaches, to the glory of four hundred thousand francs, and to the quick
+arrival of Serpice and Gaston!" Then, her upward glance catching sight
+of the musicians sipping their absinthe in the little gallery above, she
+flung her empty glass against the wall behind them, and shook with
+laughter as they started in alarm and spilled the green poison when they
+dodged aside. "Another dance, you dawdlers!" she cried. "Does Marise pay
+you to sit there like mourners? Strike up, you mummies, or you pay
+yourselves for what you drink to-night. Soul of desires!"--as the
+musicians grabbed up their instruments, and a leaping, lilting,
+quick-beating air went rollicking out over the hubbub--"a quadrille, you
+angels of inspiration! Partners, gentlemen! Partners, ladies! A
+quadrille! A quadrille!"
+
+They set up a many-throated cheer and flocked out with her upon the
+floor; and in one instant feet were flying, skirts were whirling,
+laughter and jest mingling with waving arms and kicking toes, and the
+whole place was in one mad riot of delirious joy.
+
+And in the midst of this there rolled up suddenly a voice crying, as
+from the bowels of the earth, "Hola! Hola! La la! loi!" the cry of the
+Apache to his kind.
+
+"Mother of delights! It is one of us, and it comes from the sewer
+passage--from the sewer!" shrilled out Marise, as the dancers halted and
+Margot ran, with fleet steps, towards the bar. "Listen! listen! They
+come to you, Margot--Serpice and Gaston. The work is done."
+
+"And before even Clodoche or von Hetzler have arrived!" she replied
+excitedly. "Give them light, give them welcome. Be quick!"
+
+Marise ducked down, loosened the fastenings of the trap-door, flung it
+back, and, leaning over the gap with a light in her hand, called down
+into the darkness, "Hola! Hola! La! la! loi! Come on, comrades, come
+on!"
+
+The caller obeyed instantly. A hand reached up and gripped the edge of
+the flooring, and out of the darkness into the light emerged the figure
+of a man in a leather cap and the blue blouse of a mechanic--a pale,
+fox-faced, fox-eyed fellow, with lank, fair hair, a brush of ragged,
+yellow beard, and with the look and air of the sneak and spy indelibly
+branded upon him.
+
+It was Cleek.
+
+"Clodoche!" exclaimed Marise, falling back in surprise.
+
+"Clodoche!" echoed Margot. "Clodoche--and from the sewers?"
+
+"Yes--why not?" he answered, his tongue thick-burred with the accent of
+Alsace, his shifting eyes flashing toward the huge window behind the
+bar, where, in the moonlight, the narrow passage leading down to the
+door of "The Twisted Arm" gaped evilly between double rows of scowling,
+thief-sheltering houses. "Name of the fiend! Is this the welcome you
+give the bringer of fortune, Margot?"
+
+"But from the sewer?" she repeated. "It is incomprehensible, _cher ami_.
+You were to pilot von Hetzler over from the Cafe Dupin to the square
+beyond there"--pointing to the window--"to leave him waiting a moment
+while you came on to see if it were safe for him to enter; and now you
+come from the sewer--from the opposite direction entirely!"
+
+"Mother of misfortunes! You had done the same yourself--you, Lantier;
+you, Clopin; you, Cadarousse; any of you--had you been in my boots," he
+made answer. "I stole a leaf from your own book, earlier in the evening.
+Garotted a fellow with jewels on him--in the Rue Noir, near the Market
+Place--and nearly got into 'the stone bottle' for doing it. He was a
+decoy, set there by the police for some of you fellows, and there was a
+sergeant de ville after me like a whirlwind. I was not fool enough to
+turn the chase in this direction, so I doubled and twisted until it was
+safe to dive into the tavern of Fouchard, and lay in hiding there.
+Fouchard let his son carry a message to the count for me, and will guide
+him to the square. When it grew near the time to come, Fouchard let me
+down into the sewer passage from there. Get on with your dance--silence
+is always suspicious. An absinthe, Marise! Have Gaston and Serpice
+arrived yet with the rest of the document, Margot la reine?"
+
+"Not yet," she answered. "But one may expect them at any minute."
+
+"Where is the fragment we already possess?"
+
+"Here," tapping her bodice and laughing, "tenderly shielded, _mon ami_,
+and why not? Who would not mother a thing that is to bring one four
+hundred thousand francs?"
+
+"Let me see it. It must be shown to the count, remember. He will take no
+risks, come not one step beyond the square, until he is certain that it
+is the paper his Government requires. Let me have it--let me take it to
+him--quick!"
+
+She waved aside airily the hand he stretched toward her, and danced into
+the thick of the resumed quadrille.
+
+"Ah, non! non! non!" she laughed, as he came after her. "The conditions
+were of your own making, _cher ami_; we break no rules even among
+ourselves."
+
+"Soul of a fool! But if the count comes to the square--he is due there
+now, mignonne--and I am not there to show him the thing--Margot, for the
+love of God, let me have the paper!"
+
+"Let me have the sign, the password!"
+
+Cleek snapped at a desperate chance because there was nothing else to
+do, because he knew that at any moment now the end might come.
+
+"'When the purse will not open, slit it!'" he hazarded,
+desperately--choosing, on the off-chance of its correctness, the
+password of the Apache.
+
+"It is not the right one! It is by no means the right one!" she made
+reply, backing away from him suddenly, her absinthe-brightened eyes
+deriding him, her absinthe-sharpened laughter mocking him. "Your
+thoughts are in the Bois, _cher ami_. What is the password of the
+brotherhood to the cause of Germany, stupid? It is not right, non! non!
+It is not right!"
+
+The cause of Germany! At the words the truth rushed like a flash of
+inspiration across Cleek's mind. The cause of Germany! What a dolt he
+was not to have thought of that before! There was but one phrase ever
+used for that among the Kaiser's people, and that phrase--
+
+"'To the day!'" he said, with a burst of sudden laughter. "My wits are
+in the moon to-night, _la reine_. 'To the day,' of course--'To the
+day!'" And even before she replied to him, he knew that he had guessed
+aright.
+
+"Bravo!" she said, with a little hiccough--for the absinthe, of which
+she had imbibed so freely to-night, was beginning to take hold of her.
+"A pretty conspirator to forget how to open the door he himself locked!
+It is well I know thee--it is well it was the word of les Apaches in the
+beginning, or I had been suspicious, silly! Wait but a moment!"--putting
+her hand to her breast and beginning to unfasten her bodice--"wait but a
+moment, Monsieur Twitching-Fingers, and the thing shall be in your
+hand."
+
+The strain, the relief, were all too great for even such nerves as
+Cleek's, and if he had not laughed aloud, he knew that he must have
+cheered.
+
+"Oho! you grin because one's fingers blunder with eagerness," hiccoughed
+Margot, thinking his laughter was for the trouble she had in getting the
+fastenings of her bodice undone. "Peste, monsieur! may not a lady well
+be modestly careful, when--Name of the devil! what's that?"
+
+It was the note of a whistle shrilling down the narrow passage
+without--the passage where Dollops, in Apache garb, had been set on
+watch; and, hearing it, Cleek clamped his jaws together and breathed
+hard. A single whistle--short and sharp, such as this one was--was the
+signal agreed upon that the real Clodoche was coming, and that he and
+Count von Hetzler had already appeared in the square beyond.
+
+"Soul of a sloth! Will not that hurry you, _la reine_?" he said
+excitedly, in reply to Margot's startled question. "It is the signal
+Fouchard's son was to give when he and von Hetzler arrived at the place
+where I am to meet them. Give me the paper--quick! quick! Tear the
+fastenings, if they will not come undone else. One cannot keep a von
+Hetzler waiting like a lackey for a scrap of ribbon and a bit of lace."
+
+"Pardieu! they have kept better men than he waiting many an hour before
+this," she made reply. "But you shall have the thing in a twinkling now.
+There! but one more knot, and then it is in your hands."
+
+And, had the fates not decreed otherwise, so, indeed, it would have
+been. But then, just then, when another second would have brought the
+paper into view, another moment seen it shut tight in the grip of his
+itching fingers, disaster came and blotted out his hopes!
+
+Without hint or warning, without sign or sound to lessen the shock of
+it, the trap-door behind the bar flew up and backward with a crash that
+sent Marise and her assistants darting away from it in shrieking alarm;
+a babel of excited voices sounded, a scurry of rushing feet scuffled and
+flashed along the shaking floor, and Merode and his followers tumbled
+helter-skelter into the room.
+
+Cleek, counting on the bolt which kept them from entering the passage
+from the corridor of the Chateau Larouge--forcing them to take a long,
+roundabout journey to "The Twisted Arm"--had not counted on their
+shortening that journey by entering the passage from Fouchard's tavern,
+doing, in fact, the very thing which he had declared to Margot he
+himself had done. And lo! here they were, howling and crowding about
+him--dirks in their hands and devils in their eyes and hearts--and the
+paper not his yet!
+
+A clamour rose as they poured in; the dancers ceased to dance; the music
+ceased to play; and Margot, shutting a tight clutch on the loosened part
+of her half-unfastened bodice, swung away from Cleek's side, and flew in
+a panic to Merode.
+
+"Gaston!" she cried, knowing from his wild look and the string of oaths
+and curses his followers were blurting out that something had gone
+amiss. "Gaston, _mon coeur_! Name of disaster! what is wrong?"
+
+"Everything is wrong!" he flung back excitedly. "That devil--that
+renegade--that fury, Cleek, the cracksman, is here. He came to the
+rescue--came out of the very skies--and all but killed Serpice!"
+
+"Cleek!" Fifty shrill voices joined Margot's in that screaming cry;
+fifty more dirks flashed into view. "Cleek in France? Cleek? Where is
+he? Which way did he go? Where's the narker--where--where?"
+
+"Here, if anywhere!"
+
+"Here?"
+
+"Yes--unless you've been fooled, and let him get away. He knows about
+the paper, and is after it, Margot; and if anyone has come up from the
+sewers within the past twenty minutes--"
+
+They knew--they grasped the situation instantly--and a roar of excited
+voices yelled out: "Clodoche! Clodoche! Clodoche!" as, snarling and
+howling like a pack of wolves, they bore down with a rush on the
+blue-bloused figure that was creeping towards the door.
+
+But as they sprang it sprang also! It was neck or nothing now. Cleek
+realised it, and, throwing himself headlong over the bar, clutched
+frantically at the lever which he knew controlled the flow of gas,
+jammed it down with all his strength, shut off the light, and, grabbing
+up a chair, sent it crashing through the window.
+
+The crowd surged on towards the wrecked bar with a yell, surged from all
+directions, and then abruptly stopped and huddled together in one. For
+the sudden flashing down of the darkness within, had made more
+prominent, the moon-lighted passage without; and there, scuttling away
+in alarm from this sudden uproar, and the outward flying of that hurled
+chair, a figure which but a moment before had come skulking to the
+window, could now be seen.
+
+"There he goes--there! there!" shrilled out a chorus of excited voices,
+as the yellow-bearded, blue-bloused figure came into view. "After him!
+Catch him! Knife him!"
+
+In an instant they were at the door, tumbling out into the darkness,
+pouring up the passage in hot pursuit. And it was at that moment the
+balance changed again. Those who were in the front rank of the pursuers
+were in time to see a lithe, thin figure--dressed as one of their own
+kind--spring up in the path of that other figure, jump on it, grip it,
+clap a huge square of sticky brown paper over the howling mouth of it,
+and bear it, struggling and kicking, to the ground.
+
+In another second they, too, were upon it--swarming over it like rats,
+and digging and hacking at it with their dirks. And so they were still
+hacking at it--although it had long since ceased to move, or to make any
+sound--when Merode came up and called them to a halt.
+
+"Drag it inside; let Margot have a thrust at it--it is her right. Pull
+off the dog's disguise, and bring me the plucky one that captured him.
+He shall have absinthe enough to swim in, the little king! Off with it
+all, Lanchere. First, the plaster--that's right. Now, the wig and beard,
+and after that--What's that you say? The beard is real? The hair is
+real? They will not come off? Name of the devil! what are you saying?"
+
+"The truth, _mon roi_, the truth! Mother of disasters! It is not the
+cracksman--it is the real Clodoche we have killed!"
+
+For one moment a sort of panic held them, swayed them, befogged the
+brains of them; then, of a sudden, Merode howled out, "Get back! Get
+back! The fellow's in there still!" and led a blind race down the
+passage to the bar, where they had seen Cleek last. It was still in
+darkness; but an eager hand gripping the lever, turned on the gas again,
+and matches everywhere were lifted to the jets.
+
+And when the light flamed out and the room was again ablaze they knew
+that they might as well hope to call back yesterday as dream of finding
+Cleek again. For there on the floor, her limp hands turned palms upward,
+a chloroformed cloth folded over her mouth and nose, lay, in a deep
+stupor, the figure of Margot, her bodice torn wide open and the paper
+forever gone!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was five minutes later when the Count von Hetzler, crouching back in
+the shadow of the square and waiting for the return of Clodoche, heard a
+dull, whirring sound that was unmistakably the purr of a motor throb
+through the stillness; and, leaning forward, saw an automobile whirl up
+out of the darkness, cut across the square, and dash off westward like a
+flash. Yet in the brief instant it took to go past the place where he
+waited there was time for him to catch the sharp click of a lowered
+window, see the clear outlines of a man's face looking out, and to hear
+a voice from within the vehicle speak.
+
+"Herr Count," it said in clear, incisive tones. "A positively infallible
+recipe for the invasion of England: Wait until the Channel freezes and
+then skate over. Good night!"
+
+"One for his nob that, Gov'nor--my hat, yuss!" said Dollops, with a
+shrill laugh, as he stuck a red head and a face all shiny with cocoa
+butter and half-removed grease-paint out of the window, and, despite the
+fact that the swift pace of the automobile had already carried it far
+past the place where the count had been in hiding, made a fan of his
+five fingers and his snub nose. "Oh, Mother 'Ubbard! Did you see him,
+sir? Bunked back in his 'ole like somebody had 'give him the hook,' and
+cleared the blessed stage before the eggs began to fly. I don't think
+them Germans 'ull be sittin' on the steps of St. Paul's this year,
+sir--not them!"
+
+Cleek laughed; and, ordering the boy to shut down the window and get on
+with the work of changing his clothes, set about doing the same thing
+himself.
+
+"I suppose you know, you clever little monkey, that I should have been
+floating down the Seine with a slit throat and enough lead in me to sink
+a barrel by this time, if it hadn't been for you," he said, as he pushed
+the outward semblance of Clodoche into the kit-bag, and began to get
+into ordinary civilian's dress as expeditiously as possible. "If you had
+slipped up--if you had been one-half minute late--or if that fellow had
+had a chance to make one cry before you covered his mouth--"
+
+"Please, sir--_don't_!" interposed Dollops, with a sort of shiver. "If
+anythink had've happened to you, Gov'nor ..." Then stopped short and
+made a sound as if he were swallowing something, and then grew very,
+very still.
+
+Cleek looked at him out of the corner of his eye--moved in spite of
+himself--hesitated a moment and then, obeying an impulse, leaned over
+and gently tapped him on the shoulder.
+
+"Dollops, shake hands," he said.
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"Shake hands."
+
+"Gawd, Gov'nor! You don't never _mean_ that, sir?"
+
+"Shake hands," said Cleek for the third time. "Do you know, you little
+monkey, that you're the only soul in all God's world that could ever
+muster up a tear for me? Thank you, my lad--you're a brick!"--then
+gripped the grimy hand that was reached out with a sort of awe, wrung it
+heartily, patted the astonished boy on the shoulder; and fell to
+whistling merrily as he went on with his dressing.
+
+"Sir, you do lick me, you fair do," said Dollops, laughing unsteadily,
+and drawing his sleeve across his eyes. "Arfter wot you've been and went
+through, a-sittin' there and whistlin' as merry as can be--like as if
+life was all beer and skittles, and you hadn't a care in the world."
+
+"I haven't--for the minute, my lad," said Cleek with a laugh of utter
+happiness. "Beer and skittles? Lord, it's all roses my boy, roses! I've
+had the good luck to accomplish a thing that's going to give me--well,
+at least one moment in Paradise--and when a man has a prospect like that
+in view ..." His voice trailed off; he laughed again; then fell to
+whistling once more--noisily, joyously, as if some schoolboy sort of
+madness was in his blood to-night--and was still whistling when the
+automobile pulled up sharply in front of the Hotel du Louvre.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+By this time he had concluded the alteration in his toilet which was
+necessary to assure his entrance into the hotel without occasioning
+comment; and as Dollops had followed suit they readily passed muster,
+when they alighted, for an ordinary English gentleman accompanied by an
+ordinary English manservant.
+
+"What was the charge at the garage?" inquired Cleek of Dollops just
+previously to alighting.
+
+"I dunno wot it runs to in this 'ere rum lingo of francs and sous, sir,"
+said Dollops, "but the garage gent he said it would amount to two pounds
+ten in English money, so I'll have to leave you to work it out for
+yourself. The shuvver, he said sommink about 'poor boars'--which I've
+heard is wot you has to give 'em as a tip to themselves, Gov'nor--so I
+promised him 'arf a crown to stop at 'tother end of that passage leadin'
+up from The Twisted Arm till he was wanted, sir. Made it a good tip
+because I wanted him to be there sure--it would have been a case of
+'nab' for us if he hadn't. Wasn't too much, was it, sir?"
+
+"No," said Cleek--and let him see that it wasn't by giving the chauffeur
+a pourboire of ten francs and sending him back to the garage with the
+impression that he had had dealings with a millionaire.
+
+Ten minutes later the hotel register bore the record of the arrival of
+"Mr. Philip Barch and servant"; and one attendant was engaged in showing
+the servant into a neat little bedroom which was to be his resting-place
+until morning while another was ushering the master into the suite
+engaged by the Baron de Carjorac.
+
+Three persons were there: the Baron, his daughter, and his daughter's
+companion; but Cleek saw but one--and that the only one who made no
+movement, uttered no sound, when he came into the room. Curiously pale
+and curiously quiet, she stood with one arm resting on the mantelpiece
+and the other hanging by her side, looking at him--looking _for_ him, in
+fact--but not saying one word, not making one sound. That she left
+wholly to the baron and his daughter.
+
+They, too, maintained, although with an effort, an appearance of
+composure so long as the hotel servant was present; but in the moment
+the door closed and the man was gone an overpowering excitement seized
+and mastered them.
+
+"Monsieur, for the love of God, don't tell me you have failed," implored
+the baron. "I have died a hundred deaths of torture and suspense since
+your card was carried up. But if I am to hear bad news ... Oh, my
+country!"
+
+"Don't cross bridges, baron, until you come to them," said Cleek
+composedly. "I gave Miss Lorne my promise that I would not leave France
+until I had done what she asked me to do; and--I am returning to England
+to-morrow by the noon boat. I have had an exciting evening, but it has
+had its compensation. Here is something for you. I had a bit of a fight
+for it, baron--look out that it doesn't get into the wrong hands again."
+
+He had taken a small packet of torn papers from his pocket while he was
+speaking; now he put it into the baron's hand--not wholly without a
+certain sense of gratification, however, in the excitement and delight
+which the act called forth; for no man is utterly devoid of personal
+vanity, personal pride in his achievements, and this man was no less
+human than his kind.
+
+He let the tumult of excitement and joy wear itself out; he suffered the
+baron's embraces--even the two rapturous kisses the man planted upon
+first one and then the other of his cheeks--he endured Mlle. Athalie's
+exuberant hand-clapping and hand-shaking and the cyclonic and wholly
+Gallic manner in which she deported herself when comparison with the
+fragments which the baron had still retained proved beyond all question
+that these were indeed the missing portions of the all-important
+document; and not until these things were over did he so much as look at
+Ailsa Lorne again.
+
+She had taken no part in the general excitement, moved not one foot from
+where she had been standing from the first. Even when Athalie danced
+over and hugged her and showed the important fragments; even when she
+reproved her with a wondering, "Ah, you strange Anglais--you stone-cold
+Anglais! Is it possible that you can have blood in your veins and yet
+take wondrous things like this so calmly?"--even then, she merely smiled
+and remained standing just as she still was; her pallor not one whit
+lessened, her reserve but the merest shadow less apparent than it had
+been before.
+
+Cleek chose that moment to walk over to her, to lift his eyes to hers,
+and to stand looking at her questioningly. For now that he was close to
+her he could see that she was trembling nervously; that her calmness was
+merely an outward thing, and that under it nerves writhed and a
+frightened heart was beating thick and fast.
+
+Was even the fancied moment in Paradise to be denied him then? That such
+a woman could not, all in a moment--could not by just one act of heroism
+on his part--be won over and lured into complete forgetfulness of such a
+past as his, he realized to the fullest extent. Always he had been
+conscious of that; but even so ... Ah, well, the meanest may hope, the
+lowest may at least look up; and even saints and angels were not above
+saying, "Well done!" to a soul that had struggled, to a sinner that had
+done his best.
+
+"I managed it, you see, Miss Lorne," he said, in a slightly lowered
+voice, while the baron busied himself in looking for his cheque-book and
+Athalie bustled about in quest of ink and a pen. "It wasn't an easy
+night's work, and I'm a bit fagged out. So, as I leave in the morning,
+it will be good-bye as well as good-night."
+
+She moved for the first time. The hand that lay upon the shelf of the
+mantelpiece shook and closed quickly. She lifted up her head and looked
+at him. Her eyes were misty and faint clouds of color were coming and
+going over her face.
+
+"What is it?" he asked. "Surely, Miss Lorne, you--are not afraid of me?"
+
+"No," she said, averting her face again. "Not of you but of myself. That
+is--I--" trying to laugh, but making a parody of it--"I was always more
+or less of a coward, Mr. Cleek, but ..." She faced round again sharply
+and held out her hand to him. "Will you let me thank you? Will you let
+me say that I must be merely a little child in intellect since it is
+only now that I have begun to understand how natural it is that a pound
+of gold should inevitably outweigh an ounce of dirt? And will you please
+understand that I am trying to thank you, trying to let you know that I
+am very, very sorry if I ever hurt your feelings. I don't think I meant
+to. I couldn't see then so clearly as I do now. Please forgive me."
+
+He took the hand she held out to him; and so had his moment in Paradise
+after all.
+
+"Hurt me as often as you like, if it will always end like this," he said
+with a queer little laugh that seemed to come from the very depths of
+his chest. "As for that other time ... How could I have expected that
+you would take it in any other way, being what you are and I what I had
+been? I am glad I told you. You could never have respected me for an
+instant if you had found it out in any other way; and I want your
+respect: I want it very, very earnestly, Miss Lorne. If you can ever
+give it to me I'll do my best to be worthy of it."
+
+She had withdrawn her hand from his and was drumming with her
+finger-tips upon the mantelshelf. A little pucker was between her
+eyebrows, she was biting her under lip perplexedly, and appeared to be
+hesitating. But of a sudden she twitched round her head sharply and a
+sweep of red went up over her face.
+
+"Shall I show you how much I do respect you, then?" she said. "One may
+ask of a friend things one would not dream of asking of a mere
+acquaintance, and so--Mr. Cleek, this night of horror has been too much
+for me. I know now that I can no longer remain in this position in this
+dreadful city. I have already resigned my post, and will return to
+England, and--if I am not too late for it--make an effort to secure the
+post of governess to Lady Chepstow's little son. I shall start in the
+morning. Will you play the part of friend and guide and see me safely
+across the Channel?"
+
+"Do you mean that?" he asked, his face alight, his eyes shining. "You
+will let me have the privilege, the honour? What a queen you are! You
+give largesse with both hands when a simple coin would have been enough.
+Shall I secure your tickets? When will you have your luggage ready? Is
+there anything you will need before you leave?"
+
+She smiled at his enthusiasm, coloured anew, and again held out her
+hand.
+
+"We will talk of all that in the morning," she said. "There will be
+plenty of time. Mlle. de Carjorac has promised to look after my effects
+and to see that they are shipped on to me in due course. But now it
+really must be good-night. I shall see you again at breakfast."
+
+"At breakfast?" repeated Cleek, with a happy laugh. "I wonder if you
+understand that I shall be kicking my heels on my bedside until it is
+ready?--that I shan't sleep a wink all night?"
+
+And as events proved he came respectably close to living up to that
+exuberant assertion--merely napping now and again, to wake up suddenly
+and "moon" for an hour or so; and, between periodical inspections of his
+watch, to wonder if God ever made a night so long and slow-dragging as
+this one.
+
+It had its recompense, however; for all--or nearly all--the next day was
+passed in company with _her_; and more than that he would not have asked
+of Heaven. Long before she rose he had made all arrangements for the
+journey to Calais; and she was not a little gratified--yes, and touched
+if the truth must be told--on arriving at the train, to find that he had
+made no effort to secure accommodations which would compel her to endure
+his companionship alone from the Gare du Nord to the steamer, but had
+considerately reserved seats in a compartment containing other
+travellers, and had done everything in his power to relieve her of any
+possible embarrassment and to insure her all possible comforts. Even
+magazines and pictorial papers were not omitted, but were there for her
+in plenty lest she might prefer an excuse for not indulging much in
+conversation; and there was also a huge bunch of La France roses bought
+at the temporary flower market beside the Madeleine at daybreak that
+morning.
+
+"They are beautiful, aren't they?" he said, as he laid them in her lap.
+"Will it surprise you to learn that flowers are a passion with me, and
+that I am a living refutation of the fallacy that 'there can be nothing
+very wrong about a man who can cultivate a garden'?"
+
+She looked up at him and smiled.
+
+"I think nothing about you will surprise me--you are so many-sided
+and--if you will pardon me saying it--so different from what one
+imagines men of--of your calling to be," she said; and laughed a little,
+colouring divinely until her face was like the roses themselves. "You
+treat me as if I were a queen; and I am not used to Court manners.
+Where, if you please, did you acquire yours?"
+
+"In the vast Kingdom of the World," he made answer, with just a
+momentary change of countenance--a mere suspicion of embarrassment:
+laughed off before she could be quite sure that it had had any real
+existence. "Please remember that to appear to be what one is not, and to
+ape manners foreign to one's real self is part of what you have so
+nicely, so euphemistically, termed 'my calling.' I am an Actor on the
+World's Stage, Miss Lorne; I should be but a very poor one if I could
+not accommodate myself to many roles."
+
+"If you play them all so well as you do that of the _preux chevalier_,
+it is no wonder you are a success," she replied gaily, slipping thus
+into easy conversation with him.
+
+And so it fell out that the magazines and the illustrated papers were
+not so much of a boon as both had fancied they might be when Cleek
+brought them to her; for they had not even been opened when the train
+ran up to the quay side at Calais and brought them almost abreast of the
+channel steamer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+It was not until they were aboard the boat and the shores of France were
+slipping off into the distance that Miss Lorne saw anything at all of
+Dollops. As he had travelled down from Paris to Calais in a separate
+compartment there had been no opportunity to do so. He had, too, held
+himself respectfully aloof even after they had boarded the steamer; and,
+but that once, when a lurch of the vessel had unexpectedly disturbed
+Cleek's equilibrium and knocked his hat off, she might not have seen him
+even then.
+
+But the manner in which he pounced upon that hat, the tender care with
+which he brushed it, and the affectionate interest in both voice and
+eyes when he handed it back and inquired eagerly, "Didn't hurt yourself,
+Gov'nor, did you, sir?" compelled her to take notice of him, and, in
+doing so, to understand the position in which they stood to each other.
+
+"You are travelling with a servant?" she enquired.
+
+"More than a servant--a devoted henchman, Miss Lorne. They say you can't
+purchase fidelity for all the money in the world, but I secured the
+finest brand of it in the Universe by the simple outlay of two half
+crowns. It is the boy of that night on Hampstead Heath--the boy who
+stood at the turning point. The Devil didn't get him, you see. He kept
+his promise and has been walking the straight road ever since."
+
+She turned round and looked at him; realizing more of the man's
+character in that moment than a hundred deeds of bravery, a thousand
+acts of gentle courtesy, could ever have made her understand.
+
+"And you took him in?" she said slowly. "You gave him a chance? You
+helped him to redeem himself? How good of you."
+
+"How good _for_ me, you mean," he laughed, "It was 'bread on the waters'
+with a vengeance, Miss Lorne. I should have lost my life last night but
+for that boy."--And told her briefly and airily how the thing had come
+to pass.
+
+"Don't think it vindictive of me, but I am sorry, I am very, very sorry
+you were not able to hand that dreadful woman, Margot, over to the
+authorities, Mr. Cleek," she said, with an expression of great
+seriousness. "She is not likely to forget or to forgive what you have
+done; and some day, perhaps ... Oh, do be on your guard. It was really
+foolhardy to have attempted the thing alone. Surely you might have
+appealed for assistance to the Paris police and not only have minimised
+your personal risk but made sure of the woman's arrest."
+
+"Not without allowing the authorities to learn exactly what the Baron de
+Carjorac was so anxious to keep them _from_ learning, Miss Lorne. They
+must have found out what I was after, what really had been lost, if I
+had applied to them for assistance. I had either to do the thing alone
+or drop the case entirely. And drop it I would not after _you_ had asked
+me to accept it, and--Pardon? No, Miss Lorne, I do not know who the
+woman Margot really is. Even that name may be fictitious, as was the one
+of 'Comtesse de la Tour.' I only know of her that she is one of the
+great figures of the Underworld; that money is her game--money alone;
+money first, last, and all the time; that her personal history is as
+much of a mystery to her closest associates as was--well, no matter;
+people of that ilk are not fit subjects to discuss with you. All that I
+know of the woman is that she has travelled pretty well over the world;
+that some six or eight months ago she was in Ceylon with a--er--a
+certain member of her crew, and came within an ace of falling foul of
+the law. She had put up a plan to loot the depository of the Pearl
+Fisheries Company at a period when there were thousands of pounds worth
+of gems awaiting transport. With her usual luck she slipped out of the
+net and left the country before she could be arrested. But she will have
+found something there that will repay her for the visit in one way or
+another. Luck of that kind seems to follow her always."
+
+And a long time afterward he had reason to remember what he said. For
+the present, however, he had banished from his mind all things but the
+happiness which was his to-day; and gave himself up to that happiness
+with his whole heart.
+
+Not once did he again intrude anything that had to do with himself, his
+exploits, or his future upon Ailsa's attention until all the voyage
+across the channel and all the journey from Dover up to London had come
+to an end; and even then, eager though he was to know how matters might
+shape themselves for _her_ future--he was tactful, considerate, careful
+not to force her into any embarrassing position or to claim from her
+more than the merest acquaintance might.
+
+"You are going to your friend at Hampstead, I suppose," he said as he
+handed her into a taxicab at Charing Cross. "I shall like to know if you
+succeed in getting the position with Lady Chepstow; and if you send no
+word to Mr. Narkom, I shall take silence as an assent and know that you
+have."
+
+And afterward, when the days grew in number and late April merged into
+early May and no word came, he knew that she had succeeded; and was
+comforted, thinking of her safely housed and perhaps in a position more
+congenial than the last. At any rate, she was in England, she was again
+in the same land with him; and that of itself was comfort.
+
+But other comforts were not wanting. The full glory of tulip time was
+here; The Yard had no immediate occasion for his services, and time was
+his to dawdle in the public parks among the children, the birds, and the
+flowers.
+
+"And, lord, how he do love 'em all, bless his heart!" commented Dollops
+in confidence to himself as he bustled about, putting the Den in order,
+watering the plants and touching lovingly the things that belonged to
+the master he adored--his daily task when Cleek was in the Park and had
+no need for his services. It was a pleasure to the boy, that service.
+His whole heart was in it. He resented anything that interfered with it
+even for an instant; and as at this particular time he was in the very
+midst of preparing a small surprise against his master's return, he was
+by no means pleased when a sharp whirring sound of a telephone bell
+shrilled out from the adjoining room and called him from his labour of
+love.
+
+"Oh, blow that thing! A body don't have a minute to call his own since
+it's been put in," he blurted out disgustedly, and answered the call.
+"'Ullo! Yuss; this is Cap'n Burbage's. Wot? No, he aren't in. Dunno when
+he will be. Dunno where he is. But if there's any messidge--I say, who
+wants him? Wot? Oh, s'elp me. You, is it, Mr. Narkom? Yuss, it's me,
+sir--Dollops. Wot? No, sir. Went out two hours ago. Gone to Kensington
+Palace Gardens. Tulips is in full bloom and you couldn't hold him
+indoors with a chain at tulip-time, bless his heart. Yuss, sir. Top hat,
+white spats--same as the 'Cap'n' always wears, sir."
+
+Narkom, at the other end of the line, called back: "If I miss him, if he
+comes in without seeing me, tell him to wait; I'll be round before
+three. Good-bye!" then hung up the receiver and turned to the gentleman
+who stood by the window on the other side of the private office,
+agitatedly twirling the end of his thick grey-threaded moustache with
+one hand, while with the other he drummed a nervous tattoo upon the
+broad oaken sill. "Not at home, Sir Henry; but, fortunately, I know
+where to find him with but little loss of time," he said, and pressed
+twice upon an electric button beside his desk. "My motor will be at the
+door in a couple of minutes, and with ordinary luck we ought to be able
+to pick him up inside of the next half-hour."
+
+Sir Henry--Sir Henry Wilding, Bart., to give him his full name and
+title--a handsome, well-set-up man of about forty years of age, well
+groomed, and with the upright bearing which comes of military training,
+twisted round on his heel at this and gave the superintendent an almost
+grateful look.
+
+"I hope so--God knows I hope so, Mr. Narkom," he said agitatedly. "Time
+is the one important thing at present. The suspense and uncertainty are
+getting on my nerves so horribly that the very minutes seem endless.
+Remember, there are only three days before the race, and if those
+rascals, whoever they are, get at Black Riot before then, God help
+me--that's all! And if this man Cleek can't probe the diabolical
+mystery, they _will_ get at her, too, and put Logan where they put
+Tolliver, the brutes!"
+
+"You may trust Cleek to see that they don't, Sir Henry. It is just the
+kind of case he will glory in; and if Black Riot is all that you believe
+her, you'll carry off the Derby in spite of these enterprising gentry
+who--Hallo! here's the motor. Clap on your hat, Sir Henry, and come
+along. Mind the step! Kensington Palace Gardens, Lennard--and as fast as
+you can streak it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+The chauffeur proved that he could "streak it" as close to the margin of
+the speed limit as the law dared wink at, even in the case of the
+well-known red limousine, and in a little over ten minutes pulled up
+before the park gates. Narkom jumped out, beckoned Sir Henry to follow
+him, and together they hurried into the grounds in quest of Cleek.
+
+Where the famous tulip beds made splotches of brilliant colour against
+the clear emerald of the closely clipped grass they came upon him--a
+solitary figure in the garb of the elderly seaman, "Captain Burbage, of
+Clarges Street"--seated on one of the garden benches, his hands folded
+over the knob of his thick walking-stick and his chin resting upon them,
+staring fixedly at the gorgeous flowers and apparently deaf and blind to
+all else.
+
+He was not, however; for as the superintendent approached he, without
+altering his gaze or his attitude in the slightest particle, said with
+the utmost calmness: "Superb, are they not, my friend? What a pity they
+should be scentless. It is as though Heaven had created a butterfly and
+deprived it of the secret of flight. Walk on, please, without addressing
+me. I am quite friendly with that policeman yonder and I do not wish him
+to suspect that the elderly gentleman he is so kind to is in any way
+connected with The Yard. Examine the tulips. That's right. You came in
+your limousine, of course? Where is it?"
+
+"Just outside the gates, at the end of the path on the right," replied
+Narkom, halting with Sir Henry and appearing to be wholly absorbed in
+pointing out the different varieties of tulips.
+
+"Good," replied Cleek, apparently taking not the slightest notice. "I'll
+toddle on presently, and when you return from inspecting the flowers you
+will find me inside the motor awaiting you."
+
+"Do, old chap--and please hurry; time is everything in this case. Let me
+introduce you to your client. (Keep looking at the flowers, please, Sir
+Henry.) I have the honour to make you acquainted with Sir Henry Wilding,
+Cleek; he needs you, my dear fellow."
+
+"Delighted--in both instances. My compliments, Sir Henry. By any chance
+that Sir Henry Wilding whose mare, Black Riot, is the favourite for next
+Wednesday's Derby?"
+
+"Yes--that very man, Mr. Cleek; and if--"
+
+"Don't get excited and don't turn, please; our friend the policeman is
+looking this way. What's the case? One of 'nobbling'? Somebody trying to
+get at the mare?"
+
+"Yes. A desperate 'somebody,' who doesn't stop even at murder. A very
+devil incarnate who seems to possess the power of invisibility, and who
+strikes in the dark. Save me, Mr. Cleek! All I've got in the world is at
+stake, and if anything happens to Black Riot, I'm a ruined man."
+
+"Yar-r-r!" yawned the elderly sea captain, rising and stretching. "I do
+believe, constable, I've been asleep. Warm weather, this, for May. A
+glorious week for Epsom. Shan't see you to-morrow, I'm afraid. Perhaps
+shan't see you until Thursday. Here, take that, my lad, and have
+half-a-crown's worth on Black Riot for the Derby; she'll win it, sure."
+
+"Thanky, sir. Good luck to you, sir."
+
+"Same to you, my lad. Good day." Then the old gentleman in the top hat
+and white spats moved slowly away, passed down the tree-shaded walk,
+passed the romping children, passed the Princess Louise's statue of
+Queen Victoria, and, after a moment, vanished. Ten minutes later, when
+Narkom and Sir Henry returned to the waiting motor, they found him
+seated within it awaiting them, as he had promised. Giving Lennard
+orders to drive about slowly in the least frequented quarters, while
+they talked, the superintendent got in with Sir Henry, and opened fire
+on the "case" without further delay.
+
+"My dear Cleek," he said, "as you appear to know all about Sir Henry and
+his famous mare, there's no need to go into that part of the subject, so
+I may as well begin by telling you at once that Sir Henry has come up to
+town for the express purpose of getting you to go down to his place in
+Suffolk to-night in company with him, as his only hope of outwitting a
+diabolical agency which has set out to get at the horse and put it out
+of commission before Derby Day, and in the most mysterious, the most
+inscrutable manner ever heard of, my dear chap. Already one groom who
+sat up to watch with her has been killed, another hopelessly paralysed,
+and to-night Logan, the mare's trainer, is to sit up with her in the
+effort to baulk the almost superhuman rascal who is at the bottom of it
+all. Conceive if you can, my dear fellow, a power so crafty, so
+diabolical, that it gets into a locked and guarded stable, gets in, my
+dear Cleek, despite four men constantly pacing back and forth before
+each and every window and door that leads into the place and with a
+groom on guard inside, and then gets out again in the same mysterious
+manner without having been seen or heard by a living soul. In addition
+to all the windows being small and covered with a grille of iron, a fact
+which would make it impossible for anyone to get in or out once the
+doors were closed and guarded, Sir Henry himself will tell you that the
+stable has been ransacked from top to bottom, every hole and every
+corner probed into, and not a living creature of any sort discovered.
+Yet only last night the groom, Tolliver, was set upon inside the place
+and killed outright in his efforts to protect the horse; killed, Cleek,
+with four men patrolling outside, and willing to swear--each and every
+one of them--that nothing and no one, either man, woman, child or beast,
+passed them going in or getting out from sunset until dawn."
+
+"Hum-m-m!" said Cleek, sucking in his lower lip. "Mysterious, to say the
+least. Was there no struggle? Did the men on guard hear no cry?"
+
+"In the case of the first groom, Murple, the one that was
+paralysed--no," said Sir Henry, as the question was addressed to him.
+"But in the case of Tolliver--yes. The men heard him cry out, heard him
+call out 'Help!' but by the time they could get the doors open it was
+all over. He was lying doubled up before the entrance to Black Riot's
+stall, with his face to the floor, as dead as Julius Caesar, poor
+fellow, and not a sign of anybody anywhere."
+
+"And the horse? Did anybody get at that?"
+
+"No; for the best of reasons. As soon as these attacks began, Mr. Cleek,
+I sent up to London. A gang of twenty-four men came down, with steel
+plates, steel joists, steel posts, and in seven hours' time Black Riot's
+box was converted into a sort of safe, to which I alone hold the key the
+instant it is locked up for the night. A steel grille about half a foot
+deep, and so tightly meshed that nothing bigger than a mouse could pass
+through, runs all round the enclosure close to the top of the walls, and
+this supplies ventilation. When the door is closed at night, it
+automatically connects itself with an electric gong in my own bedroom,
+so that the slightest attempt to open it, or even to touch it, would
+hammer out an alarm close to my head."
+
+"Has it ever done so?"
+
+"Yes--last night, when Tolliver was killed."
+
+"How killed, Sir Henry? Stabbed or shot?"
+
+"Neither. He appeared to have been strangled, poor fellow, and to have
+died in most awful agony."
+
+"Strangled? But, my dear sir, that would hardly have been possible in so
+short a time. You say your men heard him call out for help. Granted that
+it took them a full minute--and it probably did not take them half
+one--to open the doors and come to his assistance, he would not be stone
+dead in so short a time; and he was stone dead when they got in, I
+believe you said?"
+
+"Yes. God knows what killed him--the coroner will find that out, no
+doubt--but there was no blood shed and no mark upon him that I could
+see."
+
+"Hum-m-m! Was there any mark on the door of the steel stall?"
+
+"Yes. A long scratch, somewhat semi-circular, and sweeping downwards at
+the lower extremity. It began close to the lock and ended about a foot
+and a half lower."
+
+"Undoubtedly, you see, Cleek," put in Narkom, "someone tried to force an
+entrance to the steel room and get at the mare, but the prompt arrival
+of the men on guard outside the stable prevented his doing so."
+
+Cleek made no response. Just at that moment the limousine was gliding
+past a building whose courtyard was one blaze of parrot tulips, and, his
+eye caught by the flaming colours, he was staring at them and
+reflectively rubbing his thumb and forefinger up and down his chin.
+After a moment, however:
+
+"Tell me something, Sir Henry," he said abruptly. "Is anybody interested
+in your not putting Black Riot into the field on Derby Day? Anybody with
+whom you have a personal acquaintance, I mean, for of course I know
+there are other owners who would be glad enough to see him scratched.
+But is there anybody who would have a particular interest in your
+failure?"
+
+"Yes--one. Major Lambson-Bowles, owner of Minnow. Minnow's second
+favourite, as perhaps you know. It would delight Lambson-Bowles to see
+me 'go under'; and as I'm so certain of Black Riot that I've mortgaged
+every stick and stone I have in the world to back her, I should go under
+if anything happened to the mare. That would suit Lambson-Bowles down to
+the ground."
+
+"Bad blood between you, then?"
+
+"Yes--very. The fellow's a brute, and--I thrashed him once, as he
+deserved, the bounder. It may interest you to know that my only sister
+was his first wife. He led her a dog's life, poor girl, and death was a
+merciful release to her. Twelve months ago he married a rich American
+woman--widow of a man who made millions in hides and leather. That's
+when Lambson-Bowles took up racing, and how he got the money to keep a
+stud. Had the beastly bad taste, too, to come down to Suffolk--within a
+gunshot of Wilding Hall--take Elmslie Manor, the biggest and grandest
+place in the neighbourhood, and cut a dash under my very nose, as it
+were."
+
+"Oho!" said Cleek; "then the major is a neighbour as well as a rival for
+the Derby plate. I see! I see!"
+
+"No, you don't--altogether," said Sir Henry quickly. "Lambson-Bowles is
+a brute and a bounder in many ways, but--well, I don't believe he is
+low-down enough to do this sort of thing--and with murder attached to
+it, too--although he did try to bribe poor Tolliver to leave me. Offered
+my trainer double wages, too, to chuck me and take up his horses."
+
+"Oh, he did that, did he? Sure of it, Sir Henry?"
+
+"Absolutely. Saw the letter he wrote to Logan."
+
+"Hum-m-m! Feel that you can rely on Logan, do you?"
+
+"To the last gasp. He's as true to me as my own shadow. If you want
+proof of it, Mr. Cleek, he's going to sit in the stable and keep guard
+himself to-night--in the face of what happened to Murple and Tolliver."
+
+"Murple is the groom who was paralysed, is he not?" said Cleek, after a
+moment. "Singular thing, that. What paralysed him, do you think?"
+
+"Heaven knows. He might just as well have been killed as poor Tolliver
+was, for he'll never be any use again, the doctors say. Some injury to
+the spinal column, and with it a curious affection of the throat and
+tongue. He can neither swallow nor speak. Nourishment has to be
+administered by tube, and the tongue is horribly swollen."
+
+"I'm of the opinion, Cleek," put in Narkom, "that strangulation is
+merely part of the procedure of the rascal who makes these diabolical
+nocturnal visits. In other words, that he is armed with some
+quick-acting infernal poison, which he forces into the mouths of his
+victims. That paralysis of the muscles of the throat is one of the
+symptoms of prussic acid poisoning, you must remember."
+
+"I do remember, Mr. Narkom," replied Cleek enigmatically. "My memory is
+much stimulated by these details, I assure you. I gather from them that,
+whatever is administered, Murple did not get quite so much of it as
+Tolliver, or he, too, would be dead. Sir Henry"--he turned again to the
+baronet--"do you trust everybody else connected with your establishment
+as much as you trust Logan?"
+
+"Yes. There's not a servant connected with the hall that hasn't been in
+my service for years, and all are loyal to me."
+
+"May I ask who else is in the house besides the servants?"
+
+"My wife, Lady Wilding, for one; her cousin, Mr. Sharpless, who is on a
+visit to us, for another; and, for a third, my uncle, the Rev. Ambrose
+Smeer, the famous revivalist."
+
+"Mr. Smeer does not approve of the race track, of course?"
+
+"No, he does not. He is absurdly 'narrow' on some subjects, and 'sport'
+of all sorts is one of them. But, beyond that, he is a dear, lovable old
+fellow, of whom I am amazingly fond."
+
+"Hum-m-m! And Lady Wilding and Mr. Sharpless--do they, too, disapprove
+of racing?"
+
+"Quite to the contrary. Both are enthusiastic upon the subject, and both
+have the utmost faith in Black Riot's certainty of winning. Lady Wilding
+is something more than attached to the mare; and as for Mr. Sharpless,
+he is so upset over these rascally attempts that every morning when the
+steel room is opened and the animal taken out, although nothing ever
+happens in the daylight, he won't let her get out of his sight for a
+single instant until she is groomed and locked up for the night. He is
+so incensed, so worked up over this diabolical business, that I verily
+believe if he caught any stranger coming near the mare he'd shoot him in
+his tracks."
+
+"Hum-m-m!" said Cleek abstractedly, and then sat silent for a long time,
+staring at his spats and moving one thumb slowly round the breadth of
+the other, his fingers interlaced and his lower lip pushed upwards over
+the one above.
+
+"There, that's the case, Cleek," said Narkom, after a time. "Do you make
+anything out of it?"
+
+"Yes," he replied; "I make a good deal out of it, Mr. Narkom, but, like
+the language of the man who stepped on the banana skin, it isn't fit for
+publication. One question more, Sir Henry. Heaven forbid it, of course,
+but if anything should happen to Logan to-night, whom would you put on
+guard over the horse to-morrow?"
+
+"Do you think I could persuade anybody if a third man perished?" said
+the baronet, answering one question with another. "I don't believe
+there's a groom in England who'd take the risk for love or money. There
+would be nothing for it but to do the watching myself. What's that? Do
+it? Certainly, I'd do it! Everybody that knows me knows that."
+
+"Ah, I see!" said Cleek, and lapsed into silence again.
+
+"But you'll come, won't you?" exclaimed Sir Henry agitatedly. "It won't
+happen if you take up the case; Mr. Narkom tells me he is sure of that.
+Come with me, Mr. Cleek. My motor is waiting at the garage. Come back
+with me, for God's sake--for humanity's sake--and get to the bottom of
+the thing."
+
+"Yes," said Cleek in reply. "Give Lennard the address of the garage,
+please; and--Mr. Narkom!"
+
+"Yes, old chap?"
+
+"Pull up at the first grocer's shop you see, will you, and buy me a
+couple of pounds of the best white flour that's milled; and if you can't
+manage to get me either a sieve or a flour dredger, a tin pepper-pot
+will do!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+It was two o'clock when Sir Henry Wilding's motor turned its back upon
+the outskirts of London, and it was a quarter past seven when it whirled
+up to the stables of Wilding Hall, and the baronet and his grey-headed,
+bespectacled and white-spatted companion alighted, having taken five
+hours and a quarter to make a journey which the trains which run daily
+between Liverpool Street and Darsham make in four.
+
+As a matter of fact, however, they really had outstripped the train, but
+it had been Cleek's pleasure to make two calls on the way, one at
+Saxmundham, where the paralysed Murple lay in the infirmary of the local
+practitioner, the other at the mortuary where the body of Tolliver was
+retained, awaiting the sitting of the coroner. Both the dead and the
+still living man Cleek had subjected to a critical personal examination,
+but whether either furnished him with any suggested clue he did not say;
+indeed, the only remark he made upon the subject was when Sir Henry, on
+hearing from Murple's wife that the doctor had said he would probably
+not last the week out, had inquired if the woman knew where to "put her
+hand on the receipt for the payment of the last premium, so that her
+claim could be sent into the life assurance company without delay when
+the end came."
+
+"Tell me something, Sir Henry," said Cleek when he heard that, and
+noticed how gratefully the woman looked at the baronet when she replied,
+"Yes, Sir Henry, God bless you, sir!" "Tell me, if it is not an
+impertinent question, did you take out an insurance policy on Murple's
+life and pay the premium on it yourself? I gathered the idea that you
+did from the manner in which the woman spoke to you."
+
+"Yes, I did," replied Sir Henry. "As a matter of fact, I take out a
+similar policy--payable to the widow--for every married man I employ in
+connection with my racing stud."
+
+"May I ask why?"
+
+"Well, for one thing, they usually are too poor and have too many
+children to support to be able to take it out for themselves, and
+exercising racers has a good many risks. Then, for another thing, I'm a
+firm believer in the policy of life assurance. It's just so much money
+laid up in safety, and one never knows what may happen."
+
+"Then it is fair," said Cleek, "to suppose, in that case, that you have
+taken out one on your own life?"
+
+"Yes--rather! And a whacking big one, too."
+
+"And Lady Wilding is, of course, the beneficiary?"
+
+"Certainly. There are no children, you know. As a matter of fact, we
+have been married only seven months. Before the date of my wedding the
+policy was in my uncle Ambrose's--the Rev. Mr. Smeer's--favour."
+
+"Ah, I see!" said Cleek reflectively. Then fell to thinking deeply over
+the subject, and was still thinking of it when the motor whizzed into
+the stable yard at Wilding Hall and brought him into contact for the
+first time with the trainer, Logan. He didn't much fancy Logan at first
+blush--and Logan didn't fancy him at all at any time.
+
+"Hur!" he said disgustedly, in a stage aside to his master, as Cleek
+stood on the threshold of the stable, with his head thrown back and his
+chin at an angle, sniffing the air somewhat after the manner of a
+bird-dog. "Hur! If un's the best Scotland Yard could let out to ye,
+sir--a half-baked old softy like that!--the rest of 'em must be a
+blessed poor lot, Ah'm thinkin'. What's un doin' now, the
+noodle?--snuffin' the air like he did not understand the smell of it!
+He'd not be expectin' a stable to be scented with eau de cologne, would
+he? What's un name, sir?"
+
+"Cleek."
+
+"Hur! Sounds like a golf-stick--an' Ah've no doubt he's got a head like
+one: main thick and with a twist in un. I dunna like 'tecs, Sir Henry,
+and I dunna like this one especial. Who's to tell as he aren't in with
+they devils as is after Black Riot? Naw! I dunna like him at all."
+
+Meantime, serenely unconscious of the displeasure he had excited in
+Logan's breast, Cleek went on sniffing the air and "poking about," as he
+phrased it, in all corners of the stable; and when, a moment later, Sir
+Henry went in and joined him, he was standing before the door of the
+steel room examining the curving scratch of which the baronet had
+spoken.
+
+"What do you make of it, Mr. Cleek?"
+
+"Not much in the way of a clue, Sir Henry--a clue to any possible
+intruder, I mean. If your artistic soul hadn't rebelled against bare
+steel--which would, of course, have soon rusted in this
+ammonia-impregnated atmosphere--and led you to put a coat of paint over
+the metal, there would have been no mark at all, the thing is so slight.
+I am of the opinion that Tolliver himself caused it. In short, that it
+was made by either a pin or a cuff button in his wristband when he was
+attacked and fell. But, enlighten me upon a puzzling point, Sir Henry:
+What do you use coriander and oil of sassafras for in a stable?"
+
+"Coriander? Oil of sassafras? I don't know what the dickens they are.
+Have you found such things here?"
+
+"No; simply smelt them. The combination is not usual--indeed, I know of
+but one race in the world who make any use of it, and they merely for a
+purpose which, of course, could not possibly exist here, unless--"
+
+He allowed the rest of the sentence to go by default, and turning,
+looked all round the place. For the first time he seemed to notice
+something unusual for the equipment of a stable, and regarded it with
+silent interest. It was nothing more nor less than a box, covered with
+sheets of virgin cork, and standing on the floor just under one of the
+windows, where the light and air could get to a weird-looking,
+rubbery-leaved, orchid-like plant, covered with ligulated scarlet
+blossoms which grew within it.
+
+"Sir Henry," he said, after a moment, "may I ask how long it is since
+you were in South America?"
+
+"I? Never was there in my life, Mr. Cleek--never."
+
+"Ah! Then who connected with the hall has been?"
+
+"Oh, I see what you are driving at," said Sir Henry, following the
+direction of his gaze. "That Patagonian plant, eh? That belonged to poor
+Tolliver. He had a strange fancy for ferns and rock plants and things of
+that description, and as that particular specimen happens to be one that
+does better in the atmosphere of a stable than elsewhere, he kept it in
+here."
+
+"Who told him that it does better in the atmosphere of a stable?"
+
+"Lady Wilding's cousin, Mr. Sharpless. It was he who gave Tolliver the
+plant."
+
+"Oho! Then Mr. Sharpless has been to South America, has he?"
+
+"Why, yes. As a matter of fact, he comes from there; so also does Lady
+Wilding. I should have thought you would have remembered that, Mr.
+Cleek, when--But perhaps you have never heard? She--they--that is,"
+stammering confusedly and colouring to the temples, "up to seven months
+ago, Mr. Cleek, Lady Wilding was on the--er--music-hall stage. She and
+Mr. Sharpless were known as 'Signor Morando and La Belle Creole'--they
+did a living statue turn together. It was highly artistic; people raved;
+I--er--fell in love with the lady and--that's all!"
+
+But it wasn't; for Cleek, reading between the lines, saw that the mad
+infatuation which had brought the lady a title and an over-generous
+husband had simmered down--as such things always do sooner or later--and
+that the marriage was very far from being a happy one. As a matter of
+fact, he learned later that the county, to a woman, had refused to
+accept Lady Wilding; that her ladyship, chafing under this ostracism,
+was for having a number of her old professional friends come down to
+visit her and make a time of it, and that, on Sir Henry's objecting, a
+violent quarrel had ensued, and the Rev. Ambrose Smeer had come down to
+the hall in the effort to make peace. And he learned something else that
+night which gave him food for deep reflection: the Rev. Ambrose Smeer,
+too, had been to South America, and when he met that gentleman--well, in
+spite of the fact that Sir Henry thought so highly of him, and it was
+known that his revival meetings had done a world of good, Cleek did not
+fancy the Rev. Ambrose Smeer any more than he fancied the trainer,
+Logan.
+
+But to return to the present. By this time the late falling twilight of
+May had begun to close in, and presently--as the day was now done and
+the night approaching--Logan led in Black Riot from the paddock,
+followed by a slim, sallow-featured, small-moustached man, bearing a
+shotgun, and dressed in grey tweeds. Sir Henry, who, it was plain to
+see, had a liking for the man, introduced this newcomer to Cleek as the
+South American, Mr. Andrew Sharpless.
+
+"That's the English of it, Mr. Cleek," said the latter jovially, but
+with an undoubted Spanish twist to the tongue. "I wouldn't have you risk
+breaking your jaw with the Brazilian original. Delighted to meet you,
+sir. I hope to Heaven you will get at the bottom of this diabolical
+thing. What do you think, Henry? Lambson-Bowles's jockey was over in
+this neighbourhood this afternoon. Trying to see how Black Riot shapes,
+of course, the bounder! Fortunately I saw him skulking along on the
+other side of the hedge, and gave him two minutes in which to make
+himself scarce. If he hadn't, if he had come a step nearer to the mare,
+I'd have shot him down like a dog. That's right, Logan, put her up for
+the night, old chap, and I'll get out your bedding."
+
+"Aye," said Logan, through his clamped teeth, "and God help man or devil
+that comes a-nigh her this night--God help him, Lunnon Mister, that's
+all Ah say!" Then he passed into the steel room with the mare, attended
+her for the night, and coming out a minute or two later, locked her up
+and gave Sir Henry the key.
+
+"Broke her and trained her, Ah did; and willin' to die for her, Ah am,
+if Ah can't pull un through no other way," he said, pausing before Cleek
+and giving him a black look, "A Derby winner her's cut out for, Lunnon
+Mister, and a Derby winner her's goin' to be, in spite of all the
+Lambson-Bowleses and the low-down horse-nobblers in Christendom!" Then
+he switched round and walked over to Sharpless, who had taken a pillow
+and a bundle of blankets from a convenient cupboard, and was making a
+bed of them on the floor at the foot of the locked steel door.
+
+"Thanky, sir, 'bliged to un, sir," said Logan as Sharpless hung up the
+shotgun and, with a word to the baronet, excused himself and went in to
+dress for dinner. Then he faced round again on Cleek, who was once more
+sniffing the air, and pointed to the rude bed: "There's where Ted Logan
+sleeps this night--there!" he went on suddenly; "and them as tries to
+get at Black Riot comes to grips with me first, me and the shotgun Mr.
+Sharpless has left Ah. And if Ah shoot, Lunnon Mister, Ah shoot to
+kill!"
+
+"Do me a favour, Sir Henry," said Cleek. "For reasons of my own, I want
+to be in this stable alone for the next ten minutes, and after that let
+no one come into it until morning. I won't be accountable for this man's
+life if he stops in here to-night, and for his sake, as well as for your
+own, I want you to forbid him to do so."
+
+Logan seemed to go nearly mad with rage at this.
+
+"Ah won't listen to it! Ah will stop here--Ah will! Ah will!" he cried
+out in a passion. "Who comes ull find Ah here waitin' to come to grips
+with un. Ah won't stop out--Ah won't! Don't un listen to Lunnon Mister,
+Sir Henry--for God's sake, don't!"
+
+"I am afraid I must in this instance, Logan. You are far too suspicious,
+my good fellow. Mr. Cleek doesn't want to 'get at' the mare; he wants to
+protect her; to keep anybody else from getting at her, so--join the
+guard outside if you are so eager. You must let him have his way." And,
+in spite of all Logan's pleading, Cleek did have his way.
+
+Protesting, swearing, almost weeping, the trainer was turned out and the
+doors closed, leaving Cleek alone in the stable; and the last Logan and
+Sir Henry saw of him until he came out and rejoined them he was standing
+in the middle of the floor, with his hands on both hips, staring fixedly
+at the impromptu bed in front of the steel-room door.
+
+"Put on the guard now and see that nobody goes into the place until
+morning, Sir Henry," he said when he came out and rejoined them some
+minutes later. "Logan, you silly fellow, you'll do no good fighting
+against Fate. Make the best of it and stop where you are."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+That night Cleek met Lady Wilding for the first time. He found her what
+he afterwards termed "a splendid animal," beautiful, statuesque, more of
+Juno than of Venus, and freely endowed with the languorous temperament
+and the splendid earthy loveliness which grows nowhere but under
+tropical skies and in the shadow of palm groves and the flame of cactus
+flowers. She showed him but scant courtesy, however, for she was but a
+poor hostess, and after dinner carried her cousin away to the
+billiard-room, and left her husband to entertain the Rev. Ambrose and
+the detective as best he could. Cleek needed but little entertaining,
+however, for in spite of his serenity he was full of the case on hand,
+and kept wandering in and out of the house and upstairs and down until
+eleven o'clock came and bed claimed him with the rest.
+
+His last wakeful recollection was of the clock in the lower corridor
+striking the first quarter after eleven; then sleep claimed him, and he
+knew no more until all the stillness was suddenly shattered by a
+loud-voiced gong hammering out an alarm and the sound of people tumbling
+out of bed and scurrying about in a panic of fright. He jumped out of
+bed, pulled on his clothing, and rushed out into the hall, only to find
+it alive with people, and at their head Sir Henry, with a dressing-gown
+thrown on over his pyjamas and a bedroom candle in his shaking hand.
+
+"The stable!" he cried out excitedly. "Come on, come on, for God's sake!
+Someone has touched the door of the steel room; and yet the place was
+left empty--empty!"
+
+But it was no longer empty, as they found out when they reached it, for
+the doors had been flung open, the men who had been left on guard
+outside the stables were now inside it, the electric lights were in full
+blaze, the shotgun still hanging where Sharpless had left it, the
+impromptu bed was tumbled and tossed in a man's death agony, and at the
+foot of the steel door Logan lay, curled up in a heap and stone dead!
+
+"He would get in, Sir Henry, he'd have shot one or the other of us if we
+hadn't let him," said one of the outer guards as Sir Henry and Cleek
+appeared. "He would lie before the door and watch, sir--he simply would;
+and God have mercy on him, poor chap; he was faithful to the last!"
+
+"And the last might not have come for years, the fool, if he had only
+obeyed," said Cleek; then lapsed into silence and stood staring at a
+dust of white flour on the red-tiled floor and at a thin wavering line
+that broke the even surface of it.
+
+It was perhaps two minutes later when the entire household--mistress,
+guests, and servants alike--came trooping across the open space between
+the hall and the stables in a state of semi-deshabille, but in that
+brief space of time friendly hands had reverently lifted the body of the
+dead man from its place before the steel door, and Sir Henry was
+nervously fitting the key to the lock in a frantic effort to get in and
+see if Black Riot was safe.
+
+"Dios! what is it? What has happened?" cried Lady Wilding as she came
+hurrying in, followed closely by Sharpless and the Rev. Ambrose Smeer.
+Then, catching sight of Logan's body, she gave a little scream and
+covered her eyes. "The trainer, Andrew, the trainer now!" she went on
+half hysterically. "Another death--another! Surely they have got the
+wretch at last?"
+
+"The mare! The mare, Henry! Is she safe?" exclaimed Sharpless excitedly
+as he whirled away from his cousin's side and bore down upon the
+baronet. "Give me the key--you're too nervous." And, taking it from him,
+unlocked the steel room and passed swiftly into it.
+
+In another instant Black Riot was led out--uninjured, untouched, in the
+very pink of condition--and, in spite of the tragedy and the dead man's
+presence, one or two of the guards were so carried away that they
+essayed a cheer.
+
+"Stop that! Stop it instantly!" rapped out Sir Henry, facing round upon
+them. "What's a horse--even the best--beside the loss of an honest life
+like that?" and flung out a shaking hand in the direction of dead Logan.
+"It will be the story of last night over again, of course? You heard his
+scream, heard his fall, but he was dead when you got to him--dead--and
+you found no one here?"
+
+"Not a soul, Sir Henry. The doors were all locked; no grille is missing
+from any window; no one is in the loft; no one in any of the stalls; no
+one in any crook or corner of the place."
+
+"Send for the constable--the justice of the peace--anybody!" chimed in
+the Rev. Ambrose Smeer at this. "Henry, will you never be warned, never
+take these awful lessons to heart? This sinful practice of racing horses
+for money--"
+
+"Oh, hush, hush! Don't preach me a sermon now, uncle," interposed Sir
+Henry. "My heart's torn, my mind crazed by this abominable thing. Poor
+old Logan! Poor, faithful old chap! Oh!" He whirled and looked over at
+Cleek, who still stood inactive, staring at the flour-dusted floor. "And
+they said that no mystery was too great for you to get to the bottom of
+it, no riddle too complex for you to find the answer! Can't you do
+something? Can't you suggest something? Can't you see any glimmer of
+light at all?"
+
+Cleek looked up, and that curious smile which Narkom knew so well--and
+would have known had he been there was the "danger signal"--looped up
+one corner of his mouth.
+
+"I fancy it is _all_ 'light,' Sir Henry," he said. "I may be wrong, but
+I fancy it is merely a question of comparative height. Do I puzzle you
+by that? Well, let me explain. Lady Wilding there is one height, Mr.
+Sharpless is another, and I am a third; and if they two were to place
+themselves side by side and, say, about four inches apart, and I were to
+stand immediately behind them, the difference would be most apparent.
+There you are. Do you grasp it?"
+
+"Not in the least."
+
+"Bothered if I do either," supplemented Sharpless. "It all sounds like
+tommy rot to me."
+
+"Does it?" said Cleek. "Then let me explain it by illustration"--and he
+walked quietly towards them. "Lady Wilding, will you oblige me by
+standing here? Thank you very much. Now, if you please, Mr. Sharpless,
+will you stand beside her ladyship while I take up my place here
+immediately behind you both? That's it exactly. A little nearer,
+please--just a little, so that your left elbow touches her ladyship's
+right. Now then"--his two hands moved briskly, there was a click-click,
+and after it: "There you are--that explains it, my good Mr. and Mrs.
+Filippo Bucarelli; that explains it completely!"
+
+And as he stepped aside on saying this, those who were watching, those
+who heard Lady Wilding's scream and Mr. Sharpless's snarling oath and
+saw them vainly try to spring apart and dart away, saw also that a steel
+handcuff was on the woman's right wrist, its mate on the man's left one,
+and that they were firmly chained together.
+
+"In the name of Heaven, man," began Sir Henry, appalled by this, and
+growing red and white by rapid turns.
+
+"I fancy that Heaven has very little to do with this precious pair, Sir
+Henry," interposed Cleek. "You want the two people who are accountable
+for these diabolical crimes, and--there they stand."
+
+"What! Do you mean to tell me that Sharpless, that my wife--"
+
+"Don't give the lady a title to which she has not and never had any
+legal right, Sir Henry. If it had ever occurred to you to emulate my
+example to-night and search the lady's effects, you would have found
+that she was christened Enriqua Dolores Torjado, and that she was
+married to Senor Filippo Bucarelli here, at Valparaiso, in Chili, three
+years ago, and that her marriage to you was merely a clever little
+scheme to get hold of a pot of money and share it with her rascally
+husband."
+
+"It's a lie!" snarled out the male prisoner. "It's an infernal
+policeman's lie! You never found any such thing!"
+
+"Pardon me, but I did," replied Cleek serenely. "And what's more, I
+found the little phial of coriander and oil of sassafras in your room,
+senor, and--I shall finish off the Mynga Worm in another ten minutes!"
+
+Bucarelli and his wife gave a mingled cry, and, chained together though
+they were, made a wild bolt for the door; only, however, to be met on
+the threshold by the local constable, to whom Cleek had dispatched a
+note some hours previously.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Philpotts; you are very prompt," he said. "There are
+your prisoners nicely trussed and waiting for you. Take them away--we
+are quite done with them here. Sir Henry"--he turned to the baronet--"if
+Black Riot is fitted to win the Derby she will win it, and you need have
+no more fear for her safety. No one has ever for one moment tried to get
+at her. You yourself were the one that precious pair were after, and the
+bait was your life assurance. By killing off the watchers over Black
+Riot one by one they knew that there would come a time when, being able
+to get no one else to take the risk of guarding the horse and sleeping
+on that bed before the steel-room door, you would do it yourself; and
+when that time came they would have had you."
+
+"But how? By what means?"
+
+"By one of the most diabolical imaginable. Among the reptiles of
+Patagonia, Sir Henry, there is one--a species of black adder, known in
+the country as the Mynga Worm--whose bite is more deadly than that of
+the rattler or the copperhead, and as rapid in its action as prussic
+acid itself. It has, too, a great velocity of movement and a peculiar
+power of springing and hurling itself upon its prey. The Patagonians are
+a barbarous people in the main and, like all barbarous people, are
+vengeful, cunning, and subtle. A favourite revenge of theirs upon
+unsuspecting enemies is to get within touch of them and secretly to
+smear a mixture of coriander and oil of sassafras upon some part of
+their bodies, and then either to lure or drive them into the forest; for
+by a peculiar arrangement of Mother Nature this mixture has a
+fascination, a maddening effect upon the Mynga Worm--just as a red rag
+has on a bull--and, enraged by the scent, it finds the spot smeared with
+it and delivers its deadly bite."
+
+"Good heaven! How horrible! And you mean to tell me--"
+
+"That they employed one of these deadly reptiles in this case? Yes, Sir
+Henry. I suspected it the very moment I smelt the odour of the coriander
+and sassafras; but I suspected that an animal or a reptile of some kind
+was at the bottom of the mystery at a prior period. That is why I wanted
+the flour. Look! Do you see where I sifted it over this spot near the
+Patagonian plant? And do you see those serpentine tracks through the
+middle of it? The Mynga Worm is there--in that box, at the roots of that
+plant. Now see!"
+
+He caught up a horse blanket, spread it on the floor, lifted the box and
+plant, set them down in the middle of it, and with a quick gathering up
+of the ends of the blanket converted it into a bag and tied it round
+with a hitching strap.
+
+"Get spades, forks, anything, and dig a hole outside in the paddock," he
+went on. "A deep hole--a yard deep at the least--then get some straw,
+some paraffin, turpentine--anything that will burn furiously and
+quickly--and we will soon finish the little beast."
+
+The servants flew to obey, and when the hole was dug he carried the bag
+out and lowered it carefully into it, covered it with straw, drenched
+this with a gallon or more of lamp oil, and rapidly applied a match to
+it and sprang back.
+
+A moment later those who were watching saw a small black snake make an
+ineffectual effort to leap out of the blazing mass, fall back into the
+flames and disappear for ever.
+
+"The method of procedure?" said Cleek, answering the baronet's query as
+the latter was pouring out what he called "a nerve settler," prior to
+following the Rev. Ambrose's example and going to bed. "Very cunning,
+and yet very, very simple, Sir Henry. Bucarelli made a practice, as I
+saw this evening, of helping the chosen watcher to make his bed on the
+floor in front of the door to the steel room, but during the time he was
+removing the blankets from the cupboard his plan was to smear them with
+the coriander and sassafras and so arrange the top blanket that when the
+watcher lay down the stuff touched his neck or throat and made that the
+point of attack for the snake, whose fangs make a small round spot not
+bigger than a knitting needle, which is easily passed over by those not
+used to looking for such a thing. There was such a spot on Tolliver's
+throat; such another at the base of Murple's skull, and there is a third
+in poor Logan's left temple. No, thank you--no more to-night, Sir Henry.
+Alcohol and I are never more than speaking acquaintances at the best of
+times. But if you really wish to do me a kindness--"
+
+"I don't think there is room to doubt that, Mr. Cleek. If I am certain
+of anything in this world I am certain of Black Riot's success on
+Wednesday; and that success I feel I shall owe to you. Money can't
+offset some debts, you know; and if there is anything in the world I can
+do, you have only to let me know."
+
+"Thank you," said Cleek. "Then invite me to spend to-morrow here, and
+give me the freedom of those superb gardens. My senses are drunk already
+with the scent of your hyacinths; and if I might have a day among them,
+I should be as near happy as makes no difference."
+
+He had his day--breaking it only to 'phone up to Clarges Street and
+quiet any possible fears upon Dollops's part--and if ever man was
+satisfied, that man was he.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+It was late on the afternoon of the day following when he turned up at
+Clarges Street and threw Dollops into a very transport of delight at the
+bare sight of him.
+
+"Crumbs, Gov'nor, but I am glad to see you, sir!" said the boy, with a
+look of positive adoration. "A fish out o' water ain't a patch to wot
+I've felt like--Lord, no! Why, sir, it's the first time you've ever been
+away from me since you took me on; and the dreams I've had is enough to
+drive a body fair dotty. I've seen parties a-stickin' knives in your
+back and puttin' poison in your food and doin' the Lord knows wot not to
+you, sir; and every blessed nerve in my body has been a doin' of a
+constant shake--like a jelly-fish on a cold day."
+
+Cleek laughed, and catching him by the shoulder whirled him round,
+looked at him, and then clapped him on the back.
+
+"Look here, don't you get to worrying and to developing nerves, young
+man," he said, "or I shall have to ship you off somewhere for a long
+rest; and I'm just beginning to feel as if I couldn't do without you.
+What you want is a change; and what I want is the river, so, if there is
+no message from The Yard--"
+
+"There isn't, sir."
+
+"Good. Then 'phone through to Mr. Narkom and tell him that you and I are
+going for a few days up the river as far as Henley, and that we are
+going to break it on Wednesday to go to the Derby."
+
+"Gov'nor! Gawd's truth, sir, you aren't never a-goin' to give me two
+sich treats as that? From now till Thursday with jist you--jist _you_,
+sir? I'll go balmy on the crumpet--I'll get to stickin' straws in my
+bloomin' 'air!"
+
+"You 'get to' the telephone and send that message to The Yard, if you
+know when you're well off," said Cleek, laughing. "And, after that, out
+with the kit bag and in with such things as we shall need; and--Hullo!
+what's this thing?"
+
+"A necktie and a rose bush wot I took the liberty of buyin' for you,
+sir, bein' as you give me ten shillin's for myself," said Dollops
+sheepishly. "I been a-keepin' of my eye on that rose bush and that
+necktie for a week past, sir. I 'ope you'll take 'em, Gov'nor, and not
+think me presumin', sir."
+
+Cleek faced round and looked at him--a long look--without saying
+anything, then he screwed round on his heel and walked to the window.
+
+"It is very nice and very thoughtful of you, Dollops," he said
+presently, his voice a little thick, his tones a little uneven. "But
+don't be silly and waste your money, my lad. Lay it by. You may need it
+one day. Now toddle on and get things ready for our outing." But
+afterwards--when the boy had gone and he was alone in the room--he
+walked back to the potted rose bush and touched its buds lovingly, and
+stood leaning over it and saying nothing for a long time. And though the
+necktie that hung on its branches was a harlequin thing of red and green
+and violent purple, when he came to dress for that promised outing he
+put it on and adjusted it as tenderly, wore it as proudly as ever knight
+of old wore the colours of his lady.
+
+"You look a fair treat in it, sir," said Dollops, delightedly and
+admiringly, when he came in later and saw that he had it on. And if
+anything had been wanting to make him quite, quite happy, it was wanting
+no more. Or, if it had been, the night that came down and found them
+housed in a little old-world inn, with a shining river at its door and
+the hush and the odorous darkness of the country lanes about it, must of
+itself have supplied the omission; for when all the house was still and
+all the lights were out, he crept from his bed and curled up like a dog
+on the mat before Cleek's door, and would not have changed places with
+an emperor.
+
+They were up and on the river, master and man, almost as soon as the
+dawn itself; taking their morning plunge under a sky that was but just
+changing the tints of rose to those of saffron before they merged into
+the actual light of day; and to the boy the man seemed almost a god in
+that dim light, which showed but an ivory shoulder lifting now and again
+as he struck outwards and deft his way through a yielding, yellow-grey
+waste that leaped in little lilac-hued ripples to his chin, and thence
+wavered off behind him in dancing lines of light. And once, when he
+heard him lift up his voice and sing as he swam, he felt sure that he
+_must_ be a god--that that alone could explain why he had found him so
+different from other men, and cared for him as he had never cared for
+any human thing before.
+
+From dawn to dark that day was one of unalloyed delight to him. Never
+before had the starved soul of him--fed, all his life, when it was fed
+at all, from the drippings of the flesh-pots and the "leavings" of the
+City--found any savour in the insipid offerings of the Country; never
+before had he known what charms lie on a river's breast, what spells of
+magic a blossoming hedge and the white "candles" of a horse-chestnut
+tree may weave, and never before had a meadow been anything to him but a
+simple grass-grown field. To-day Nature--through this man who was so
+essentially bred in the very womb of her--spoke to his understanding and
+found her words not lost on air. The dormant things within the boy had
+awakened. Life spoke; Hope sang; and between them all the world was
+changed. Yesterday, he had looked upon this day of idling in the country
+as a pleasant interlude, as a happy prologue to those greater delights
+that would come when he at last went to Epsom and really saw the famous
+race for the Derby. To-day, he was sorry that anything--even so great a
+thing as that--must come to disturb such placid happiness as this.
+
+And yet, when the wondrous "Wednesday" came and he was actually on his
+way to Epsom Downs at last ... Ah, well, Joy is elastic; Youth is a time
+of many dreams, and who blames a boy for being delighted that one of
+them is coming true at last?
+
+Cleek did not, at all events. Indeed, Cleek aided and abetted him in all
+his boisterous outbursts from first to last; and was quite as excited as
+he when the event of the meeting--the great race for the famous Derby
+Stakes--was put up at last. Indeed, he was a bit wilder, if anything,
+than the boy himself when the flag fell and the whole field swept by in
+one thunderous rush, with Minnow in the lead and Black Riot far and away
+behind. Nor did his excitement abate when, as the whole cavalcade swung
+onwards over the green turf with the yelling thousands waving and
+shouting about it, Sir Henry Wilding's mare began to lessen that lead,
+and foot by foot to creep up towards the head.
+
+He shouted then--as wildly as Dollops himself, as wildly as any man
+present. He jumped up on his seat and waved his hat; he thumped Dollops
+on the back and cried: "She's creeping up! She's creeping up! Stick to
+it, old chap, stick to it! Give her her head, you fool! She'll do it--by
+God, she'll do it! Hurrah! Hurrah!" And was shouted down, and even
+seized and pulled down by others whose view he obstructed, and whose
+interest and excitement were as great as his.
+
+Onwards they flew, horses and riders, the whole pounding, mixing,
+ever-changing mass of them; jackets and caps of every hue flashing here
+and there--now in a huddled mass, now with this one in the lead, and
+again with that: a vast, ever-moving, ever-altering kaleidoscope that
+was, presently, hidden entirely from the main mass of the onlookers, by
+the surging crowd, the mass of drags and carriages of all sorts in the
+huge square of the central enclosure, and most of all by the people who
+stood up on seats and wheels and even the tops of the vehicles. Then,
+for a little time, the roars came from a distance only--from those in
+the enclosure who alone could see--then neared and neared and grew in
+volume, as the unseen racers pounded onward and came pelting up the long
+stretch toward Tattenham Corner. And by and bye they swung into view
+again--still a huddled mass, still so closely packed together that the
+positions of the individual horses was a matter of uncertainty--but
+always the roaring sound went on and always it came nearer and nearer,
+until a thousand voices took it up at the foot of the grand stand, and
+other thousands bellowed it up and up from tier to tier to the very
+roof.
+
+For, of a sudden, that blaze of caps and jackets, that huddle of horses
+red and horses grey, horses black and horses roan, piebald, white--every
+colour that a horse may be--had come at last to Tattenham Corner and
+burst into the full view of everybody. Yet, as they came, a black mare,
+hugging the railed enclosure on the inner side of the sweep, arrowed
+forward with a sudden spurt, came like a rocket to the fore, and all the
+earth and all the sky seemed to ring with the cry: "Wilding! Wilding!
+Black Riot leads! Black Riot leads!"
+
+She did--and kept it to the end!
+
+In half a minute her number was up, yelling thousands were tumbling out
+upon the field to cheer her, to cheer her rider, to cheer her proud
+owner when he came out to lead her to the paddock and the weighing room,
+and to feel in that moment the proudest and the happiest man in England;
+and of those, not the least excited and delighted was Cleek.
+
+Carried away by enthusiasm, he had risen again in his seat and, with his
+hat held aloft upon a walking stick, was waving and stamping and
+shouting enthusiastically: "Black Riot wins! Black Riot! Black Riot!
+Bully boy! Bully boy!"
+
+And so he was still shouting when he felt a hand touch him, and looking
+round saw Mr. Narkom.
+
+"Ripping, wasn't it, old chap?" said the superintendent. "No wonder you
+are excited, considering what interest you have. Been looking for you,
+my dear fellow. Knew of course, from your telling me, that you would be
+here to-day, but shouldn't have been able to identify you but for the
+presence of young Dollops here. I say: you're not going to stop now that
+the great race is over, are you? The rest won't amount to anything."
+
+"No, I shall not stop," said Cleek. "Why? Do you want me?"
+
+"Yes. Lennard's outside with the limousine. Hop into it, will you, and
+meet me at the Fiddle and Horseshoe, between Shepherd's Bush and Acton?
+It's only half-past three and the limousine can cover the distance in
+less than no time. Can't go with you. Got to round up my men here,
+first. Join you shortly, however. McTavish has a sixty-horse-power
+Mercedes, and he'll rush me over almost on your heels. Let Dollops go
+home by train, and you meet me as I've asked, will you?"
+
+"Yes," said Cleek.
+
+And so the joyous holiday came to an unexpected end.
+
+Parting from Dollops, and leaving the boy to journey on to Clarges
+Street alone, he fared forth to find Lennard and the red limousine, and
+was whirled away in record time to the inn of the Fiddle and Horseshoe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+It had but just gone five when Narkom walked into the little bar parlour
+and found him standing there, looking out on the quaint, old-fashioned
+bowling green that lay all steeped in sunshine and zoned with the froth
+of pear and apple blossoms thick piled above the time-stained bricks of
+an enclosing wall.
+
+"What a model of punctuality you are, old chap," the superintendent
+said, nodding approvingly. "Wait a moment while I go and order tea, and
+then we will get down to business in real earnest. Shan't be long."
+
+"Pray, don't hurry yourself on my account, Mr. Narkom," returned Cleek,
+"coming down to earth" out of a mental airship. "I could do with another
+hour of that"--nodding toward the view--"and still wonder where the time
+had gone. These quaint old inns, which the march of what we are pleased
+to call 'Progress' is steadily crowding off the face of the land, are
+always deeply interesting to me; I love them. What a day! What a
+picture! What a sky! As blue as what Dollops calls the 'Merry Geranium
+Sea.' I'd give a Jew's eye for a handful of those apple blossoms--they
+are divine!"
+
+Narkom hastened from the room without replying. The strain of poetry
+underlying the character of this strange, inscrutable man, his amazing
+love of Nature, his moments of almost womanish weakness and sentiment,
+astonished and mystified him. It was as if a hawk had acquired the
+utterly useless trick of fluting like a nightingale, and being himself
+wholly without imagination, he could not comprehend it in the smallest
+degree.
+
+When he returned a few minutes later, however, the idealist seemed to
+have simmered down into the materialist, the extraordinary to have
+become merged in the ordinary, for he found his famous ally no longer
+studying the beauties of Nature, but giving his whole attention to the
+sordid commonplaces of man, for he was standing before a glaringly
+printed bill one of many that were tacked upon the walls, which set
+forth in amazing pictures and double-leaded type the wonders that were
+to be seen daily and nightly at Olympia, where, for a month past, "Van
+Zant's Royal Belgian Circus and World-famed Menagerie" had been holding
+forth to "Crowded and delighted audiences." Much was made of two "star
+turns" upon this lurid bill: "Mademoiselle Marie de Zanoni, the
+beautiful and peerless bare-back equestrienne, the most daring lady
+rider in the universe," for the one; and for the other, "Chevalier
+Adrian di Roma, king of the animal world, with his great aggregation of
+savage and ferocious wild beasts, including the famous man-eating
+African lion, Nero, the largest and most ferocious animal of its species
+in captivity." And under this latter announcement there was a picture of
+a young and handsome man, literally smothered with medals, lying at full
+length, with his arms crossed and his head in the wide-open jaws of a
+snarling, wild-eyed lion.
+
+"My dear chap, you really do make me believe that there actually is such
+a thing as instinct," said Narkom, as he came in. "Fancy your selecting
+that particular bill out of all the others in the room! What an abnormal
+individual you are!"
+
+"Why? Has it anything to do with the case you have in hand?"
+
+"Anything to do with it? My dear fellow, it _is_ 'the case.' I can't
+imagine what drew your attention to it."
+
+"Can't you?" said Cleek, with a half-smile. Then he stretched forth his
+hand and touched the word "Nero" with the tip of his forefinger. "That
+did. Things awaken a man's memory occasionally, Mr. Narkom, and--Tell
+me, isn't that the beast there was such a stir about in the newspapers a
+fortnight or so ago--the lion that crushed the head of a man in full
+view of the audience?"
+
+"Yes," replied Narkom, with a slight shudder. "Awful thing, wasn't it?
+Gave me the creeps to read about it. The chap who was killed, poor
+beggar, was a mere boy, not twenty, son of the Chevalier di Roma
+himself. There was a great stir about it. Talk of the authorities
+forbidding the performance, and all that sort of thing. They never did,
+however, for on investigation--Ah, the tea at last, thank fortune. Come,
+sit down, my dear fellow, and we'll talk whilst we refresh ourselves.
+Landlady, see that we are not disturbed, will you, and that nobody is
+admitted but the parties I mentioned?"
+
+"Clients?" queried Cleek, as the door closed and they were alone
+together.
+
+"Yes. One, Mlle. Zelie, the 'chevalier's' only daughter, a slack-wire
+artist; the other, Signor Scarmelli, a trapeze performer, who is the
+lady's fiance."
+
+"Ah, then our friend the chevalier is not so young as the picture on the
+bill would have us believe he is."
+
+"No, he is not. As a matter of fact, he is considerably past forty, and
+is--or, rather, was, up to six months ago, a widower with three
+children, two sons and a daughter."
+
+"I suppose," said Cleek, helping himself to a buttered scone, "I am to
+infer from what you say that at the period you mentioned, six months
+ago, the intrepid gentleman showed his courage yet more forcibly by
+taking a second wife? Young or old?"
+
+"Young," said Narkom in reply. "Very young, not yet four-and-twenty, in
+fact, and very, very beautiful. That is she who is 'featured' on the
+bill as the star of the equestrian part of the programme: 'Mlle. Marie
+de Zanoni.' So far as I have been able to gather, the affair was a love
+match. The lady, it appears, had no end of suitors, both in and out of
+the profession; it has even been hinted that she could, had she been so
+minded, have married an impressionable young Austrian nobleman of
+independent means who was madly in love with her; but she appears to
+have considered it preferable to become 'an old man's darling,' so to
+speak, and to have selected the middle-aged chevalier rather than
+someone whose age is nearer her own."
+
+"Nothing new in that, Mr. Narkom. Young women before Mlle. Marie de
+Zanoni's day have been known to love elderly men sincerely: young Mrs.
+Bawdrey, in the case of 'The Nine-fingered Skeleton,' is an example of
+that. Still, such marriages are not common, I admit, so when they occur
+one naturally looks to see if there may not be 'other considerations' at
+the bottom of the attachment. Is the chevalier well-to-do? Has he
+expectations of any kind?"
+
+"To the contrary; he has nothing but the salary he earns--which is by no
+means so large as the public imagines; and as he comes of a long line of
+circus performers, all of whom died early and poor, 'expectations,' as
+you put it, do not enter into the affair at all. Apparently the lady did
+marry him for love of him, as she professes and as he imagines;
+although, if what I hear is true, it would appear that she has lately
+outgrown that love; in short, that a Romeo more suitable to her age has
+recently joined the show in the person of a rider called Signor Antonio
+Martinelli; that he has fallen desperately in love with her, and that--"
+
+He bit off his words short and rose to his feet. The door had opened
+suddenly to admit a young man and a young woman, who entered in a state
+of nervous excitement. "Ah, my dear Mr. Scarmelli, you and Miss Zelie
+are most welcome," continued the superintendent. "My friend and I were
+this moment talking about you."
+
+Cleek glanced across the room, and, as was customary with him, made up
+his mind instantly. The girl, despite her association with the arena,
+was a modest, unaffected little thing of about eighteen; the man was a
+straight-looking, clear-eyed, boyish-faced young fellow of about
+eight-and-twenty; well, but by no means flashily, dressed, and carrying
+himself with the air of one who respects himself and demands the respect
+of others. He was evidently an Englishman, despite his Italian _nom de
+theatre_, and Cleek decided out of hand that he liked him.
+
+"We can shelve 'George Headland' in this instance, Mr. Narkom," he said,
+as the superintendent led forward the pair for the purpose of
+introducing them, and suffered himself to be presented in the name of
+Cleek.
+
+The effect of this was electrical; would, in fact, had he been a vain
+man, have been sufficient to gratify him to the fullest, for the girl,
+with a little "Oh!" of amazement, drew back and stood looking at him
+with a sort of awe that rounded her eyes and parted her lips, while the
+man leaned heavily upon the back of a convenient chair and looked and
+acted as one utterly overcome.
+
+"Cleek!" he repeated, after a moment's despairful silence. "You, sir,
+are that great man? This is a misfortune, indeed."
+
+"A misfortune, my friend? Why a 'misfortune,' pray? Do you think the
+riddle you have brought is beyond my powers?"
+
+"Oh, no; not that--never that!" he made reply. "If there is any one man
+in the world who could get at the bottom of it, could solve the mystery
+of the lion's change, the lion's smile, you are that man, sir, you. That
+is the misfortune: that you could do it, and yet--I cannot expect it,
+cannot avail myself of this great opportunity. Look! I am doing it all
+on my own initiative, sir--all for the sake of Zelie and that dear,
+lovable old chap, her father. I have saved fifty-eight pounds, Mr.
+Cleek. I had hoped that that might tempt a clever detective to take up
+the case; but what is such a sum to such a man as you?"
+
+"If that is all that stands in the way, don't let it worry you, my good
+fellow," said Cleek, with a smile. "Put your fifty-eight pounds in your
+pocket against your wedding-day, and--good luck to you. I'll take the
+case for nothing. Now then, what is it? What the dickens did you mean
+just now when you spoke about 'the lion's change' and 'the lion's
+smile'? What lion--Nero? Here, sit down and tell me all about it."
+
+"There is little enough to tell, Heaven knows," said young Scarmelli,
+with a sigh, accepting the invitation after he had gratefully wrung
+Cleek's hand, and his fiancee, with a burst of happy tears, had caught
+it up as it slipped from his and had covered it with thankful kisses.
+"That, Mr. Cleek, is where the greatest difficulty lies--there is so
+little to explain that has any bearing upon the matter at all. It is
+only that the lion--Nero, that is, the chevalier's special pride and
+special pet--seems to have undergone some great and inexplicable change,
+as though he is at times under some evil spell, which lasts but a moment
+and yet makes that moment a tragical one. It began, no one knows why nor
+how, two weeks ago, when, without hint or warning, he killed the person
+he loved best in all the world--the chevalier's eldest son. Doubtless
+you have heard of that?"
+
+"Yes," said Cleek. "But what you are now telling me sheds a new light
+upon the matter. Am I to understand, then, that all that talk, on the
+bills and in the newspapers, about the lion being a savage and a
+dangerous one is not true, and that he really is attached to his owner,
+and his owner's family?"
+
+"That is the truth," replied Scarmelli; "Nero is, in fact, the gentlest,
+most docile, most intelligent beast of his kind living. In short, sir,
+there's not a 'bite' in him; and, added to that, he is over thirty years
+old. Zelie--Miss di Roma--will tell you that he was born in captivity;
+that from his earliest moment he has been the pet of her family; that he
+was, so to speak, raised with her and her brothers; that, as children,
+they often slept with him; that he will follow those he loves like any
+dog, fight for them, protect them, let them tweak his ears and pull his
+tail without showing the slightest resentment, even though they may
+actually hurt him. Indeed, he is so general a favourite, Mr. Cleek, that
+there isn't an attendant connected with the show who would not, and,
+indeed, has not at some time, put his head in the beast's mouth, just as
+the chevalier does in public, certain that no harm could possibly come
+of the act.
+
+"You may judge, then, sir, what a shock, what a horrible surprise it was
+when the tragedy of two weeks ago occurred. Often, to add zest to the
+performance, the chevalier varies it by allowing his children to put
+their heads into Nero's mouth instead of doing so himself, merely making
+a fake of it that he has the lion under such control that he will
+respect any command given by him. That is what happened on that night.
+Young Henri was chosen to put his head into Nero's mouth, and did so
+without fear or hesitation. He took the beast's jaws and pulled them
+apart, and laid his head within them, as he had done a hundred times
+before; but of a sudden an appalling, an uncanny, thing happened. It was
+as though some supernatural power laid hold of the beast and made a
+thing of horror of what a moment before had been a noble-looking animal;
+for suddenly a strange hissing noise issued from its jaws, its lips
+curled upward until it smiled--smiled, Mr. Cleek!--oh, the ghastliest,
+most awful, most blood-curdling smile imaginable--and then, with a sort
+of mingled snarl and bark, it clamped its jaws together and crushed the
+boy's head as though it were an egg-shell!"
+
+He put up his hands and covered his eyes as if to shut out some
+appalling vision, and for a moment or two nothing was heard but the low
+sobbing of the victim's sister.
+
+"As suddenly as that change had come over the beast, Mr. Cleek,"
+Scarmelli went on presently, "just so suddenly it passed, and it was the
+docile, affectionate animal it had been for years. It seemed to
+understand that some harm had befallen its favourite--for Henri was its
+favourite--and, curling itself up beside his body, it licked his hands
+and moaned disconsolately in a manner almost human. That's all there is
+to tell, sir, save that at times the horrid change, the appalling smile,
+repeat themselves when either the chevalier or his son bend to put a
+head within its jaws, and but for their watchfulness and quickness the
+tragedy of that other awful night would surely be repeated. Sir, it is
+not natural; I know now, as surely as if the lion itself had spoken,
+that someone is at the bottom of this ghastly thing, that some human
+agency is at work, some unknown enemy of the chevalier's is doing
+something, God alone knows what or why, to bring about his death as his
+son's was brought about."
+
+And here, for the first time, the chevalier's daughter spoke.
+
+"Ah, tell him all, Jim, tell him all," she said, in her pretty broken
+English. "Monsieur, may the good God in heaven forgive me, if I wrong
+her; but--but--Ah, Monsieur Cleek, sometimes I feel that she, my
+stepmother, and that man, that 'rider' who knows not how to ride as the
+artist should--monsieur, I cannot help it, but I feel that they are at
+the bottom of it."
+
+"Yes, but why?" queried Cleek. "I have heard of your father's second
+marriage, mademoiselle, and of this Signor Antonio Martinelli, to whom
+you allude. Mr. Narkom has told me. But why should you connect these two
+persons with this inexplicable thing? Does your father do so, too?"
+
+"Oh, no! Oh, no!" she answered excitedly. "He does not even know that we
+suspect, Jim and I. He loves her, monsieur. It would kill him to doubt
+her."
+
+"Then why should you?"
+
+"Because I cannot help it, monsieur. God knows, I would if I could, for
+I care for her dearly--I am grateful to her for making my father happy.
+My brothers, too, cared for her. We believed she loved him; we believed
+it was because of that she married him. And yet--and yet--Ah, monsieur,
+how can I fail to feel as I do when this change in the lion came with
+that man's coming? And she--ah, monsieur, she is always with him. Why
+does she curry favour of him and his rich friend?"
+
+"He has a rich friend, then?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur. The company was in difficulties; Monsieur van Zant, the
+proprietor, could not make it pay, and it was upon the point of
+disbanding. But, suddenly, this indifferent performer, this rider who
+is, after all, but a poor amateur and not fit to appear with a company
+of trained artists, suddenly this Signor Martinelli comes to Monsieur
+van Zant to say that, if he will engage him, he has a rich friend--one
+Senor Sperati, a Brazilian coffee planter--who will 'back' the show with
+his money and buy a partnership in it. Of course, M. van Zant accepted;
+and since then this Senor Sperati has travelled everywhere with us, has
+had the entree like one of us, and his friend, the bad rider, has fairly
+bewitched my stepmother, for she is ever with him, ever with them both,
+and--and--Ah, mon Dieu! the lion smiles, and my people die! Why does it
+'smile' for no others? Why is it only they--my father, my brother--they
+alone?"
+
+"Is that a fact?" said Cleek, turning to young Scarmelli. "You say that
+all connected with the circus have so little fear of the beast that even
+attendants sometimes do this foolhardy trick. Does the lion never
+'smile' for any of those?"
+
+"Never, Mr. Cleek--never under any circumstances. Nor does it always
+smile for the chevalier and his son. That is the mystery of it. One
+never knows when it is going to happen--one never knows why it does
+happen. But if you could see that uncanny smile--"
+
+"I should like to," interposed Cleek. "That is, if it might happen
+without any tragical result. Hum-m-m! Nobody but the chevalier and the
+chevalier's son! And when does it happen in their case--during the
+course of the show, or when there is nobody about but those connected
+with it?"
+
+"Oh, always during the course of the entertainment, sir. Indeed, it has
+never happened at any other time--never at all."
+
+"Oho!" said Cleek. "Then it is only when they are dressed and made up
+for the performance, eh? Hum-m-m! I see." Then he relapsed into silence
+for a moment, and sat tracing circles on the floor with the toe of his
+boot. But, of a sudden: "You came here directly after the matinee, I
+suppose?" he queried, glancing up at young Scarmelli.
+
+"Yes; in fact, before it was wholly over."
+
+"I see. Then it is just possible that all the performers have not yet
+got into their civilian clothes. Couldn't manage to take me round behind
+the scenes, so to speak, if Mr. Narkom will lend us his motor to hurry
+us there? Could, eh? That's good. I think I'd like to have a look at
+that lion and, if you don't mind, an introduction to the parties
+concerned. No! don't fear; we won't startle anybody by revealing my
+identity or the cause of the visit. Let us say that I'm a vet, to whom
+you have appealed for an opinion, regarding Nero's queer conduct. All
+ready, Mr. Narkom? Thanks--then let's be off."
+
+Two minutes later the red limousine was at the door, and, stepping into
+it with his two companions, he was whizzed away to Olympia and the first
+step towards the solution of the riddle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+As it is the custom of those connected with the world of the circus to
+eat, sleep, have their whole being, as it were, within the environment
+of the show, to the total exclusion of hotels, boarding-houses, or
+outside lodgings of any sort, he found on his arrival at his destination
+the entire company assembled in what was known as the "living-tent,"
+chatting, laughing, reading, playing games, and killing time generally
+whilst waiting for the call to the "dining-tent," and this gave him an
+opportunity to meet all the persons connected with the "case," from the
+"chevalier" himself to the Brazilian coffee planter who was "backing"
+the show.
+
+He found this latter individual a somewhat sullen and taciturn man of
+middle age, who had more the appearance of an Austrian than a Brazilian,
+and with a swinging gait and an uprightness of bearing which were not to
+be misunderstood.
+
+"Humph! Known military training," was Cleek's mental comment as soon as
+he saw the man walk. "Got it in Germany, too; I know that peculiar
+'swing.' What's his little game, I wonder? And what's a Brazilian doing
+in the army of the Kaiser? And, having been in it, what's he doing
+dropping into this line--backing a circus, and travelling with it like a
+Bohemian?"
+
+But although these thoughts interested him, he did not put them into
+words nor take anybody into his confidence regarding them.
+
+As for the other members of the company, he found "the indifferent
+rider," known as Signor Antonio Martinelli, an undoubted Irishman of
+about thirty years of age, extremely handsome, but with a certain
+"shiftiness" of the eye which was far from inspiring confidence, and
+with a trick of the tongue which suggested that his baptismal
+certificate probably bore the name of Anthony Martin. He found, too,
+that all he had heard regarding the youth and beauty of the chevalier's
+second wife was quite correct, and although she devoted herself a great
+deal to the Brazilian coffee planter and the Irish-Italian "Martinelli,"
+she had a way of looking over at her middle-aged spouse, without his
+knowledge, that left no doubt in Cleek's mind regarding the real state
+of her feelings towards the man. And last, but not least by any means,
+he found the chevalier himself a frank, open-minded, open-hearted,
+lovable man who ought not, in the natural order of things, to have an
+enemy in the world. Despite his high-falutin' _nom de theatre_, he was
+Belgian--a big, soft-hearted, easy-going, unsuspicious fellow, who
+worshipped his wife, adored his children, and loved every creature of
+the animal world.
+
+How well that love was returned, Cleek saw when he went with him to that
+part of the building where his animals were kept, and watched them
+"nose" his hand or lick his cheek whenever the opportunity offered. But
+Nero, the lion, was perhaps the greatest surprise of all, for so tame,
+so docile, so little feared was the animal, that its cage-door was open,
+and they found one of the attendants squatting cross-legged inside and
+playing with it as though it were a kitten.
+
+"There he is, doctor," said the chevalier, waving his hand towards the
+beast. "Ah, I will not believe that it was anything but an accident,
+sir. He loved my boy. He would hurt no one that is kind to him. Fetch
+him out, Tom, and let the doctor see him at close quarters."
+
+Despite all these assurances of the animal's docility, Cleek could not
+but remember what the creature had done, and, in consequence, did not
+feel quite at ease when it came lumbering out of the cage with the
+attendant and ranged up alongside of him, rubbing its huge head against
+the chevalier's arm after the manner of an affectionate cat.
+
+"Don't be frightened, sir," said Tom, noticing this. "Nothing more'n a
+big dog, sir. Had the care of him for eight years, I have--haven't I,
+chevalier?--and never a growl or scratch out of him. No 'smile' for your
+old Tom, is there, Nero, boy, eh? No fear! Ain't a thing as anybody does
+with him, sir, that I wouldn't do off-hand and feel quite safe."
+
+"Even to putting your head in his mouth?" queried Cleek.
+
+"Lord yes!" returned the man, with a laugh. "That's nothing. Done it
+many a day. Look here!" With that he pulled the massive jaws apart, and,
+bending down, laid his head within them. The lion stood perfectly
+passive, and did not offer to close his mouth until it was again empty.
+It was then that Cleek remembered and glanced round at young Scarmelli.
+
+"He never 'smiles' for any but the chevalier and his son, I believe you
+said," he remarked. "I wonder if the chevalier himself would be as safe
+if he were to make a feint of doing that?" For the chevalier, like most
+of the other performers, had not changed his dress after the matinee,
+since the evening performance was soon to begin; and if, as Cleek had an
+idea, that the matter of costume and make-up had anything to do with the
+mystery of the thing, here, surely, was a chance to learn.
+
+"Make a feint of it? Certainly I will, doctor," the chevalier replied.
+"But why a feint? Why not the actual thing?"
+
+"No, please--at least, not until I have seen how the beast is likely to
+take it. Just put your head down close to his muzzle, chevalier. Go
+slow, please, and keep your head at a safe distance."
+
+The chevalier obeyed. Bringing his head down until it was on a level
+with the animal's own, he opened the ponderous jaws. The beast was as
+passive as before; and, finding no trace of the coming of the mysterious
+and dreaded "smile," he laid his face between the double row of gleaming
+teeth, held it there a moment, and then withdrew it uninjured. Cleek
+took his chin between his thumb and forefinger and pinched it hard. What
+he had just witnessed would seem to refute the idea of either costume or
+make-up having any bearing upon the case.
+
+"Did you do that to-day at the matinee performance, chevalier?" he
+hazarded, after a moment's thoughtfulness.
+
+"Oh, yes," he replied. "It was not my plan to do so, however. I alter my
+performance constantly to give variety. To-day I had arranged for my
+little son to do the trick; but somehow--Ah! I am a foolish man,
+monsieur; I have odd fancies, odd whims, sometimes odd fears,
+since--since that awful night. Something came over me at the last
+moment, just as my boy came into the cage to perform the trick I changed
+my mind. I would not let him do it. I thrust him aside and did the trick
+myself."
+
+"Oho!" said Cleek. "Will the boy do it to-night, then, chevalier?"
+
+"Perhaps," he made reply. "He is still dressed for it. Look, here he
+comes now, monsieur, and my wife, and some of our good friends with him.
+Ah, they are so interested, they are anxious to hear what report you
+make upon Nero's condition."
+
+Cleek glanced round. Several members of the company were advancing
+towards them from the "living-tent." In the lead was the boy, a little
+fellow of about twelve years of age, fancifully dressed in tights and
+tunic. By his side was his stepmother, looking pale and anxious. But
+although both Signor Martinelli and the Brazilian coffee planter came to
+the edge of the tent and looked out, it was observable that they
+immediately withdrew, and allowed the rest of the party to proceed
+without them.
+
+"Dearest, I have just heard from Tom that you and the doctor are
+experimenting with Nero," said the chevalier's wife, as she came up with
+the others and joined him. "Oh, do be careful, do! Much as I like the
+animal, doctor, I shall never feel safe until my husband parts with it
+or gives up that ghastly 'trick.'"
+
+"My dearest, my dearest, how absurdly you talk!" interrupted her
+husband. "You know well that without that my act would be commonplace,
+that no manager would want either it or me. And how, pray, should we
+live if that were to happen?"
+
+"There would always be my salary; we could make that do."
+
+"As if I would consent to live upon your earnings and add nothing
+myself! No, no! I shall never do that--never. It is not as though that
+foolish dream of long ago had come true, and I might hope one day to
+retire. I am of the circus, and of it I shall always remain."
+
+"I wish you might not; I wish the dream might come true, even yet," she
+made reply. "Why shouldn't it? Wilder ones have come true for other
+people; why should they not for you?"
+
+Before her husband could make any response to this, the whole trend of
+the conversation was altered by the boy.
+
+"Father," he said, "am I to do the trick to-night? Senor Sperati says it
+is silly of me to sit about all dressed and ready if I am to do nothing,
+like a little super, instead of a performer and an artist."
+
+"Oh, but that is not kind of the senor to say that," his father replied,
+soothing his ruffled feelings. "You are an artist, of course; never
+super--no, never. But if you shall do the trick or not, I cannot say. It
+will depend, as it did at the matinee. If I feel it is right, you shall
+do it; but if I feel it is wrong, then it must be no. You see, doctor,"
+catching Cleek's eye, "what a little enthusiast he is, and with how
+little fear."
+
+"Yes, I do see, chevalier; but I wonder if he would be willing to humour
+me in something? As he is not afraid, I've an odd fancy to see how he'd
+go about the thing. Would you mind letting him make the feint you
+yourself made a few minutes ago? Only, I must insist that in this
+instance it be nothing more than a feint, chevalier. Don't let him go
+too near at the time of doing it. Don't let him open the lion's jaws
+with his own hands. You do that. Do you mind?"
+
+"Of a certainty not, monsieur. Gustave, show the good doctor how you go
+about it when papa lets you do the trick. But you are not really to do
+it just yet, only to bend the head near to Nero's mouth. Now then, come,
+see."
+
+As he spoke he divided the lion's jaws and signalled the child to bend.
+He obeyed. Very slowly the little head drooped nearer to the gaping,
+full-fanged mouth, very slowly and very carefully, for Cleek's hand was
+on the boy's shoulder, Cleek's eyes were on the lion's face. The huge
+brute was as meek and as undisturbed as before, and there was actual
+kindness in its fixed eyes. But of a sudden, when the child's head was
+on a level with those gaping jaws, the lips curled backward in a ghastly
+parody of a smile, a weird, uncanny sound whizzed through the bared
+teeth, the passive body bulked as with a shock, and Cleek had just time
+to snatch the boy back when the great jaws struck together with a snap
+that would have splintered a skull of iron had they closed upon it.
+
+The hideous and mysterious "smile" had come again, and, brief though it
+was, its passing found the boy's sister lying on the ground in a dead
+faint, the boy's stepmother cowering back, with covered eyes and shrill,
+affrighted screams, and the boy's father leaning, shaken and white,
+against the empty case and nursing a bleeding hand.
+
+In an instant the whole place was in an uproar. "It smiled again! It
+smiled again!" ran in broken gasps from lip to lip; but through it all
+Cleek stood there, clutching the frightened child close to him, but not
+saying one word, not making one sound. Across the dark arena came a rush
+of running footsteps, and presently Senor Sperati came panting up,
+breathless and pale with excitement.
+
+"What's the matter? What's wrong?" he cried. "Is it the lion again? Is
+the boy killed? Speak up!"
+
+"No," said Cleek very quietly, "nor will he be. The father will do the
+trick to-night, not the son. We've had a fright and a lesson, that's
+all." And, putting the sobbing child from him, he caught young
+Scarmelli's arm and hurried him away. "Take me somewhere that we can
+talk in safety," he said. "We are on the threshold of the end,
+Scarmelli, and I want your help."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Cleek, have you any idea--any clue?"
+
+"Yes, more than a clue. I know how, but I have not yet discovered why.
+Now, if you know, tell me what did the chevalier mean, what did his wife
+mean, when they spoke of a dream that might have come true, but didn't?
+Do you know? Have you any idea? Or, if you have not, do you think your
+fiancee has?"
+
+"Why, yes," he made reply. "Zelie has told me about it often. It is of a
+fortune that was promised and never materialized. Oh, such a long time
+ago, when he was quite a young man, the chevalier saved the life of a
+very great man, a Prussian nobleman of great wealth. He was profuse in
+his thanks and his promises, that nobleman; swore that he would make him
+independent for life, and all that sort of thing."
+
+"And didn't?"
+
+"No, he didn't. After a dozen letters promising the chevalier things
+that almost turned his head, the man dropped him entirely. In the midst
+of his dreams of wealth a letter came from the old skinflint's steward
+enclosing him the sum of six hundred marks, and telling him that as his
+master had come to the conclusion that wealth would be more of a curse
+than a blessing to a man of his class and station, he had thought better
+of his rash promise. He begged to tender the enclosed as a proper and
+sufficient reward for the service rendered, and 'should not trouble the
+young man any further.' Of course, the chevalier didn't reply. Who
+would, after having been promised wealth, education, everything one had
+confessed that one most desired? Being young, high-spirited, and
+bitterly, bitterly disappointed, the chevalier bundled the six hundred
+marks back without a single word, and that was the last he ever heard of
+the Baron von Steinheid from that day to this."
+
+"The Baron von Steinheid?" repeated Cleek, pulling himself up as though
+he had trodden upon something. "Do you mean to say that the man whose
+life he saved--Scarmelli--tell me something: Does it happen by any
+chance that the 'Chevalier di Roma's' real name is Peter Janssen
+Pullaine?"
+
+"Yes," said Scarmelli, in reply. "That is his name. Why?"
+
+"Nothing, but that it solves the riddle, and--the lion has smiled for
+the last time! No, don't ask me any questions; there isn't time to
+explain. Get me as quickly as you can to the place where we left Mr.
+Narkom's motor. Will this way lead me out? Thanks! Get back to the
+others, and look for me again in two hours' time; and--Scarmelli!"
+
+"Yes, sir?"
+
+"One last word--don't let that boy get out of your sight for one
+instant, and don't, no matter at what cost, let the chevalier do his
+turn to-night before I get back. Good-bye for a time. I'm off."
+
+Then he moved like a fleetly-passing shadow round the angle of the
+building, and two minutes later he was with Narkom in the red limousine.
+
+"To the German embassy as fast as we can fly," he said as he scrambled
+in. "I've something to tell you about that lion's smile, Mr. Narkom, and
+I'll tell it while we're on the wing."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+It was nine o'clock and after. The great show at Olympia was at its
+height; the packed house was roaring with delight over the daring
+equestrianship of "Mlle. Marie de Zanoni," and the sound of the cheers
+rolled in to the huge dressing-tent, where the artists awaited their
+several turns, and the chevalier, in spangled trunks and tights, all
+ready for his call, sat hugging his child and shivering like a man with
+the ague.
+
+"Come, come, buck up, man, and don't funk it like this," said Senor
+Sperati, who had graciously consented to assist him with his dressing
+because of the injury to his hand. "The idea of you losing your nerve,
+you of all men, and because of a little affair like that. You know very
+well that Nero is as safe as a kitten to-night, that he never has two
+smiling turns in the same week, much less the same day. Your act's the
+next on the programme. Buck up and go at it like a man."
+
+"I can't, senor, I can't!" almost wailed the chevalier. "My nerve is
+gone. Never, if I live to be a thousand, shall I forget that awful
+moment, that appalling 'smile.' I tell you, there is wizardry in the
+thing; the beast is bewitched. My work in the arena is done--done for
+ever, senor. I shall never have courage to look into the beast's jaws
+again."
+
+"Rot! You're not going to ruin the show, are you, and after all the
+money I've put into it? If you have no care for yourself, it's your duty
+to think about me. You can at least try. I tell you you must try! Here,
+take a sip of brandy, and see if that won't put a bit of courage into
+you. Hello!" as a burst of applause and the thud of a horse's hoofs down
+the passage to the stables came rolling in, "there's your wife's turn
+over at last; and there--listen! the ringmaster is announcing yours. Get
+up, man; get up and go out."
+
+"I can't, senor--I can't! I can't!"
+
+"But I tell you you must."
+
+And just here an interruption came.
+
+"Bad advice, my dear captain," said a voice--Cleek's voice--from the
+other end of the tent; and with a twist and a snarl the "senor" screwed
+round on his heel in time to see that other intruders were putting in an
+appearance as well as this unwelcome one.
+
+"Who the deuce asked you for your opinion?" rapped out the "senor"
+savagely. "And what are you doing in here, anyhow? If we want the
+service of a vet., we're quite capable of getting one for ourselves
+without having him shove his presence upon us unasked."
+
+"You are quite capable of doing a great many things, my dear captain,
+even making lions smile!" said Cleek serenely. "It would appear that the
+gallant Captain von Gossler, nephew, and, in the absence of one who has
+a better claim, heir to the late Baron von Steinheid--That's it, nab the
+beggar. Played, sir, played! Hustle him out and into the cab, with his
+precious confederate, the Irish-Italian 'signor,' and make a clean sweep
+of the pair of them. You'll find it a neck-stretching game, captain, I'm
+afraid, when the jury comes to hear of that poor boy's death and your
+beastly part in it."
+
+By this time the tent was in an uproar, for the chevalier's wife had
+come hurrying in, the chevalier's daughter was on the verge of
+hysterics, and the chevalier's prospective son-in-law was alternately
+hugging the great beast-tamer and then shaking his hand and generally
+deporting himself like a respectable young man who had suddenly gone
+daft.
+
+"Governor!" he cried, half laughing, half sobbing. "Bully old governor.
+It's over--it's over. Never any more danger, never any more hard times,
+never any more lion's smiles."
+
+"No, never," said Cleek. "Come here, Madame Pullaine, and hear the good
+news with the rest. You married for love, and you've proved a brick. The
+dream's come true, and the life of ease and of luxury is yours at last,
+Mr. Pullaine."
+
+"But, sir, I--I do not understand," stammered the chevalier. "What has
+happened? Why have you arrested the Senor Sperati? What has he done? I
+cannot comprehend."
+
+"Can't you? Well, it so happens, chevalier, that the Baron von Steinheid
+died something like two months ago, leaving the sum of sixty thousand
+pounds sterling to one Peter Janssen Pullaine and the heirs of his body,
+and that a certain Captain von Gossler, son of the baron's only sister,
+meant to make sure that there was no Peter Janssen Pullaine and no heirs
+of his body to inherit one farthing of it."
+
+"Sir! Dear God, can this be true?"
+
+"Perfectly true, chevalier. The late baron's solicitors have been
+advertising for some time for news regarding the whereabouts of Peter
+Janssen Pullaine, and if you had not so successfully hidden your real
+name under that of your professional one, no doubt some of your
+colleagues would have put you in the way of finding it out long ago. The
+baron did not go back on his word and did not act ungratefully. His
+will, dated twenty-nine years ago, was never altered in a single
+particular. I rather suspect that that letter and that gift of money
+which came to you in the name of his steward, and was supposed to close
+the affair entirely, was the work of his nephew, the gentleman whose
+exit has just been made. A crafty individual that, chevalier, and he
+laid his plans cleverly and well. Who would be likely to connect him
+with the death of a beast-tamer in a circus, who had perished in what
+would appear an accident of his calling? Ah, yes, the lion's smile was a
+clever idea--he was a sharp rascal to think of it."
+
+"Sir! You--you do not mean to tell me that he caused that? He never went
+near the beast--never--even once."
+
+"Not necessary, chevalier. He kept near you and your children; that was
+all that he needed to do to carry out his plan. The lion was as much his
+victim as anybody else--you or your children. What it did it could not
+help doing. The very simplicity of the plan was its passport to success.
+All that was required was the unsuspected sifting of snuff on the hair
+of the person whose head was to be put in the beast's mouth. The lion's
+smile was not, properly speaking, a smile at all, chevalier; it was the
+torture which came of snuff getting into its nostrils, and when the
+beast made that uncanny noise and snapped its jaws together, it was
+simply the outcome of a sneeze. The thing would be farcical if it were
+not that tragedy hangs on the thread of it, and that a life, a useful
+human life, was destroyed by means of it. Yes, it was clever, it was
+diabolically clever; but you know what Bobby Burns says about the best
+laid schemes of mice and men. There's always a Power--higher up--that
+works the ruin of them."
+
+With that he walked by, and, going to young Scarmelli, put out his hand.
+
+"You're a good chap and you've got a good girl, so I expect you will be
+happy," he said; and then lowered his voice so that the rest might not
+reach the chevalier's ears. "You were wrong to suspect the little
+stepmother," he added. "She's true blue, Scarmelli. She was only playing
+up to those fellows because she was afraid the 'senor' would drop out
+and close the show if she didn't, and that she and her husband and the
+children would be thrown out of work. She loves her husband--that's
+certain--and she's a good little woman; and, Scarmelli!"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Cleek?"
+
+"There's nothing better than a good woman on this earth, my lad. Always
+remember that. I think you, too, have found one. I hope you have. I hope
+you'll be happy. What's that? Owe me? Not a rap, my boy. Or, if you feel
+that you must give me something, give me your prayers for equal luck,
+and--send me a slice of the wedding cake. Good-night!"
+
+And twisted round on his heel and walked out; making his way out to the
+streets and facing the journey to Clarges Street afoot. For to be
+absolutely without envy of any sort is not given to anything born of
+woman; and the sight of this man's happiness, the knowledge of this
+man's reward, brought upon him a bitter recollection of how far he still
+was from his own.
+
+Would he ever get that reward? he wondered. Would he ever be nearer to
+it than he was to-night? It hurt--yes, it hurt horribly, sometimes, this
+stone-cold silence, this walking always in shadowed paths without a ray
+of light, without the certainty of arriving _anywhere_, though he plod
+onward for a lifetime--and the old feeling of savage resentment, the old
+sense of self-pity--the surest thing on God's earth to blaze a trail for
+the oncoming of the worst that is in a man--bit at the soul of him and
+touched him on the raw again.
+
+He knew what that boded; and he also knew the antidote.
+
+"Dollops, they broke into our holiday--they did us out of a part of it,
+didn't they, old chap?" he said, when he reached home at last and found
+the boy anxiously awaiting him. "Well, we'll have a day for every hour
+they deprived us of, a whole day, bonny boy. Pack up again and we'll be
+off to the land as God made it, and where God's things still live; and
+we'll have a fortnight of it--a whole blessed fortnight, my boy, with
+the river and the fields and the flowers and the dreams that hide in
+trees."
+
+Dollops made no reply. He simply bolted for the kit-bag and began to
+pack at once. And the morrow, when it came, found these two--the servant
+who was still a boy, and the master who had discovered the way back to
+boyhood's secrets--forging up the shining river and seeking the Land of
+Nightingales again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+The spring had blossomed itself out and the summer had bloomed itself
+in. The holiday up the river was a thing of the past; the dreams of the
+Dreamer had given place to those sterner phases of life which must be
+coped with by the Realist; and Cleek was "back in harness" again.
+
+A half-dozen more or less important cases had occupied his time since
+his return; but, although he had carried these to a successful issue and
+had again been lauded to the skies by the daily papers, the one word of
+praise from the one quarter whence he so earnestly desired to hear was
+never forthcoming.
+
+Of Ailsa Lorne he had heard not a solitary thing, either directly or
+indirectly, since that day when he had put her into the taxicab at
+Charing Cross Station and saw her safely on her way to Hampstead before
+he went his own.
+
+True, her silence was, as he had agreed, an admission that all was well
+with her and that she had secured the position in question; true it was
+also that it was not for her to take the initiative and break that
+silence; that he fully realised how impossible, for a girl born and bred
+as she had been, to voluntarily open up a correspondence with a man who
+was as yet little more than a mere acquaintance; but, all the same, he
+chafed under that silence and spent many a wakeful hour at night
+brooding on it.
+
+In his heart he knew that if any advance was to be made, that advance
+was the man's duty, not the woman's; but the fear that she would think
+he was thrusting himself upon her, the dread that even yet the white
+soul of her could not but shrink from a closer association with him,
+kept him from taking one step towards breaking the silence he deplored.
+
+The French have a proverb which says: "It is always the unexpected that
+happens." And it was the unexpected that happened in this case.
+
+In the midst of his dejection, in the very depths of returning despair,
+there came to him this note from Mr. Narkom:
+
+"My Dear Cleek,
+
+"Kindly refrain from going out this evening. I shall call about nine
+o'clock, bringing with me Miss Ailsa Lorne, whom you doubtless remember,
+and her present patron, Angela, Countess Chepstow, the young widow of
+that ripping old warhorse, who, as you may recall, quelled that
+dangerous and fanatical rising of the Cingalese at Trincomalee. These
+ladies wish to see you with reference to a most extraordinary case, an
+inexplicable mystery, which both they and I believe no man but yourself
+can satisfactorily probe.
+
+"Yours in haste,
+
+"Maverick Narkom."
+
+So, then, he was to see her again, to touch her hand, hear her voice,
+look into the eyes that had lighted him back from the path to
+destruction! Cleek's heart began to hammer and his pulses to drum.
+Needless to say, he took extraordinary care with his toilet that
+evening, with the result that when the ladies arrived there was nothing
+even vaguely suggestive of the detective about him.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Cleek, do help us--please do," implored Ailsa, after the first
+greetings were over. "Lady Chepstow is almost beside herself with dread
+and anxiety over the inexplicable thing, and I have persuaded her that
+if anybody on earth can solve the mystery of it, avert the new and
+appalling danger of it, it is you! Oh, say that you will take the case,
+say that you will save little Lord Chepstow and put an end to this
+maddening mystery!"
+
+"Little Lord Chepstow?" repeated Cleek, glancing over at the countess,
+who stood, a very Niobe in her grief and despair, holding out two
+imploring hands in silent supplication. "That is your ladyship's son, is
+it not?"
+
+"Yes," she answered, with a sort of wail; "my only son--my only child.
+All that I have to love--all that I have to live for in this world."
+
+"And you think the little fellow is in peril?"
+
+"Yes--in deadly peril."
+
+"From what source? From whose hand?"
+
+"I don't know--I don't know!" she answered, distractedly. "Sometimes I
+am wild enough to suspect even Captain Hawksley, unjust and unkind as it
+seems."
+
+"Captain Hawksley? Who is he?"
+
+"My late husband's cousin; heir, after my little son, to the title and
+estates. He is very poor, deeply in debt, and the inheritance would put
+an end to all his difficulties. But he is fond of my son; they seem
+almost to worship each other. I, too, am fond of him. But, for all that,
+I have to remember that he and he alone would benefit by Cedric's death,
+and--and--wicked as it seems--Oh, Mr. Cleek, help me! Direct me!
+Sometimes I doubt him. Sometimes I doubt everybody. Sometimes I think of
+those other days, that other mystery, that land which reeks of them; and
+then--and then--Oh, that horrible Ceylon! I wish I had never set foot in
+it in all my life!"
+
+Her agitation and distress were so great as to make her utterances only
+half coherent; and Ailsa, realising that this sort of thing must only
+perplex Cleek, and leave him in the dark regarding the matter upon which
+they had come to consult him, gently interposed.
+
+"Do try to calm yourself and to tell the story as briefly as possible,
+dear Lady Chepstow," she advised. Then, taking the initiative, added
+quietly, "It begins, Mr. Cleek, at a period when his little lordship,
+whose governess I have the honour to be, was but two years old, and at
+Trincomalee, where his late father was stationed with his regiment four
+years ago. Somebody, for some absurd reason, had set afoot a ridiculous
+rumour that the English had received orders from the Throne to stamp out
+every religion but their own--in short, if the British were not
+exterminated, dreadful desecrations would occur, as they were
+determined--"
+
+"To loot all the temples erected to Buddha, destroy the images, and make
+a bonfire of all the sacred relics," finished Cleek himself. "I rarely
+forget history, Miss Lorne, especially when it is such recent history as
+that memorable Buddhist rising at Trincomalee. It began upon an utterly
+unfounded, ridiculous rumour; it terminated, if my memory serves me
+correctly, in something akin to the very thing it was supposed to avert.
+That is to say, during the outburst of fanaticism, that most sacred of
+all relics--the holy tooth of Buddha--disappeared mysteriously from the
+temple of Dambool, and in spite of the fact that many lacs of rupees
+were offered for its recovery, it has never, I believe, been found, or
+even traced, to this day, although a huge fortune awaits the restorer,
+and, with it, overpowering honours from the native princes. Those must
+have been trying times, Lady Chepstow, for the commandant's wife, the
+mother of the commandant's only child?"
+
+"Horrible! horrible!" she answered, with a shudder, forgetting for an
+instant the dangers of the present in the recollection of the tragical
+past. "For a period, our lives were not safe; murder hid behind every
+bush, skulked in the shadow of every rock and tree, and we knew not at
+what minute the little garrison might be rushed under cover of the
+darkness and every soul slaughtered before the relief force could come
+to our assistance. I died a hundred deaths in a day in my anxiety for
+husband and child. And once the very zealousness of our comrades almost
+brought about the horror I feared. Oh!"--with a shudder of horrified
+recollection and a covering of the eyes, as if to shut out the memory of
+it--"Oh! that night--that horrible night! Unknown to any of us, my baby,
+rising from the bed where I had left him sleeping, whilst I went outside
+to stand by Lord Chepstow, wandered beyond the line of defence, and,
+before anybody realised it, was out in the open, alone and unprotected.
+
+"Ferralt, the cook, saw him first; saw, too, the crouching figure of a
+native, armed with a gun, in the shadow of the undergrowth. Without
+hesitation the brave fellow rushed out, fell upon the native before he
+could dart away, wrenched the gun from him, and brained him with the
+butt. A cry of the utmost horror rang out upon the air, and, uttering
+it, another native bounded out from a hiding-place close to where the
+first had been killed, and flew zigzagging across the open, where Cedric
+was. Evidently he had no intention of molesting the little fellow, for
+he fled straight on past him, still shrieking after the accident
+occurred; but to Ferralt it seemed as if his intention were to murder
+the boy, and, clapping the gun to his shoulder, in a panic of
+excitement, he fired. If it had been one of the soldiers,
+someone--anyone--who understood marksmanship and was not likely to be in
+a nervous quake over the circumstances, the thing could not have
+happened, although the fugitive was careering along in a direct line
+with my precious little one. But, with Ferralt--Oh, Mr. Cleek, can you
+imagine my horror when I saw the flash of that shot, heard a shrill cry
+of pain, and saw my child drop to the ground?"
+
+"Good heaven!" exclaimed Cleek, agitated in spite of himself. "Then the
+blunderer shot the child instead of the native?"
+
+"Yes; and was so horrified by the mishap that, without waiting to learn
+the result, he rushed blindly to the brink of a deep ravine, and threw
+himself headlong to death. But the injury to Cedric was only a trifling
+one after all. The bullet seemed merely to have grazed him in passing,
+and, beyond a ragged gash in the fleshy part of the thigh, he was not
+harmed at all. That I myself dressed and bandaged, and in a couple of
+weeks it was quite healed. But it taught me a lesson, that night of
+horror, and I never let my baby out of my sight for one instant from
+that time until the rising was entirely quelled.
+
+"As suddenly as it had started, the trouble subsided. Native priests
+came under a flag of truce to Lord Chepstow, and confessed their error,
+acknowledged that they had never any right to suspect the British of any
+design upon their gods, for the loot of the temple had actually taken
+place in the midst of the rising, and they knew that it could not have
+come from the hands of the soldiers, for they had had them under
+surveillance all the time, and not one person of the race had ventured
+within a mile of the temple.
+
+"Yet the tooth of Buddha had been taken, the sacred tooth which is more
+holy to Buddhists than the statue of Gautama Buddha itself. Their
+remorse was very real, and after that, to the day of his death from
+fever, eighteen months afterward, they could never show enough honour to
+Lord Chepstow. And even then their favour continued. They transferred to
+the little son the homage they had done the father, but in a far, far
+greater degree. If he had been a king's son they could have shown him no
+greater honour. Native princes showered him with rich gifts; if he
+walked out, his path was strewn with flowers by bowing maidens; if he
+went into the market-place, the people prostrated themselves before him.
+
+"When I questioned Buddhist women of this amazing homage to Cedric, they
+gave me a full explanation. My son was sacred, they said. Buddha had
+withdrawn his favour from his people because of the evil they had done
+in suspecting the father and of the innocent life--Ferralt's--which had
+been sacrificed, and they had been commanded of the priests to do homage
+to the child and thereby appease the offended god, who, doubtless, had
+himself spirited away the holy tooth, and would not restore it until
+full recompense was made to the sacred son of the sacred dead.
+
+"When it became known that I had decided to return to England with my
+boy, native princes offered me fabulous sums to remain, and when they
+found that I could not be tempted to stay, the populace turned out in
+every town and village through which we passed on our way to the ship,
+and bowing multitudes followed us to the very last. Nor did it cease
+with that, for in all the years that have followed, even here in London,
+the homage and worship have continued. My son can go nowhere but that he
+is followed by Cingalese; can see no man or woman of the race, but he or
+she prostrates herself before him and murmurs, 'Holy, most holy!' And
+daily, almost hourly, rich gifts are showered upon him from unknown
+hands, and he is watched over and guarded constantly. I tell you all
+this, Mr. Cleek, that you may the better understand how appalling is the
+horror which now assails us, how frightful is the knowledge that someone
+now seeks his life, and is using every means to take it."
+
+"In other words, my dear Cleek," put in Narkom, as her ladyship,
+overcome with emotion, broke down suddenly, "there appears to be a
+sudden and inexplicable change of front on the part of these fanatics,
+and they now seem as anxious to bring evil to his little lordship as
+they formerly were to protect and cherish him. At any rate, someone of
+their order has, upon three separate occasions within the last month,
+endeavoured to kidnap him, and, in one instance, even attempted to
+murder him."
+
+"Is that a fact?" queried Cleek sharply, glancing over at Miss Lorne.
+"You are certain it is not a fancy, but an absolute fact?"
+
+"Yes; oh, yes!" she made answer, agitatedly. "Twice when I have gone
+into the Park with him, attempts have been made to separate us, to get
+him away from me; and once they did get him away--so swiftly, so
+adroitly, that he had vanished before I could turn round. But, although
+a bag had been thrown over his head to stifle his cries, he managed to
+make a very little one. I plunged screaming into the undergrowth from
+which that cry had come, and was just in time to save him. He was lying
+on the ground all bundled up in a bag, and his assailant, who must have
+heard me coming, had gone as if by magic. His little lordship, however,
+was able to tell me that the man was a Cingalese, and that he had 'tried
+to cut him with a knife.'"
+
+"Cut him with a knife?" repeated Cleek in a reflective tone, and blew
+out a long, low whistle.
+
+"Oh! but that is not the worst, Mr. Cleek," went on Ailsa. "Three days
+ago a woman--a very beautiful and distinguished-looking woman--called to
+see Lady Chepstow regarding the reference of a former servant, one Jane
+Catherboys, who used to be her ladyship's maid. After the caller left, a
+box of sugared violets was found lying temptingly open on a table in the
+main hall. Little Cedric is passionately fond of sugared violets, and,
+had he happened to pass that way before the box was discovered, he
+surely would have yielded to the temptation and eaten some. In removing
+the box the parlour-maid accidentally upset it, and before she could
+gather all the violets up her ladyship's little Pomeranian dog snapped
+up one and ate it. It was dead in six minutes' time! The sweets were
+simply loaded with prussic acid. When we came to inquire into the matter
+in the hope of tracing the mysterious caller, we found that Jane
+Catherboys was no longer in need of a position; that she had been
+married for eight months; that she knew nothing whatever of the woman,
+and had sent no one to inquire into her references."
+
+"All of which shows, my dear Cleek," put in Narkom significantly, "that,
+whatever hand is directing these attempts, it belongs to one who knows
+more than a mere outsider possibly could: in short, to one who is aware
+of his little lordship's excessive fondness for sugared violets, and is
+aware that Lady Chepstow once did have a maid named Jane Catherboys."
+
+"If," said Cleek, "you mean to suggest by that that this points
+suspiciously in Captain Hawksley's direction, Mr. Narkom, permit me to
+say that it does not necessarily follow. The clever people of the
+under-world do nothing by halves nor without careful inquiry beforehand;
+that is what makes the difference between the common pickpocket and the
+brilliant swindler." He turned to Ailsa. "Is that all, Miss Lorne, or am
+I right in supposing that there is even worse to come?"
+
+"Oh, much worse--much, Mr. Cleek! The knowledge that these would-be
+murderers, whoever they are, whatever may be their mysterious motive,
+have grown desperate enough to invade the house itself has driven Lady
+Chepstow well-nigh frantic. Of course, orders were immediately given to
+the servants that no stranger, no matter how well dressed, how well
+seeming, nor what the plea, was, from that moment, to be allowed past
+the threshold. We felt secure in that, knowing that no servant of the
+household would betray his or her trust, and that all would be on the
+constant watch for any further attempt. The unknown enemy must have
+found out about these precautions, for no stranger came again to the
+door. But last night a thing we had never counted upon happened. In the
+dead of the night the unknown broke into the house--into the very
+nursery itself--and but that Lady Chepstow, impelled she does not know
+by what, only that she was nervous and wakeful, and felt the need of
+some companionship, rose and carried the sleeping child into her own
+bed, he would assuredly have been murdered. The nurse, awakened by a
+horrible suffocating sensation, opened her eyes to find a man bending
+over her with a chloroform-soaked cloth, which he was about to lay over
+her face. She shrieked and fainted, but not before she saw the man
+spring to the little bed on the other side of her own, hack furiously at
+it with a long, murderous knife, then dart to the window and vanish. In
+the darkness he had not, of course, been able to see that that little
+bed was empty, for its position kept it in deep shadow, and hearing the
+household stir at the sound of the nurse's shriek, he struck out blindly
+and flew to save himself from detection. The nurse states that he was
+undoubtedly a foreigner--a dark-skinned Asiatic--and her description of
+him tallies with that his little lordship gave of the man who attempted
+to kill him that day in the Park. There, Mr. Cleek," she concluded,
+"that's the whole story. Can't you do something to help us--something to
+lift this constant state of dread and to remove this terrible danger
+from little Lord Chepstow's life?"
+
+"I'll try, Miss Lorne; but it is a most extraordinary case. Where is the
+boy, now?"
+
+"At home, closely guarded. We appealed to Mr. Narkom, and he generously
+appointed two detective officers to sit with his little lordship and
+keep constant watch over him whilst we are away."
+
+"And in the meantime," added Mr. Narkom, "I've issued orders for a
+general rounding-up of all the Cingalese who can be traced or are known
+to be in town. Petrie and Hammond have that part of the job in hand, and
+if they hit upon any Asiatic who answers to the description of this
+murderous rascal--"
+
+"I don't believe they will," interposed Cleek; "or, if they do, I don't
+for a moment believe he will turn out to be the guilty party. In other
+words, I have an idea that the fellow will prove to be a European."
+
+"But, my dear fellow, both his little lordship and the nurse saw the
+man, and, as you have heard, they both agree that he was dark-skinned
+and quite Oriental in appearance."
+
+"One of the easiest possible disguises, Mr. Narkom. A wig, a stick of
+grease-paint, a threepenny twist of crepe hair, and there you are! No, I
+do not believe that the man is a Cingalese at all; and, far from his
+having any connection with what you were pleased to term just now a
+change of front on the part of the Buddhists who have so long held the
+little chap as something sacred, I don't believe that they know anything
+about him. I base that upon the fact that the child is still treated
+with homage whenever he goes out, according to what Miss Lorne says, and
+that, with the single exception of that one woman who tried to poison
+him, nobody but just one man--this particular one man--has ever made any
+attempt to harm the boy. Fanatics, like those Cingalese, cleave to an
+idea to the end, Mr. Narkom; they don't cast it aside and go off at
+another tangent. You have heard what Lady Chepstow says the native women
+told her; the boy was sacred; their priests had commanded them to
+appease Buddha by doing homage to him until the tooth was found, and the
+tooth has not been found up to the present day! That means that nothing
+on earth could change their attitude toward him, that not one of the
+Buddhist sect would harm a solitary hair of his head for a king's
+ransom; so you may eliminate the Cingalese from the case entirely so far
+as the attempts upon the child's life are concerned. Whoever is making
+the attempts is doing so without their knowledge and for a purely
+personal reason."
+
+"Then, in that case, this Captain Hawksley--"
+
+"I'll have a look at that gentleman before I tumble into bed to-night,
+and you shall have my views upon that point to-morrow morning, Mr.
+Narkom. Frankly, things point rather suspiciously in the captain's
+direction, since he is apparently the only person likely to be benefited
+by the boy's death, and if a motive cannot be traced to some other
+person--" He stopped abruptly and held up his hand. Outside in the dim
+halls of the house a sudden noise had sprung into being, the noise of
+someone running upstairs in great haste, and, stepping quickly to the
+door, Cleek drew it sharply open. As he did so, Dollops came puffing up
+out of the lower gloom, a sheep's trotter in one hand, and a letter in
+the other.
+
+"Law, Gov'nor!" groaned he, from midway on the staircase, "I don't
+believe as I'm ever goin' to be let get a square tuck-in this side of
+the buryin' ground! Jist finished wot was left of that there steak and
+kidney puddin', sir, and started on my seckint trotter, when I sees a
+pair o' legs nip parst the area railin's to the front door, and then nip
+off again like greased lightnin', and when I ups and does a flyin' leap
+up the kitchen stairs, there was this here envellup in the letter-box,
+and them there blessed legs nowheres in sight. I say, sir," agitatedly,
+"look wot's wrote on the envellup, will yer? And us always keepin' of it
+so dark."
+
+Cleek plucked the letter from his extended hand, glanced at it, and
+puckered up his lips; then, with a gesture, he sent Dollops back below
+stairs, and, returning to the room, closed the door behind him.
+
+"The enemy evidently knows all Lady Chepstow's movements, Mr. Narkom,"
+he said. "I expect she and Miss Lorne have been under surveillance all
+day and have been followed here. Look at that!" He flung the letter down
+on a table as he spoke, and Narkom, glancing at it, saw printed in rude,
+illiterate letters upon the envelope the one word "Cleek." The identity
+of "Captain Burbage" was known to someone, and the secret of the house
+in Clarges Street was a secret no longer!
+
+"Purposely disguised, you see. No one, not even a little child, would
+make such a botch of copying the alphabet as that," Cleek said, as he
+took the letter up and opened it. The sheet it contained was lettered in
+the same uncouth manner, and bore these words:
+
+"Cleek, take a fool's advice and don't accept the Chepstow case. Be
+warned. If you interfere, somebody you care about will pay the price.
+You'll find it more satisfactory to buy a wedding bouquet than a funeral
+wreath!"
+
+"Oh!" shuddered the two ladies in one breath. "How horrible! How
+cowardly!" And then, feeling that her last hope had gone, Lady Chepstow
+broke into a fit of violent weeping and laid her head on Ailsa's
+shoulder.
+
+"Oh, my baby! My darling baby boy!" she sobbed. "And now they are
+threatening somebody that you, too, love. Of course, Mr. Cleek, I can't
+expect you to risk the sacrifice of your own dear ones for the sake of
+me and mine, and so--and so--Oh, take me away, Miss Lorne! Let me go
+back to my baby and have him while I may."
+
+"Good-night, Mr. Cleek!" said Ailsa, stretching out a shaking hand to
+him. "Thank you so much for--for what you would have done but for this.
+And you were our last hope, too!"
+
+"Why give it up then, Miss Lorne?" he said, holding her hand and looking
+into her eyes. "Why not go on letting me be your last hope--your only
+hope?"
+
+"Yes, but they--they spoke of a funeral wreath."
+
+"And they also spoke of a wedding bouquet! I am going to take the case,
+Miss Lorne--take it, and solve it, as I'm a living man. Thank you!" as
+her brimming eyes uplifted in deep thankfulness and her shaking hand
+returned the pressure of his. "Now, just give me five minutes' time in
+the next room--it's my laboratory, Lady Chepstow--and I'll tell you
+whether I shall begin with Captain Hawksley or eliminate him from the
+case entirely. You might go in ahead, Mr. Narkom, and get the acid bath
+and the powder ready for me. We'll see what the finger-prints of our
+gentle correspondent have to tell, and, if they are not in the records
+of Scotland Yard or down in my own private little book, we'll get a
+sample of Captain Hawksley's in the morning."
+
+Then, excusing himself to the ladies, he passed into the inner room in
+company with Narkom, and carried the letter with him. When he returned
+it was still in his hand, but there were greyish smudges all over it.
+
+"There's not a finger-print in the lot that is worth anything as a means
+of identification, Miss Lorne," he said. "But you and Lady Chepstow may
+accept my assurance that Captain Hawksley is not the man. The writer of
+this letter belongs to the criminal classes; he is on his guard against
+the danger of finger-prints, and he wore rubber gloves when he penned
+this message. When I find him, rest assured I shall find a man who has
+had dealings with the police before and whose finger-prints are on their
+records. I don't know what his game is nor what he's after yet, but I
+will inside of a week. I've an idea; but it's so wild a thing I'm almost
+afraid to trust myself to believe it possible until I stumble over
+something that points the same way. Now, go home with Lady Chepstow, and
+begin the work of helping me."
+
+"Helping you? Oh, Mr. Cleek, can we? Is there anything we can do to
+help?"
+
+"Yes. When you leave the house, act as though you are in the utmost
+state of dejection--and keep that up indefinitely. Make it appear, for I
+am certain you will be followed and spied upon, as if I had declined the
+case. But don't have any fear about the boy. The two constables will
+sleep in the room with him to-night and every night until the thing is
+cleared up and the danger past. To-morrow about dusk, however, you,
+personally, take him for a walk near the Park, and if, among the other
+Cingalese you may meet, you should see one dressed as an Englishman, and
+wearing a scarlet flower in his buttonhole, take no notice of how often
+you see him nor of what he may do."
+
+"It will be you, Mr. Cleek?"
+
+"Yes. Now go, please; and don't forget to act as if you and her ladyship
+were utterly broken-hearted. Also"--his voice dropped lower, his hand
+met her hand, and in the darkness of the hall a little silver-plated
+revolver was slipped into her palm--"also, take this. Keep it always
+with you, never be without it night or day, and if any living creature
+offers you violence, shoot him down as you would a mad dog. Good-night,
+and--remember!"
+
+And long after she and Lady Chepstow had gone down and passed out into
+the night he stood there, looking the situation straight in the face and
+thinking his own troubled thoughts.
+
+"A wedding bouquet! A threat against her, and the mention of a wedding
+bouquet!" he said, as he went back into the room and sat down to figure
+the puzzle out. "Only one creature in the world knows of my feelings in
+that direction, and only one creature in the world would be capable of
+that threat--Margot! But what interest could she or any of her tribe
+have in the death of Lady Chepstow's little son? Her game is always
+money. If she were after a ransom she would try to abduct the child, not
+to kill him, and if"--A sudden thought came and wrenched away his voice.
+He sat a moment twisting his fingers one through the other and frowning
+at the floor; then, of a sudden, he gave a cry and jumped to his feet.
+"Five lacs of rupees--a fortune! By George, I've got it!" he fairly
+shouted. "The wild guess was a correct one, I'll stake my life. Let's
+put it to the test."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+The summer twilight was deepening into the summer dusk when Ailsa,
+acting upon Cleek's advice, set forth with his little lordship the
+following evening, and turned her steps in the direction of the Park;
+but although, on her way there, she observed more than once that a
+swarthy-skinned man in European dress who wore a scarlet flower in his
+coat, and was so perfect a type of the Asiatic that he would have passed
+muster for one even among a gathering of Cingalese, kept appearing and
+disappearing at irregular intervals, it spoke well for the powers of
+imitation and self-effacement possessed by Dollops, that she never once
+thought of associating that young man with the dawdling messenger boy
+who strolled leisurely along with a package under his arm and patronised
+every bun-shop, winkle-stall, and pork-pie purveyor on the line of
+march.
+
+For upward of an hour this sort of thing went on without any
+interruption or any solitary thing out of the ordinary, Ailsa strolling
+along leisurely, with the boy's hands in hers and his innocent prattle
+running on ceaselessly; then, of a sudden, whilst they were moving along
+close to the Park railings and in the shadow of the overhanging trees,
+the figure of an undersized man in semi-European costume, but wearing on
+his head the twisted turban of a Cingalese, issued from one of the
+gates, and well-nigh collided with them.
+
+He drew back, murmuring an apology in pidgin-English, then, seeing the
+child, he salaamed profoundly and murmured in a voice of deep reverence,
+"Holy, most holy!" and prostrated himself, with his forehead touching
+the ground, until Ailsa and the child had passed on. But barely had they
+taken five steps before Cleek appeared upon the scene, and did exactly
+the same thing as the Cingalese.
+
+"All right. You may go home now. I've got my man," he whispered, as
+Ailsa and the boy passed by. "Look for me at Chepstow House some time
+to-night." Then rose, as she walked on, and went after the man who first
+had prostrated himself before the child.
+
+He had risen and gone on his way, but not before witnessing Cleek's
+obeisance, and flashing upon him a sharp, searching look. Cleek
+quickened his steps and shortened the distance between them. Now or
+never was the time to put to the test that wild thought which last night
+had hammered on his brain, for it was certain that this man was in very
+truth a Cingalese, and, as such, must know! He stretched forth his hand
+and touched the man, who drew back sharply, half indignantly, but
+changed his attitude entirely when Cleek, who knew Hindustani more than
+well, spoke to him in the native tongue.
+
+"Unto thee, oh, brother!" Cleek said. "Thou, too, art of us, for thou,
+too, dost acknowledge the sacred shrine. These eyes have beheld thee."
+
+All his hopes rested on the slim pillar of that one word, "shrine," and
+his heart almost ceased to beat as he watched to see how it was
+received. It broke, however, into a very tumult of disturbance in the
+next instant, for the man positively beamed as he gave reply.
+
+"Sacred be the shrine!" he answered in Hindustani. "Clearly thou art of
+us--not of those others."
+
+"Others? What others? I am but newly come to this country."
+
+"Walk with me, then, to my abode, sup with me, eat of my salt, and I
+will tell thee then, oh, brother. But I forget: thou hast no knowledge
+of me. Listen, then. I am Arjeeb Noosrut, father of the High Priest
+Seydama, and it is among the people of my house that the gun is yet
+preserved. Nor has the blood of Seydama been ever washed from the wood
+of it. Come."
+
+All in a moment a light seemed to break over Cleek's brain. The missing
+link had been supplied--the one thing that could make possible the wild
+thought which had come to him last night had been given into his hands,
+and here at last was the key to the amazing mystery! He turned without a
+word and went with Arjeeb Noosrut.
+
+"What an ass!" he said to himself in the soundless words of thought
+"What an ass never to have suspected it when it is all so clear!"
+
+Meantime Ailsa and the boy, dismissed from any further need of service,
+walked on through the deepening dusk and turned their faces homeward.
+But they had not gone twenty yards from the spot where Cleek had seen
+them last when his little lordship set up a joyful cry and pointed
+excitedly to a claret-coloured limousine which at that moment swung in
+from the middle of the roadway and slowed down as it neared the kerb.
+
+"Oh, look, Miss Lorne; here's mummie's motor car; and I do believe
+that's Bimbi peeping out of it!" exclaimed the child--"Bimbi" being his
+pet name for Captain Hawksley--then broke, in wild excitement, from
+Ailsa's detaining hand and fled to a tall, military-looking man with a
+fair beard and moustache who had just that moment alighted from the
+vehicle. "It is Bimbi--it is!--it is!" he shouted as he ran. "Oh, Bimbi,
+I _am_ glad!"
+
+"Ceddie, dear, you mustn't be so boisterous!" chided Ailsa, coming up
+with him at the kerb. "How fond he is of you to be sure, Captain
+Hawksley. You've come for us, I suppose? Ceddie recognised the car at
+once."
+
+"Yes; jump in," he answered. "Lady Chepstow sent me after you. She's
+nervous, poor soul, every moment the boy's away from her. Jump in, old
+chap!"--catching up his little lordship and swinging him inside. "Better
+take the back seat, Miss Lorne; it's more comfortable. Quite settled,
+both of you? That's good. All right, chauffeur--Home!"
+
+Then he jumped in after them, closed the door, dropped into a seat, and
+the motor, making a wide curve out into the road, pelted away into the
+fast-gathering darkness.
+
+"Bimbi says maybe he's going to be my daddy one day--didn't you, Bimbi?"
+said his little lordship, climbing up on to "Bimbi's" knee and snuggling
+close to him.
+
+"I say, you know, you mustn't tell secrets, old chap!" was the laughing
+response. "Miss Lorne will hand you over to Nursie with orders to put
+you to bed if you do, _I_ know--won't you, Miss Lorne?"
+
+"He ought to be in bed, anyhow," responded Ailsa gaily; and then, this
+giving the conversation a merry turn, they talked and laughed and kept
+up such a chatter that three-quarters of an hour went like magic and
+nobody seemed aware of it. But suddenly Ailsa thought, and then put her
+thoughts into words.
+
+"What a long time we are in getting home," she said, and bent forward so
+that the light from the window might fall upon the dial of her wrist
+watch, then gave a little startled cry and half rose from her seat. For
+the darkness was now tempered by moonlight, and she could see that they
+were no longer in the populous districts of the town, but were speeding
+along past woodlands and open fields in the very depths of the country.
+"Good gracious! Johnston must have lost his senses!" she exclaimed
+agitatedly. "Look where we are, Captain Hawksley!--out in the country
+with only a farmhouse or two in sight. Johnston! Johnston!" She bent
+forward and rapped wildly on the glass panel. "Johnston, stop!--turn
+round!--are you out of your head? Captain Hawksley, stop him--stop him
+for pity's sake!"
+
+"Sit down, Miss Lorne." He made reply in a low, level voice, a voice in
+which there was something that made her pluck the child to her and hold
+him right to her breast. "You are not going home to-night. You are going
+for a ride with me; and if--Oh, that's your little game, is it?"
+lurching forward as she made a frantic clutch at the handle of the door.
+"Sit down, do you hear me?--or it will be worse for you! There!"--the
+cold bore of a revolver barrel touched her temple and wrung a quaking
+gasp of terror from her--"Do you feel that? Now you sit down and be
+quiet! If you make a single move, utter a single cry, I'll blow your
+brains out before you've half finished it. Look here, do you know who
+you're dealing with now? See!"
+
+His hand reached up and twitched away the fair beard and moustache; he
+bent forward so that the moonlight through the glass could fall on his
+face. It had changed as his voice had now changed, and she saw that she
+was looking at the man who in those other days of stress and trial had
+posed as "Gaston Merode," brother to the fictitious "Countess de la
+Tour."
+
+"You!" she said in a bleak voice of desolation and fright. "Dear heaven,
+that horrible Margot's confederate, the King of the Apaches!"
+
+"Yes!" he rapped out. "You and that fellow Cleek came between us in one
+promising game, but I'm hanged if you shall do it in this one! I want
+this boy, and--I've got him. Now, you call off Cleek and tell him to
+drop this case--to make no effort to follow us or to come between us and
+the kid--or I'll slit your throat after I've done with his little
+lordship here. Lanisterre!"--to the chauffeur--"Lanisterre, do you
+hear?"
+
+"_Oui, monsieur_."
+
+"Give her her head--full speed--and get to the mill as fast as you can.
+Margot will be with us in another two hours' time."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Through the ever-deepening dusk Cleek and Arjeeb Noosrut moved onward
+together; and onward behind them moved, too, the same dilatory messenger
+boy who had loitered about in the neighbourhood of the park, squandering
+his halfpence now as then, leaving a small trail of winkle shells and
+trotter bones to mark the record of his passage, and never seeming to
+lose one iota of his appetite, eat as much and as often as he would.
+
+The walk led down into the depths of Soho, that refuge of the foreign
+element in London; but long before they halted at the narrow doorway of
+a narrow house in a narrow side street--a street that seemed to have
+gone to sleep in an atmosphere of gloom and smells--Cleek had adroitly
+"pumped" Arjeeb Noosrut dry, and the riddle of the sacred son was a
+riddle to him no longer. He was now only anxious to part from the man
+and return with the news to Lady Chepstow, and was casting round in his
+mind for some excuse to avoid going indoors with him and wasting
+precious time in breaking bread and eating salt, when there lurched out
+of an adjoining doorway an ungainly figure in turban and sandals and the
+full flower of that grotesque regalia which passes muster at cheap
+theatres and masquerade balls for the costume of a Cingalese. The fellow
+had bent forward out of the deeper darkness of the house-passage into
+the murk and gloom of the ill-lit street, and was straining his eyes as
+if in search for someone long expected.
+
+"Dog of an infidel!" exclaimed Arjeeb Noosrut, speaking in Hindustani,
+and spitting on the pavement as he caught sight of the man. "See,
+well-beloved, he is of those 'others' of which I spoke when I first met
+thee. There are many of them, but true believers none. They dwell in a
+room huddled up as unclean things in the house there; they drink and
+make merry far into the night, and a woman veiled and in European garb
+comes to them and drinks with them sometimes--and sometimes a man of her
+kind with her; and they speak a tongue that is not the tongue of our
+people; yet have I seen them go forth into the city and do homage as we
+to the sacred son."
+
+Cleek sucked in his breath and, twitching round, stared at the dim
+figure leaning forward in the dim light.
+
+"By George!" he said to himself; "if I know anything, I ought to know
+the slouch and the low-sunk head of the Apache! And the woman
+comes!--And a man comes!--And there are five lacs of rupees! I wonder! I
+wonder! But no--she wouldn't come here, to a place like this, if she had
+ventured back into England and had called some of the band over to help.
+She'd go to the old spot--to the old haunt where she and I used to lie
+low and laugh whilst the police were hunting for me. She'd go there, I'm
+sure, to the old Burnt Acre Mill, where, if you were 'stalked,' you
+could open the sluice gates and let the Thames and the mill stream rush
+in and meet, and make a hell of whirling waters that would drown a fish.
+She would go there if it were she. And yet--it is an Apache: I swear it
+is an Apache!"
+
+He turned and looked back at Arjeeb Noosrut, then raised his hand and
+brushed it down the back of his head, which was always the sign "Wait!"
+to Dollops--and then spoke as calmly as he could.
+
+"Brother, I will go in and break bread and eat salt with thee," he said.
+"But I may do no more, for to-night I am in haste."
+
+"Come then," the man answered; and taking him by the hand, led him in
+and up to a room at the back of the second storey, where, hot as the
+night was, the windows were closed and a woman squatted before a lighted
+brasier, was dripping the contents of an oil cruse over the roasting
+carcass of a young kid.
+
+"It is to shut out the sounds of the vile infidel orgies from the house
+adjoining," explained Arjeeb Noosrut, as Cleek walked to the tightly
+closed window and leant his forehead against it. "Yet, if the heat
+oppresses thee--"
+
+"It does," interposed Cleek, and leant far out into the darkness as
+though sucking in the air when the sash was raised and the thing which
+had been only a dim babel of wordless sounds a moment before, became now
+the riotous laughter and the ribald comments of men upon the verses of a
+comic song which one of their number was joyously singing.
+
+"French!" said Cleek under his breath, as he caught the notes of the
+singer and the words of his audience--"French--I knew it!"
+
+Then he drew in his head, and having broken of the bread and eaten of
+the salt which, at a word from Arjeeb Noosrut, the woman brought on a
+wicker tray and laid before them, he moved hastily to the door.
+
+"Brother and son of the faithful, peace be with thee--I must go," he
+said. "But I come again; and it is written that thou shalt be honoured
+above all men when I return to thee, and that the true believers--the
+true sons of Holy Buddha--shall have cause to set thy name at the head
+of the records of those who are most blest of him!"
+
+Then he salaamed and passed out; and, closing the door behind him, ran
+like a hare down the narrow stairs. At the door Dollops rose up like the
+imp in a pantomime and jumped toward him.
+
+"Law, Gov'nor, I'm nigh starved a-waitin' for yer!" he said in a
+whisper. "Wot's the lay now? A double-quick change? I've got the stuff
+here, look!"--holding up the package he was carrying--"or a chance for
+me to do some fly catchin' with me bloomin' tickle tootsies?"
+
+The man in the Cingalese costume had vanished from the doorway of the
+adjoining house, and, catching the boy by the arm, Cleek hurried him to
+it and drew him into the dark passage.
+
+"I'm going to the back; I'm going to climb up to the windows of the
+second storey and see who's there and what's going on," he whispered.
+"Lie low and watch. I think it's Margot's gang."
+
+"Oh, colour me blue! Them beauties? And in London? I'd give a tanner for
+a strong cup o' tea!"
+
+"Sh-h-h! Be quiet--speak low. Don't be seen, but keep a close watch; and
+if anybody comes downstairs--"
+
+"He's mine!" interjected Dollops, stripping up his sleeves. "Glue to the
+eyebrows and warranted to stick! Nip away, Gov'nor, and leave it to the
+tickle tootsies and me!" Then, as Cleek moved swiftly and silently down
+the passage and slipped out into a sort of yard at the back of the
+house, he pulled out his roll of brown paper squares and his tube of
+adhesive, and crawling upstairs on his hands and knees, began operations
+at the top step. But he had barely got the first "plaster" fairly made
+and ready to apply when there came a rush of footsteps behind him and he
+was obliged to duck down and flatten himself against the floor of the
+landing to escape being run down by a man who dashed in through the
+lower floor, flew at top speed up the stairs, and, with a sort of
+blended cheer and yell, whirled open a door on the landing above and
+vanished. In a twinkling other cheers rang out, there was the sound of
+hastily moving feet and the uproar of general excitement.
+
+"Oh, well, if you won't stop to be waited on, gents, help yourselves!"
+said Dollops with a chuckle. Then he began backing hastily down the
+stairs, squirting the contents of the tube all over the steps, and
+concluded the operation by scattering all the loose sheets of paper on
+the floor at the foot of them before slipping out into the street and
+composedly waiting.
+
+Meantime Cleek, sneaking out through the rear door, found himself in a
+small, brick-paved yard hemmed in by a high wall thickly fringed on the
+top with a hedge of broken bottles. At one time in its history the house
+had been occupied by a catgut maker, and the rickety shed in which he
+had carried on his calling still clung, sagging and broken-roofed, to
+the building itself, its rotten slates all but vanished, and its
+interior piled high with mildewed bedding, mouldy old carpet, broken
+furniture, and refuse of every sort.
+
+A foot or two above the roof-level of this glowed--two luminous
+rectangles in the blackness of darkness--the windows of the back room on
+the second storey; and out of these came floating still the song, the
+laughter, and the jabbered French he had heard in the house next door.
+It did not take him long to make up his mind. Gripping the swaying
+supports of the sagging shed, he went up it with the agility of a
+monkey, crawled to the nearer of the two windows, and, cautiously
+raising himself, peeped in. What he saw made him suck in his breath
+sharply and sent his heart hammering hard and fast.
+
+A dozen men were in the room--men whose faces, despite an inartistic
+attempt to appear Oriental, he recognized at a glance and knew better
+than he knew his own. About them lay discarded portions of Cingalese
+attire, thrown off because of the heat, and waiting to be resumed at any
+moment. The air was thick with tobacco smoke and rank with spirituous
+odours. Sprawled figures were everywhere, and on a sort of couch against
+the opposite wall, a cigarette between her fingers, a glass of absinthe
+at her elbow, her laughter and badinage ringing out as loudly as any,
+lay the lissom figure of Margot!
+
+But even as Cleek looked in upon it the picture changed. Swift, sharp,
+and sudden came the rattle of flying feet on the outer stairs. Margot
+flung aside her cigarette and jumped up, the song and the laughter came
+to an abrupt end, the door flew open, and with a shout and a cheer a man
+bounced into the room.
+
+"Serpice! Ah, _le bon Dieu!_ it is Serpice at last!" cried out Margot in
+joyous excitement, as she and the others crowded round him. "Soul of a
+sluggard, don't waste time in laughing and capering like this! Speak up,
+speak up, you hear? Are we to fly at once to the mill and join him? Has
+he succeeded? Is it done?"
+
+"Yes, yes, yes!" shouted back Serpice, throwing up his cap and capering.
+"It is done! It is done! Under the very nose of the cracksman, too!
+Merode's got them--got them both! The little lordship and the
+Mademoiselle Lorne, too! They took the bait like gudgeons; they stepped
+into the automobile without a fear, and--whizz! it was off to the mill
+like that! La, la, la! We win, we win, we win!"
+
+The shock of the thing was too much for Cleek. Carried out of himself by
+the knowledge that the woman he loved was now in peril of her life,
+discretion forsook him, blind rage mastered him, and he did one of the
+few foolish things of his life.
+
+"You lie, you brute--you lie!" he shouted, jumping up into full view.
+"God help the man who lays a hand on her! Let him keep his life from me
+if he can!"
+
+"The cracksman!" yelled out Serpice. "The cracksman! The cracksman!"
+echoed Margot and the rest. Then a pistol barked and spat, the light was
+swept out, a bullet sang past Cleek's ear, and he realised how foolish
+he had been. For part of the crowd came surging to the window, part went
+in one blind rush for the door to head him off and hem him in, and,
+through the din and hubbub rang viciously the voice of Margot shrilling
+out: "Kill him! Kill him!" as though nothing but the sight of his blood
+would glut the malice of her.
+
+It was neck or nothing now, and the race was to the swift. He dropped
+through a gap in the ragged roof--sheer down, like a shot--into the
+rubble and refuse below; he lurched through the shed to the door, and
+through that to the black passage leading to the street--the clatter on
+the higher staircase giving warning of the crowd coming after him--and
+flew like a hare hard pressed toward the outer door, and then--just
+then, when every little moment counted--there was a scrambling sound, a
+chorus of oaths, a slipping, a sliding, a bang on one step and a bump on
+another; and, as he darted by, and sprang out into the street, the hall
+was filled with a writhing, scuffling, swearing mass of glue-covered men
+struggling in a whirling waste of loose brown paper.
+
+"This way! come quickly, for your life!" he shouted to Dollops, as he
+came plunging out into the street. "They've got them--got his little
+lordship! Got Miss Lorne--in spite of me. Come on! come on! come
+on!"--and flew like an arrow from crossing to crossing and street to
+street with Dollops, like a shadow, at his heels.
+
+A sudden swerve to the right brought them into a lighted and populous
+thoroughfare. Italian restaurants, German delicatessen shops, eating
+places of a dozen other nationalities lined the pavements on both sides
+of the street, and, in front of these a high-power motor stood,
+protected by the watchful eye of an accommodating policeman while the
+chauffeur sampled Chianti in a wine-shop close by. With a rush and a
+leap Cleek was upon it, and with another rush and a leap the constable
+was upon him, only to be greeted with the swift flicking open of a coat
+and the gleam of a badge that every man in the force knew.
+
+"Cleek?"
+
+"Yes! In the name of The Yard; in the name of the king! get out of the
+way! In with you, Dollops! We'll get the brutes yet!"
+
+Then he bent over, threw in the clutch, and discarding all speed laws,
+sent the car humming and tearing away.
+
+"Hold tight!" he said, through his teeth. "Whatever comes, we've got to
+get to Burnt Acre Mill inside of an hour. If you know any prayers,
+Dollops, say them."
+
+"The Lord fetch us home in time for supper!" gulped the boy obediently.
+"S'help me, Gov'nor, the wind's goin' through my teeth like I was a
+mouth organ--and I'm hollow enough for a flute!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+It is strange how, in moments of stress and trial, even in times of
+tragedy, the most commonplace thoughts will intrude themselves and the
+mind separate itself from the immediate events. As Merode put the cold
+muzzle of the revolver to Ailsa's temple and she ought, one would have
+supposed, to have been deaf and blind to all things but the horror of
+her position, one of these strange mental lapses occurred, and her mind,
+travelling back over the years of her early schooldays, dwelt on a
+punishment task set her by her preceptress--the task of copying three
+hundred times the phrase "Discretion is the better part of valour."
+
+As the recollection of that time rose before her mental vision, the
+value of the phrase itself forced its worth upon her and, huddling back
+in the corner of the limousine, she clutched the frightened child to her
+and gave implicit obedience to Merode's command to make no effort to
+attract attention either by word or deed. And he, fancying that he had
+thoroughly cowed her, withdrew the touch of the weapon from her temple,
+but held it ready for possible use in the grip of his thin, strong hand.
+
+For a time the limousine kept straight on in its headlong course, then,
+of a sudden, it swerved to the left, the gleam of a river--all silver
+with moonlight--struck up through a line of trees on one side of the
+car, the blank unbroken dreariness of a stretch of waste land spread out
+upon the other; and presently, by the slowing down of the motor, Ailsa
+guessed that they were nearing their destination. They reached it a few
+moments later, and a peep from the window, as the vehicle stopped,
+showed her the outlines of a ruined watermill--ghostly, crumbling,
+owl-haunted--looming black against the silver sky.
+
+A crumbled wheel hung, rotten and moss-grown, over a dry water-course,
+where straggling willows stretched out from the bank and trailed their
+long, feathery ends a yard or so above the level of the weeds and
+grasses that carpeted the sandy bed of it, and along its edge--once
+built as a protection for the heedless or unwary, but now a ruin and a
+wreck--a moss-grown wall with a narrow, gateless archway made an
+irregular shadow on the moon-drenched earth. She saw that archway and
+that dry water-course, and a new, strong hope arose within her.
+Discretion had played its part; now it was time for Valour to take the
+stage.
+
+"Come, get out--this is the end," said Merode, as he unlatched the door
+of the limousine and alighted. "You may yell here until your throat
+splits, for all the good it will do you. Lanisterre, show us a light;
+the path to the door is uncertain, and the floor of the mill is unsafe.
+This way, if you please, Miss Lorne. Let me have the boy--I'll look
+after him!"
+
+"No, no!--not yet! Please, not yet!" said Ailsa, with a little catch in
+her voice as she plucked his little lordship to her and smothered his
+frightened cries against her breast. "Let me have him whilst I may--let
+me hold him to--the last, Monsieur Merode. His mother trusts me. She
+will want to know that I--I stood by him until I could stand no longer.
+Please!--we are so helpless--I am so fond of him, and--he is such a very
+little boy. Listen! You want me to write to Mr. Cleek; you want me to
+ask something of him. I won't do it for myself--no, not if you kill me
+for refusing. I'll never do it for myself; but--but I will do it if you
+won't separate us until he has had time to say his prayers."
+
+"Oh, all right, then," he agreed. "If it's any consolation doing a
+fool's trick like that, why--do it! Now come along, and let's get inside
+the mill without any more nonsense. Lanisterre, bring that lantern here
+so that mademoiselle can see the path to the door. This way, if you
+please, Miss Lorne."
+
+"Thank you," she said as she alighted and moved slowly in the direction
+of the door, soothing the child as they crept along almost within touch
+of the crumbling wall. "Ceddie, darling, don't cry. You are a brave
+little hero, I know, and heroes are never afraid to die." From the tail
+of her eye she watched Merode. He seemed to realise from these words to
+the child that she was reconciled to the inevitable, and with an air of
+satisfaction he put the pistol back into his pocket and walked beside
+her. She kept straight on with her soothing words; and, in the
+half-shadow, neither Merode nor Lanisterre could see that one hand was
+lost in the folds of her skirt.
+
+"Ceddie, darling, let Miss Lorne be able to tell mummie that her little
+man was a hero; that he died, as heroes always die, without a fear or a
+weakening to the very last. I'll stand by you, precious; I'll hold your
+hand; and, when the time comes--"
+
+It came then! The gateless archway was reached at last; and the thing
+she had been planning all along now became possible. With one sudden
+push she sent the boy reeling down the incline into the dry
+water-course, flashed round sharply, and before Merode really knew how
+the thing happened, she was standing with her back to the arch and a
+revolver in her levelled hand.
+
+"Throw up your arms--throw them up at once, or, as God hears me, I'll
+shoot!" she cried. "Run, Ceddie--run, baby! He shan't follow you--I'll
+kill him if he tries!"
+
+"You idiot!" began Merode, and made a lurch toward her. But the pistol
+barked, and something white-hot zigzagged along his arm and bit like a
+flame into his shoulder.
+
+"Up with your hands--up with them!" she said in a voice that shook with
+excitement as he howled out and made a reeling backward step. "Next time
+it will be the head I aim at, not the arm!" Then, lifting up her voice
+in one loud shriek that made the echoes bound, she called with all her
+strength; "Help, somebody--for God's sake help! Scream, Ceddie--scream!
+Help! Help!"
+
+And lo! as she called, as if a miracle had been wrought, out of the
+darkness an answering voice called back to her, and the wild, swift
+notes of a motor horn bleated along the lonely road.
+
+"I'm coming--I--Cleek!" that voice rang out. "Hold your own--hold it to
+the last, Miss Lorne, and God help the man who lays a finger on you!"
+
+"Mr. Cleek! Mr. Cleek, oh, thank God!" she flung back with all the
+rapture a human voice could contain. "Come on, come on! I've got
+him--got that man Merode, and the boy is safe, the boy is safe! Come on!
+come on! come on!"
+
+"We're a-comin', miss, you gamble on that--and the lightnin's a fool to
+us!" shouted Dollops in reply. "Let her have it, Gov'nor! Bust the
+bloomin' tank. Give her her head; give her her feet; give her her
+blessed merry-thought if she wants it! Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!"
+
+And then, just then, when she most needed her strength and her courage,
+Ailsa's evaporated. The reaction came and with the despairing cries of
+Merode and Lanisterre ringing in her ears, she sank back, weak, white,
+almost fainting--and, leaning against the side of the archway, began to
+laugh and to sob hysterically. Merode seized that one moment and sprang
+to the breach.
+
+Realising that the game was all but up, that there was nothing for him
+now but to save his own skin if he could, he called out to Lanisterre to
+follow him, then plunged into the mill, swung over the lever which
+controlled the sluice gates, and, darting out by the back way, fled
+across the waste.
+
+But behind him he left a scene of indescribable horror, and the shrill
+screaming of a little child told him when that horror began. For as the
+sluice gates opened a sullen roar sounded; on one side the diverted
+millstream, and on the other the river, rose as two solid walls of
+water, rushed forward and--met; and in the twinkling of an eye the old
+water-course was one wild, leaping, roaring, gyrating whirlpool of
+up-flung froth and twisting waves that bore in their eddying clutch the
+battling figure of a drowning child.
+
+Even before he came in sight of it the roaring waters and the fearful
+splash of their impact told Cleek what had been done. He could hear
+Ailsa's screams; he could hear the boy's feeble cries, and a moment
+later, when the whizzing motor panted up through the moonlight and sped
+by the broken wall, there was Ailsa, fairly palsied with fright,
+clinging weakly to the crumbling arch and uttering little sobbing,
+wordless, incoherent moans of fright as she stared down into the hell of
+waters; and below, in the foam, a little yellow head was spinning round
+and round and round, in dizzying circles of torn and leaping waves.
+
+"Heavens, Gov'nor!" began Dollops in a voice of appalling despair; but
+before he could get beyond that, Cleek's coat was off, Cleek's body had
+described a sort of semi-circle, and--the child was no longer alone in
+the whirlpool!
+
+Battling, struggling, fairly leaping, as a fish leaps in a torrent, one
+moment half out of the water, the next wholly submerged, Cleek struck
+from eddy to eddy, from circle to circle; until that little yellow head
+was within reach, then put forth his hand and gripped it, pulled it to
+him, and in another moment he was whirling round and round the
+whirlpool's course with the child clutched to him and his wet, white
+face gleaming wax-like over the angle of his shoulder.
+
+They had not made the half of the first circle thus before Dollops had
+leaped to the bending willows, had scrambled up the rough trunk of the
+nearest of them, and, pushing his weight out upon a strong and supple
+bough, bent it downward until the half of its strongest withes were deep
+in the whirling waters.
+
+"Grab 'em, Gov'nor--grab 'em when you come by!" he sang out over the
+roar of the waters. "They'll hold you, sir--hold a dozen like you; and
+if--Well played! Got 'em the first grab! Hang on! Get a tight grip! Now
+then, sir, hand over hand till you're at the bank! Good biz! Good biz!
+Blest if you won't be goin' in for the circus trade next! Steady does
+it, sir--steady, steady! Goal, by Jupiter! Now then, hand me up the
+nipper--I should say the young gent--and in two minutes' time--Right!
+Got him! 'Ere you are, Miss Lorne--lay hold of his little lordship, will
+you? I've got me blessed hands full a keepin' to me perch whilst the
+guv'nor's a-wobbling of the branch like this. Good biz! Now then, sir,
+another 'arf a yard. That's the call! Hands on this bough and foot on
+the bank there. One, two, three--knew you'd do it! Safe as houses, Gawd
+bless yer bully heart!"
+
+And then as Cleek, wet, white, panting, dragged himself out of the
+clutch of the whirlpool and lay breathing heavily on the ground:
+
+"By gums, Gov'nor," Dollops added as he looked down on the whirling
+waters, "what an egg-beater it would make, wouldn't it, sir? Ain't got
+such a thing as a biscuit about yer, have you? Me spine's a rasping
+holes in me necktie, and I'm so flat you could slip me into a pillar box
+and they'd take me home for a penny stamp."
+
+But Cleek made no reply. Wet and spent after his fierce struggle with
+the whirling fury he had just escaped, he lay looking up into Ailsa's
+eyes as she came to him with the sobbing child close pressed to her
+bosom and all heaven in her beaming face.
+
+"It is not the 'funeral wreath' after all, you see, Miss Lorne," he
+said. "It came near to being it; but--it is not, it is not. I wonder,
+oh, I wonder!"
+
+Then he laughed the foolish, vacuous laugh of a man whose thoughts are
+too happy for the banality of words.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+It was midnight and after. In the close-curtained library of Chepstow
+House, Cleek, with his little lordship sleeping in his arms, sat in
+solemn conclave with Lady Chepstow, Captain Hawksley, and Maverick
+Narkom; and while they talked, Ailsa, like a restless spirit, wandered
+to and fro, now lifting the curtains to peep out into the darkness, now
+listening as if her whole life's hope lay in the coming of some expected
+sound. And in her veins there burned a fever of suspense.
+
+"So you failed to get the rascals, did you, Mr. Narkom?" Cleek was
+saying. "I feared as much; but I couldn't get word to you sooner. We
+injured the machine in that mad race to the mill, and of course we had
+to come at a snail's pace afterwards. I'm sorry we didn't get
+Margot--sorrier still that that hound Merode got away. They are bound to
+make more trouble before the race is run. Not for her ladyship, however,
+and not for this dear little chap. Their troubles are at an end, and the
+sacred son will be a sacred son no longer."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Cleek, do tell me what you mean," implored Lady Chepstow. "Do
+tell me how--"
+
+"Doctor Fordyce, at last!" struck in Ailsa excitedly, as the door-bell
+and knocker clashed and the butler's swift footsteps went along the
+hall. "Now we shall know, Mr. Cleek--oh, now we shall know for certain!"
+
+"And so shall all the world," he replied as the door opened and the
+doctor was ushered into the room. "I don't think you were ever so
+welcome anywhere or at any time before, doctor," he added with a smile.
+"Come and look at this little chap. Bonny little specimen of a
+Britisher, isn't he?"
+
+"Yes; but my dear sir, I--I was under the impression that I was called
+to a scene of excitement; and you seem as peaceful as Eden here. The
+constable who came for me said it was something to do with Scotland
+Yard."
+
+"So it is, doctor. I had Mr. Narkom send for you to perform a very
+trifling but most important operation upon his little lordship here."
+
+"Upon Cedric!" exclaimed Lady Chepstow, rising in a panic of alarm. "An
+operation to be performed upon my baby boy? Oh, Mr. Cleek, in the name
+of Heaven--"
+
+"No, your ladyship, in the name of Buddha. Don't be alarmed. It is only
+to be a trifling cut--a mere re-opening of that little wound in the
+thigh which you dressed and healed so successfully at Trincomalee. You
+made a mistake, all of you, that night when the boy was shot. The native
+poor Ferralt saw skulking along with the gun was not a mere tribesman
+and had not the very faintest thought of discharging that weapon at your
+little son, or, indeed, at anybody else in the world. He was the High
+Priest Seydama, guardian of the Holy Tooth--the one living being who
+dared by right to touch it or to lay hands upon the shrine that
+contained it. Fearful, when the false rumour of that intended loot was
+circulated, that infidel eyes should look upon it, infidel hands profane
+the sacred relic, he determined to remove it from Dambool to the
+rock-hewn temple of Galwihara and to enshrine it there. For the purpose
+of giving no clue to his movements, he chose to abandon his priestly
+vestments, to disguise himself as a common tribesman, and, the better to
+defeat the designs of any who might penetrate that disguise and
+endeavour to take the sacred relic from him and hold it for ransom, he
+hid the Holy Tooth in the barrel of a gun. That gun was in his hands,
+your ladyship, when Ferralt rushed out and brained him."
+
+"In his hands? Oh, Mr. Cleek, then--then--" Her voice all but failed her
+as a sudden realization came. "That relic, that fetish! If it was in
+that gun at that time, then it is now--"
+
+"Embedded in the fleshy part of the boy's thigh," said Cleek, finishing
+the sentence for her. "Inclosed, doubtless, in a sac or cyst which
+Mother Nature has wrapped round it, the tooth is there--in your little
+son's body; and for five whole years he has been the living shrine that
+held it!"
+
+It was quite true--as events rapidly and completely proved.
+
+Ten minutes later, the trifling operation was concluded; the boy lay
+whimpering in his mother's arms and the long-lost relic was on the
+surgeon's palm.
+
+"Take it, Captain Hawksley," said Cleek, lifting it between his thumb
+and forefinger and carrying it to him. "There is a man in Soho--one
+Arjeeb Noosrut--who will know it when he sees it; and there is a vast
+reward. Five lacs of rupees will pay off no end of debts, my friend; and
+a man with that balance at his banker's can't be thought a mere
+fortune-hunter when he asks for the hand of the woman he loves."
+
+The Captain didn't ask for _his_, however--he simply jumped up and
+grabbed it.
+
+"By George, you're a brick!" he said, with something uneven in his
+voice--something that was like laughter and tears all jumbled up
+together; then he glanced over at Lady Chepstow, and flushed, and
+floundered, and stammered confusedly, but went on shaking Cleek's hand
+all the time. "It's ripping of you--it's bully, dear chap, but--I say,
+you know, it isn't fair. It's jolly uneven. _You_ found out. You ought
+at least to have a share in the reward."
+
+"Not I," said Cleek, with an airy laugh. "Like the fellow who was born
+with a third leg, 'I have no use for it,' Captain. But if you really
+want to give any part of it away, bank a thousand to the credit of my
+boy Dollops to be turned over to him when he's twenty-one. And you might
+make Mr. Narkom, and, if she will accept the post, Miss Lorne, his
+trustees."
+
+Miss Lorne faced round and looked at him; and even from that distance he
+could see that her mouth was moving tremulously and there was something
+shining in the corner of her eye.
+
+"I accept that position with pleasure, Mr. Cleek," she said. "It is the
+act of a man and--a gentleman. Thank you! Thank you." And came down the
+long length of the room with her hand outstretched to take his.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+He took it with that grave courtesy, that gentle dignity of bearing
+which at times distinguished his deportment and was, indeed, as puzzling
+to her as it was to Mr. Maverick Narkom. It came but rarely, that
+peculiar air, but it was very noticeable when it did come, although the
+man himself seemed totally oblivious of it. Miss Lorne noticed it now,
+just as she had noticed it that day in the train when she had said
+banteringly: "I am not used to Court manners. Where, if you please, did
+you acquire yours?"
+
+"I can't say how deeply indebted I feel--you must imagine that, Miss
+Lorne," he said, bending over the hand that lay in his, with an air that
+made Lady Chepstow lift her eyebrows and look at him narrowly. "It is
+one of the kindest things you could do for the boy and--for me. I thank
+you very, very much indeed. My thanks are due to you, too, Captain; for
+I feel that you will gladly do the favour I have asked."
+
+"Do it? Yes, like a shot, old chap. What a ripping fellow you are!"
+
+"I'm a tired one at all events," replied Cleek. "So, if you--and the
+ladies"--bowing to them--"will kindly excuse me, I'll be off home for a
+needed rest. Lady Chepstow, my very best respects. I feel sure that his
+little lordship will be quite all right in a day or two, although I
+shall, of course, be glad to learn how he progresses. May I? Perhaps
+Miss Lorne might be persuaded to send me a word or two through--Mr.
+Narkom."
+
+Lady Chepstow was still looking at him as she had been from the moment
+he had taken Ailsa's hand. Now she put out her own to him.
+
+"Why wait for written reports, Mr. Cleek? Why not call in person and
+see?" she asked. "It will be more satisfactory than writing; and you
+will be welcome always."
+
+"I thank your ladyship," he said gravely--though all the soul of him
+rioted and laughed and longed to shout out for sheer joy. "It is a
+privilege I shall be happy to enjoy."
+
+But afterward, when he came to take his leave, a dearer one was granted
+him; for Ailsa herself accompanied him to the door.
+
+"I couldn't let the butler show you out, Mr. Cleek," she said, as they
+stood together in the wide entrance hall. "I couldn't let you go until I
+had said something that is on my mind--something that has been pricking
+my conscience all evening. I want to tell you that from this night on I
+am going to forget those other nights: that one in the mist at
+Hampstead, that other on the stairway at Wyvern House--forget them
+utterly and entirely, Mr. Cleek. Whatever you may have been _once_, I
+know that now you are indeed a man!"
+
+Then gave him her hand again, smiled at him, and sent him home feeling
+that he was as near to the threshold of heaven as any mortal thing may
+hope to be.
+
+Followed a time of such happiness as only they may know who having lived
+in darkness first know that there is such a thing as Light; followed
+days and weeks that went like magic things, blest to the uttermost
+before they go. For now he was a welcome visitor at the house that
+sheltered her; now the armour of reserve had dropped from her, and they
+were finding out between them that they had many tastes in common.
+
+It was in August when the first interruption to this happy state of
+affairs occurred and they came to know that separation was to be endured
+again. Lady Chepstow, planning already for a wedding that was to take
+place in the early winter, decided to spend the last few months of her
+widowhood at her country house in Devonshire, and retired to it taking
+her servants, her little son, and her son's governess with her.
+
+For a day or two, Cleek "mooned" about--restless, lonely despite
+Dollops's presence, finding no savour in anything; and it came as a
+positive relief when a call from The Yard sent him to a modest little
+house in the neighbourhood of Wandsworth Common. The "call" in question
+took the shape of a letter from Mr. Narkom.
+
+"My dear Cleek," it ran, "a most amazing case--probably _the_ most
+amazing you have yet tackled--has just cropped up. The client is one
+Captain Morrison, a retired Army officer living solely on his half pay.
+His daughter is involved in the astonishing affair. Indeed, it is at her
+earnest appeal that the matter has been brought to my notice. As the
+Captain is in too weak a state of health to journey any distance, I am
+going to ask you to meet me at No. 17, Sunnington Crescent,
+Wandsworth--a house kept by one Mrs. Culpin, widow of one of my Yard
+men, at three o'clock this afternoon. Knowing your reluctance to have
+your identity disclosed, I have taken the liberty of giving you the name
+you adopted in the Bawdrey affair, to wit: 'George Headland.' I have
+also taken the same precaution with regard to the Morrisons, leaving you
+to disclose your identity or not, as you see fit."
+
+Glad enough for anything to distract his thoughts from the brooding
+state of melancholy into which they had sunk, Cleek looked up a
+time-table, caught the 2:47 train from Victoria Station; and Narkom,
+walking into Mrs. Culpin's modest little drawing-room at two minutes
+past three, found him standing in the window and looking thoughtfully
+out at the groups of children romping on the near-by common.
+
+"Well, here I am at last, you see, my dear fellow," he said, as he
+crossed the room and shook hands with him. "Ripping day, isn't it? What
+are you doing? Admiring the view or taking stock of Mrs. Culpin's
+roses?"
+
+"Neither. I was speculating in futures," replied Cleek, glancing back at
+the sunlit common, and then glancing away again with a faintly audible
+sigh. "How happy, how care-free they are, those merry little beggars,
+Mr. Narkom. What you said in your letter set my thoughts harking
+backward, and ... I was wondering what things the coming years might
+hold for them and for their parents. At one time, you know, Philip
+Bawdrey was as innocent and guileless as any of those little shavers;
+and yet, in after years he proved a monster of iniquity, a beast of
+ingratitude, and--Oh, well, let it pass. He paid, as thankless children
+always do pay under God's good rule. I wonder what his thoughts were
+when his last hour came."
+
+"It did come, then?"
+
+"Yes. Got playing some of his games with those short-tempered chaps out
+in Buenos Ayres and got knifed a fortnight after his arrival. I had a
+letter from Mrs. Bawdrey yesterday. His father never knew of--well, the
+other thing; and never will now, thank God. The longer I live, Mr.
+Narkom, the surer I become that straight living always pays; and that
+the chap who turns into the other lane gets what he deserves before the
+game is played out."
+
+"Ten years of Scotland Yard have enabled me to endorse that statement
+emphatically," replied Narkom. "'The riddle of the ninth finger' was no
+different in that respect from nine hundred other riddles that have come
+my way since I took office. Now sit down, old chap, and let us take up
+the present case. But I say, Cleek; speaking of rewards reminds me of
+what I wrote you. There's very little chance of one in this affair. All
+the parties connected with it are in very moderate circumstances. The
+sculptor fellow, Van Nant, who figures in it, was quite well-to-do at
+one time, I believe, but he ran through the greater part of his money,
+and a dishonest solicitor did him out of the rest. Miss Morrison herself
+never did have any, and, as I have told you, the Captain hasn't anything
+in the world but his pension; and it takes every shilling of that to
+keep them. In the circumstances, I'd have made it a simple 'Yard'
+affair, chargeable to the Government, and put one of the regular staff
+upon it. But--well, it's such an astounding, such an unheard-of-thing, I
+knew you'd fairly revel in it. And besides, after all the rewards you
+have won you must be quite a well-to-do man by this time, and able to
+indulge in a little philanthropy."
+
+Cleek smiled.
+
+"I will indulge in it, of course," he said, "but not for that reason,
+Mr. Narkom. I wonder how much it will surprise you to learn that, at the
+present moment, I have just one hundred pounds in all the world?"
+
+"My dear fellow!" Narkom exclaimed, with a sort of gasp, staring at him
+in round-eyed amazement. "You fairly take away my breath. Why, you must
+have received a fortune since you took up these special cases. Fifty or
+sixty thousand pounds at the smallest calculation."
+
+"More! To be precise, I have received exactly seventy-two thousand
+pounds, Mr. Narkom. But, as I tell you, I have to-day but one hundred
+pounds of that sum left. Lost in speculation? Oh, dear no! I've not
+invested one farthing in any scheme, company, or purchase since the
+night you gave me my chance and helped me to live an honest life."
+
+"Then in the name of Heaven, Cleek, what has become of the money?"
+
+"It has gone in the cause of my redemption, Mr. Narkom," he answered in
+a hushed voice. "My good friend--for you really _have_ been a good
+friend to me, the best I ever had in all the world--my good friend, let
+us for only just this one minute speak of the times that lie behind. You
+know what redeemed me--a woman's eyes, a woman's rose-white soul! I
+said, did I not, that I wanted to win her, wanted to be worthy of her,
+wanted to climb up and stand with her in the light? You remember that,
+do you not, Mr. Narkom?"
+
+"Yes, I remember. But, my dear fellow, why speak of your 'vanishing
+cracksman' days when you have so utterly put them behind you, and since
+lived a life beyond reproach? Whatever you did in those times you have
+amply atoned for. And what can that have to do with your impoverished
+state?"
+
+"It has everything to do with it. I said I would be worthy of that one
+dear woman, and--I can never be, Mr. Narkom, until I have made
+restitution; until I can offer her a clean hand as well as a clean life.
+I can't restore the actual things that the 'vanishing cracksman' stole;
+for they are gone beyond recall, but--I can, at least, restore the value
+of them, and--that I have been secretly doing for a long time."
+
+"Man alive! God bless my soul! Cleek, my dear fellow, do you mean to
+tell me that all the rewards, all the money you have earned--"
+
+"Has gone to the people from whom I stole things in the wretched old
+days that lie behind me," he finished very gently. "It goes back, in
+secret gifts, as fast as it is earned, Mr. Narkom. Don't you see the
+answers, the acknowledgments, in the 'Personal' columns of the papers
+now and again? Wheresoever I robbed in those old days, I am repaying in
+these. When the score is wiped off, when the last robbery is paid for,
+my hand will be clean, and--I can offer it; never before."
+
+"Cleek! My dear fellow! What a man! What a _man_! Oh, more than ever am
+I certain _now_ that old Sir Horace Wyvern was right that night when he
+said that you were a gentleman. Tell me--I'll respect it--tell me, for
+God's sake, man, who are you? _What_ are you, dear friend?"
+
+"Cleek," he made reply. "Just Cleek! The rest is my secret and--God's!
+We've never spoken of the past since _that_ night, Mr. Narkom, and, with
+your kind permission, we never will speak of it again. I'm Cleek, the
+detective--at your service once more. Now, then, let's have the new
+strange case on which you called me here. What's it all about?"
+
+"Necromancy--wizardry--fairy-lore--all the stuff and nonsense that goes
+to the making of 'The Arabian Nights'!" said Narkom, waxing excited as
+his thoughts were thus shoved back to the amazing affair he had in hand.
+"All your 'Red Crawls' and your 'Sacred Sons' and your 'Nine-fingered
+Skeletons' are fools to it for wonder and mystery. Talk about
+witchcraft! Talk about wizards and giants and enchanters and the things
+that witches did in the days of Macbeth! God bless my soul, they're
+nothing to it. Those were the days of magic, anyhow, so you can take it
+or leave it, as you like; but this--look here, Cleek, you've heard of a
+good many queer things and run foul of a good many mysteries, I'll
+admit, but did you ever--in this twentieth century, when witchcraft and
+black magic are supposed to be as dead as Queen Anne--did you ever, my
+dear fellow, hear of such a marvel as a man putting on a blue leather
+belt that was said to have the power of rendering the wearer invisible
+and then forthwith melting into thin air and floating off like a cloud
+of pipe smoke?"
+
+"Gammon!"
+
+"Gammon nothing! Facts!"
+
+"Facts? You're off your head, man. The thing couldn't possibly happen.
+Somebody's having you!"
+
+"Well, somebody had _him_, at all events. Young Carboys, I mean--the
+chap that's engaged, or, rather was engaged, to Captain Morrison's
+daughter; and the poor girl's half out of her mind over it. He put the
+belt on in the presence of her and her father--in their own house, mind
+you--walked into a bedroom, and vanished like smoke. Doors locked,
+windows closed, room empty, belt on the floor, and man gone. Not a trace
+of him from that moment to this; and yesterday was to have been his
+wedding-day. There's a 'mystery,' if you like. What do you make of
+that?"
+
+Cleek looked at him for an instant. Then:
+
+"My dear Mr. Narkom, for the moment I thought you were fooling," he said
+in a tone of deep interest. "But I see now that you are quite in
+earnest, although the thing sounds so preposterous, a child might be
+expected to scoff at it. A man to get a magic belt, to put it on, and
+then to melt away? Why, the 'Seven-league Boots' couldn't be a greater
+tax on one's credulity. Sit down and tell me all about it."
+
+"The dickens of it is there doesn't seem to be much to tell," said
+Narkom, accepting the invitation. "Young Carboys, who appears to have
+been a decent sort of chap, had neither money, position, nor enemies, so
+that's an end to any idea of somebody having a reason for wishing to get
+rid of him; and, as he was devotedly attached to Miss Morrison, and was
+counting the very hours to the time of their wedding, and, in addition,
+had no debts, no entanglements of any sort, and no possible reason for
+wishing to disappear, there isn't the slightest ground for suspecting
+that he did so voluntarily."
+
+"Suppose you tell me the story from the beginning, and leave me to draw
+my own conclusions regarding that," said Cleek. "Who and what was the
+man? Was he living in the same house with his fiancee, then? You say the
+disappearance occurred there, at night, and that he went into a bedroom.
+Was the place his home, as well as Captain Morrison's, then?"
+
+"On the contrary. His home was a matter of three or four miles distant.
+He was merely stopping at the Morrison's on that particular night; I'll
+tell you presently why and how he came to do that. For the present,
+let's take things in their proper order. Once upon a time this George
+Carboys occupied a fair position in the world, and his parents--long
+since dead--were well to do. The son, being an only child, was well
+looked after--sent to Eton and then to Brasenose, and all that sort of
+thing--and the future looked very bright for him. Before he was
+twenty-one, however, his father lost everything through unlucky
+speculations, and that forced the son to make his own living. At the
+'Varsity he had fallen in with a rich young Belgian--fellow named
+Maurice Van Nant--who had a taste for sculpture and the fine arts
+generally, and they had become the warmest and closest of friends."
+
+"Maurice Van Nant? That's the sculptor fellow you said in the beginning
+had gone through his money, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes. Well, when young Carboys was thrown on the world, so to speak,
+this Van Nant came to the rescue, made a place for him as private
+secretary and companion, and for three or four years they knocked round
+the world together, going to Egypt, Persia, India, _et cetera_, as Van
+Nant was mad on the subject of Oriental art, and wished to study it at
+the fountain-head. In the meantime both Carboys' parents went over to
+the silent majority, and left him without a relative in the world,
+barring Captain Morrison, who is an uncle about seven times removed and
+would, of course, naturally be heir-at-law to anything he left if he had
+anything to leave, poor beggar, which he hadn't. But that's getting
+ahead of the story.
+
+"Well, at the end of four years or so Van Nant came to the bottom of his
+purse--hadn't a stiver left; and from dabbling in art for pleasure, had
+to come down to it as a means of earning a livelihood. And he and
+Carboys returned to England, and, for purposes of economy, pooled their
+interests, took a small box of a house over Putney way, set up a regular
+'bachelor establishment,' and started in the business of bread-winning
+together. Carboys succeeded in getting a clerk's position in town; Van
+Nant set about modelling clay figures and painting mediocre pictures,
+and selling both whenever he could find purchasers.
+
+"Naturally, these were slow in coming, few and far between; but with
+Carboys' steady two pounds a week coming in, they managed to scrape
+along and to keep themselves going. They were very happy, too, despite
+the fact that Carboys had got himself engaged to Miss Morrison, and was
+hoarding every penny he could possibly save in order to get enough to
+marry on; and this did not tend to make Van Nant overjoyed, as such a
+marriage would, of course, mean the end of their long association and
+the giving up of their bachelor quarters."
+
+"To say nothing of leaving Van Nant to rub along as best he could
+without any assistance from Carboys," commented Cleek. "I think I can
+guess a portion of what resulted, Mr. Narkom. Van Nant did not, of
+course, in these circumstances have any tender regard for Miss
+Morrison."
+
+"No, he did not. In point of fact, he disliked her very much indeed, and
+viewed the approaching wedding with extreme disfavour."
+
+"And yet you say that nobody had an interest in doing Carboys some sort
+of mischief in order to prevent that wedding from being consummated, Mr.
+Narkom," said Cleek with a shrug of the shoulders. "Certainly, Van Nant
+would have been glad to see a spoke put in that particular wheel; though
+I freely confess I do not see what good could come of preventing it by
+doing away with Carboys, as he would then be in as bad a position as if
+the marriage had been allowed to proceed as planned. Either way he loses
+Carboys' companionship and assistance; and his one wish would be to
+preserve both. Well, go on. What next? I'm anxious to hear about the
+belt. Where and how does that come in?"
+
+"Well, it appears that Miss Morrison got hold of a humorous book called
+'The Brass Bottle,' a fantastic, farcical thing, about a genie who had
+been sealed up in a bottle for a thousand years getting out and causing
+the poor devil of a hero no end of worry by heaping riches and honours
+upon him in the most embarrassing manner. It happened that on the night
+Miss Morrison got this book, and read it aloud for the amusement of her
+father and lover, Carboys had persuaded Van Nant to spend the evening
+with them. Apparently he enjoyed himself, too, for he laughed as
+boisterously as any of them over the farcical tale, and would not go
+home until he had heard the end of it. When it was finished Miss
+Morrison tells me, Carboys, after laughing fit to split his sides over
+the predicament of the hero of the book, cried out: 'By George! I wish
+some old genie would take it into his head to hunt me up, and try the
+same sort of a dodge with me. He wouldn't find this chicken shying his
+gold and his gems back at his head, I can tell you. I'd accept all the
+Arab slaves and all the palaces he wanted to thrust on me; and then I'd
+make 'em all over to you, Mary dear, so you'd never have to do another
+day's worrying or pinching in all your life. But never you nor anybody
+else depend upon an Arab's gratitude or an Arab's generosity. He'll
+promise you the moon, and then wriggle out of giving you so much as a
+star--just as Abdul ben Meerza did with me.' And upon Miss Morrison
+asking what he meant by that, he replied, laughingly: 'Ask Van, he knew
+the old codger better than I--knew his whole blessed family, blow
+him!--and was able to talk to the old skinflint in his own outlandish
+tongue.'
+
+"Upon Miss Morrison's acting on this suggestion, Van Nant told of an
+adventure Carboys had had in Persia some years previously. It appears
+that he saved the life of a miserly old Arab called Abdul ben Meerza at
+the risk of his own; that the old man was profuse in his expressions of
+gratitude, and, on their parting, had said: 'By the Prophet, thou shalt
+yet find the tree of this day's planting bear rich fruit for thee and
+thy feet walk upon golden stones.' But, in spite of this promise, he had
+walked away, and Carboys had never heard another word from nor of him
+from that hour until three nights ago."
+
+"Oho!" said Cleek, with a strong, rising inflection. "And he did hear of
+him, then?"
+
+"Yes," replied Narkom. "Quite unexpectedly, and while he was preparing
+to spend a dull evening at home with Van Nant--for the night was, as you
+must recollect, my dear fellow, a horribly wet and stormy one--a message
+came to him from Miss Morrison asking him to come over to Wandsworth
+without delay, as a most amazing thing had happened. A box marked 'From
+Abdul ben Meerza' had been delivered there, of all astonishing places.
+The message concluded by saying that as it was such a horrible night,
+the Captain, her father, would not hear of his returning, so begged him
+to bring his effects, and come prepared to remain until morning.
+
+"He went, of course, carrying with him a small bag containing his
+pyjamas, his shaving tackle, and such few accessories as would be
+necessary, since, if he stopped, he must start from there to business in
+the morning; and on his arrival was handed a small leather case
+addressed as he had been told. Imagining all sorts of wonders, from
+jewels of fabulous value to documents entitling him to endless wealth,
+he unfastened the case, and found within it a broad belt of blue
+enamelled leather secured with a circular brass clasp, on which was
+rudely scratched in English the words, 'The wizards of the East grew
+rich by being unseen. Whoso clasps this belt about his waist may become
+invisible for the wishing. So does ben Meerza remember.'
+
+"Of course, Carboys treated it as the veriest rubbish--who wouldn't?
+Indeed, suspected Van Nant of having played a joke upon him, and
+laughingly threw it aside; and, finding that he had taken an
+uncomfortable journey for nothing, got some good out of it by spending a
+pleasant evening with the Captain and his daughter. A room had been made
+ready for him--in fact, although he did not know it, Miss Morrison had
+given him hers, and had herself gone to a less attractive one--and in
+due time he prepared to turn in for the night. As they parted Miss
+Morrison, in a bantering spirit, picked up the belt and handed it to
+him, remarking that he had better keep it, as, after marriage, he might
+some time be glad to creep into the house unseen; and, in the same
+bantering spirit, he had replied that he had better begin learning how
+the thing worked in case of necessity, and taking the belt, clasped it
+round his waist, said good-night, and stepped into the room prepared for
+him. Miss Morrison and her father heard him close the door and pull down
+the blind, and--that was the last that was seen or heard of him.
+
+"In the morning the bed was found undisturbed, his locked bag on a
+chair, and in the middle of the floor the blue leather belt; but of the
+man himself there was not one trace to be found. There, that's the
+story, Cleek. Now what do you make of it?"
+
+"I shall be able to tell you better after I have seen the parties
+concerned," said Cleek, after a moment's pause. "You have brought your
+motor, of course? Let us step into it, then, and whizz round to Captain
+Morrison's house. What's that? Oh, undoubtedly a case of foul play, Mr.
+Narkom. But as to the motive and the matter of who is guilty, it is
+impossible to decide until I have looked further into the evidence. Do
+me a favour, will you? After you have left me at the Captain's house,
+'phone up The Yard, and let me have the secret cable code with the East;
+also, if you can, the name of the chief of the Persian police."
+
+"My dear chap, you can't really place any credence in that absurd
+assertion regarding the blue belt? You can't possibly think that Abdul
+ben Meerza really sent the thing?"
+
+"No, I can't," said Cleek in reply. "Because, to the best of my belief,
+it is impossible for a dead man to send anything; and, if my memory
+doesn't betray me, I fancy I read in the newspaper accounts of that big
+Tajik rising at Khotour a couple of months ago, that the leader, one
+Abdul ben Meerza, a rich but exceedingly miserly merchant of the
+province of Elburz, was, by the Shah's command, bastinadoed within an
+inch of his life, and then publicly beheaded."
+
+"By Jove! I believe you are right, my dear fellow," asserted Narkom. "I
+thought the name had a familiar sound--as if I had, somewhere, heard it
+before. I suppose there is no likelihood, by any chance, that the old
+skinflint could have lived up to his promise and left poor Carboys
+something, after all, Cleek? Because, you know, if he did--"
+
+"Captain Morrison would, as heir-at-law, inherit it," supplemented
+Cleek, dryly. "Get out the motor, Mr. Narkom, and let's spin round and
+see him. I fancy I should like a few minutes' conversation with the
+Captain. And--Mr. Narkom!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"We'll stick to the name 'George Headland,' if you please. When you are
+out for birds it doesn't do to frighten them off beforehand."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+It did not take more than five minutes to cover the distance between
+Sunnington Crescent and the modest little house where Captain Morrison
+and his daughter lived; so in a very brief time Cleek had the
+satisfaction of interviewing both.
+
+Narkom's assertion, that Miss Morrison was "half out of her mind over
+the distressing affair" had prepared him to encounter a weeping,
+red-eyed, heart-broken creature of the most excitable type. He found
+instead a pale, serious-faced, undemonstrative girl of somewhat
+uncertain age--sweet of voice, soft of step, quiet of demeanour--who was
+either one of those persons who repress all external evidence of
+internal fires, and bear their crosses in silence, or was as
+cold-blooded as a fish and as heartless as a statue. He found the father
+the exact antithesis of the daughter, a nervous, fretful, irritable
+individual (gout had him by the heels at the time), who was as full of
+"yaps" and snarls as any Irish terrier, and as peevish and fussy as a
+fault-finding old woman. Added to this, he had a way of glancing all
+round the room, and avoiding the eye of the person to whom he was
+talking. And if Cleek had been like the generality of people, and hadn't
+known that some of the best and "straightest" men in the world have been
+afflicted in this manner, and some of the worst and "crookedest" could
+look you straight in the eyes without turning a hair, he might have
+taken this for a bad sign. Then, too, he seemed to have a great many
+more wrappings and swaddlings about his gouty foot than appeared to be
+necessary--unless it was done to make his helpless state very apparent,
+and to carry out his assertion that he hadn't been able to walk a foot
+unassisted for the past week, and could not, therefore, be in any way
+connected with young Carboys' mysterious vanishment. Still, even that
+had its contra aspect. He might be one of those individuals who make a
+mountain out of a molehill of pain, and insist upon a dozen poultices
+where one would do.
+
+But Cleek could not forget that, as Narkom had said, there was not the
+shadow of doubt that in the event of Carboys having died possessed of
+means, the Captain would be the heir-at-law by virtue of his kinship;
+and it is a great deal more satisfactory to be rich oneself than to be
+dependent upon the generosity of a rich son-in-law. So, after adroitly
+exercising the "pump" upon other matters:
+
+"I suppose, Miss Morrison," said Cleek in a casual off-hand sort of way,
+"you don't happen to know if Mr. Carboys ever made a will, do you? I am
+aware, from what Mr. Narkom has told me of his circumstances, that he
+really possessed nothing that would call for the execution of such a
+document; but young men have odd fancies sometimes--particularly when
+they become engaged--so it is just possible that he might have done such
+a thing; that there was a ring or something of that sort he wanted to
+make sure of your getting should anything happen to him. Of course, it
+is an absurd suggestion, but--"
+
+"It is not so absurd as you think, Mr. Headland," she interrupted. "As
+it happens, Mr. Carboys did make a will. But that was a very long time
+ago--in fact, before he knew me, so my name did not figure in it at all.
+He once told me of the circumstances connected with it. It was executed
+when he was about three-and-twenty. It appears that there were some
+personal trinkets, relics of his more prosperous days: a set of jewelled
+waistcoat buttons, a scarf-pin, a few choice books and things like that,
+which he desired Mr. Van Nant to have in the event of his death (they
+were then going to the Orient, and times there were troublous); so he
+drew up a will, leaving everything that he might die possessed of to Mr.
+Van Nant, and left the paper with the latter's solicitor when they bade
+good-bye to England. So far as I know, that will still exists, Mr.
+Headland; so"--here the faintest suggestion of a quiver got into her
+voice--"if anything of a tragical nature had happened to him, and--and
+the trinkets hadn't disappeared with him, Mr. Van Nant could claim them
+all, and I should have not even one poor little token to cherish in
+memory of him. And I am sure--I am very sure--that if he had known--if
+he had thought--"
+
+"Mary, for goodness' sake, don't begin to snivel!" chimed in her father
+querulously. "It gets on my nerves. And you know very well how I am
+suffering! Of course, it was most inconsiderate of Carboys not to
+destroy that will as soon as you and he were engaged; but he knew that
+marriage invalidates any will a man may have made previously, and--well,
+you can't suppose that he ever expected things to turn out as they have
+done. Besides, Van Nant would have seen that you got something to
+treasure as a remembrance. He's a very decent chap, is Van Nant, Mr.
+Headland, although my daughter has never appeared to think so. But
+there's no arguing with a woman any way."
+
+Cleek glanced at Narkom. It was a significant glance, and said as
+plainly as so many words: "What do you think of it? You said there was
+no motive, and, provided Carboys fell heir to something of which we know
+nothing as yet, here are _two_! If that will was destroyed, one man
+would, as heir-at-law, inherit; ditto the other man if it was not
+destroyed and not invalidated by marriage. And here's the 'one' man
+singing the praises of the 'other' one!"
+
+"Collusion?" queried Narkom's answering look. "Perhaps," said Cleek's in
+response, "one of these two men has made away with him. The question is,
+which? and, also, why? when? where?" Then he turned to the Captain's
+daughter, and asked quietly: "Would you mind letting me see the room
+from which the young man disappeared? I confess I haven't the ghost of
+an idea regarding the case, Captain; but if you don't mind letting your
+daughter show me the room--"
+
+"Mind? Good Lord, no!" responded the Captain. "All I want to know is,
+what became of the poor boy, and if there's any likelihood of his ever
+coming back alive. I'd go up with you myself, only you see how helpless
+I am. Mary, take Mr. Headland to the room. And please don't stop any
+longer than is necessary. I'm suffering agonies and not fit to be left
+alone."
+
+Miss Morrison promised to return as expeditiously as possible, and then
+forthwith led the way to the room in question.
+
+"This is it, Mr. Headland," she said as she opened the door and ushered
+Cleek in. "Everything is just exactly as it was when George left it. I
+couldn't bring myself to touch a thing until after a detective had seen
+it. Father said it was silly and sentimental of me to go on sleeping in
+a little box of a hall bedroom when I could be so much more comfortable
+if I returned to my own. But--I couldn't! I felt that I might possibly
+be unconsciously destroying something in the shape of a clue if I moved
+a solitary object, and so--Look! there is the drawn blind just as he
+left it; there his portmanteau on that chair by the bedside, and
+there--" Her voice sank to a sort of awed whisper, her shaking finger
+extended in the direction of a blue semi-circle in the middle of the
+floor. "There is the belt! He had it round his waist when he crossed
+this threshold that night. It was lying there just as you see it when
+the servant brought up his tea and his shaving-water the next morning,
+and found the room empty and the bed undisturbed."
+
+Cleek walked forward and picked up the belt.
+
+"Humph! Unfastened!" he said as he took it up; and Miss Morrison,
+closing the door, went below and left them. "Our wonderful wizard does
+not seem to have mastered the simple matter of making a man vanish out
+of the thing without first unfastening the buckle, it appears. I should
+have thought he could have managed that, shouldn't you, Mr. Narkom, if
+he could have managed the business of making him melt into thin air?
+Hur-r-r!" reflectively, as he turned the belt over and examined it. "Not
+seen much use, apparently; the leather's quite new, and the inside quite
+unsoiled. British manufactured brass, too, in the buckle. Shouldn't have
+expected that in a Persian-made article. Inscription scratched on with
+the point of a knife, or some other implement not employed in metal
+engraving. May I trouble you for a pin? Thank you. Hum-m-m! Thought so.
+Some dirty, clayey stuff rubbed in to make the letters appear old and of
+long standing. Look here, Mr. Narkom: metal quite bright underneath when
+you pick the stuff out. Inscription very recently added; leather,
+American tanned; brass, Birmingham; stitching, by the Blake shoe and
+harness machine; wizard--probably born in Tottenham Court Road, and his
+knowledge of Persia confined to Persian powder in four-penny tins."
+
+He laid the belt aside, and walked slowly round the room, inspecting its
+contents before turning his attention to the portmanteau.
+
+"Evidently the vanishing qualities of the belt did not assert themselves
+very rapidly, Mr. Narkom," he said, "for Mr. Carboys not only prepared
+to go to bed, but had time to get himself ready to hurry off to business
+in the morning with as little delay as possible. Look here; here are his
+pyjamas on the top of this chest of drawers, neatly folded, just as he
+lifted them out of his portmanteau; and as a razor has been wiped on
+this towel (see this slim line of dust-like particles of hair), he
+shaved before going to bed in order to save himself the trouble of doing
+so in the morning. But as there is no shaving-mug visible, and he
+couldn't get hot water at that hour of the night, we shall probably
+discover a spirit-lamp and its equipment when we look into the
+portmanteau. Now, as he had time to put these shaving articles away
+after using, and as no man shaves with his collar and necktie on, if we
+do not find those, too, in the portmanteau, we may conclude that he put
+them on again; and, as he wouldn't put them on again if he were going to
+bed, the inference is obvious--something caused him to dress and prepare
+to leave the house voluntarily. That 'something' must have manifested
+itself very abruptly, and demanded great haste--either that, or he
+expected to return; for you will observe that, although he replaced his
+shaving tackle in the portmanteau, he did not put his sleeping-suit back
+with it. While I am poking about, do me the favour of looking in the
+bag, Mr. Narkom; and tell me if you find the collar and necktie there."
+
+"Not a trace of them," announced the superintendent a moment or two
+later. "Here are the shaving-mug, the brush, and the spirit-lamp,
+however, just as you suggested; and--Hallo! what have you stumbled upon
+now?" For Cleek, who had been "poking about," as he termed it, had
+suddenly stooped, picked up something, and was regarding it fixedly as
+it lay in the palm of his hand.
+
+"A somewhat remarkable thing to discover in a lady's bed-chamber, Mr.
+Narkom, unless--Just step downstairs, and ask Miss Morrison to come up
+again for a moment, will you?" And then held out his hand so that Narkom
+could see, in passing, that a hempseed, two grains of barley, and an oat
+lay upon his palm. "Miss Morrison," he inquired as Mary returned in
+company with the superintendent, "Miss Morrison, do you keep pigeons?"
+
+She gave a little cry, and clasped her hands together, as if reproaching
+herself for some heartless act.
+
+"Oh!" she said, moving hastily forward toward the window. "Poor dears!
+How good of you to remind me. To think that I should forget to feed them
+for three whole days. They may be dead by now. But at such a time I
+could think of nothing but this hideous mystery. My pigeons--my poor,
+pretty pigeons!"
+
+"Oh, then you do keep them?"
+
+"Yes; oh, yes. In a wire-enclosed cote attached to the house just
+outside this window. Homing pigeons, Mr. Headland. George bought them
+for me. We had an even half dozen each. We used to send messages to each
+other that way. He would bring his over to me, and take mine away with
+him at night when he went home, so we could correspond at any moment
+without waiting for the post. That's how I sent him the message about
+the arrival of the belt. Oh, do unlock the window, and let me see if the
+pretty dears are still alive."
+
+"It doesn't need to be unlocked, Miss Morrison," he replied, as he
+pulled up the blind. "See, it can be opened easily--the catch is not
+secured."
+
+"Not secured? Why, how strange. I myself fastened it after I despatched
+the bird with the message about the belt. And nobody came into the room
+after that until George did so that night. Oh, do look and see if the
+pretty creatures are dead. They generally coo so persistently; and now I
+don't hear a sound from them."
+
+Cleek threw up the sash and looked out. A huge wistaria with tendrils as
+thick as a man's wrist covered the side of the house, and made a
+veritable ladder down to the little garden; and, firmly secured to this,
+on a level with the window-sill and within easy reach therefrom, was the
+dovecote in question. He put in his hand, and slowly drew out four
+stiff, cold, feathered little bodies, and laid them on the
+dressing-table before her; then, while she was grieving over them, he
+groped round in all corners of the cote and drew forth still another.
+
+"Five?" she exclaimed in surprise. "Five? Oh, but there should be only
+four, Mr. Headland. It is true that George brought over all six the day
+before; but I 'flew' one to him in the early morning, and I 'flew' a
+second at night, with the message about the belt; so there should be but
+four."
+
+"Oh, well, possibly one was 'flown' by him to you, and it 'homed'
+without your knowledge."
+
+"Yes, but it couldn't get inside the wired enclosure unassisted, Mr.
+Headland. See! that spring-door has to be opened when it is returned to
+the cote after it has carried its message home. You see, I trained them,
+by feeding them in here, to come into this room when they were flown
+back to me. They always flew directly in if the window was opened, or
+gave warning of their presence by fluttering about and beating against
+the panes if the sash was closed. And for a fifth pigeon to be inside
+the enclosure--I can't understand the thing at all. Oh, Mr. Headland, do
+you think it is anything in the nature of a clue?"
+
+"It may be," he replied evasively. "Clues are funny things, Miss
+Morrison; you never know when you may pick one up, nor how. I shouldn't
+say anything to anybody about this fifth pigeon if I were you. Let that
+be our secret for awhile; and if your father wants to know why I sent
+for you to come up here again--why, just say I have discovered that your
+pigeons are dead for want of food." And for a moment or two, after she
+had closed the door and gone below again, he stood looking at Mr. Narkom
+and slowly rubbing his thumb and forefinger up and down his chin. Then,
+of a sudden:
+
+"I think, Mr. Narkom, we can fairly decide, on the evidence of that
+fifth pigeon, that George Carboys left this room voluntarily," returned
+Cleek; "that the bird brought him a message of such importance it was
+necessary to leave this house at once, and that, not wishing to leave it
+unlocked while he was absent, and not--because of the Captain's
+inability to get back upstairs afterward--having anybody to whom he
+could appeal to get up and lock it after him, he chose to get out of
+this window, and to go down by means of that wistaria. I think, too, we
+may decide that, as he left no note to explain his absence, he expected
+to return before morning, and that, as he never did return, he has met
+with foul play. Of course, it is no use looking for footprints in the
+garden in support of this hypothesis, for the storm that night was a
+very severe one and quite sufficient to blot out all trace of them;
+but--Look here, Mr. Narkom, put two and two together. If a message was
+sent him by a carrier pigeon, where must that pigeon have come from,
+since it was one of Miss Morrison's?"
+
+"Why, from Van Nant's place, of course. It couldn't possibly come from
+any other place."
+
+"Exactly. And as Van Nant and Carboys lived together--kept Bachelor
+Hall--and there was never anybody but their two selves in the house at
+any time, why, nobody but Van Nant himself could have despatched the
+bird. Look at that fragment of burnt paper lying in the basin of that
+candlestick on the washstand. If that isn't all that's left of the paper
+that was tied under the pigeon's wing, and if Carboys didn't use it for
+the purpose of lighting the spirit-lamp by which he heated his
+shaving-water, depend upon it that, in his haste and excitement, he
+tucked it into his pocket, and if ever we find his body we shall find
+that paper on it."
+
+"His body? My dear Cleek, you don't believe that the man has been
+murdered?"
+
+"I don't know--yet. I shall, however, if this Van Nant puts anything in
+the way of my searching that house thoroughly or makes any pretence to
+follow me whilst I am doing so. I want to meet this Maurice Van Nant
+just as soon as I can, Mr. Narkom, just as soon as I can."
+
+And it was barely two minutes after he had expressed this wish that Miss
+Morrison reappeared upon the scene, accompanied by a pale, nervous,
+bovine-eyed man of about thirty-five years of age, and said in a tone of
+agitation: "Pardon me for interrupting, Mr. Headland, but this is Mr.
+Maurice Van Nant. He is most anxious to meet you, and father would have
+me bring him up at once."
+
+Narkom screwed round on his heel, looked at the Belgian, and lost faith
+in Miss Morrison's powers of discrimination instantly. On the
+dressing-table stood Carboys' picture--heavy-jowled, sleepy-eyed,
+dull-looking--and on the threshold stood a man with the kindest eyes,
+the sweetest smile, and the handsomest and most sympathetic countenance
+he had seen in many a day. If the eyes are the mirror of the soul, if
+the face is the index of the character, then here was a man weak as
+water, as easily led as any lamb, and as guileless.
+
+"You are just the man I want to see, Mr. Van Nant," said Cleek, after
+the first formalities were over, and assuming, as he always did at such
+times, the heavy, befogged expression of incompetence. "I confess this
+bewildering affair altogether perplexes me; but you, I understand, were
+Mr. Carboys' close friend and associate, and as I can find nothing in
+the nature of a clue here, I should like, with your permission, to look
+over his home quarters and see if I can find anything there."
+
+If he had looked for any sign of reluctance or of embarrassment upon Van
+Nant's part when such a request should be made, he was wholly
+disappointed, for the man, almost on the point of tears, seized his
+hand, pressed it warmly, and said in a voice of eager entreaty: "Oh, do,
+Mr. Headland, do. Search anywhere, do anything that will serve to find
+my friend and to clear up this dreadful affair. I can't sleep for
+thinking of it; I can't get a moment's peace night or day. You didn't
+know him or you would understand how I am tortured--how I miss him. The
+best friend, the dearest and the lightest-hearted fellow that ever
+lived. If I had anything left in this world, I'd give it all--all, Mr.
+Headland, to clear up the mystery of this thing and to get him back. One
+man could do that, I believe, could and would if I had the money to
+offer him."
+
+"Indeed? And who may he be, Mr. Van Nant?"
+
+"The great, the amazing, the undeceivable man, Cleek. He'd get at the
+truth of it. Nothing could baffle and bewilder him. But--oh, well, it's
+the old, old tale of the power of money. He wouldn't take the case--a
+high-and-mighty 'top-notcher' like that--unless the reward was a
+tempting one, I'm sure."
+
+"No, I'm afraid he wouldn't," agreed Cleek, with the utmost composure.
+"So you must leave him out of your calculations altogether, Mr. Van
+Nant. And now, if you don't mind accompanying us and showing the
+chauffeur the way, perhaps Mr. Narkom will take us over to your house in
+his motor."
+
+"Mind? No, certainly I don't mind. Anything in the world to get at a
+clue to this thing, Mr. Headland, anything. Do let us go at once."
+
+Cleek led the way from the room. Halfway down the stairs, however, he
+excused himself on the plea of having forgotten his magnifying glass,
+and ran back to get it. Two minutes later he rejoined them in the little
+drawing-room, where the growling Captain was still demanding the whole
+time and attention of his daughter, and, the motor being ready, the
+three men walked out, got into it, and were whisked away to the house
+which once had been the home of the vanished George Carboys.
+
+It proved to be a small, isolated brick house in very bad condition,
+standing in an out-of-the-way road somewhere between Putney and
+Wimbledon. It stood somewhat back from the road, in the midst of a
+little patch of ground abounding in privet and laurel bushes, and it was
+evident that its cheapness had been its chief attraction to the two men
+who had rented it, although, on entering, it was found to possess at the
+back a sort of extension, with top and side lights, which must have
+appealed to Van Nant's need of something in the nature of a studio. At
+all events, he had converted it into a very respectable apology for one;
+and Cleek was not a little surprised by what it contained.
+
+Rich stuffs, bits of tapestry, Persian draperies, Arabian
+prayer-mats--relics of his other and better days and of his Oriental
+wanderings--hung on the walls and ornamented the floor; his rejected
+pictures and his unsold statues, many of them life-sized and all of
+clay, coated with a lustreless paint to make them look like marble, were
+disposed about the place with an eye to artistic effect, and near to an
+angle, where stood (on a pedestal, half concealed, half revealed by
+artistically arranged draperies) the life-size figure of a Roman
+senator, in toga and sandals, there was the one untidy spot, the one
+utterly inartistic thing the room contained.
+
+It was the crude, half-finished shape of a recumbent female figure, of
+large proportions and abominable modelling, stretched out at full length
+upon a long, low, trestle-supported "sculptor's staging," on which also
+lay Van Nant's modelling tools and his clay-stained working blouse.
+Cleek looked at the huge unnatural thing--out of drawing, anatomically
+wrong in many particulars--and felt like quoting Angelo's famous remark
+anent his master Lorenzo's faun: "What a pity to have spoilt so much
+expensive material," and Van Nant, observing, waved his hand toward it.
+
+"A slumbering nymph," he explained. "Only the head and shoulders
+finished as yet, you see. I began it the day before, yesterday, but my
+hand seems somehow to have lost its cunning. Here are the keys of all
+the rooms, Mr. Headland. Carboys' was the one directly at the head of
+the stairs, in the front. Won't you and Mr. Narkom go up and search
+without me? I couldn't bear to look into the place and see the things
+that belonged to him and he not there. It would cut me to the heart if I
+did. Or, maybe, you would sooner go alone, and leave Mr. Narkom to
+search round this room. We used to make a general sitting-room of it at
+nights when we were alone together, and some clue may have been
+dropped."
+
+"A good suggestion, Mr. Narkom," commented Cleek, as he took the keys.
+"Look round and see what you can find whilst I poke about upstairs."
+Then he walked out of the studio and searching every nook and corner,
+whilst Van Nant, for the want of something to occupy his mind and his
+hands, worked on the nymph, and could hear him moving about overhead in
+quest of possible clues.
+
+For perhaps twenty minutes Cleek was away; then he came down and walked
+into the room looking the very picture of hopeless bewilderment.
+
+"Mr. Narkom," he said, "this case stumps me. I believe there's magic in
+it, if you ask me; and as the only way to find magic is with magic, I am
+going to consult a clairvoyante, and if one of those parties can't give
+me a clue, I don't believe the mystery will ever be solved. I know of a
+ripping one, but she is over in Ireland, and as it's a dickens of a way
+to go, I shan't be able to get back before the day after to-morrow at
+the earliest. But--look here, sir, I'll tell you what! This is Tuesday
+evening, isn't it? Now if you and Mr. Van Nant will be at Captain
+Morrison's house on Thursday evening at seven o'clock, and will wait
+there until I come, I'll tell you what that clairvoyante says, and
+whether there's any chance of this thing being solved or not. Is that
+agreeable, Mr. Van Nant?"
+
+"Quite, Mr. Headland. I'll be there promptly."
+
+"And stop until you hear from me?"
+
+"And stop until I hear from you--yes."
+
+"Right you are, sir. Now then, Mr. Narkom, if you'll let the chauffeur
+whisk me over to the station, I'll get back to London and on to the
+earliest possible train for Holyhead so as to be on hand for the first
+Irish packet to-morrow. And while you're looking for your hat, sir--good
+evening, Mr. Van Nant--I'll step outside and tell Lennard to start up."
+
+With that, he passed out of the studio, walked down the hall, and went
+out of the house. And half a minute later, when the superintendent
+joined him, he found him sitting in the limousine and staring at his
+toes.
+
+"My dear Cleek, did you find anything?" he queried, as he took a seat
+beside him, and the motor swung out into the road and whizzed away. "Of
+course, I know you've no more idea of going to Ireland than you have of
+taking a pot-shot at the moon: but there's something on your mind. I
+know the signs, Cleek. What is it?"
+
+The response to this was rather startling.
+
+"Mr. Narkom," said Cleek, answering one question with another, "what's
+the best thing to make powdered bismuth stick--lard, cold cream, or
+cocoa butter?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+If punctuality is a virtue, then Mr. Maurice Van Nant deserved to go on
+record as one of the most virtuous men in existence. For the little
+Dutch clock in Captain Morrison's drawing-room had barely begun to
+strike seven on the following Thursday evening when he put in an
+appearance there, and found the Captain and his daughter anxiously
+awaiting him. But, as virtue is, on most excellent authority, its own
+reward, he had to be satisfied with the possession of it, since neither
+Narkom nor Cleek was there to meet him.
+
+But the reason for this defection was made manifest when Miss Morrison
+placed before him a telegram which had arrived some ten minutes earlier
+and read as follows: "Unavoidably delayed. Be with you at nine-thirty.
+Ask Mr. Van Nant to wait. Great and welcome piece of news for
+him.--NARKOM."
+
+Van Nant smiled.
+
+"Great and welcome news," he repeated. "Then Mr. Headland must have
+found something in the nature of a clue in Ireland, captain, though what
+he could find there I can't imagine. Frankly, I thought him a stupid
+sort of fellow, but if he has managed to find a clue to poor George's
+whereabouts over in Ireland, he must be sharper than I believed. Well,
+we shall know about that at half-past nine, when Mr. Narkom comes. I
+hope nothing will happen to make him disappoint us again."
+
+Nothing did. Promptly at the hour appointed, the red limousine whizzed
+up to the door, and Mr. Narkom made his appearance. But, contrary to the
+expectations of the three occupants of the little drawing-room, he was
+quite alone.
+
+"So sorry I couldn't come earlier," he said, as he came in, looking and
+acting like the bearer of great good news; "but you will appreciate the
+delay when I tell you what caused it. What's that, Mr. Van Nant?
+Headland? No, he's not with me. As a matter of fact, I've dispensed with
+his services in this particular case. Fancy, Miss Morrison, the muff
+came back from Ireland this evening, said the clairvoyante he consulted
+went into a trance, and told him that the key to the mystery could only
+be discovered in Germany, and he wanted me to sanction his going over
+there on no better evidence than that. Of course, I wouldn't; so I took
+him off the case forthwith, and set out to get another and a better man
+to handle it. That's what delayed me. And now, Mr. Van Nant"--fairly
+beaming, and rubbing his palms together delightedly--"here's where the
+great and welcome news I spoke of comes in. I remembered what you said
+the other day--I remembered how your heart is wrapped up in the solving
+of this great puzzle--what you said about it being a question of money
+alone; and so, what do you think I did? I went to that great man, Cleek.
+I laid the matter before him, told him there was no reward, that it was
+just a matter of sheer humanity--the consciousness of doing his duty and
+helping another fellow in distress--and, throw up your hat and cheer, my
+dear fellow, for you've got your heart's desire: Cleek's consented to
+take the case!"
+
+A little flurry of excitement greeted this announcement. Miss Morrison
+grabbed his hand and burst into tears of gratitude; the Captain,
+forgetting in his delight the state of his injured foot, rose from his
+chair, only to remember suddenly and sit down again, his half-uttered
+cheer dying on his lips; and Van Nant, as if overcome by this unexpected
+boon, this granting of a wish he had never dared to hope would be
+fulfilled, could only clap both hands over his face and sob
+hysterically.
+
+"Cleek!" he said, in a voice that shook with nervous catches and the
+emotion of a soul deeply stirred, "Cleek to take the case? The great,
+the amazing, the undeceivable Cleek! Oh, Mr. Narkom, can this be true?"
+
+"As true as that you are standing here this minute, my dear sir. Not so
+much of a money grabber as that muff Headland wanted you to believe, is
+he--eh? Waived every hope of a reward, and took the case on the spot.
+He'll get at the root of it--Lord, yes! Lay you a sovereign to a
+sixpence, Mr. Van Nant, he gets to the bottom of it and finds out what
+became of George Carboys in forty-eight hours after he begins on the
+case."
+
+"And when will he begin, Mr. Narkom? To-morrow? The next day? Or not
+this week at all? When, sir--when?"
+
+"When? Why, bless your heart, man, he's begun already--or, at least,
+will do so in another hour and a half. He's promised to meet us at your
+house at eleven o'clock to-night. Chose that place because he lives at
+Putney, and it's nearer. Eleven was the hour he set, though, of course,
+he may arrive sooner; there's no counting on an erratic fellow like that
+chap. So we'll make it eleven, and possess our souls in patience until
+it's time to start."
+
+"But, my dear Mr. Narkom, wouldn't it be better, or, at least, more
+hospitable if I went over to meet him, in case he does come earlier?
+There's no one in the house, remember, and it's locked up."
+
+"Lord bless you, that won't bother him! Never travels without his tools,
+you know--skeleton keys, and all that--and he'll be in the house before
+you can wink an eye. Still, of course, if you'd rather be there to admit
+him in the regulation way--"
+
+"It would at least be more courteous, Mr. Narkom," Miss Morrison
+interposed. "So great a man doing so great a favour--Oh, yes, I really
+think that Mr. Van Nant should."
+
+"Oh, well, let him then, by all means," said Narkom. "Go, if you choose,
+Mr. Van Nant. I'd let you have my motor, only I must get over to the
+station and 'phone up headquarters on another affair in five minutes."
+
+"It doesn't matter, thank you all the same. I can get a taxi at the top
+of the road," said Van Nant; and then, making his excuses to Miss
+Morrison and her father, he took up his hat and left the house. As a
+matter of fact, it was only courtesy that made him say that about the
+taxi, for there is rarely one to be found waiting about in the
+neighbourhood of Wandsworth Common after half-past nine o'clock at
+night, and nobody could have been more surprised than he when he
+actually did come across one, loitering about aimlessly and quite empty,
+before he had gone two dozen yards.
+
+He engaged it on the spot, jumped into it, gave the chauffeur his
+directions, and a minute later was whizzing away to the isolated house.
+It was eight minutes past ten when he reached it, standing as black and
+lightless as when he left it four hours ago, and, after paying off the
+chauffeur and dismissing the vehicle, he fumbled nervously for his
+latchkey, found it, unlocked the door, and went hurriedly in.
+
+"Have you come yet, Mr. Cleek?" he called out, as he shut the door and
+stood in the pitch-black hall. "Mr. Cleek! Mr. Cleek, are you here? It
+is I--Maurice Van Nant. Mr. Narkom has sent me on ahead."
+
+Not a sound answered him, not even an echo. He sucked in his breath with
+a sort of wheezing sound, then groped round the hall table till he found
+his bedroom candle, and, striking a match, lit it. The staircase leading
+to the upper floors gaped at him out of the partial gloom, and he fairly
+sprang at it--indeed, was halfway up it when some other idea possessed
+him, brought him to a sudden standstill, and, facing round abruptly, he
+went back to the lower hall again, glimmering along it like a shadow,
+with the inadequate light held above him, and moving fleetly to the
+studio in the rear.
+
+The door stood partly open, just as he had left it. He pushed it inward
+and stepped over the threshold.
+
+"Mr. Cleek!" he called again. "Mr. Cleek! Are you here?"
+
+And again the silence alone answered him. The studio was as he had seen
+it last, save for those fantastic shadows which the candle's wavering
+flame wreathed in the dim corners and along the pictured walls. There,
+on its half-draped pedestal, the Roman senator stood--dead white against
+the purple background--and there, close to the foot of it, the great
+bulk of the disproportionate nymph still sprawled, finished and
+whitewashed now, and looking even more of a monstrosity than ever in
+that waving light.
+
+He gave one deep gulping sigh of relief, flashed across the room on
+tiptoe, and went down on his knees beside the monstrous thing, moving
+the candle this way and that along the length of it, as if searching for
+something, and laughing in little jerky gasps of relief when he found
+nothing that was not as it had been--as it should be--as he wanted it to
+be. And then, as he rose and patted the clay, and laughed aloud as he
+realised how hard it had set, then, at that instant, a white shape
+lurched forward and swooped downward, carrying him down with it. The
+candle slipped from his fingers and clattered on the floor, a pair of
+steel handcuffs clicked as they closed round his wrists, a voice above
+him said sharply: "You wanted Cleek I believe? Well, Cleek's got you,
+you sneaking murderer. Gentlemen, come in! Allow me to turn over to you
+the murderer of George Carboys! You'll find the body inside that
+slumbering nymph!"
+
+And the last thing that Mr. Maurice Van Nant saw, as he shrieked and
+fainted, the last thing he realised, was that lights were flashing up
+and men tumbling in through the opening windows; that the Roman
+senator's pedestal was empty, and the figure which once had stood upon
+it was bending over him--alive!
+
+And just at that moment the red limousine flashed up out of the
+darkness, the outer door whirled open and Narkom came pelting up.
+
+"He took the bait, then, Cleek?" he cried, as he saw the manacled figure
+on the floor, with the "Roman senator" bending over and the policemen
+crowding in about it. "I guessed it when I saw the lights flash up. I've
+been on his heels ever since he snapped at that conveniently placed taxi
+after he left Miss Morrison and her father."
+
+"You haven't brought them with you, I hope, Mr. Narkom? I wouldn't have
+that poor girl face the ordeal of what's to be revealed here to-night
+for worlds."
+
+"No, I've not. I made a pretext of having to 'phone through to
+headquarters, and slipped out a moment after him. But, I say, my dear
+chap"--as Cleek's hands made a rapid search of the pockets of the
+unconscious man, and finally brought to light a folded paper--"what's
+that thing? What are you doing?"
+
+"Compounding a felony in the interest of humanity," he made reply as he
+put the end of the paper into the flame of the candle and held it there
+until it was consumed. "We all do foolish things sometimes when we are
+young, Mr. Narkom, and--well, George Carboys was no exception when he
+wrote the little thing I have just burned. Let us forget all about
+it--Captain Morrison is heir-at-law, and that poor girl will benefit."
+
+"There was an estate, then?"
+
+"Yes. My cable yesterday to the head of the Persian police set all doubt
+upon that point at rest. Abdul ben Meerza, parting with nothing while he
+lived, after the manner of misers in general, left a will bequeathing
+something like £12,000 to George Carboys, and his executor communicated
+that fact to the supposed friend of both parties--Mr. Maurice Van Nant;
+and exactly ten days ago, so his former solicitor informed me, Mr.
+Maurice Van Nant visited him unexpectedly, and withdrew from his keeping
+a sealed packet which had been in the firm's custody for eight years. If
+you want to know why he withdrew it--Dollops!"
+
+"Right you are, Gov'nor."
+
+"Give me the sledge-hammer. Thanks! Now, Mr. Narkom, look!" And,
+swinging the hammer, he struck at the nymph with a force that shattered
+the monstrous thing to atoms; and Narkom, coming forward to look when
+Cleek bent over the ruin he had wrought, saw in the midst of the dust
+and rubbish the body of a dead man, fully clothed, and with the gap of a
+bullet-hole in the left temple.
+
+Again Cleek's hands began a rapid search, and again, as before, they
+brought to light a paper, a little crumpled ball of paper that had been
+thrust into the right-hand pocket of the dead man's waistcoat, as though
+jammed there under the stress of strong excitement and the pressure of
+great haste. He smoothed it out and read it carefully, then passed it
+over to Mr. Narkom.
+
+"There!" he said, "that's how he lured him over to his death. That's the
+message the pigeon brought. Would any man have failed to fly to face the
+author of a foul lie like that?"
+
+"Beloved Mary," the message ran, "come to me again to-night. How sweet
+of you to think of such a thing as the belt to get him over and to make
+him stop until morning! Steal out after he goes to bed, darling. I'll
+leave the studio window unlocked, as usual. With a thousand kisses.
+
+"Your own devoted,
+
+"MAURICE."
+
+"The dog!" said Narkom fiercely. "And against a pure creature like Mary
+Morrison! Here, Smathers, Petrie, Hammond, take him away. Hanging's too
+good for a beastly cur like that!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"How did I know that the body was inside the statue?" said Cleek,
+answering Narkom's query, as they drove back in the red limousine toward
+London and Clarges Street. "Well, as a matter of fact, I never did know
+for certain until he began to examine the thing to-night. From the first
+I felt sure he was at the bottom of the affair, that he had lured
+Carboys back to the house, and murdered him; but it puzzled me to think
+what could possibly have been done with the body. I felt pretty certain,
+however, when I saw that monstrous statue."
+
+"Yes, but why?"
+
+"My dear Mr. Narkom, you ought not to ask that question. Did it not
+strike you as odd that a man who was torn with grief over the
+disappearance of a loved friend should think of modelling any sort of a
+statue on that very first day, much less such an inartistic one as that?
+Consider: the man has never been a first-class sculptor, it is true, but
+he knew the rudiments of his art, he had turned out some fairly
+presentable work; and that nymph was as abominably conceived and as
+abominably executed as if it had been the work of a raw beginner. Then
+there was another suspicious circumstance. Modelling clay is not exactly
+as cheap as dirt, Mr. Narkom. Why, then, should this man, who was
+confessedly as poor as the proverbial church mouse, plunge into the wild
+extravagance of buying half a ton of it--and at such a time? Those are
+the things that brought the suspicion into my mind; the certainty,
+however, had to be brought about beyond dispute before I could act.
+
+"I knew that George Carboys had returned to that studio by the dry marks
+of muddy footprints, that were nothing like the shape of Van Nant's,
+which I found on the boards of the verandah and on the carpet under one
+of the windows; I knew, too, that it was Van Nant who had sent that
+pigeon. You remember when I excused myself and went back on the pretext
+of having forgotten my magnifying glass the other day? I did so for the
+purpose of looking at that fifth pigeon. I had observed something on its
+breast feathers which I thought, at first glance, was dry mud, as though
+it had fallen or brushed against something muddy in its flight. As we
+descended the stairs I observed that there was a similar mark on Van
+Nant's sleeve. I brushed against him and scraped off a fleck with my
+finger-nails. It was the dust of dried modelling clay. That on the
+pigeon's breast proved to be the same substance. I knew then that the
+hands of the person who liberated that pigeon were the hands of someone
+who was engaged in modelling something or handling the clay of the
+modeller, and--the inference was clear.
+
+"As for the rest; when Van Nant entered that studio to-night, frightened
+half out of his wits at the knowledge that he would have to deal with
+the one detective he feared, I knew that if he approached that statue
+and made any attempts to examine it I should have my man, and that the
+hiding-place of his victim's body would be proved beyond question. When
+he did go to it, and did examine it--Clarges Street at last, thank
+fortune; for I am tired and sleepy. Stop here, Lennard; I'm getting out.
+Come along, Dollops. Good-night, Mr. Narkom! 'And so, to bed,' as good
+old Pepys says."
+
+And passed on, up the street, with his hand on the boy's shoulder and
+the stillness and the darkness enfolding them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+For the next five or six weeks life ran on merrily enough for Cleek; so
+merrily, in fact, that Dollops came to be quite accustomed to hear him
+whistling about the house and to see him go up the stairs two steps at a
+time whenever he had occasion to mount them for any purpose whatsoever.
+
+It would not have needed any abnormally acute mind, any process of
+subtle reasoning, to get at the secret of all this exuberance, this
+perennial flow of high spirits; indeed, one had only to watch the letter
+box at Number 204, Clarges Street, to get at the bottom of it instantly;
+for twice a week the postman dropped into it a letter addressed in an
+undoubtedly feminine "hand" to Captain Horatio Burbage, and invariably
+postmarked "Lynhaven, Devon."
+
+Dollops had made that discovery long ago and had put his conclusions
+regarding it into the mournfully-uttered sentence: "A skirt's got him!"
+But, after one violent pang of fierce and rending jealousy, was grateful
+to that "skirt" for bringing happiness to the man he loved above all
+other things upon earth and whose welfare was the dearest of his heart's
+desires. Indeed, he grew, in time, to watch as eagerly for the coming of
+those letters as did his master himself; and he could have shouted with
+delight whenever he heard the postman's knock, and saw one of the
+regulation blue-grey envelopes drop through the slit into the wire cage
+on the door.
+
+Cleek, too, was delighted when he saw them. It was nothing to him that
+the notes they contained were of the briefest--mere records of the state
+of the weather, the progress of his little lordship, the fact that Lady
+Chepstow wished to be remembered and that the writer was well "and hoped
+he, too, was." They were written by _her_--that was enough. He gave so
+much that very little sufficed him in return; and the knowledge that he
+had been in her mind for the five or ten minutes which it had taken to
+write the few lines she sent him, made him exceedingly happy.
+
+But she was not his only correspondent in these days--not even his most
+frequent one. For a warm, strong friendship--first sown in those
+ante-Derby days--had sprung up between Sir Henry Wilding and himself and
+had deepened steadily into a warm feeling of comradeship and mutual
+esteem. Frequent letters passed between them; and the bond of fellowship
+had become so strong a thing that Sir Henry never came to town without
+their meeting and dining together.
+
+"Gad! you know, I can't bring myself to think of you as a
+police-officer, old chap!" was the way Sir Henry put it on the day when
+he first invited him to lunch with him at his club. "I'd about as soon
+think of sitting down with one of my grooms as breaking bread with one
+of that lot; and I shall never get it out of my head that you're a
+gentleman going in for this sort of thing as a hobby--never b'Gad! if I
+live to be a hundred."
+
+"I hope you will come nearer to doing that than you have to guessing the
+truth about me," replied Cleek, with a smile. "Take my word for it,
+won't you?--this thing is my profession. I don't do it as a mere hobby:
+I live by it--I have no other means of living _but_ by it. I am--what I
+am, and nothing more."
+
+"Oh, gammon! Why not tell me at once that you are a winkle stall-keeper
+and be done with it? You can't tell a fish that another fish is a
+turnip--at least you can't and expect him to believe it. Own up, old
+chap. I know a man of birth when I meet him. Tell me who you are,
+Cleek--I'll respect it."
+
+"I don't doubt that--the addition is superfluous."
+
+"Then who are you? What are you, Cleek? Eh?"
+
+"What you have called me--'Cleek.' Cleek the detective, Cleek of the
+Forty Faces, if you prefer it; but just 'Cleek' and nothing more. Don't
+get to building romances about me merely because I have the _instincts_
+of a gentleman, Sir Henry. Just simply remember that Nature _does_ make
+mistakes sometimes; that she has been known to put a horse's head on a
+sheep's shoulders and to make a navvy's son look more royal than a
+prince. I am Cleek, the detective--simply Cleek. Let it go at that."
+
+And as there was no alternative, Sir Henry did.
+
+It made no difference in their friendship, however. Police officer or
+not, he liked and he respected the man, and made no visit to town
+without meeting and entertaining him.
+
+So matters stood between them when on a certain Thursday in mid
+September he came up unexpectedly from Wilding Hall and 'phoned through
+to Clarges Street, asking Cleek to dine with him that night at the Club
+of the Two Services.
+
+Cleek accepted the invitation gladly and was not a little surprised on
+arriving to find that, in this instance, dinner was to be served in a
+little private room and that a third party was also to partake of it.
+
+"Dear chap, pardon me for taking you unawares," said Sir Henry, as Cleek
+entered the private room and found himself in the presence of a
+decidedly military-looking man long past middle life, "but the fact is
+that immediately after I had telephoned you, I encountered a friend and
+a--er--peculiar circumstance arose which impelled me to secure a private
+room and to--er--throw myself upon your good graces as it were. Let me
+have the pleasure, dear chap, of introducing you to my friend, Major
+Burnham-Seaforth. Major, you are at last in the presence of the
+gentleman of whom I spoke--Mr. Cleek."
+
+"Mr. Cleek, I am delighted," said the Major, offering his hand. "I have
+heard your praises sung so continuously the past two hours that I feel
+as if I already knew you."
+
+"Ah, you mustn't mind all that Sir Henry says," replied Cleek, as he
+shook hands with him. "He makes mountains out of millstones, and would
+panegyrize the most commonplace of men if he happened to take a fancy to
+him. You mustn't believe all that Sir Henry says and thinks, Major."
+
+"I shall be happy, Mr. Cleek, if I can really hope to believe the half
+of it," replied the Major, enigmatically--and was prevented from saying
+more by the arrival of the waiter and the serving of dinner.
+
+It was not until the meal was over and coffee and cigars had been served
+and the too attentive waiter had taken his departure that Cleek
+understood that remark or realised what it portended. But even then, it
+was not the Major who explained.
+
+"My dear Cleek," said Sir Henry, lowering his voice and leaning over the
+table, "I hope you will not think I have taken a mean advantage of you,
+but I have brought the Major here to-night for a purpose. He has, in
+fact, come to consult you professionally; and upon my recommendation. Do
+you object to that, or may I go on?"
+
+"Go on by all means," replied Cleek. "I fancy you know very well that
+there is nothing you might ask of me that I would not at least attempt
+to do, dear chap."
+
+"Thanks very much. Well then, the Major has come, my dear Cleek, to ask
+you to help in unravelling a puzzle of singular and mystifying interest.
+Now you may or may not have heard of a Music Hall artiste--a sort of
+conjurer and impersonator combined--called Zyco the Magician, who was
+once very popular and was assisted in his illusions by a veiled but
+reputedly beautiful Turkish lady who was billed on the programmes and
+posters as 'Zuilika, the Caliph's Daughter.'"
+
+"I remember the pair very well indeed," said Cleek. "They toured the
+Music Halls for years, and I saw their performance frequently. They were
+among the first, I believe, to produce that afterwards universal
+illusion known as 'The Vanishing Lady.' As I have not heard anything of
+them nor seen their names billed for a couple of years past, I fancy
+they have either retired from the profession or gone to some other part
+of the world. The man was not only a very clever magician, but a master
+of mimicry. I always believed, however, that in spite of his name he was
+of English birth. The woman's face I never saw, of course, as she was
+always veiled to the eyes after the manner of Turkish ladies. But
+although a good many persons suspected that her birthplace was no nearer
+Bagdad than Peckham, I somehow felt that she was, after all, a genuine,
+native-born Turk."
+
+"You are quite right in both suspicions, Mr. Cleek," put in the Major
+agitatedly. "The man _was_ an Englishman; the lady _is_ a Turk."
+
+"May I ask, Major, why you speak of the lady in the present tense and of
+the man in the past? Is he dead?"
+
+"I hope so," responded the Major fervently. "God knows I do, Mr. Cleek.
+My every hope in life depends upon that."
+
+"May I ask why?"
+
+"I am desirous of marrying his widow!"
+
+"My dear Major, you cannot possibly be serious! A woman of that class?"
+
+"Pardon me, sir, but you have, for all your cleverness, fallen a victim
+to the prevailing error. The lady is in every way my social equal--in
+her own country my superior. She _is_ a caliph's daughter. The title
+which the playgoing public imagined was of the usual bombastic,
+just-on-the-programme sort, is hers by right. Her late father, Caliph Al
+Hamid Sulaiman, was one of the richest and most powerful Mohammedans in
+existence. He died five months ago, leaving an immense fortune to be
+conveyed to England to his exiled but forgiven child."
+
+"Ah, I see. Then, naturally, of course--"
+
+"The suggestion is unworthy of you, Sir Henry, and anything but
+complimentary to me. The inheritance of this money has had nothing
+whatever to do with my feelings for the lady. That began two years ago,
+when, by accident, I was permitted to look upon her face for the first,
+last, and only time. I should still wish to marry her if she were an
+absolute pauper. I know what you are saying to yourself, sir: 'There is
+no fool like an old fool.' Well, perhaps there isn't. But--" he turned
+to Cleek--"I may as well begin at the beginning and confess that even if
+I did not desire to marry the lady I should still have a deep interest
+in her husband's death, Mr. Cleek. He is--or was, if dead--the only son
+of my cousin, the Earl of Wynraven, who is now over ninety years of age.
+I am in the direct line, and if this Lord Norman Ulchester, whom you and
+the public know only as 'Zyco the Magician,' were in his grave there
+would only be that one feeble old man between me and the title."
+
+"Ah, I see!" said Cleek, in reply; then, seating himself at the table,
+he arranged the shade of the lamp so that the light fell full upon the
+Major's face while leaving his own in the shadow. "Then your interest in
+the affair, Major, may be said to be a double one."
+
+"More, sir--a triple one. I have a rival in the shape of my own son. He,
+too, wishes to marry Zuilika--is madly enamoured of her, in fact; so
+wildly that I have always hesitated to confess my own desires to him for
+fear of the consequences. He is almost a madman in his outbursts of
+temper; and where Zuilika is concerned--Perhaps you will understand, Mr.
+Cleek, when I tell you that once when he thought her husband had
+ill-used her, he came within an ace of killing the man. There was bad
+blood between them always--even as boys--and, as men, it was bitterer
+than ever because of _her_."
+
+"Suppose you begin at the beginning and tell me the whole story, Major,"
+suggested Cleek, studying the man's face narrowly. "How did the Earl of
+Wynraven's son come to meet this singularly fascinating lady, and
+where?"
+
+"In Turkey--or Arabia--I forget which. He was doing his theatrical
+nonsense in the East with some barn-storming show or other, having been
+obliged to get out of England to escape arrest for some shady
+transaction a year before. He was always a bad egg--always a disgrace to
+his name and connections. That's why his father turned him off and never
+would have any more to do with him. As a boy he was rather clever at
+conjuring tricks and impersonations of all sorts--he could mimic
+anything or anybody he ever saw, from the German Emperor down to a
+Gaiety chorus girl, and do it to absolute perfection. When his father
+kicked him out he turned these natural gifts to account, and, having
+fallen in with some professional dancing-woman, joined her for a time
+and went on the stage with her.
+
+"It was after he had parted from this dancer and was knocking about
+London and leading a disgraceful life generally that he did the thing
+which caused him to hurry off to the East and throw in his lot with the
+travelling company I have alluded to. He was always a handsome fellow
+and had a way with him that was wonderfully taking with women, so I
+suppose that that accounts as much as anything for Zuilika's infatuation
+and her doing the mad thing she did. I don't know when nor where nor how
+they first met; but the foolish girl simply went off her head over him,
+and he appears to have been as completely infatuated with her. Of
+course, in that land, the idea of a woman of her sect, of her standing,
+having anything to do with a Frank was looked upon as something
+appalling, something akin to sacrilege; and when they found that her
+father had got wind of it and that the fellow's life would not be safe
+if he remained within reach another day, they flew to the coast
+together, shipped for England, and were married immediately after their
+arrival."
+
+"A highly satisfactory termination for the lady," commented Cleek. "One
+could hardly have expected that from a man so hopelessly unprincipled as
+you represent him to have always been. But there's a bit of good in even
+the devil, we are told."
+
+"Oh, be sure that he didn't marry her from any principle of honour, my
+dear sir," replied the Major. "If it were merely a question of that,
+he'd have cut loose from her as soon as the vessel touched port.
+Consideration of self ruled him in that as in all other things. He knew
+that the girl's father fairly idolised her; knew that, in time, his
+wrath would give way to his love, and, sooner or later, the old man--who
+had been mad at the idea of any marriage--would be moved to settle a
+large sum upon her so that she might never be in want. But let me get on
+with my story. Having nothing when he returned to England, and being
+obliged to cover up his identity by assuming another name, Ulchester,
+after vainly appealing to his father for help on the plea that he was
+now honourably married and settled down, turned again to the stage, and,
+repugnant though such a thing was to the delicately-nurtured woman he
+had married, compelled Zuilika to become his assistant and to go on the
+boards with him. That is how the afterwards well-known music-hall 'team'
+of 'Zyco and the Caliph's Daughter' came into existence.
+
+"The novelty of their 'turn' caught on like wild fire, and they were a
+success from the first, not a little of that success being due to the
+mystery surrounding the identity and appearance of Zuilika; for, true to
+the traditions of her native land, she never appeared, either in public
+or in private, without being closely veiled. Only her 'lord' was ever
+permitted to look upon her uncovered face; all that the world at large
+might ever hope to behold of it was the low, broad forehead and the two
+brilliant eyes that appeared above the close-drawn line of her yashmak.
+Of course she shrank from the life into which she was forced; but it had
+its reward, for it kept her in close contact with her husband, whom she
+almost worshipped. So, for a time, she was proportionately happy;
+although, as the years passed by and her father showed no inclination to
+bestow the coveted 'rich allowance' upon his daughter, Ulchester's
+ardour began to cool. He no longer treated her with the same
+affectionate deference; he neglected her, in fact, and, in the end, even
+began to ill-use her.
+
+"About two years ago, matters assumed a worse aspect. He again met Anita
+Rosario, the Spanish dancer, under whose guidance he had first turned to
+the halls for a livelihood, and once more took up with her. He seemed to
+have lost all thought or care for the feelings of his wife, for, after
+torturing her with jealousy over his attentions to the dancer, he took a
+house adjoining my own--on the borders of the most unfrequented part of
+the common at Wimbledon--established himself and Zuilika there, and
+brought the woman Anita home to live with them. From that period matters
+went from bad to worse. Evidently having tired of the stage, both
+Ulchester and Anita abandoned it, and turned the house into a sort of
+club where gambling was carried on to a disgraceful extent.
+Broken-hearted over the treatment she was receiving, Zuilika appealed to
+me and to my son to help her in her distress--to devise some plan to
+break the spell of Ulchester's madness and to get that woman out of the
+house. It was then that I first beheld her face. In her excitement she
+managed, somehow, to snap or loosen the fastening which held her
+yashmak, and it fell--fell, and let my son realise, as I realised, how
+wondrously beautiful it is possible for the human face to be!"
+
+"Steady, Major, steady! I can quite understand your feelings--can
+realise better than most men!" said Cleek with a sort of sigh. "You
+looked into heaven, and--well, what then? Let's have the rest of the
+story."
+
+"I think my son must have put it into her head to give Ulchester a taste
+of his own medicine--to attempt to excite his jealousy by pretending to
+find interests elsewhere. At any rate, she began to show him a great
+deal of attention--or, at least, so he says, although I never saw it.
+All I know is that she--she--well, sir, she deliberately led _me_ on
+until I was half insane over her, and--that's all!"
+
+"What do you mean by 'that's all'? The matter couldn't possibly have
+ended there, or else why this appeal to me?"
+
+"It ended for me, so far as her affectionate treatment of me was
+concerned; for in the midst of it the unexpected happened. Her father
+died, forgiving her, as Ulchester had hoped, but doing more than his
+wildest dreams could have given him cause to imagine possible. In a
+word, sir, the caliph not only bestowed his entire earthly possessions
+upon her, but had them conveyed to England by trusted allies and placed
+in her hands. There were coffers of gold pieces, jewels of fabulous
+value--sufficient, when converted into English money, as they were
+within the week, and deposited to her credit in the Bank of England, to
+make her the sole possessor of nearly three million pounds."
+
+"Phew!" whistled Cleek. "When these Orientals do it they certainly do it
+properly. That's what you might call 'giving with both hands,' Major,
+eh?"
+
+"The gift did not end with that, sir," the Major replied with a gesture
+of repulsion. "There was a gruesome, ghastly, appalling addition in the
+shape of two mummy cases--one empty, the other filled. A parchment
+accompanying these stated that the caliph could not sleep elsewhere but
+in the land of his fathers, nor sleep _there_ until his beloved child
+rested beside him. They had been parted in life, but they should not be
+parted in death. An Egyptian had, therefore, been summoned to his
+bedside, had been given orders to embalm him after death, to send the
+mummy to Zuilika, and with it a case in which, when her own death should
+occur, _her_ body should be deposited; and followers of the prophet had
+taken oath to see that both were carried to their native land and
+entombed side by side. Until death came to relieve her of this ghastly
+duty, Zuilika was charged to be the guardian of the mummy and daily to
+make the orisons of the faithful before it, keeping it always with its
+face towards the East."
+
+"By George! it sounds like a page from the 'Arabian Nights,'" exclaimed
+Cleek. "Well, what next? Did Ulchester take kindly to this housing of
+the mummy of his father-in-law and the eventual coffin of his wife? Or
+was he willing to stand for anything so long as he got possession of the
+huge fortune the old man left?"
+
+"He never did get it, Mr. Cleek--he never touched so much as one
+farthing of it. Zuilika took nobody into her confidence until everything
+had been converted into English gold and deposited in the bank to her
+credit. Then she went straight to him and to Anita, showed them proof of
+the deposit, reviled them for their treatment of her, and swore that not
+one farthing's benefit should accrue to Ulchester until Anita was turned
+out of the house in the presence of their guests and the husband took
+oath on his knees to join the wife in those daily prayers before the
+caliph's mummy. Furthermore, Ulchester was to embrace the faith of the
+Mohammedans that he might return with her at once to the land and the
+gods she had offended by marriage with a Frankish infidel."
+
+"Which, of course, he declined to do?"
+
+"Yes. He declined utterly. But it was a case of the crushed worm, with
+Zuilika. Now was _her_ turn; and she would not abate one jot or tittle.
+There was a stormy scene, of course. It ended by Ulchester and the woman
+Anita leaving the house together. From that hour Zuilika never again
+heard his living voice, never again saw his living face! He seems to
+have gone wild with wrath over what he had lost and to have plunged
+headlong into the maddest sort of dissipation. It is known--positively
+known, and can be sworn to by reputable witnesses--that for the next
+three days he did not draw one sober breath. On the fourth, a note from
+him--a note which he was _seen_ to write in a public house--was carried
+to Zuilika. In that note he cursed her with every conceivable term; told
+her that when she got it he would be at the bottom of the river, driven
+there by her conduct, and that if it was possible for the dead to come
+back and haunt people he'd do it. Two hours after he wrote that note he
+was seen getting out of the train at Tilbury and going towards the
+docks; but from that moment to this every trace of him is lost."
+
+"Ah, I see!" said Cleek reflectively. "And you want to find out if he
+really carried out that threat and did put an end to himself, I suppose?
+That's why you have come to me, eh? Frankly, I don't believe that he
+did, Major. That sort of a man never commits suicide upon so slim a
+pretext as that. If he commits it at all, it's because he is at the end
+of his tether--and our friend 'Zyco' seems to have been a long way from
+the end of his. How does the lady take it? Seriously?"
+
+"Oh, very, sir, very. Of course, to a woman of her temperament and with
+her Oriental ideas regarding the supernatural, _et cetera_, that threat
+to haunt her was the worst he could have done to her. At first she was
+absolutely beside herself with grief and horror; swore that she had
+killed him by her cruelty; that there was nothing left her but to die,
+and all that sort of thing; and for three days she was little better
+than a mad woman. At the end of that time, after the fashion of her
+people, she retired to her own room, covered herself with sackcloth and
+ashes, and remained hidden from all eyes for the space of a fortnight,
+weeping and wailing constantly and touching nothing but bread and
+water."
+
+"Poor wretch! She suffers like that, then, over a rascally fellow not
+worth a single tear. It's marvellous, Major, what women do see in men
+that they can go on loving them. Has she come out of her retirement
+yet?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Cleek. She came out of it five days ago, to all appearances a
+thoroughly heart-broken woman. Of course as she was all alone in the
+world, my son and I considered it our duty, during the time of her
+wildness and despair, to see that a thoroughly respectable female was
+called in to take charge of the house and to show respect for the
+proprieties, and for us to take up our abode there in order to prevent
+her from doing herself an injury. We are still domiciled there, but it
+will surprise you to learn that a most undesirable person is there also.
+In short, sir, that the woman Anita Rosario, the cause of all the
+trouble, is again an inmate of the house; and what is more remarkable
+still, this time by Zuilika's own request."
+
+"What's that? My dear Major, you amaze me! What can possibly have caused
+the good lady to do a thing like that?"
+
+"She hopes, she says, to appease the dead and to avert the threatened
+'haunting.' At all events, she sent for Anita some days ago. Indeed, I
+believe it is her intention to take the Spaniard with her when she
+returns to the East."
+
+"She intends doing that, then? She is so satisfied of her husband's
+death that she deems no further question necessary. Intends to take no
+further step toward proving it?"
+
+"It has been proved to her satisfaction. His body was recovered the day
+before yesterday."
+
+"Oho! then he is dead, eh? Why didn't you say so in the beginning? When
+did you learn of it?"
+
+"This very evening. That is what brings me here. I learned from Zuilika
+that a body answering the description of his had been fished from the
+water at Tilbury and carried to the mortuary. It was horribly
+disfigured--by contact with the piers and passing vessels--but she and
+Anita--and--and my son--"
+
+"Your son, Major? Your son?"
+
+"Yes!" replied the Major in a sort of half-whisper. "They--they took him
+with them when they went, unknown to me. He has become rather friendly
+with the Spanish woman of late. All three saw the body; all three
+identified it as being Ulchester's beyond a doubt."
+
+"And you? Surely when you see it you will be able to satisfy any
+misgivings you may have?"
+
+"I shall never see it, Mr. Cleek. It was claimed when identified and
+buried within twelve hours," said the Major, glancing up sharply as
+Cleek, receiving this piece of information, blew out a soft, low
+whistle. "I was not told anything about it until this evening, and what
+I have done--in coming to you, I mean--I have done with nobody's
+knowledge. I--I am so horribly in the dark--I have such fearful thoughts
+and--and I want to be sure. I must be sure or I shall go out of my mind.
+That's the 'case,' Mr. Cleek--tell me what you think of it."
+
+"I can do that in a very few words, Major," he replied. "It is either a
+gigantic swindle or it is a clear case of murder. If a swindle, then
+Ulchester himself is at the bottom of it and it will end in murder just
+the same. Frankly, the swindle theory strikes me as being the more
+probable; in other words, that the whole thing is a put-up game between
+Ulchester and the woman Anita; that they played upon Zuilika's fear of
+the supernatural for a purpose; that a body was procured and sunk in
+that particular spot for the furtherance of that purpose; and if the
+widow attempts to put into execution this plan--no doubt instilled into
+her mind by Anita--of returning with her wealth to her native land, she
+will simply be led into some safe place and then effectually put out of
+the way for ever. That is what I think of the case if it is to be
+regarded in the light of a swindle; but if Ulchester is really dead,
+murder, not suicide, is at the back of his taking off, and--Oh, well, we
+won't say anything more about it just yet awhile. I shall want to look
+over the ground before I jump to any conclusions. You are still stopping
+in the house, you and your son, I think you remarked? If you could
+contrive to put up an old army friend's son there for a night, Major,
+give me the address. I'll drop in on you to-morrow and have a little
+look round."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+When, next morning, Major Burnham-Seaforth announced the dilemma in
+which, through his own house being temporarily closed, he found himself
+owing to the proposed visit of Lieutenant Rupert St. Aubyn, son of an
+old army friend, Zuilika was the first to suggest the very thing he was
+fishing for.
+
+"Ah, let him come here, dear friend," she said in that sad, sweetly
+modulated voice which so often wrung this susceptible old heart. "There
+is plenty of room!--plenty, alas now--and any friend of yours can only
+be a friend of mine. He will not annoy. Let him come here."
+
+"Yes, let him," supplemented young Burnham-Seaforth, speaking with his
+eyes on Senorita Rosario, who seemed nervous and ill-pleased by the news
+of the expected arrival. "He won't have to be entertained by us if he
+only comes to see the pater; and we can easily crowd him aside if he
+tries to thrust himself upon us--a fellow with a name like 'Rupert St.
+Aubyn' is bound to be a silly ass." And when, in the late afternoon,
+"Lieutenant Rupert St. Aubyn," in the person of Cleek, arrived with his
+snubnosed manservant, a kit-bag, several rugs and a bundle of golf
+sticks, young Burnham-Seaforth saw no reason to alter that assertion.
+For, a "silly ass"--albeit an unusually handsome one with his fair,
+curling hair and his big blonde moustache--he certainly was; a lisping
+"ha-ha-ing" "don't-cher-knowing" silly ass, whom the presence of ladies
+seemed to cover with confusion and drive into a very panic of shy
+embarrassment.
+
+"_Dios!_ but he is handsome, this big, fair lieutenant!" whispered the
+Spaniard to young Burnham-Seaforth. "A great, handsome fool--all beauty
+and no brains, like a doll of wax!" Then she bent over and murmured
+smilingly to Zuilika: "I shall make a bigger nincompoop of this big,
+fair sap-head than Heaven already has done before he leaves here, just
+for the sake of seeing him stammer and blush!"
+
+Only the sad expression of Zuilika's eyes told that she so much as
+heard, as she rose to greet the visitor. Garbed from head to foot in the
+deep violet-coloured stuff which is the mourning of Turkish women, her
+little pointed slippers showing beneath the hem of her frock, and only
+her dark, mournful eyes visible between the top of the shrouding yashmak
+and the edge of her sequined snood, she made a pathetic picture as she
+stood there waiting to greet the unknown visitor.
+
+"Sir, you are welcome--you are most welcome," she said in a voice whose
+modulations were not lost upon Cleek's ears as he put forth his hand and
+received the tips of her little, henna-stained fingers upon his palm.
+"Peace be with you, who are of his people--he that I loved and mourn!"
+Then, as if overcome with grief at the recollection of her widowhood,
+she plucked away her hand, covered her eyes, and moved staggeringly out
+of the room. And Cleek saw no more of her that day; but he knew when she
+performed her orisons before the mummy case--as she did each morning and
+evening--by the strong, pungent odour of incense drifting through the
+house and filling it with a sickly scent.
+
+Her absence seemed to make but little impression upon him, however; for,
+following up a well-defined plan of action, he devoted himself wholly to
+the Spanish woman, and both amazed her and gratified her vanity by
+allowing her to learn that a man may be the silliest ass imaginable and
+yet quite understand how to flirt and to make love to a woman. And so it
+fell out that instead of "Lieutenant Rupert St. Aubyn" being elbowed out
+by young Burnham-Seaforth, it was "Lieutenant St. Aubyn" who elbowed
+_him_ out; and without being in the least aware of it, the flattered
+Anita, like an adroitly hooked trout, was being "played" in and out and
+round about the eddies and the deeps until the angler had her quite
+ready for the final dip of the net at the landing point.
+
+All this was to accomplish exactly what it _did_ accomplish, namely, the
+ill temper, the wrath, the angry resentment of young Burnham-Seaforth.
+And when the evening had passed and bedtime arrived, Cleek took his
+candle and retired in the direction of the rooms set apart for him, with
+the certainty of knowing that he had done that which would this very
+night prove beyond all question the guilt or innocence of one person at
+least who was enmeshed in this mysterious tangle. He was not surprised,
+therefore, at what followed his next step.
+
+Reaching the upper landing he blew out the light of his candle, slammed
+the door to his own room, noisily turned the key, and shot the bolt of
+another, then tiptoed his way back to the staircase and looked down the
+well-hole into the lower hall.
+
+Zuilika had retired to her room, the Major had retired to his, and now
+Anita was taking up her candle to retire to hers. She had barely touched
+it, however, when there came a sound of swift footsteps and young
+Burnham-Seaforth lurched out of the drawing-room door and joined her. He
+was in a state of great excitement and was breathing hard.
+
+"Anita--Miss Rosario!" he began, plucking her by the sleeve and
+uplifting a pale, boyish face--he was not yet twenty-two--to hers with a
+look of abject misery. "I want to speak to you--I simply must speak to
+you. I've been waiting for the chance, and now that it's come--Look
+here! You're not going back on me, are you?"
+
+"Going back on you?" repeated Anita, showing her pretty white teeth in
+an amused smile. "What shall you mean by that 'going back on you'--eh?
+You are a stupid little donkey, to be sure. But then I do not care to
+get on the back of one--so why?"
+
+"Oh, you know very well what I mean," he rapped out angrily. "It is not
+fair the way you have been treating me ever since that yellow-headed
+bounder came. I've had a night of misery--Zuilika never showing herself;
+you doing nothing, absolutely nothing, although you promised--you _know_
+you did!--and I heard you, I absolutely heard you persuade that St.
+Aubyn fool to stop at least another night."
+
+"Yes, of course you did. But what of it? He is good company--he talks
+well, he sings well, he is very handsome and--well, what difference can
+it make to you? You are not interested in _me, amigo_?"
+
+"No, no; of course I'm not. You are nothing to me at all--you--Oh, I beg
+your pardon; I didn't quite mean that. I--I mean you are nothing to me
+in that way. But you--you're not keeping to your word. You promised, you
+know, that you'd use your influence with Zuilika; that you'd get her to
+be more kind to me--to see me alone and--and all that sort of thing. And
+you've not made a single attempt--not one. You've just sat round and
+flirted with that tow-headed brute and done nothing at all to help me
+on; and--and it's jolly unkind of you, that's what!"
+
+Cleek heard Anita's soft rippling laughter; but he waited to hear no
+more. Moving swiftly away from the well-hole of the staircase he passed
+on tiptoe down the hall to the Major's rooms, and, opening the door,
+went in. The old soldier was standing, with arms folded, at the window
+looking silently out into the darkness of the night. He turned at the
+sound of the door's opening and moved toward Cleek with a white,
+agonised face and a pair of shaking, outstretched hands.
+
+"Well?" he said with a sort of gasp.
+
+"My dear Major," said Cleek quietly. "The wisest of men are sometimes
+mistaken--that is my excuse for my own short-sightedness. I said in the
+beginning that his was either a case of swindling or a case of murder,
+did I not? Well, I now amend my verdict. It is a case of swindling _and_
+murder; and your son has had nothing to do with either!"
+
+"Oh, thank God! thank God!" the old man said; then sat down suddenly and
+dropped his face between his hands and was still for a long time. When
+he looked up again his eyes were red, but his lips were smiling.
+
+"If you only knew what a relief it is," he said. "If you only knew how
+much I have suffered, Mr. Cleek. His friendship with that Spanish woman;
+his going with her to identify the body--even assisting in its hurried
+burial! These things all seemed so frightfully black--so utterly without
+any explanation other than personal guilt."
+
+"Yet they are all easily explained, Major. His friendship for the
+Spanish woman is merely due to a promise to intercede for him with
+Zuilika. She is his one aim and object, poor little donkey! As for his
+identification of the body--well, if the widow herself could find points
+of undisputed resemblance, why not he? A nervous, excitable, impetuous
+boy like that--and anxious, too, that the lady of his heart should be
+freed from the one thing, the one man, whose existence made her
+everlastingly unattainable--why, in the hands of a clever woman like
+Anita Rosario such a chap could be made to identify anything and to
+believe it as religiously as he believes. Now, go to bed and rest easy,
+Major. I'm going to call up Dollops and do a little night prowling. If
+it turns out as I hope, this little riddle will be solved to-morrow."
+
+"But how, Mr. Cleek? It seems to me that it is as dark as ever. You put
+my poor old head in a whirl. You say there is swindling; you hint one
+moment that the body was not that of Ulchester, and in the next that
+murder has been done. Do, pray, tell me what it all means--what you make
+of this amazing case."
+
+"I'll do that to-morrow, Major; not to-night. The answer to the
+riddle--the answer that's in my mind, I mean--is at once so simple and
+yet so appallingly awful that I'll hazard no guess until I'm sure. Look
+here"--he put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a gold piece--"do
+you know what that is, Major?"
+
+"It looks like a spade guinea, Mr. Cleek."
+
+"Right; it is a spade guinea--a pocket piece I've carried for years.
+You've heard, no doubt, of vital things turning upon the tossing of a
+coin. Well, if you see me toss this coin to-morrow, something of that
+sort will occur. It will be tossed up in the midst of a riddle, Major;
+when it comes down it will be a riddle no longer."
+
+Then he opened the door, closed it after him, and, before the Major
+could utter a word, was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+The promise was so vague, so mystifying, indeed, so seemingly absurd,
+that the Major did not allow himself to dwell upon it. As a matter of
+fact, it passed completely out of his mind; nor did it again find
+lodgment there until it was forced back upon his memory in a most
+unusual manner.
+
+Whatsoever had been the result of what Cleek had called his "night
+prowling," he took nobody into his confidence when he and the Major and
+the Major's son and Senorita Rosario met at breakfast the next day
+(Zuilika, true to her training and the traditions of her people, never
+broke morning bread save in the seclusion of her own bed-chamber, and
+then on her knees with her face towards the east) nor did he allude to
+it at any period throughout the day.
+
+He seemed, indeed, purposely, to avoid the Major, and to devote himself
+to the Spanish woman with an ardour that was positively heartless,
+considering that as they two sang and flirted and played several sets of
+singles on the tennis court, Zuilika, like a spirit of misery, kept
+walking, walking, walking through the halls and the rooms of the house,
+her woeful eyes fixed on the carpet, her henna-stained fingers
+constantly locking and unlocking, and moans of desolation coming now and
+again from behind her yashmak as her swaying body moved restlessly to
+and fro. For to-day was memorable. Five weeks ago this coming nightfall
+Ulchester had flung himself out of this house in a fury of wrath, and
+this time of bitter regret and ceaseless mourning had begun.
+
+"She will go out of her mind, poor creature, if something cannot be done
+to keep her from dwelling on her misery like this," commented the
+housekeeper, coming upon that restless figure pacing the darkened hall,
+moaning, moaning--seeing nothing, hearing nothing, doing nothing but
+walk and sorrow, sorrow and walk, hour in and hour out. "It's enough to
+tear a body's heart to hear her, poor dear. And that good-for-nothing
+Spanish piece racing and shrieking round the tennis court like a she
+tom-cat, the heartless hussy. Her and that simpering silly that's
+trotting round after her had ought to be put in a bag and shaken up,
+that they ought. It's downright scandalous to be carrying on like that
+at such a time."
+
+And so both the Major and his son thought too, and tried their best to
+solace the lonely mourner and to persuade her to sit down and rest.
+
+"Zuilika, you will wear yourself out, child, if you go on walking like
+this," said the Major solicitously. "Do rest and be at peace for a
+little time at least."
+
+"I can never have peace in this land--I can never forget the day!" she
+answered drearily. "Oh, my beloved! Oh, my lord, it was I who sent thee
+to it--it was I, it was I! Give me my own country--give me the gods of
+my people; here there is only memory and pain, and no rest, no rest
+ever!"
+
+She could not be persuaded to sit down and rest until Anita herself took
+the matter into her own hands and insisted that she should. That was at
+tea-time. Anita, showing some little trace of feeling now that Cleek had
+gone to wash his hands and was no longer there to occupy her thoughts,
+placed a deep, soft chair near the window, and would not yield until the
+violet-clad figure of the mourner sank down into the depths of it and
+leaned back with its shrouded face drooping in silent melancholy.
+
+And it was while she was so sitting that Cleek came into the room and
+did a most unusual, a most ungentlemanly thing, in the eyes of the Major
+and his son.
+
+Without hesitating, he walked to within a yard or two of where she was
+sitting, and then, in the silliest of silly tones, blurted out suddenly:
+"I say, don't you know, I've had a jolly rum experience. You know that
+blessed room at the angle just opposite the library--the one with the
+locked door?"
+
+The drooping, violet figure straightened abruptly, and the Major felt
+for the moment as if he could have kicked Cleek with pleasure. Of course
+they knew the room. It was there that the two mummy cases were kept,
+sacred from the profaning presence of any but this stricken woman. No
+wonder that she bent forward, full of eagerness, full of the dreadful
+fear that Frankish feet had crossed the threshold, Frankish eyes looked
+within the sacred shrine.
+
+"Well, don't you know," went on Cleek, without taking the slightest
+notice of anything, "just as I was going past that door I picked up a
+most remarkable thing. Wonder if it's yours, madam?" glancing at
+Zuilika. "Just have a look at it, will you? Here, catch!" And not until
+he saw a piece of gold spin through the air and fall into Zuilika's lap
+did the Major remember that promise of last night.
+
+"Oh, come, I say, St. Aubyn, that's rather thick!" sang out young
+Burnham-Seaforth indignantly, as Zuilika caught the coin in her lap.
+"Blest if I know what you call manners, but to throw things at a lady is
+a new way of passing them in this part of the world, I can assure you."
+
+"Awfully sorry, old chap, no offence, I assure you," said Cleek, more
+asinine than ever, as Zuilika, having picked up the piece and looked at
+it, disclaimed all knowledge of it, and laid it on the edge of the table
+without any further interest in it or him. "Just to show, you know, that
+I--er--couldn't have meant anything disrespectful, why--er--you all
+know, don't you know, how jolly much I respect Senorita Rosario, by
+Jove! and so--Here, senorita, you catch, too, and see if the blessed
+thing's yours." And, picking up the coin, tossed it into her lap just as
+he had done with Zuilika.
+
+She, too, caught it and examined it, and laughingly shook her head.
+
+"No--not mine!" she said. "I have not seen him before. To the finder
+shall be the keep. Come, sit here. Will you have the tea?"
+
+"Yes, thanks," said Cleek; then dropped down on the sofa beside her, and
+took tea as serenely as though there were no such things in the world as
+murder and swindling and puzzling police-riddles to solve.
+
+And the Major, staring at him, was as amazed as ever. He had said, last
+night, that when the coin fell the answer would be given--and yet it had
+fallen, and nothing had happened, and he was laughing and flirting with
+Senorita Rosario as composedly and as persistently as ever. More than
+that; after he had finished his second cup of tea, and immediately
+following the sound of someone just beyond the verandah rail whistling
+the lively, lilting measures of "There's a Girl Wanted There"--the
+"silly ass" seemed to become a thousand times sillier than ever; for he
+forthwith set down his cup, and, turning to Anita, said with an inane
+sort of giggle, "I say, you know, here's a lark. Let's have a game of
+'Slap Hand,' you and I--what? Know it, don't you? You try to slap my
+hands, and I try to slap yours, and whichever succeeds in doing it first
+gets a prize. Awful fun, don't you know. Come on--start her up."
+
+And, Anita agreeing, they fell forthwith to slapping away at the backs
+of each other's hands with great gusto, until, all of a sudden, the
+whistler outside gave one loud, shrill note, and--there was a great and
+mighty change.
+
+Those who were watching saw Anita's two hands suddenly caught, heard a
+sharp, metallic "click," and saw them as suddenly dropped again to the
+accompaniment of a shrill little scream from her ashen lips, and the
+next moment Cleek had risen and jumped away from her side--clear across
+to where Zuilika was; and those who were watching saw Anita jump up with
+a pair of steel handcuffs on her wrists, just as Dollops vaulted up over
+the verandah rail and appeared at one window, whilst Petrie appeared at
+another, Hammond poked his body through a third, and the opening door
+gave entrance to Superintendent Narkom.
+
+"The police!" shrilled out Anita in a panic of fright. "_Madre de Dios_,
+the police!"
+
+The Major and his son were on their feet like a shot; Zuilika, with a
+faint, startled cry, bounded bolt upright, like an imp shot through a
+trap-door; but before the little henna-stained hands could do more than
+simply move, Cleek's arms went round her from behind, tight and fast as
+a steel clamp, there was another metallic "click," another shrill cry,
+and another pair of wrists were in gyves.
+
+"Come in, Mr. Narkom; come in, constables," said Cleek, with the utmost
+composure. "Here are your promised prisoners--nicely trussed, you see,
+so that they can't get at the little popguns they carry--and a worse
+pair of rogues never went into the hands of Jack Ketch!"
+
+"And Jack Ketch will get them, Cleek, if I know anything about it. Your
+hazard was right. I've examined the caliph's mummy-case; the mummy
+itself has been removed--destroyed--done away with utterly--and the poor
+creature's body is there!"
+
+And here the poor, dumfounded, utterly bewildered Major found voice to
+speak at last.
+
+"Mummy-case! Body! Dear God in heaven, Mr. Cleek, what are you hinting
+at?" he gasped. "You--you don't mean that she--that Zuilika--killed
+him?"
+
+"No, Major, I don't," he made reply. "I simply mean that he killed her!
+The body in the mummy-case is the body of Zuilika, the caliph's
+daughter! This is the creature you have been wasting your pity on--see!"
+
+With that he laid an intense grip on the concealing yashmak, tore it
+away, and so revealed the close-shaven, ghastly-hued countenance of the
+cornered criminal.
+
+"My God!--Ulchester--Ulchester himself!" said the Major in a voice of
+fright and surprise.
+
+"Yes, Ulchester himself, Major. In a few more days he'd have withdrawn
+the money, and got out of the country, body and all, if he hadn't been
+nabbed, the rascal. There'd have been no tracing the crime then; and he
+and the Senorita here would have been in clover for the rest of their
+natural lives. But there's always that bright little bit of Bobby Burns
+to be reckoned with. You know: 'The best laid schemes of mice and men,'
+_et cetera_--that bit. But the Yard's got them, and--they'll never leave
+the country now. Take them, Mr. Narkom, they're yours!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"How did I guess it?" said Cleek, replying to the Major's query, as they
+sat late that night discussing the affair. "Well, I think the first
+faint inkling of it came when I arrived here yesterday, and smelt the
+overpowering odour of the incenses. There was so much of it, and it was
+used so frequently--twice a day--that it seemed to suggest an attempt to
+hide other odours of a less pleasant kind. When I left you last night,
+Dollops and I went down to the mummy-chamber, and a skeleton key soon
+let us in. The unpleasant odour was rather pronounced in there. But even
+that didn't give me the cue, until I happened to find in the fireplace a
+considerable heap of fine ashes, and in the midst of them small lumps of
+gummy substance, which I knew to result from the burning of myrrh. I
+suspected from that and from the nature of the ashes that a mummy had
+been burnt, and as there was only one mummy in the affair, the inference
+was obvious. I laid hands on the two cases and tilted them. One was
+quite empty. The weight of the other told me that it contained something
+a little heavier than any mummy ought to be. I came to the conclusion
+that there was a body in it, injected full of arsenic, no doubt, to
+prevent as much as possible the processes of decay, the odour of which
+the incense was concealing. I didn't attempt to open the thing; I left
+that until the arrival of the men from The Yard, for whom I sent Dollops
+this afternoon. I had a vague notion that it would not turn out to be
+Ulchester's, and I had also a distinct recollection of what you said
+about his being able to mimic a Gaiety chorus-girl and all that sort of
+thing, and the more I thought over it, the more I realized what an
+excellent thing to cover a bearded face a yashmak is. Still, it was all
+hazard. I wasn't sure--indeed, I never was sure--until tea-time, when I
+caught this supposed 'Zuilika' sitting at last, and gave the spade
+guinea its chance to decide it."
+
+"But, Mr. Cleek, how could it have decided it? That's the thing which
+amazes me most of all. How could the tossing of that coin have decided
+the sex of the wearer of those garments?"
+
+"My dear Major, it is an infallible test. Did you ever notice that if
+you throw anything for a man to catch in his lap, he pulls his knees
+together to _make_ a lap in order to catch it; whereas a woman--used to
+wearing skirts and, thereby, having a lap already prepared--immediately
+broadens that lap by the exactly opposite movement, knowing that
+whatever is thrown has no chance of slipping through and falling to the
+floor. When I tossed the coin to Ulchester, he instinctively jerked his
+knees together. That settled it, of course. And now, if you won't mind
+my saying it, I'm a bit sleepy and it is about time I took myself off to
+home and bed."
+
+"But not at this late hour, surely? You will never catch a train."
+
+"I shan't need one, Major. They are holding a horse and trap ready for
+me at the stables of the 'Coach and Horses.' Mr. Narkom promised to look
+out for that, and--I beg pardon? No, I can't stop over night. Thank you
+for the invitation, but Dollops would raise half London if I didn't turn
+up after promising to do so."
+
+"I should have thought you might have simplified matters and obviated
+that by keeping the boy when you had him here," said the Major. "We
+could easily have found a place to put him up for the night."
+
+"Thanks very much, but I wouldn't interrupt the course of his studies
+for the world," replied Cleek. "I've found an old chap--an
+ex-schoolmaster, down on his luck and glad for the chance to turn an
+honest penny--who takes him on every night from eight to ten; and the
+young monkey is so eager and is absorbing knowledge at such a rate that
+he positively amazes me. But now, really, it must be good-night. The boy
+will be waiting and I must hear his lessons before I go to bed."
+
+"Not surely when you are so tired as you say?"
+
+"Never too tired for that, Major. It makes me sleep better and sounder
+to know that the lad's getting on and that I've cheated the Devil in
+just one more instance. Good-night and good luck to you. It's a bully
+old world after all, isn't it, Major?" Then laughed and shook hands with
+him and fared forth into the starlight, whistling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+Who feeds on Hope alone makes but a sorry banquet; and for the next few
+weeks Hope was all--or nearly all--that came Cleek's way.
+
+For some unexplained reason, Miss Lorne's letters--never very frequent,
+and always very brief--had, of late been gradually growing briefer: as
+if written in haste and from a mere sense of duty and at odd moments
+snatched from the call of more absorbing things; and, finally, there
+came a dropping off altogether and a week that brought no message from
+her at all.
+
+The old restlessness, the almost outlived sense of personal injury and
+rebellion against circumstances, took hold of Cleek again when that time
+came; and the soul of him drank deep of the waters of bitterness.
+
+So, then, it was all to be in vain, was it, this long struggle with the
+Devil of Circumstances, this long striving for a Goal? And after all,
+"Thou shalt not enter" was to be written over the gateway of his
+ambition? He had been lifted only to be dropped again, redeemed only to
+let him see how vain it was for the leopard, even though he achieved the
+impossible and changed his spots, to be other than a leopard always; how
+impossible it was for a man to override the decrees of Nature or evade
+the edicts of Providence? That was what it meant, eh?
+
+To a nature such as his, Life was always a picture drawn out of
+perspective. There was never any Middle Distance; never any proper
+gradation. It was always either the Highest Heights or the Lowest
+Depths; the glare of fierce light or the black of deepest darkness. He
+could not plod; he must either fly or fall; either loll at the Gates of
+Paradise or groan in the depths of Hell. And the failure of Ailsa
+Lorne's letters sent him to the darkest and most hopeless corner of it.
+
+Not that he blamed her--wholly; but that he blamed that Fate which had
+so persistently dogged him from childhood on. For now that the letters
+had ceased altogether, he recalled things which otherwise would have
+been forgotten; and, his sense of proportion being distorted, made
+mountains out of sand dunes.
+
+In one of those letters, he recollected, she had spoken of meeting
+unexpectedly an old friend whom she had not seen since the days of his
+boyhood; in another, she had casually remarked, "I met Captain Morford
+again to-day and we spent a very pleasant half hour together," and in a
+third had written, "The Captain promised to call and take tea to-day but
+didn't. I rather fancy he divines the fact that Lady Chepstow does not
+care for him. Indeed, she dislikes him immensely. Why, I wonder?
+Personally, I think him exceedingly pleasant, and there are things in
+his character for which I have the deepest respect and admiration."
+
+And out of these trifling circumstances--lo! the darkest corner that
+darkest Hell contained.
+
+So that was how it was to end, was it? That was the card which Fate had
+all along kept up her sleeve while she stood off laughing at his
+endeavours, his hopes, his struggles against the inevitable? In the end,
+another man was to appear, another man was to win her, and the dream was
+to turn out nothing more than a dream after all.
+
+Once again the voices of the Wild called out to the Caged Wolf; once
+again, the old things beckoned and the new things lost their savour and
+the Devil said, as before, "What is the use? What _is_ the use?" and the
+Savage cried out to be stripped and flung back into the wilderness as
+God made him, and called and called and called for an end to the things
+that stank in his nostrils and for the fierce companionship of his kind.
+And but that Time had staled these things a little and blunted the keen
+edge of them so that they could not endure for long, and there was
+Dollops and the lessons and Dollops' future to recollect, the Wolf and
+the Savage and the Devil might not have hungered in vain.
+
+Followed a period of intense depression when all things seemed to lose
+their savour and when Narkom, amazed, said to himself that the man had
+come to the end of his usefulness and had lost every attribute of the
+successful criminologist. For the next three cases he brought him Cleek
+botched in a manner that would have disgraced the merest tyro. Two, he
+failed utterly to solve, although the solutions were eventually worked
+out by the ordinary forces of the Yard; and in the third he let his man
+get away under his very nose and convey Government secrets to a foreign
+Power. It was but natural that these three dismal failures should find
+their way to the newspapers and that, in the hysterical condition of
+modern journalism, they should be flung out to the world at large with
+all the ostentation of leaded type and panicky scare heads, and that
+learned editors should discourse knowingly of "the limitations of
+mentality" and "the well-authenticated cases of the sudden warping of
+abnormal intelligences resulting in the startling termination of amazing
+careers," or snivel dismally over "the complete collapse of that
+imaginative power which, hitherto, had been this detective's greatest
+asset, and which now, on the principle that however deep a well may be
+if a force-pump be put into it it must some time suck gravel, seemed to
+have come to its end."
+
+These things, when Cleek heard of them, affected him not at all. He
+seemed not to care whether his career was ended or not, whether the
+world praised or censured. Neither his pride nor his vanity was stirred
+even to the very smallest degree.
+
+But Narkom, loyal still, took these gloomy prophecies and editorial
+vapourings much to heart and strove valiantly to confound the man's
+detractors and to put the spur to the man himself. He would not believe
+that the end had come, that his mental powers had run suddenly against a
+dead wall beyond which there was no possibility of proceeding. Something
+was weighing upon his mind and damping his spirits that was all; and it
+must be the business of those who were his friends to take steps to
+discover what that something was and, if possible, to eliminate it. He
+therefore sought out Dollops and held secret conclave with him; and
+Dollops dolefully epitomized the difficulty thus: "A skirt--that's
+what's at the bottom of it, sir. No letter at all these ten days past.
+She's chucked him, I'm afraid." And with this brief preface told all
+that he was able to tell; which, after all, was not much.
+
+He could only explain about the letter that used to come off and on in
+the other days and which brought such a flow of high spirits to the man
+for whom it was intended; he could only say that it was addressed in a
+woman's hand and bore always the one postmark; and when Narkom heard
+what that postmark was and recollected where Lady Chepstow's country
+seat lay, and who was with her, he puckered up his lips as if he were
+about to whistle and made two slim arches with his uplifted eyebrows.
+
+"Sir, if only you could sneak off and run down there without his knowing
+of it--it wouldn't do to write a letter, Mr. Narkom: he'd be on to that
+before you could turn round, sir," the boy ventured hopefully; "but if
+only you could run down there and give her a tip what she's a doing of
+and what she's a chuckin' away, what a Man she's a throwin' down, maybe,
+sir, maybe--"
+
+"Yes, 'maybe,'" agreed the superintendent, after a moment's reflection.
+"At any rate it's worth a trial." And went, forthwith.
+
+Not that it was a prudent thing to do; not that it is wise for any man
+at any time to interfere, even with the best intentions, with the course
+of another man's love affairs; and, finally, not that it was at all
+necessary or had any influence whatsoever upon the events which
+succeeded the step. Indeed, he might have spared himself the trouble,
+for he had barely covered a fifth of the distance when the country post
+was delivered in London, and Cleek, rocketing up in one sweep from the
+Pit to the Gateway, stood laughing huskily with a letter from Ailsa in
+his hand.
+
+He ripped off the envelope and read it greedily.
+
+"Dear Friend," she wrote, "I cannot imagine what you must think of my
+silence; but whatsoever you do think cannot be half so terrible as the
+actual cause of it. I have been in close touch with misery and death,
+with things so appalling that heart and mind have had room to hold
+nothing else. Indeed, I am still so horribly nervous and upset that I
+scarcely know how to think coherently much less write. I can only
+remember that you once said that if ever I needed your help I was to
+ask; and oh, Mr. Cleek, I need it very very much indeed now. Not for
+myself--let me find time to add that--but for a dear, dear friend--the
+friend I have so often written about: Captain Morford--who is involved
+in an affair of the most distressing and mysterious character and whose
+only hope lies, I feel, in you. Will you come to the rescue, for my
+sake? That is what I am asking. Let me say, however, that there is no
+possibility of a reward, for the captain is in no position to offer one;
+but I seem to feel that that will not weigh with you. Neither can I ask
+you to call at the house, for, as I have already told you, Lady Chepstow
+does not care for the Captain and under those circumstances it would be
+embarrassing to ask him there to meet you. So then, if no other case
+intervenes, and you really _can_ grant me this great favour, will you be
+in the neighbourhood of the lich-gate of Lyntonhurst Old Church at nine
+o'clock in the morning of Thursday, you will win the everlasting
+gratitude of, Your sincere friend--AILSA LORNE."
+
+Would he be there? He laughed aloud as he put the question to himself. A
+Bradshaw was on his table. He caught it up, found that there was a train
+that could be caught in thirty-five minutes' time, and clapped on his
+hat and--caught it.
+
+That night he slept at the inn of the Three Desires--which, as you may
+possibly know, lies but a gunshot beyond the boundary wall of the glebe
+of Lyntonhurst Old Church--slept with an alarm clock at his head and
+every servant at the inn from the boots to the barmaid tipped a shilling
+to see that he did not oversleep himself.
+
+He was up before any of them, however--up and out into the pearl-dusk of
+the morning before ever the alarm-clock shrilled its first note, or the
+sun's sheen slid lower than the spurs of the weather-cock on the spire
+of Lyntonhurst Old Church--and twice he had walked past the big gates
+and looked up the still avenue to the windows of the huge house whose
+roof covered her before Lyntonhurst Old Church spoke up through the
+dawn-hush and told the parish it was half-past four o'clock.
+
+By five, he had found a pool cupped in the beech woods with mallows and
+marsh marigolds and a screen of green things all round it and a tent of
+blue sky over the sun-touched tree tops; and had stripped and splashed
+into it and set all the birds to flight with the harsher song of human
+things; by seven he was back at the Three Desires; by eight he had
+shaved and changed and breakfasted and was out again in the fields and
+the leafy lanes, and by nine he was at the lich-gate of the church.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+She was there already; sitting far back at the end of one of the narrow
+wooden side benches with the shadow of the gate's moss-grown roof and of
+the big cypress above it partly screening her, her shrinking position
+evincing a desire to escape general observation as clearly as her pale
+face and nervously drumming hand betrayed a state of extreme agitation.
+
+She rose as Cleek lifted the latch and came in, and advanced to meet him
+with both hands outstretched in greeting and a rich colour staining all
+her face.
+
+"I knew that you would come--I was as certain of it as I am now this
+minute," she said with a little embarrassed laugh, then dropped her eyes
+and said no more, for he had taken those two hands in his and was
+holding them tightly and looking at her with an expression that was half
+a reproach and half a caress.
+
+"I am glad you did not doubt," he said, with an odd, wistful little
+smile. "It is good to know one's friends have faith in one, Miss Lorne.
+I had almost come to believe that you had forgotten me."
+
+"Because I did not write? Oh, but I could not--indeed I could not. I
+have been spending days and nights in a house of mourning--Lady Chepstow
+gave me leave of absence; and my heart was so full I did not write even
+to her. I have been trying to soothe and to comfort a distracted girl, a
+half-crazed old man, a bereft and horribly smitten family. I have been
+doing all in my power to put hope and courage into the heart of a
+despairing and most unhappy lover."
+
+"Meaning Captain Morford?"
+
+"Yes. He has been almost beside himself. And since this last blow
+fell.... Oh, I had been so sure that it would not, that between us all
+we would manage to avert it; yet in spite of everything it did fall--it
+did!--and if I live to be a hundred I shall never forget it."
+
+"Calm yourself, Miss Lorne. You are shaking like a leaf. Try to tell me
+plainly what it is that has happened; what the danger is that threatens
+this--er--Captain Morford."
+
+"Oh, nothing threatens _him_, personally," she replied. "He says he
+could stand it better if it were only that; and I believe him--I truly
+do. The thing that nearly drives him out of his mind is the thought that
+one day she--the girl he loves--the girl he is to marry--the girl for
+whose dear sake he stands ready to give up so much--the thought that one
+day _her_ turn will come, that one day she, too, will be stricken down
+as mother and brothers have been is almost driving him frantic."
+
+"Mother and brothers?--_brothers_?" Cleek looked up sharply, and there
+was a curious break in his voice, a yet more curious brightening of his
+eyes. "Miss Lorne, am I to understand that this Captain Morford is
+engaged to a girl who has _brothers_?"
+
+"Yes. That is--no. She has 'brothers' no longer. There is only one left
+living now, Mr. Cleek, only one. Ah, think of it! of that whole family
+of six persons, but three are left: Miriam, Flora, and Ronald."
+
+"Miriam, Flora, and ... Miss Lorne, will you tell me please the name of
+the lady to whom Captain Morford is engaged?"
+
+"Why Miriam Comstock, of course--did I forget to mention it?"
+
+"I think so," said Cleek; and shook out a little jerky laugh, and stood
+looking at her foolishly; not quite knowing what to do with his feet and
+hands. But suddenly--"Oh come, let's have the case--let's have it at
+once," he broke out impetuously. "Tell me what it is, what I'm to do for
+this Captain Morford, and I'll do it if mortal man can."
+
+"And no mortal man can if you cannot--I've faith enough in you for
+that," she began, then stopped short and sucked in her breath, and crept
+back to the extreme end of the lich-gate and stood shaking and very
+pale. Someone had come suddenly round the angle of the church and was
+moving up the road that ran past the gate.
+
+"Please--no--let me get away as quickly as possible," she said in a
+swift whisper as Cleek, startled by the change in her, made an eager
+step forward. "It is known that I have been with them--the
+Comstocks--and it is all so mysterious and awful.... Oh, who can tell
+whose hand it may be? who may be spying? or what? It is best that I
+should give no hint that assistance has been asked for; best that nobody
+should see me talking with _you_--Mr. Narkom says that it is."
+
+"Mr. Narkom?"
+
+"Yes. He was in the neighbourhood accidentally. He called last night. I
+told him and he was glad that I had sent for you. He is over there, on
+the other side of the churchyard. Oh, please will you go to him? Captain
+Morford is within easy call and has agreed to come when he is wanted. Do
+go, do go quickly, Mr. Cleek. There's someone coming up the road and I
+am horribly frightened."
+
+"But why? It is merely a farm labourer," said Cleek, glancing through
+the open side of the lich-gate and down the road. "You can see that for
+yourself."
+
+"Yes, but--who knows? who can tell? There is no clue to the actual
+person and he is so cunning, so crafty--Oh, please, will you go?
+Afterward, if you like, we can meet here again. To-day I am too
+frightened to stay."
+
+He saw that she was in a state of extreme nervous terror; that it would
+be cruel to subject her to any further suffering, and without one more
+word, walked past her into the Churchyard and made his way over the
+green ridge that rose immediately behind the building and down the slope
+beyond until he came to the extreme other side. And there in the shade
+of a thickly grown spinney, he found Mr. Marverick Narkom sitting with
+his back against a beech-tree smoking a nerve-soothing cigar and
+expectantly awaiting him.
+
+"My dear fellow, I never was so glad," he said, tossing away his smoke
+and jumping up as Cleek appeared. "Happy coincidence my motoring down
+here--eh, what? Wife in these parts visiting. Rum, my turning up just
+after Miss Lorne had written you and at a time when we both are needed,
+wasn't it?"
+
+"Very," said Cleek, pulling out a cigarette and stretching himself full
+length upon the ground. "Would as soon have expected to run foul of a
+specimen of the Great Auk endeavouring to rear a family in the
+neighbourhood of Trafalgar Square. Well, what's it now, Mr. Narkom?--I'm
+told you know the details. A match please, if you have one. Thanks very
+much. Now then let's have the facts. What sort of a case is it?"
+
+"The knottiest in all my experience, the strangest that even you have
+ever handled," replied the Superintendent, impressively. "It's a
+murder--three murders, in fact, with a possible fourth and a fifth in
+the near future if the diabolical rascal who is at the bottom of it
+isn't pulled up sharp and his amazing _modus operandi_ discovered.
+
+"The case will interest you, my dear chap; it is so startlingly original
+in its methods of procedure, so complex, so weird, and so appallingly
+mysterious. Conceive if you can, my dear fellow, an individual so
+supernaturally cunning that he not only kills without a trace, but kills
+in the presence of watchers--kills whilst the victim is in the very arms
+of those watchers! And yet escapes, unseen, unknown, without a clue to
+tell when, where, or how he entered the room or left it; when, where, or
+how he struck the blow, or why; yet did strike it, despite the sleepless
+vigil of a man who not only sat up all night with the victim, but held
+him in his arms to be sure that nobody could get at him; nobody so much
+as approach him without his guardian's knowledge!"
+
+Cleek twitched round sharply and sat up, leaning upon his elbow and
+looking at Narkom as though he doubted his sanity.
+
+"Let me have that again!" he said in sharp, crisp tones. "A man killed
+whilst another man held him--held him in his arms--and watched over him,
+and yet the other man saw nothing of the murderer? Is that what you
+said?"
+
+"That's it, precisely. Only I must tell you that, in the instance when
+the victim was held in the arms of the person watching him, it was not a
+man that was killed, but a boy. There had been a man killed, however,
+four weeks previously in the same house, in the same mysterious manner,
+and by the same unknown agency. A month earlier a woman, too, had been
+done to death there in the same way. The man was the brother of that
+boy, and the woman was the mother of both."
+
+Cleek moved so quickly that he might fairly have been said to flash from
+a sitting to a standing position, and then began to feel round in his
+pockets for his cigarette case with a nervous sort of haste, which
+Narkom knew and understood.
+
+"Ah," he said, in a tone of satisfaction, "I thought the case would
+interest you. You've been down in the dumps lately and needed something
+to buck you up a bit. I told Captain Morford that this would be sure to
+do it. Heard of him, haven't you? Extremely nice chap. Home on leave
+from Bombay. Only recently got his captaincy. Grandson and heir to that
+fine old snob, Sir Gilbert Morford, who's known everywhere as 'The
+Titled Teapot.' You know, 'Morford & Morford's Unrivalled Tea.' Knighted
+for something or other--the Lord knows what or why--and puts on more
+side over his tin-plate title than Royalty itself. The Captain is a
+decent sort, however. He'll give you the full particulars of this
+astounding case. Wait a bit. I'll call him"--pausing a moment to put the
+first two fingers of each hand into his mouth and blow out a shrill,
+ear-splitting whistle. "That'll fetch him! He'll be here before you can
+say Jack Robinson!"
+
+He wasn't, of course; but you couldn't have said it half a hundred times
+before he was; or, at least, before Cleek, startled by a rustling of the
+boughs, glanced round and saw a tall, fairish young man who had no more
+the appearance of a soldier than a currant has of a gooseberry. He
+looked more like a bank clerk than anything else that Cleek could think
+of at the minute, and a none too prepossessing bank clerk at that, for
+Nature had not been any too lavish of her gifts as regards personal
+attractiveness, seeming to prefer to make up for her miserliness in the
+bestowal of good looks by an absolute prodigality in the gifts of
+ears--ears as big as an oyster-shell and so prominent that they seemed
+even larger than they were, and that is saying a great deal.
+
+Still, unprepossessing as the man was, there was a certain charm of
+manner about him and a certain attractiveness in his voice Cleek
+discovered when he was introduced to him and found himself being "sized
+up," so to speak, by a pair of keen grey eyes.
+
+"Now let us have the details of the case, if you please, Captain," said
+Cleek, coming to the point of the interview with as little beating about
+the bush as possible. "Mr. Narkom has given me a vague idea of the
+nature of it, but I want something more than that, of course. I am told
+that three persons in one family have been done to death in a most
+mysterious manner, and without any clue to the assassin or his motive;
+indeed that the hand which strikes strikes even in the presence of
+others, yet remains unknown and invisible. Frankly, I never heard of but
+one instance which at all resembles this or--No, Mr. Narkom, it is
+nothing that ever came your way, no affair that has happened since you
+and I first met, sir. It was a long time ago--eight or ten years, to be
+exact--and a good many miles from England. The cases were somewhat
+similar, judging from the scanty outline you have given me, and--What's
+that? No, the criminal was never apprehended. He got away, and his
+methods were never generally known. Even if they had been, they were not
+those which any desperado might have emulated, any tyro practised. They
+required a certain knowledge of anatomy, chemical action--even surgery.
+I don't believe that ten people in the world knew about the thing at
+that time. I stumbled upon what I believed was the solution of the
+mystery whilst I was taking a course of chemistry for--well, for the
+purpose of demonstrating the possibility of manufacturing precious
+stones of a size and weight to make them a profitable--er--speculation.
+The science in medicine was not so advanced in those days as it is now,
+and when I ventured to suggest to certain doctors what I believed to
+have been the cause of the mysterious deaths and the _modus operandi_ of
+the murderer, I simply got laughed at for my pains. I felt pretty
+certain of my facts, however, and pretty certain of the man who was
+guilty. Pardon? No, not alive now; that fellow had his brains blown out
+in a bar-room brawl before I left New Zealand."
+
+"New Zealand?" struck in Captain Morford agitatedly. "I say, that's a
+rum go, isn't it, Mr. Narkom. New Zealand is where the Comstocks come
+from--or, rather, the father and mother did."
+
+"By Jove! Cleek, that looks suspicious, old chap," chimed in Narkom.
+"Don't think, do you, that there can possibly be any connection between
+the two cases? In other words, that that fellow you suspected in New
+Zealand didn't really die after all?"
+
+"Shortly, the chemist? Not a doubt about his death, Mr. Narkom. I was in
+the bar-room when he was killed. Three bullets went through his head,
+and he was as dead as Napoleon Bonaparte by the time he struck the
+floor. The methods may be the same, but not the man--there is not the
+ghost of possibility of there being any connection between the two. But
+let us give the Captain a chance to explain the case. When, where, and
+how did these mysterious murders begin, Captain, if you please?"
+
+"At Lilac Lodge, over Windsor way," replied the Captain, trying to
+answer all three questions at once. "They started about a week after the
+Comstocks went to live there. And the thing was so appalling, the place
+seemed so certainly under a curse, that although he had paid a good
+round sum for it, and had spent a pot of money having the house
+decorated and the garden laid out just as Miriam and her mother fancied
+it--Miriam is Miss Comstock, my fiancee, Mr. Cleek--nothing would induce
+Mr. Harmstead to stop in it another hour after the second murder
+occurred."
+
+"Mr. Harmstead! Who is Mr. Harmstead, Captain?"
+
+"The late Mrs. Comstock's bachelor uncle--a very rich old chap, who was
+once a sheep-farmer in New Zealand, and afterwards in Australia. Mrs.
+Comstock hadn't seen him since she was a very little girl until he came
+to England some few months ago to settle down and to take care of her
+children and her."
+
+"How did it happen that she hadn't seen him in all that time? I take it
+there must have been some good reason, Captain?"
+
+"Yes, rather. You see it was like this: The Harmsteads--Mrs. Comstock
+was a Harmstead by birth, and Uncle Phil was her father's only
+brother--the Harmsteads had never been well to-do as a family: indeed
+none of them but dear old Uncle Phil ever had a hundred pounds they
+could call their own, so when Miss Harmstead's father died, which was
+about eight months after his brother left New Zealand and went to
+Australia, she married a young joiner and cabinet-maker, George
+Comstock, to whom she had long been engaged, and a few weeks later,
+fancying there would be a better chance for advancement in his trade in
+England than out there, Mr. Comstock sold out what few belongings he had
+in the world and brought his wife over here."
+
+"Oh, I see. Then of course she had no opportunity of seeing her uncle
+until he came here?"
+
+"No, not a ghost of one. She corresponded with him for a time,
+however--wrote him after the first child was born--and christened
+'Philip' in honour of him. In those days it used to take six months to
+get a letter to Australia, and another six to get word back, so the baby
+was more than a year old when Uncle Phil wrote that if he didn't marry
+in the meantime and have a son of his own--which was very unlikely--he
+would make young Phil his heir and come out after him, too, one of these
+fine days."
+
+"One moment. Was the person you allude to as 'Young Phil' one of the
+sons that was murdered?"
+
+"Yes. He was the first victim, poor, chap!"
+
+"Oh, I see!" said Cleek. "I see! So there is money in the background,
+eh? Well go on. What next? Hear any more from Uncle Phil after that?"
+
+"Oh, yes--for a long time. Miriam and Flora were born, and word of their
+arrival in the world was sent out to him before the final letter for
+years and years reached them. In that letter he wrote that he was doing
+better and better every year, and getting so rich that he didn't have
+time to do anything but just stop where he was and 'gather in the
+shekels.' There'd be enough for all when he did come, however, and he
+was altering his will so that in case anything should happen to young
+Phil--'which God forbid,' he wrote--the girls would come next, and so on
+to all the heirs of his niece. After that letter years went by, and
+never another one. They, thinking that he had married after all--for in
+his last letter he had spoken of a young widow who had lately been
+engaged to fill the post of housekeeper at his ranch--gave up all hope
+when after three times writing no reply came, and finally desisted
+entirely. He says, however, that it was just the other way about. That
+he did write--wrote six or seven times--but could get no reply; and as
+he afterwards found the housekeeper in question a designing and
+deceitful person, and shipped her off about her business, he makes no
+doubt that she received and destroyed Mrs. Comstock's letter to him and
+burnt his to her, hoping, no doubt, to inveigle him into marrying her."
+
+"Quite likely, if she were a designing woman," commented Cleek. "But go
+on, please. What next?"
+
+"Oh, years of hardship, during which Mr. Comstock died and his widow had
+to earn their own living unaided. Young Phil got a post as bookkeeper,
+Flora taught music and painting, Mrs. Comstock did needlework, and
+Miriam became a governess in the family of a distant connection of my
+grandfather, Sir Gilbert Morford. That's where and how I met her, Mr.
+Cleek, and--Well, that's another story!" his cheeks reddening and a
+flash of fire coming into his eyes. "My grandfather says he will 'chuck
+me out neck and crop' if I marry her; but it does not matter--I will!"
+
+"Yes, you will--if the cut of that chin stands for anything," commented
+Cleek. "Well, to get on: the Comstocks were down in the deeps, and no
+hope of hearing any more from Australia and Uncle Phil, eh? What next?"
+
+"Why, all of a sudden he dropped in on them, bless his bully old
+heart!--and then good-bye to hard times and any more struggling for
+them. He'd been in England searching for them for seven months before he
+found them; but when he did find them there was a time! Inside of ten
+hours, the whole world was changed for them. Made the boys and the girls
+give up their positions and come home to live with him and their mother,
+poured money out by the handful, bought Lilac Lodge and fitted it up
+like a little palace, dressed his niece and her daughters like queens,
+and settled down with them to what seemed about to be a life of glorious
+and luxurious ease, and in the midst of all this peace and plenty,
+brightness and hope, the first blow fell. Mrs. Comstock, going to bed at
+night in perfect health, was found in the morning stone-dead! Of course,
+as no doctor could give a death certificate when none had been in
+attendance upon her, the Law stepped in, the coroner held an inquest, an
+autopsy was decided upon, and the result of it was a deeper and more
+amazing mystery than ever. She had died--but from what? Every organ was
+found to be in a thoroughly healthy condition. The heart was sound, the
+lungs betrayed no sign of an anesthetic, the blood and kidneys not the
+faintest trace of poison--everything about her was perfectly normal. She
+had not died through drugs, she had not died through strangulation,
+suffocation, electrical shock, or failure of the heart. She had not been
+stabbed, she had not been shot, she had not succumbed to any mortal
+disease--yet there she was, stone-dead, slain by something which no one
+could trace and for which Science could find no name."
+
+Narkom opened his lips to speak, but Cleek signalled him to silence, and
+stood studying the Captain from under down-drawn brows, looking and
+listening and thoughtfully rubbing his thumb and forefinger up and down
+his chin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+"Of course the family was horribly shocked and upset by this sudden and
+mysterious interruption to the dream of peace," went on the Captain;
+"but nothing was left but to accept the verdict of 'Death from unknown
+causes,' and to believe it the will of God. The body was buried a few
+days later, and, comforting each other as best they could, the sorrowing
+uncle and heart-broken nieces and nephews settled down to living their
+lives without the one who had been the sunshine of the home, and whose
+loss seemed the greatest blow that could have been dealt them. A month
+passed and they were just beginning to forget details of the tragedy
+when a second and equally mysterious and horrifying one occurred, and
+the eldest son of the dead woman--Philip--was stricken down precisely as
+his mother had been, and, as his horrified brother, sisters, and uncle
+now recalled, like her, on the tenth day of the month!"
+
+"Hum-m-m!" said Cleek, reflectively. "Rather significant, that. It was,
+I assume, that circumstance which first suggested the idea of something
+more than mere chance being at the back of these sudden and mysterious
+deaths?"
+
+"That and one other circumstance. The condition of the bedclothing, Mr.
+Cleek, showed that in Philip's case there had been something in the
+nature of a struggle before he had succumbed to the Power which had
+assailed him. In other words, he had not been, as doubtless the poor
+mother had, so infinitely inferior in point of strength to the murderer
+as to be absolutely powerless in the wretch's grip from the very first
+instant of the attack. He had fought for his life, poor fellow, but it
+must have been a brief fight and death itself almost instantaneous; for
+although the bedclothing was tangled round his feet in a manner which
+could only have occurred in a struggle, he did not live long enough to
+get off the bed itself or slide so much as one foot to the floor. He
+died as his mother had died, and the verdict of the doctors and of the
+coroner's jury was the same: 'Death from unknown causes'!"
+
+"Hm-m-m!" said Cleek again. "And were all the symptoms--or, rather, the
+absence of symptoms--the same?"
+
+"Precisely. All the organs were discovered to be in a normal condition,
+the blood was untainted by any suggestion of either mineral or animal
+poison, the heart was sound, the lungs healthy--there was neither an
+internal disturbance nor an external wound, unless one could call a
+'wound' a slight, a very slight, swelling upon the left side of the
+neck; a small thing, not so big as a sixpence."
+
+"And appearing very much like the inflammation resulting from the bite
+of a gnat or a spider, Captain?"
+
+"Exactly like it, Mr. Cleek. In fact, the doctors fancied at first that
+it was the result of his having been bitten by some poisonous insect,
+and were for accounting for his death that way. But, of course, the
+entire absence of poison in the blood soon put an end to that idea, so
+it was certain that whatever he died from, it was not from a bite or a
+sting of any sort."
+
+"Clever chaps, those doctors," commented Cleek with a curious one-sided
+smile. "However, they were quite correct in that, I imagine, poison,
+either animal, vegetable, or mineral, was not the means of destruction.
+Still, I should have thought that at this second post-mortem the
+likeness of the son's case to that of the mother's would have impelled
+them to extra vigilance, and resulted in a much more careful searching,
+and minute examination of the viscera. If my theory is correct, I do not
+suppose they would have found anything in the contents of the thorax or
+the abdomen, but it is just possible that analysis of the matter removed
+from the cranial cavity might have revealed a small blood-clot in the
+brain."
+
+The Captain twitched up his eyebrows and stared at him in open-mouthed
+amazement.
+
+"Of all the--By Jove! you know, this beats me! To think of your guessing
+that!" he said. "As a matter of fact, that's precisely what they did do,
+Mr. Cleek. But as they couldn't arrive at any conclusion nor trace a
+probable cause of its origin they were more in the dark than ever.
+Selwin, the local practitioner, was for putting it down as a case of
+apoplexy on the strength of that small blood-clot, but as there was an
+entire absence of every other symptom of apoplectic conditions the other
+doctors scouted the suggestion as preposterous--pointed out the
+generally healthy state of the brain and of the heart, lungs, arterial
+walls, _et cetera_, as utterly refuting such a theory--and in the end
+the verdict on the son was the verdict given on the mother: 'Death from
+unknown causes'; and he was buried as she had been buried, with the
+secret of the murder undiscovered."
+
+"And then what, Captain?"
+
+"What I have already told you, Mr. Cleek. Nothing under God's heaven
+would or could persuade Mr. Harmstead to let his nieces and their two
+surviving brothers remain another hour in that house of disaster. He
+removed them from it instantly--fled the very neighbourhood, hired a
+house down here--at Dalehampton; a dozen miles or so on the other side
+of the Tor, yonder--and carried them there to live. The family now
+consisted of Miriam and Flora, the two girls, Paul, a boy of
+thirteen--old Mr. Harmstead's special pride and pet--and Ronald, a
+little chap of eleven. In this new home they hoped and prayed to be free
+from the horrible visitant who had made the memory of the old one a
+nightmare to them, but--they couldn't forget, Mr. Cleek, what the Tenth
+of each month had taken from them, and grew sick with dread at the
+steady approach of the Tenth of this one."
+
+"And as this is the Twelfth," said Cleek, "the day before yesterday
+_was_ the Tenth. Did anything happen?"
+
+"Yes," replied the Captain, his voice dropping until it was little more
+than a whisper. "I tried to cheer them; Miss Lorne tried to cheer them.
+We sat with them, tried to make them think that our presence there would
+act as a shield and a guard--and tried to think so ourselves. But old
+Mr. Harmstead took even stronger measures. 'Nothing shall touch
+Paul--nothing that lives and breathes,' he said, desperately. 'I'll take
+him into my room; I'll sit up with him in my arms all night!'"
+
+"And did so?"
+
+"Yes. At twelve o'clock, Miss Lorne, Miss Comstock, and I went in to say
+good-night to him. He was sitting in a deep chair with the boy fast
+asleep in his arms--sitting and looking all about him with the dumb
+agony of a trapped mouse. I'll never forget how he clutched the boy to
+him nor the cry he gave when the door opened to admit us, the sob of
+relief when he saw it was only us. His cry and his movement awoke the
+boy, but he dropped off to sleep again before I left, and was breathing
+healthily and peacefully. The last look I had at the picture as I went
+out, Mr. Cleek, the dear old chap was holding his pet in his arms and
+smiling down into his boyish face. So he was still sitting, Miss
+Comstock tells me, when she came down this morning. 'Look,' he said to
+her, 'I watched him--I held him--the tenth day is past and the death
+didn't get him, my bonnie!' Then called her to his side and shook the
+little fellow to awaken him. It was then only that he discovered the
+truth. The boy was stone-dead!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+"There, Mr. Cleek," resumed the Captain, after he could master his
+emotion. "That is the case--that is the riddle I am praying to Heaven
+that you may be able to solve. What the mysterious power is, when,
+where, or how it got into the room and got at the boy, God alone knows.
+Mr. Harmstead will swear that he never let the little fellow out of his
+arms for one solitary instant between the time of our leaving him just
+after midnight, and Miss Comstock's coming in in the morning. He admits,
+however, that twice during that period he fell asleep, but it was only
+for a few minutes each time; and long years of being constantly alert
+for possible marauders--out there in the wilds of Australia--have tended
+to make his sleep so light that anything heavier than a cat's footfall
+wakes him on the instant. Yet last night something--man or spirit--came
+and went, and he neither heard nor saw either sound or shape from
+midnight until morning. One thing I must tell you, however, which may
+throw some light upon the movements of the appalling thing. Whereas Mr.
+Harmstead not only closed, but locked, both of the two windows in the
+room, and pinned the thick plushette curtains of them together--as Miss
+Comstock and I saw them pinned when we left the room last night--when
+those curtains came to be drawn this morning one of the windows was
+found to be partly open, and there was a smear of something that looked
+like grease across the sill and the stone coping beyond."
+
+"Of course, of course!" commented Cleek enigmatically. "Provided my
+theory is correct, I should have expected that. A thing that comes and
+goes through windows must, at some period, leave some mark of its
+passage. Of course that particular window opened upon a balcony or
+something of that sort, didn't it?"
+
+"No, it is a perfectly unbroken descent from the window sill to the
+ground. But there's a big tree close by, and the branches of that brush
+the pane of glass."
+
+"Ah! I see! I see! All the soap dishes in the house left filled last
+night and found filled this morning, captain?"
+
+"Good heavens! I don't know. What on earth can soap dishes have to do
+with it, man?"
+
+"Possibly nothing, probably a great deal--particularly if there's found
+to be a cake of soap in each. But that we can discover later. Now one
+word more. Was that same minute swelling--the mark like a gnat's
+bite--on the neck of the boy's body, too? And had it been on that of the
+mother's as well?"
+
+"I can't answer either question, Mr. Cleek. I don't remember to have
+heard about it being remarked in the case of Mrs. Comstock's death; and
+the murder of little Paul was such a horrible thing and so upset
+everybody that none of us thought to look."
+
+"An error of judgment that; however, it is one easily rectified, since
+the body is not yet interred," said Cleek. "Ever read Harvey's
+'Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Sanguinis,' Captain?--the volume in which
+William Harvey first gave to the world at large his discovery regarding
+the circulation of the blood."
+
+"Good heavens, no! What would I be doing reading matters of that kind?
+I'm not a medico, Mr. Cleek--I'm a soldier."
+
+"I know. But, still--well, I thought it just possible that you might
+have read the work, or, at least, heard something regarding the contents
+of the volume. Men who have a hobby are rather given to riding it and
+boring other people with discussions and dissertations upon it; and I
+seem to think that I have heard it said that Sir Gilbert Morford's
+greatest desire in the time of his youth was to become a medical man. In
+fact, that he put in two or three years as a student at St.
+Bartholomew's, and would have qualified, but that the sudden death of
+his father compelled him to abandon the hope and to assume the
+responsibilities of the head of the house of Morford & Morford, tea
+importers, of Mincing Lane."
+
+"Yes; that's quite correct. He bitterly resented the compulsion--the
+'pitchforking of a man out of a profession into the abomination of
+trade,' as he always expresses it--but of course, he was obliged to
+yield, and the 'dream of his life' dropped off into nothing but a dream.
+But the old love and the old recollection still linger, and, although he
+no longer personally follows either trade or profession, he keeps up his
+laboratory work, subscribes to every medical journal in Christendom, and
+if you want to tickle his vanity or to get on the right side of him all
+you have to do is to address him as 'doctor.' With all due respect to
+him, he's a bit of a prig, Mr. Cleek, and hates people of no
+position--'people of the lower order,' as he always terms them--as the
+gentleman down under is said to hate holy water."
+
+"So that he, naturally, would move heaven and earth to prevent his
+grandson and heir from marrying a young woman of that class? I see!"
+supplemented Cleek. "The dear gentleman would like the name of Morford
+to go down to posterity linked to duchesses or earls' daughters, and
+surrounded by a blaze of glory. Ah, it's a queer world, Captain. There
+is no bitterer hater of the 'common herd' than the snob who has climbed
+up from it! The snob and the sneak are closely allied, Captain, and men
+of that stamp have been known to do some pretty ugly things to uphold
+their pinchbeck dignity, and to keep the tinsel of the present over the
+cheap gingerbread of the past."
+
+"Good God, man! You don't surely mean to suggest--"
+
+"Gently, gently, Captain. Your indignation does you credit; but it is
+never well to have a shot at a rabbit before he's fairly out of the
+hole, and you are sure that it isn't the ferret you sent in after him.
+Anything in the way of a conveyance handy, Mr. Narkom?"
+
+"Yes--the limousine. I came down in it yesterday. It's over at the Rose
+and Crown."
+
+"Good! Then perhaps Captain Morford will meet us there in a half hour's
+time. Meanwhile, I've got a few things to throw into my kit-bag, and as
+that's over at the Three Desires, perhaps you won't mind coming along
+and giving me a hand. Then we'll run over to that house at Dalehampton
+and have a look at the body of that poor little shaver as expeditiously
+as possible. Will you come?"
+
+"Yes, certainly," said Narkom; and having given a few necessary
+directions to the Captain walked on and followed Cleek. He knew very
+well the suggestion that he should do so was merely an excuse to have a
+few words with him in private--for no man would be likely to need
+another man's assistance in simply putting a few things into a bag--and
+he was rather puzzled to account for Cleek's desire to say anything to
+him which the Captain was not to hear. However, he kept his curiosity in
+check and his tongue behind his teeth until they were on the other side
+of the lich-gate and in the road leading to the Three Desires.
+
+"There's something you want to say to me, isn't there?" he inquired.
+"Something you want attended to on the quiet?"
+
+"Yes," admitted Cleek, tersely. "There's a public telephone station a
+mile or two on the other side of this place--I saw it this morning when
+I was out tramping. Slip off down there, ring up the head of the
+Dalehampton Constabulary, and tell him to have a man at the house ready
+to pop up when wanted. I'll be long enough over my supposed 'packing' to
+cover the time of your going and returning without the Captain's
+knowledge."
+
+"Without--Good Heaven! My dear Cleek, you were serious, then? You meant
+it? You--you really believe that suspicion points to Sir Gilbert
+Morford?"
+
+"Not any more than it points to Sir Gilbert Morford's grandson, Mr.
+Narkom."
+
+"Good Lord! To him? To that boy? Why, man alive, what possible motive
+could he have for bringing grief and anguish to Miss Comstock when he's
+willing to give up a fortune to marry her?"
+
+"Ah, but don't forget that another fortune descends to all the heirs,
+male and female alike, of the late Mrs. Comstock, Mr. Narkom, and that
+if the Captain's fiancee becomes, in course of time, the only surviving
+child of that unfortunate lady, the Captain's sacrifice will not be such
+an overpowering hardship for him, after all."
+
+"Great Scott! I never thought of that before, Cleek--never."
+
+"Didn't you? Well, don't think too much of it now that you have. For
+circumstantial evidence is tricky and treacherous, and he mayn't be the
+man, after all!"
+
+"Mayn't be? What a beggar you are for damping a man's ardour after
+you've fanned it up to the blazing point. Any light in the darkness, old
+chap? Any idea of what--and how?"
+
+"Yes," said Cleek, quietly. "If there's a mark on that poor little
+shaver's neck, Mr. Narkom, I shall know the means. And if there's soap
+on the window sill I shall know the man!" And then, having reached the
+doorway of the inn, he dived into it and went up the staircase two steps
+at a time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+The little house of Dalehampton was something more than a mere house of
+grief, they found, when the long drive came to an end and Cleek and his
+two companions entered it, for the very spirit of desolation and despair
+seemed to have taken up its abode there; and, like an Incarnate Woe,
+Miss Comstock paced through the hush and darkness, hour in and hour out,
+as she had been doing since daybreak.
+
+"My darling, you mustn't--you really mustn't, dear. You'll lose your
+mind if you brood over the thing like this," said the Captain, flying to
+her the very instant they arrived; and, disregarding the presence of his
+two companions, caught her in his arms and kissed her. "Miriam, dearest,
+don't! It breaks my heart. I know it's awful; but do try to have
+strength and hope. I am sure we shall get at the bottom of the thing
+now--sure that there will be no more--that this is truly the end. These
+gentlemen are from Scotland Yard, dearest, and they say it surely will
+be."
+
+"Heaven knows I hope so," replied Miss Comstock, acknowledging the
+introduction to Cleek and Narkom by a gentle inclination of the head.
+"But indeed, I can't hope, Jim--indeed, I cannot, gentlemen. The tenth
+of next month will take its toll as the tenth of this one has done. I
+feel persuaded that it will. For who can fight a thing unseen and
+unknown?"
+
+Her grief was so great, her despair so hopeless, that Cleek forbore
+attempting to assuage either by any words of sympathy or promise. He
+seemed to feel that hers was an anguish upon which even the kindliest
+words must fall only as an intrusion, and the heart of the man--that
+curiously created heart, which at times could be savage even to the
+point of brutality, and again tender and sympathetic as any
+woman's--went out to her in one great surge of human feeling. And two
+minutes later--when all the Law's grim business of inquiry and inquest
+had been carried out by Narkom, and she, in obedience to his expressed
+desire, led them to the room where the dead boy lay--that wave of
+sympathetic feeling broke over his soul again. For the gentle opening of
+the door had shown him a small, dimly lit room, a kneeling figure, bent
+of back and bowed of head, that leant over a little white bed in a very
+agony of tearless woe.
+
+"He can hardly tear himself away for an instant--he loved him so!" she
+said in a quavering whisper to Cleek. "Must we disturb him? It seems
+almost cruel."
+
+"I know it," he whispered back; "but the place must be searched in quest
+of possible clues, Miss Comstock. The--the little boy, too, must be
+examined, and it would be crueller still if he were to stay and see
+things like that. Lead him out if you can. It will be for a few minutes
+only. Tell him so--tell him he can come back then." And turned his face
+away from that woeful picture as she went over and spoke to the
+sorrowing old man.
+
+"Uncle!" she said softly. "Uncle Phil! You must come away for a little
+time, dear. It is necessary."
+
+"Oh, I can't, Mirry--I can't, lovie, dear!" he answered without lifting
+his head or loosening his folded hands. "My bonnie, my bonnie, that I
+loved so well! Ah, let me have him while I may, Mirry--they'll take him
+from me soon enough--soon enough, my bonnie boy!"
+
+"But, dearest, you must. The--the Law has stepped in. Gentlemen from
+Scotland Yard are here. Jim has brought them. They must have the room
+for a little time. There--there's the window to be examined, you know;
+and if they can find out anything--"
+
+"I'll give them the half of all I have in the world!" broke in the old
+man with a little burst of tears. "Tell them that. The half of
+everything--everything--if they can get at the creature. If they can
+find out. But"--collapsing suddenly, with his elbows on his knees and
+his face between his hands--"they can't, they can't; nobody can! It
+kills and kills and kills; and God help us! we all shall go the same
+way! It will be my turn, too, some time soon. I wish it were mine now. I
+wish it had been mine long ago--before I lost my bonnie own!"
+
+"Takes it hard, poor old chap, doesn't he?" whispered Narkom, glancing
+round and getting something of a shock when he saw that Cleek, who a
+moment before had appeared to be almost on the verge of tears, was now
+fumbling in his coat pockets, and, with indrawn lips and knotted brows,
+was scowling--absolutely scowling--in the direction where Captain
+Morford stood, biting his lips and drumming with his finger nails upon
+the edge of the washstand. But Cleek made no reply. Instead, he walked
+quickly across to the Captain's side, stretched forth his hand, took up
+a tablet of soap, turned it over, laid it down again, stepped to the
+window, stepped back, and laid a firm hand on the young man's shoulder.
+
+"Captain," he said suddenly, in sharp, crisp tones, that sounded
+painfully harsh after the old man's broken cries, "Captain, there's a
+little game of cards called 'Bluff,' and it's an excellent amusement if
+you don't get caught at it. We shan't have to go any further with the
+search for clues in this case; but I think I shall have to ask you, my
+friend, a few little questions in private, and in the interests of a
+gentleman called Jack Ketch!"
+
+This unexpected outburst produced something like a panic. Miss Comstock,
+hearing the words, cried out, put both hands to her temples, as though
+her head were reeling; old Mr. Harmstead straightened suddenly and flung
+a look of blank amazement across the room; and the Captain, twitching
+away from the man who gripped him, went first deathly white and then red
+as any beet.
+
+"Good God!" he gulped. "You--I--Look here, I say now, what does this
+mean? What the dickens are you talking about?"
+
+"Bluff, Captain! Simply 'bluff'!" responded Cleek serenely. "And as I
+said before, it's a clever little game. Stand where you are--keep an eye
+on him, Mr. Narkom. What I've got to say to you, my friend, we'll talk
+about in private, and after I have assisted Miss Comstock to lead her
+uncle out of the room."
+
+With that he swung away from the Captain's side and went over to that of
+the old man.
+
+"Come, Mr. Harmstead, let me help you to rise," he began; then stopped
+as the old man put up a knotted and twisted hand in supplication and
+protested agitatedly: "But--but, sir, I do not want to go. Good Heaven!
+What can you be hinting against that poor, dear boy? Surely you do not
+mean--you cannot mean--"
+
+"That the little game of 'Bluff' has worked, Dr. Finch, and you'll never
+draw a revolver on me," rapped in Cleek, giving him a backward push that
+carried him to the floor, and in the twinkling of an eye he had pounced
+upon him like a cat and was saying, as he snapped the handcuffs upon his
+wrists: "Got you, you brute-beast; got you tight and fast! Do you
+remember Hamilton, the medical student, in New Zealand, eight years ago?
+Do you? Well, that's the man you're dealing with now!"
+
+The man, struggling and kicking, biting and clawing like any other
+cornered wild cat, flung out a cry of utter despair at this, and
+collapsed suddenly; and in the winking of an eye Cleek's hands had
+flashed into the two pockets of the dressing-gown the fellow was
+wearing, and flashed out again with a revolver in one and a shining
+nickel thing in the other.
+
+"Got your 'bark,' doctor, and got your 'bite' as well!" he said, as he
+rose to his feet. "You'd have put a bullet through me at the first word,
+wouldn't you, but for that little 'bluff' of suspecting and arresting
+another man? Captain, look to Miss Comstock--I think she has fainted.
+You wanted the murderer of Mrs. Comstock and her children, didn't you?
+Well, here he is, the rascal!"
+
+"Good God! Then it--it's not a mistake? You mean it--mean it? And Uncle
+Phil! You accuse Uncle Phil?"
+
+"Uncle Nothing!" flung back Cleek with a sort of laugh--and, hazarding a
+guess which afterwards was proved to be the truth--"I'll lay my life,
+Captain, that when you apply to the Australian authorities you will find
+that old Mr. Philip Harmstead is in his grave; that he was attended in
+his last illness by one Dr. Frederick Finch, to whom his fortune would
+revert in the event of Mrs. Comstock and her children dying. Finch is
+the fellow's name--isn't it, doctor, eh?"
+
+"Finch?" repeated the Captain. "Good Heaven! Why that was the name of
+the woman who was old Mr. Harmstead's housekeeper--you know, the widow I
+told you about to-night."
+
+"Oho!" said Cleek. "That's possibly where the threads join and this
+little game begins. Or perhaps it may really be said to begin again
+where Shorty, the chemist, died, and the celebrated Spofford mystery
+ended--eh, doctor? Look here, Captain, look here, Mr. Narkom, you
+remember what I told you this morning about that case in New Zealand
+which so strongly resembled this one? That was the Spofford mystery. Do
+you remember what I said about hitting upon a theory and offering it to
+the medical fraternity, only to get laughed at for my pains? Well, it
+was to this man, Dr. Frederick Finch, I advanced that theory, and it was
+Dr. Frederick Finch who jeered at it, but has now made deadly use of it,
+the hound. Do you want to know how he killed his victims, and what he
+used? Look at this thing that you saw me take from the pocket of his
+dressing-gown. It is a hypodermic syringe, but there is nothing in
+it--there never has been anything in it. Air was his poison--air his
+shaft of death; and he killed by injecting it into the veins of his
+victims. The result of air coming into contact with the circulating
+blood of a human being is the formation of a blood-clot, and death is
+instantaneous the instant the clot reaches either the brain or the
+heart! That was his method. But thank God it's done with for ever now,
+and the next tenth day of the month will pass over this stricken family
+and leave it unscathed!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"How did I know the man?" said Cleek, answering Narkom's query, as they
+came down the Tor-side afoot and forged on in the direction of
+Lyntonhurst Old Church--whither Captain Morford and the limousine had
+long ago preceded them--with the low-dropped sun behind them and
+lengthening shadows streaming on before. "Well, as a matter of fact, I
+never did know him until I actually touched him. I was certain of the
+method, of course; but the man--no. I got my first suspicion of 'Uncle
+Phil' when I heard him speak. I knew I had heard that voice somewhere,
+and I realised that it was much too young a voice for a man who
+appeared--and must be, if he were the real 'Uncle Phil'--extremely old;
+but it was only when I saw his hand, and the peculiar knotted and
+twisted little finger that I really knew who he was. What's that? The
+soap? Well, of course I knew that if, as I suspected, someone in the
+house was the real culprit, an attempt would be made to make it look as
+though the criminal entered from without, so naturally the window would
+be opened, and something of some sort would be smeared on the
+sill--something that wouldn't blow away and wouldn't wash off in the
+event of a sudden rainstorm coming up. Soap would do--and soap is always
+handy in a bedroom. I knew whose hand had made the smear as soon as I
+looked at the cake of soap in 'Uncle Phil's' room--it was badly rubbed
+on one side where it had been scraped over the stone coping and along
+the outer edge of the sill where--Pardon me: this is the turning--I
+leave you here. Pick me up at the inn of the Three Desires in an hour's
+time, please, and we'll motor back to town together. So long!"
+
+And swung round into the branching lane and down the green slope, and
+round under the shadow of Lyntonhurst Old Church to the quiet country
+road and the lich-gate where Ailsa Lorne was waiting.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+She was sitting in the very same place she had occupied when first he
+saw her this morning, with the cypress tree and the roof making shadows
+above and about her; and now, as then, she rose when she heard the latch
+click and came toward him with hands outstretched and eyes aglow and
+little gusts of colour sweeping in rose waves over throat and cheeks.
+
+"Oh, to think that you have solved it! To think that it is the end! And
+to think that it was he--that dear, kind 'uncle' of whom they all were
+so fond!" she said. "I could scarcely believe it when Captain Morford
+brought the news. It made me quite faint for the moment--it was so
+unexpected, so horrible!"
+
+"And after all, there was nothing to fear from that farm labourer who
+frightened you so this morning, you see," he smiled, holding her two
+hands in his and looking down at her from his greater height. "Yet I
+find your crouching back in the shadow as if you were still frightened
+to be seen. Are you?"
+
+"A little," she admitted. "You see, the road is a public one. People are
+always passing, and--How good it was of you to come all this long
+distance out of your way. Indeed, I am very, very grateful, Mr. Cleek."
+
+"Thank you," he said gravely. "But you need not be. Indeed, the
+gratitude should be all on my side. I said I would come if ever you
+wanted me, and you gave me an opportunity to keep my word. As for it
+being out of my way to come here, it is but a little distance to the
+Three Desires and a long one to Lady Chepstow's place, so it is you, not
+I, that have 'gone out of the way!' It was good of you to give me this
+grace--I should have been sorry to go back to town without saying
+good-bye."
+
+"But need you go so soon?" she asked. "Lady Chepstow will feel slighted,
+I know, if she hears that you have been in the neighbourhood and have
+not called. She is a friend, you know, a warm, true friend--always
+grateful for what you did, always glad to see you. Why not stop on a day
+or two and call and see her?"
+
+A robin flicked down out of the cypress tree and perched on the gate
+top, looked up at Cleek with bright, sharp eyes, flung out a wee little
+trill, and was off again.
+
+"I'm afraid it is out of the question--I'm afraid I'm not so deeply
+interested in Lady Chepstow as, perhaps, I ought to be," said Cleek,
+noticing in a dim subconscious way that the robin had flown on to the
+church door and perched there, and was in full song now. "Besides, she
+does not know of me what you do. Perhaps, if she did.... Oh, well, it
+doesn't matter. Thank you for coming to say good-bye, Miss Lorne. It was
+kind of you. Now I must emulate Poor Jo, and 'move on' again."
+
+"And without any reward!" said Ailsa with a smile and a sigh. "Without
+expecting any; without asking any; without wanting any!"
+
+He stood a moment, twisting his heel round and round in the gravel of
+the pathway, and breathing hard, his eyes on the ground, and his lips
+indrawn. Then, of a sudden--"Perhaps I did want one. Perhaps I've always
+wanted one. And hoped to get it some day perhaps from--you!" he said.
+And looked up at her as a man looks but once at one woman ever.
+
+She had come a step nearer; she was standing there with the shadows
+behind her and the light on her face, warm colour in her cheeks, and a
+smile on her lips and in her eyes. She spoke no word, made no sound;
+merely stood there and smiled and, somehow, he seemed to know what the
+smile of her meant and what the bird's note said.
+
+"Miss Lorne--Ailsa," he said, very, very gently, "if some day ... when
+all the wrongs I did in those other days are righted, and all that a man
+can do on this earth to atone for such a past as mine has been done ...
+if then, in that time, I come to you and ask for that reward, do you
+think, oh, do you think that you can find it in your heart to give it?"
+
+"When that day dawns, come and see," she said, "if you wish to wait so
+long!"
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+THE AFFAIR OF THE MAN WHO HAD BEEN CALLED HAMILTON CLEEK
+
+
+"Note for you, sir--messenger just fetched it. Addressed to 'Captain
+Burbage,' so it'll be from The Yard," said Dollops, coming into the room
+with a doughnut in one hand and a square envelope in the other.
+
+Cleek, who had been sitting at his writing-table, with a litter of
+folded documents, bits of antique jewellery, and what looked like odds
+and ends of faded ribbon lying before him, swept the whole collection
+into the table drawer as Dollops spoke and stretched forth his hand for
+the letter.
+
+It was one of Narkom's characteristic communications, albeit somewhat
+shorter than those communications usually were--a fact which told Cleek
+at once that the matter was one of immense importance.
+
+"My dear Cleek," it ran. "For the love of goodness don't let anything
+tempt you into going out to-night. I shall call about ten. Foreign
+government affair--reward simply enormous. Look out for me. Yours, in
+hot haste--MAVERICK NARKOM."
+
+"Be on the lookout for the red limousine," said Cleek, glancing over at
+Dollops, who stood waiting for orders. "It will be along about ten.
+That's all. You may go."
+
+"Right you are, Gov'nor. I'll keep my eyes peeled, sir. Lor'! I do hope
+it's summink to do with a restaurant or a cookshop this time. I could do
+with a job of that sort--my word, yes! I'm fair famishin'. And, beggin'
+pardon, but you don't look none too healthy yourself this evening,
+Gov'nor. Ain't et summink wot's disagreed with you, have you, sir?"
+
+"I? What nonsense! I'm as fit as a fiddle. What could make you think
+otherwise?"
+
+"Oh, I dunno, sir--only--Well, if you don't mind my sayin' of it, sir,
+whenever you gets to unlocking of that draw and lookin' at them things
+you keep in there--wotever they is--you always gets a sort of
+solemncholy look in the eyes; and you gets white about the gills, and
+your lips has a pucker to 'em that I don't like to see."
+
+"Tommy rot! Imagination's a splendid thing for a detective to possess,
+Dollops, but don't let yours run away with you in this fashion, my lad,
+or you'll never rise above what you are. Toddle along now, and look out
+for Mr. Narkom's arrival. It's after nine already, so he'll soon be
+here."
+
+"Anybody a-comin' with him, sir?"
+
+"I don't know--he didn't say. Cut along, now; I'm busy!" said Cleek.
+Nevertheless, when Dollops had gone and the door was shut and he had the
+room to himself again, and, if he really did have any business on hand,
+there was no reason in the world why he should not have set about it, he
+remained sitting at the table and idly drumming upon it with his finger
+tips, a deep ridge between his brows and a far-away expression in his
+fixed, unwinking eyes. And so he was still sitting when, something like
+twenty minutes later, the sharp "Toot-toot!" of a motor horn sounded.
+
+Narkom's note lay on the table close to his elbow. He took it up,
+crumpled it into a ball, and threw it into his waste basket. "A foreign
+government affair," he said with a curious one-sided smile. "A strange
+coincidence, to be sure!" Then, as if obeying an impulse, he opened the
+drawer, looked at the litter of things he had swept into it, shut it up
+again and locked it securely, putting the key into his pocket and rising
+to his feet. Two minutes later, when Narkom pushed open the door and
+entered the room, he found Cleek leaning against the edge of the
+mantelpiece and smoking a cigarette with the air of one whose feet trod
+always upon rose petals, and who hadn't a thought beyond the affairs of
+the moment, nor a care for anything but the flavour of Egyptian tobacco.
+
+"Ah, my dear fellow, you can't think what a relief it was to catch you.
+I had but a moment in which to dash off the note, and I was on thorns
+with fear that it would miss you; that on a glorious night like this
+you'd be off for a pull up the river or something of that sort," said
+the superintendent, as he bustled in and shook hands with him. "You are
+such a beggar for getting off by yourself and mooning."
+
+"Well, to tell you the truth, Mr. Narkom, I came within an ace of doing
+the very thing you speak of," replied Cleek. "It's full moon, for one
+thing, and it's primrose time for another. Happily for your desire to
+catch me, however, I--er--got interested in the evening paper, and that
+delayed me."
+
+"Very glad, dear chap; very glad, indeed," began Narkom. Then, as his
+eye fell upon the particular evening paper in question lying on the
+writing-table, a little crumpled from use, but with a certain
+"displayed-headed" article of three columns length in full view, he
+turned round and stared at Cleek with an air of awe and mystification.
+"My dear fellow, you must be under the guardianship of some uncanny
+familiar. You surely must, Cleek!" he went on. "Do you mean to tell me
+that is what kept you at home? That you have been reading about the
+preparations for the forthcoming coronation of King Ulric of
+Mauravania?"
+
+"Yes; why not? I am sure it makes interesting reading, Mr. Narkom. The
+kingdom of Mauravania has had sufficient ups and downs to inspire a
+novelist, so its records should certainly interest a mere reader. To be
+frank, I found the account of the amazing preparations for the
+coronation of his new Majesty distinctly entertaining. They are an
+excitable and spectacular people, those Mauravanians, and this time they
+seem bent upon outdoing themselves."
+
+"But, my dear Cleek, that you should have chosen to stop at home and
+read about that particular affair! Bless my soul man, it's--it's
+amazing, abnormal, uncanny! Positively uncanny, Cleek!"
+
+"My dear Narkom, I don't see where the uncanny element comes in, I must
+confess," replied Cleek with an indulgent smile. "Surely an Englishman
+must always feel a certain amount of interest in Mauravian affairs. Have
+the goodness to remember that there should be an Englishman upon that
+particular throne. Aye, and there would be, too, but for one of those
+moments of weak-backed policy, of a desire upon the part of the
+'old-woman' element which sometimes prevails in English politics to keep
+friendly relations with other powers at any cost. Brush up your history,
+Mr. Narkom, and give your memory a fillip. Eight-and-thirty years ago
+Queen Karma of Mauravania had an English consort and bore him two
+daughters, and one son. You will perhaps recall the mad rebellion, the
+idiotic rising which disgraced that reign. That was the time for England
+to have spoken. But the peace party had it by the throat; they, with
+their mawkish cry for peace--peace at any price!--drowned the voices of
+men and heroes, and the end was what it was! Queen Karma was
+deposed--she and her children fled, God knows how, God knows where--fled
+and left a dead husband and father, slain like a hero and an Englishman,
+fighting for his own, and with his face to the foe. Avenge his death?
+Nonsense, declared the old women. He had no right to defy the will of
+Heaven, no right to stir up strife with a friendly people and expect his
+countrymen to embroil themselves because of his lust for power. It would
+be a lasting disgrace to the nation if England allowed a lot of howling,
+bloodthirsty meddlers to persuade it to interfere.
+
+"The old women had their way. Queen Karma and her children vanished; her
+uncle Duke Sforza came to the throne as Alburtus III., and eight months
+ago his son, the present King Ulric, succeeded him. The father had been
+a bad king, the son a bad crown-prince. Mauravania has paid the price.
+Let her put up with it! I don't think in the light of these things, Mr.
+Narkom, there is any wonder that an Englishman finds interest in reading
+of the affairs of a country over which an Englishman's son might, and
+ought to, have ruled. As for me, I have no sympathy, my friend, with
+Mauravania or her justly punished people."
+
+"Still, my dear fellow, that should not count when the reward for taking
+up this case is so enormous--and I dare say it will not."
+
+"Reward? Case?" repeated Cleek. "What do you mean by that?"
+
+"That I am here to enlist your services in the cause of King Ulric of
+Mauravania," replied Narkom, impressively. "Something has happened,
+Cleek, which, if not cleared up before the coronation day--now only one
+month hence, as you must have read--will certainly result in his
+Majesty's public disgrace, and may result in his overthrow and death!
+His friend and chief adviser, Count Irma, has come all the way from
+Mauravania, and is at this moment downstairs in this house, to put the
+case in your hands and to implore you to help and to save his royal
+master!"
+
+"His royal master? The son of the man who drove an Englishman's wife and
+an Englishman's children into exile--poverty--misery--despair?" said
+Cleek, pulling himself up. "I won't take it, Mr. Narkom! If he offers me
+millions, I'll lift no hand to help or to save Mauravania's king!"
+
+The response to this came from an unexpected quarter.
+
+"But to save Mauravania's queen, monsieur? Will you do nothing for her?"
+said an excited and imploring voice. And as Cleek, startled by the
+interruption, switched round and glanced in the direction of the sound,
+the half-dosed door swung inward and a figure, muffled to the very eyes,
+moved over the threshold into the room. "Have pardon, monsieur--I could
+not but overhear," went on the newcomer, turning to Narkom. "I should
+scarcely be worthy of his Majesty's confidence and favour had I remained
+inactive. I simply had to come up unbidden. _Had_ to, monsieur"--turning
+to Cleek--"and so--" His words dropped off suddenly. A puzzled look
+first expanded and then contracted his eyes, and his lips tightened
+curiously under the screen of his white, military moustache. "Monsieur,"
+he said, presently putting into words the sense of baffling familiarity
+which perplexed him. "Monsieur, you then are the great, the astonishing
+Cleek? You, monsieur? Pardon, but surely I have had the pleasure of
+meeting monsieur before? No, not here, for I have never been in England
+until to-day; but in my own country--in Mauravania. Surely, monsieur, I
+have seen you there?"
+
+"On the contrary," said Cleek, speaking the simple truth. "I have never
+set foot in Mauravania in all my life, sir. And as you have overheard my
+words you may see that I do not intend to even now. The difficulties of
+Mauravania's king do not in the least appeal to me."
+
+"Ah, but Mauravania's queen, monsieur--Mauravania's queen."
+
+"The lady interests me no more than does her royal spouse."
+
+"But, monsieur, she must--she really must--if you are honest in what you
+say, and your sympathies are all with the deposed and exiled ones--the
+ex-queen Karma and her children. Surely, monsieur, you who seem to know
+so well the history of that sad time cannot be ignorant of what has
+happened since to her ex-Majesty and her children?"
+
+"I know only that Queen Karma died in France, in extreme poverty,
+befriended to the last by people of the very humblest birth and of not
+too much respectability. What became of her son I do not know; but her
+daughters, the two princesses, mere infants at the time, were sent, one
+to England, where she subsequently died, and the other to Persia, where,
+I believe, she remained up to her ninth year, and then went no one seems
+to know where."
+
+"Then, monsieur, let me tell you what became of her. The late King
+Alburtus discovered her whereabouts, and, to prevent any possible
+trouble in the future, imprisoned her in the Fort of Sulberga up to the
+year before his death. Eleven months ago she became the Crown Prince
+Ulric's wife. She is now his consort. And by saving her, monsieur, you
+who feel so warmly upon the subject of the rights of her family's
+succession, will be saving her, helping Mauravania's queen, and
+defeating those who are her enemies."
+
+Cleek sucked in his breath and regarded the man silently, steadily, for
+a long time. Then:
+
+"Is that true, Count?" he asked. "On your word of honour as a soldier
+and a gentleman, is that true?"
+
+"As true as Holy Writ, monsieur. On my word of honour. On my hopes of
+heaven!"
+
+"Very well, then," said Cleek quietly. "Tell me the case, Count. I'll
+take it."
+
+"Monsieur, my eternal gratitude. Also the reward is--"
+
+"We will talk about that afterward. Sit down, please, and tell me what
+you want me to do."
+
+"Oh, monsieur, almost the impossible," said the Count despairfully. "The
+outwitting of a woman who must in very truth be the devil's own
+daughter, so subtle, so appalling are the craft and cunning of her.
+That, for one thing. For another, the finding of a paper, which, if
+published--as the woman swears it shall be if her terms are not acceded
+to--will be the signal for his Majesty's overthrow. And, for the
+third"--emotion mastered him; his voice choked up and failed; he
+deported himself for a moment like one afraid to let even his own ears
+hear the thing spoken of aloud, then governed his cowardice and went
+on--"For the third thing, monsieur," he said, lowering his tone until it
+was almost a whisper, "the recovery--the restoration to its place of
+honour before the coronation day arrives--of that fateful gem,
+Mauravania's pride and glory--'the Rainbow Pearl!'"
+
+Cleek clamped his jaws together like a bloodhound snapping and over his
+hardening face there came a slow-creeping, unnatural pallor.
+
+"Has that been lost?" he said in a low, bleak voice. "Has he, this
+precious royal master of yours, this usurper--has he parted with that
+thing--the wondrous Rainbow Pearl?"
+
+"Monsieur knows of the gem, then?"
+
+"Know of it? Who does not? Its fame is world-wide. Wars have been fought
+for it, lives sacrificed for it. It is more valuable than England's
+Koh-i-noor, and more important to the country and the crown that possess
+it. The legend runs, does it not, that Mauravania falls when the Rainbow
+Pearl passes into alien hands. An absurd belief, to be sure, but who can
+argue with a superstitious people or hammer wisdom into the minds of
+babies? And _that_ has been lost--that gem so dear to Mauravania's
+people, so important to Mauravania's crown?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur--ah, the good God help my country!--yes!" said the Count
+brokenly. "It has passed from his Majesty's hands; it is no longer among
+the crown jewels of Mauravania--a Russian has it."
+
+"A Russian?" Cleek's cry was like to nothing so much as the snarl of a
+wild animal. "A Russian to hold it--a Russian?--the sworn enemy of
+Mauravania--the race most hated of her people! God help your wretched
+king, Count Irma, if this were known to his subjects."
+
+"Ah, monsieur, it is that we dread--it is that against which we
+struggle," replied the Count. "If that jewel were missing on the
+coronation day, if it were known that a Russian holds it--Dear God! the
+populace would rise--rise, monsieur, and tear his Majesty to pieces."
+
+"He deserves no better!" said Cleek, through his close-shut teeth. "To a
+Russian--a Russian! As heaven hears me, but for his queen--Well, let it
+pass. Tell me, how did this Russian get the jewel, and when?"
+
+"Oh, long ago, monsieur--long ago; many months before King Alburtus
+died."
+
+"Was it his hand that gave it up?"
+
+"No, monsieur. He died without knowing of its loss, without suspecting
+that the stone in the royal parure is but a sham and an imitation,"
+replied the count. "It all came of the youth, the recklessness, the
+folly of the crown prince. Monsieur may have heard of his--his many wild
+escapades--his thoughtless acts, his--his--"
+
+"Call them dissipations, Count, and give them their real name. His acts
+as crown prince were a scandal and a disgrace. To whom did he part with
+this gem--a woman?"
+
+"Monsieur, yes! It was during the time he was stopping in
+Paris--incognito to all but a trusted few. He--he met the woman there,
+became fascinated with her--bound to her--an abject slave to her."
+
+"A slave to a Russian? Mauravania's heir and--a Russian?"
+
+"Monsieur, he did not know that until afterward. In a mad freak--there
+was to be a masked ball--he yielded to the lady's persuasions to let her
+wear the famous Rainbow Pearl for that one night. He journeyed back to
+Mauravania and abstracted it from among the royal jewels--putting a mere
+imitation in its place so that it should not be missed until he could
+return the original. Monsieur, he was never able to return it at any
+time, for, once she had got it, the Russian made away with it in some
+secret manner and refused to give it up. Her price for returning it was
+his royal father's consent to ennoble her, to receive her at the
+Mauravanian Court, and so to alter the constitution that it would be
+possible for her to become the crown prince's wife."
+
+"The proposition of an idiot. The thing could not possibly be done."
+
+"No, monsieur, it could not. So the crown prince broke from her and bent
+all his energies upon the recovery of the pearl and the keeping of its
+loss a secret from the king and his people. Bravos, footpads,
+burglars--all manner of men--were employed before he left Paris. The
+woman's house was broken into, the woman herself waylaid and searched,
+but nothing came of it--no clue to the lost jewel could be found."
+
+"Why then did he not appeal to the police?"
+
+"Monsieur, he--he dared not. In one of his moments of madness
+he--she--that is--Oh, monsieur, remember his youth! It appears that the
+woman had got him to put into writing something which, if made public,
+would cause the people of Mauravania to rise as one man and to do with
+him as wolves do with things that are thrown to them in their fury."
+
+"The dog! Some treaty with a Russian, of course!" said Cleek
+indignantly. "Oh, fickle Mauravania, how well you are punished for your
+treasonable choice! Well, go on, Count. What next?"
+
+"Of a sudden, monsieur, the woman disappeared. Nothing was heard of her,
+no clue to her whereabouts discovered for two whole years. She was as
+one dead and gone until last week."
+
+"Oho! She returned, then?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur. Without hint or warning she turned up in Mauravania,
+accompanied by a disreputable one-eyed man who has the manner and
+appearance of one bred in the gutters of Paris, albeit he is well
+clothed, well-looked after, and she treats him and his wretched
+collection of parakeets with the utmost consideration."
+
+"Parakeets?" put in Narkom excitedly. "My dear Cleek, couldn't a
+parakeet be made to swallow a pearl?"
+
+"Perhaps; but not this one, Mr. Narkom," he made reply. "It is quite the
+size of a pigeon's egg, I believe; is it not, Count?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur, quite. To see it is to remember it always. It has the
+changing lights of the rainbow, and--"
+
+"Never mind that; go on with the story, please. This woman and this
+one-eyed man appeared last week in Mauravania, you say?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur; and with them a bodyguard of at least ten servants. Her
+demand now is that his Majesty make her his morganatic wife; that he
+establish her at the palace under the same roof with his queen; and that
+she be allowed to ride with them in the state carriage on the coronation
+day. Failing that, she swears that she will not only publish the
+contents of that dreadful letter, but send the original to the chief of
+the Mauravanian police and appear in public with the Rainbow Pearl upon
+her person."
+
+"The Jezebel! What steps have you taken, Count, to prevent this?"
+
+"All that I can imagine, monsieur. To prevent her from getting into
+close touch with the public, I have thrown open my own house to her, and
+received her and her retinue under my own roof rather than allow them to
+be quartered at an hotel. Also, this has given me the opportunity to
+have her effects and those of her followers secretly searched; but no
+clue to the letter, no clue to the pearl has anywhere been discovered."
+
+"Still she must have both with her, otherwise she could not carry out
+her threat. No doubt she suspects what motive you had in taking her into
+your own house, Count--a woman like that is no fool. But tell me, does
+she show no anxiety, no fear of a search?"
+
+"None, monsieur. She knows that my people search her effects; indeed,
+she has told me so. But it alarms her not a whit. As she told me two
+days ago, I shall find nothing; but if I did it would be useless, for,
+on the moment anything of hers was touched, her servants would see that
+the finder never carried it from the house."
+
+"Oho!" said Cleek, with a strong rising inflection. "A little searching
+party of her own, eh? The lady is clever, at all events. The moment
+either pearl or letter should be removed from its hiding-place her
+servants would allow nobody to leave the house without being searched to
+the very skin?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur. So if by any chance you were to discover either--"
+
+"My friend, set your mind at rest," interposed Cleek. "If I find either,
+or both, they will leave the house with me, I promise you. Mr. Narkom--"
+he turned to the superintendent--"keep an eye on Dollops for me, will
+you? There are reasons why I can't take him--can't take anybody--with me
+in the working out of this case. I may be a couple of days or I may be a
+week--I can't say as yet; but I start with Count Irma for Mauravania in
+the morning. And, Mr. Narkom!"
+
+"Yes, old chap?"
+
+"Do me a favour, please. Be at Charing Cross station when the first
+boat-train leaves to-morrow morning, will you, and bring me a small pot
+of extract of beef--a very small pot, the smallest they make--not bigger
+than a shilling nor thicker than one if they make them that size. What's
+that? Hide the pearl in it? What nonsense! I don't want one half big
+enough for that. Besides, they'd be sure to find it when they searched
+me if I tried any such fool's trick as that. Dollops isn't the only
+creature in the world that gets hungry, my friend, and beef extract is
+very sustaining, very, I assure you, sir."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+"A beautiful city, Count--an exceedingly beautiful city," said Cleek, as
+the carriage which had been sent to meet them at the station rolled into
+the broad Avenue des Arcs, which is at once the widest and most ornate
+thoroughfare the capital city of Mauravania boasts. "Ah, what a
+heritage! No wonder King Ulric is so anxious to retain his sovereignty;
+no wonder this--er--Madame Tcharnovetski, I think you said the name
+is--"
+
+"Yes, monsieur. It is oddly spelled, but it is pronounced a little
+broader than you give it--quite as though it were written
+Shar-no-vet-skee, in fact, with the accent on the third syllable."
+
+"Ah, yes. Thanks very much. No wonder she is anxious to become a power
+here. Mauravania is a fairyland in very truth; and this beautiful avenue
+with its arches, its splendid trees, its sculpture, its--Ah! _cocher_,
+pull up at once. Stop, if you please, stop!"
+
+"Oui, monsieur," replied the driver, reining in his horses and glancing
+round. "_Dix mille pardons, M'sieur_, there is something amiss?"
+
+"Yes; very much amiss--from the dog's point of view," replied Cleek,
+indicating by a wave of the hand a mongrel puppy which crouched, forlorn
+and hungry, in the shadow of an imposing building. "He should be a
+Socialist among dogs, that little fellow, Count. The mere accident of
+birth has made him what he is, and that poodled monstrosity the lady
+yonder is leading the pet and pride of a thoughtless mistress. I want
+that little canine outcast, Count, and with your permission I will
+appropriate him, and give him his first carriage ride." With that, he
+stepped down from the vehicle, whistled the cur to him, and taking it up
+in his arms, returned with it to his seat.
+
+"Monsieur, you are to me the most astonishing of men," said the Count,
+noticing how he patted the puppy and settled it in his lap as the
+carriage resumed its even rolling down the broad, beautiful avenue. "One
+moment upholding the rights of birth, the next rebelling against the
+injustice of it. Are your sympathies with the unfortunate so keen,
+monsieur, that even this stray cur may claim them?"
+
+"Perhaps," replied Cleek enigmatically. "You must wait and see, Count.
+Just now I pity him for his forlornity; to-morrow--next day--a week
+hence--I may hold it a better course to put an end to his hopeless lot
+by chloroforming him into a painless and peaceful death."
+
+"Monsieur, I cannot follow you--you speak in riddles."
+
+"I deal in riddles, Count; you must wait for the solution of them, I'm
+afraid."
+
+"I wish I could grasp the solution of one which puzzles me a great deal,
+monsieur. What is it that has happened to your countenance? You have
+done nothing to put on a disguise; yet, since we left the train and
+entered the landau, some subtle change has occurred. What is it? How has
+it come about? The night before last, when I saw you for the first time,
+your face was one that impressed me with a sense of familiarity--now,
+monsieur, you are like a different man."
+
+"I am a different man, Count. Like puppy, here, I am a waif and a stray;
+yet, at the same time, I have my purpose and am part of a carefully-laid
+scheme."
+
+The Count made no reply. He could not comprehend the man at all, and at
+times--but for the world-wide reputation of him--he would have believed
+him insane. Not a question as to the great and important case he was on,
+but merely incomprehensible remarks, trifling fancies, apparently
+aimless whims! Two nights ago a pot of beef extract; to-day a mongrel
+puppy; and all the time the hopes of a kingdom, the future of a monarch
+resting in his hands!
+
+For twenty minutes longer the landau rolled on; then it came to a halt
+under the broad _porte cochere_ of the Villa Irma, and two minutes after
+that Cleek and the Count stood in the presence of Madame Tcharnovetski,
+her purblind associate, and her retinue of servant-guards.
+
+A handsome woman, this madame, a woman of about two-and-thirty, with the
+tar-black eyes and the twilight coloured tresses of Northern Russia;
+bold as brass, flippant as a French cocotte, steel-nerved and
+calm-blooded as a professional gambler. It had been her whim that all
+the women of the Count's family should be banished from the house during
+her stay; that the great salon of the villa--a wondrous apartment, hung
+in blue and silver, and lit by a huge crystal chandelier--should be put
+at her disposal night and day; that the electric lights should be
+replaced with dozens of wax candles (after the manner of the ballrooms
+of her native Russia), and that her one-eyed companion, with his wicker
+cage of screeching parakeets, should come and go when and where and how
+he listed, and that an electric alarm bell be connected with her
+sleeping apartment and his.
+
+"Your hirelings will tamper with his birds and his effects in the
+night--I know that, Monsieur le Comte," she had said when she demanded
+this. "He is a nervous fellow, this poor Clopin; I wish him to be able
+to ring for help if you and your men go too far."
+
+Clopin was sitting by the window chattering to his birds when Cleek
+entered, and a glance at him was sufficient to decide two points: first,
+he was not disguised, nor was his partial blindness in any way a sham,
+for an idiot could have seen that the droop of the left eyelid over the
+staring, palpably artificial eye which glazed over the empty socket
+beneath was due to perfectly natural causes; and, second, that the man
+was indeed what the Count had said he resembled, namely, a gutter-bred
+outcast.
+
+"French!" was Cleek's silent comment upon him. "One of those charlatans
+who infest the streets of Paris with their so-called 'fortune-telling
+birds,' who, for ten centimes, pick out an envelope with their beaks as
+a means of telling you what the future is supposed to hold. What has
+made a woman like this pick up a fellow of his stamp? Hum-m-m! Puppy, I
+think you are a good move," stroking the ears of the mongrel dog; "a
+very much better move than a cage of useless parakeets that are meant to
+throw suspicion in the wrong direction and have a seed-cup so large and
+so obviously overfilled that it is safe to say there is nothing hidden
+in it and never has been! And madame has a fancy for waxlights," his
+gaze travelling upward to the glittering chandelier. "Hum-m-m! How well
+they know, these women whose beauty is going off, that waxlights show
+less of Time's ravages than gas or electricity. Candles in the
+chandelier; candles in the sconces, candles on the mantelpieces. This
+room should be very charming when it is lighted at night."
+
+It was--as he learned later. Just now things not quite so charming
+filled the bill, for madame was jeering at him in a manner not to be
+understood.
+
+"A police spy--that is what you are, monsieur!" she said, coming up to
+him and impudently snapping her fingers under his nose. "Such a fool,
+this white-headed old dotard of a Count, to think that he can take me in
+with a silly yarn about going to visit a nephew and bringing him back
+here to stay. Monsieur, you are a police spy. Well, good luck to you.
+Get what the Mauravanian king wants, if--you--can!"
+
+"Madame," replied Cleek, with a deeply deferential bow and with an
+accent that seemed born of Paris, "madame, that is what I mean to do, I
+assure you."
+
+"Ah, do you?" she answered, with a scream of laughter. "You hear that,
+Clopin? You hear that, my good servitors? This silly French noodle is
+going to get the things in spite of us. Oho, but you have a fine opinion
+of yourself, monsieur. You need work fast, too, pretty boaster, I can
+tell you. For the royal jewellers will require the Rainbow Pearl very
+soon to fix it in its place in the crown for the coronation ceremony,
+and if that thing his Majesty holds is offered to them, how long, think
+you, will it be before all Mauravania knows that it is an imitation?
+Look you," waxing suddenly vicious, "I'll make it shorter still, the
+time you have to strive. Monsieur le Comte, take this message to his
+Majesty from me: If in three days he does not promise to accede to my
+demands and give me a public proof of it over his royal seal, I leave
+Mauravania--the pearl and letter leave with me, and they shall not come
+back until I return with them for the coronation."
+
+"For the love of God, madame," said the Count, "don't make it harder
+still. Oh, wait, wait, I beseech you!"
+
+"Not an hour longer than I have now said!" she flung back at him. "I
+have waited until I am tired of it, and my patience is worn out. Three
+days, Count; three days, monsieur with the puppy dog; three days, and
+not an instant longer, do you hear?"
+
+"Quite enough, madame," replied Cleek, with a courtly bow, "I promise to
+have them in two!"
+
+She threw back her head and fairly shook with laughter.
+
+"Of a truth, monsieur, you are a candid boaster!" she cried. "Look you,
+my good fellows, and you too, my poor dumb Clopin, pretty monsieur here
+will have the letter and the pearl in two days' time. Look to it that he
+never leaves this house at any minute from this time forth that you do
+not search him from top to toe. If he resists--ah, well, a pistol may go
+off accidentally, and things that Mauravania's king would give his life
+to keep hidden will come to light if any charge of murder is preferred.
+Monsieur the police spy, I wish you joy of your task."
+
+"Madame, I shall take joy in it," Cleek replied. "But why should we talk
+of unpleasant things when the future looks so bright? Come, may we not
+give ourselves a pleasant evening? Look, there is a piano, and--Count,
+hold my puppy for me, and please see that no one feeds him at any time.
+I am starving him so that he may devour some of Clopin's parakeets,
+because I hate the sight of the little beasts. Thank you. Madame, do you
+like music? Listen, then: I'll sing you Mauravania's national anthem:
+'God guard the throne; God shield the right!'" and, dropping down upon
+the seat before the open instrument, he did so.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night was ever memorable at the Villa Irma, for the detective
+seemed somehow to have given place to the courtier, and so merry was his
+mood, so infectious his good nature, that even madame came under the
+spell of it. She sang with him, she even danced a Russian polka with
+him; she sat with him at dinner, and flirted with him in the salon
+afterward; and when the time came for her to retire, it was he who took
+her bedroom candle from the shelf and put it into her hand.
+
+"Of a truth, you are a charming fellow, monsieur," she said, when he
+bent and kissed her hand. "What a pity you should be a police spy and
+upon so hopeless a case."
+
+"Hopeless cases are my delight, madame. Believe me, I shall not fail."
+
+"Only three days, remember, _cher ami_--only three days!"
+
+"Madame is too kind. I have said it: two will do. On the morning of the
+third madame's passport will be ready and the Rainbow Pearl be in the
+royal jeweller's hands. A thousand pleasant dreams--_bon soir_!" And
+bowed her out and kissed his hand to her as she went up the stairs to
+bed.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Thrice during the next twenty-four hours Cleek, who seemed to have
+become so attached to the mongrel dog that he kept it under his arm
+continually, had reason to leave the house, and thrice was he seized by
+madame's henchmen, bundled unceremoniously into a convenient room, and
+searched to the very skin before he was suffered to pass beyond the
+threshold. And if so much as a pin had been hidden upon his person, it
+must have been discovered.
+
+"You see, monsieur, how hopeless it is!" said the Count despairfully.
+"One dare not rebel: one dare not lift a finger, or the woman speaks and
+his Majesty's ruin falls. Oh, the madness of that boast of yours! Only
+another twenty-four hours--only another day--and then God help his
+Majesty!"
+
+"God has helped him a great deal better than he deserves, Count,"
+replied Cleek. "By to-morrow night at ten o'clock be in the square of
+the Aquisola, please. Bring with you the passports of madame and her
+companions, also a detachment of the Royal Guard, and his Majesty's
+cheque for the reward I am to receive."
+
+"Monsieur! You really hope to get the things? You really do?"
+
+"Oh, I do more than 'hope,' Count--I have succeeded. I knew last night
+where both pearl and letter were. To-morrow night--ah, well, let
+to-morrow tell its own tale. Only be in the square at the hour I
+mention, and when I lift a lighted candle and pass it across the salon
+window, send the guard here with the passports. Let them remain
+outside--within sight, but not within range of hearing what is said and
+done. You are alone to enter--remember that."
+
+"To receive the jewel and the letter?" eagerly. "Or, at least, to have
+you point out the hiding-place of them?"
+
+"No; we should be shot down like dogs if I undertook a mad thing like
+that."
+
+"Then, monsieur, how are we to seize them? How get them into our
+possession, his Majesty and I?"
+
+"From my hand, Count; this hand which held them both before I went to
+bed last night."
+
+"Monsieur!" The Count fell back from him as if from some supernatural
+presence. "You found them? You held them? You took possession of them
+last night? How did you get them out of the house?"
+
+"I have not done so yet."
+
+"But can you? Oh, monsieur, wizard though you are, can you get them past
+her guards? Can you, monsieur--can you?"
+
+"Watch for the light at the window, Count. It will not be waved unless
+it is safe for you to come and the pearl is already out of the house."
+
+"And the letter, monsieur--the damning letter?"
+
+Cleek smiled one of his strange, inscrutable smiles.
+
+"Ask me that to-morrow, Count," he said. "You shall hear something, you
+and madame, that will surprise you both," then twisted round on his heel
+and walked hurriedly away.
+
+And all that day and all that night he danced attendance upon madame,
+and sang to her, and handed her bedroom candle to her as he had done the
+night before, and gave back jest for jest and returned her merry
+badinage in kind.
+
+Nor did he change in that when the fateful to-morrow came. From morning
+to night he was at her side, at her beck and call, doing nothing that
+was different from the doings of yesterday, save that at evening he
+locked the mongrel dog up in his room instead of carrying him about. And
+the dog, feeling its loneliness, or, possibly, famishing--for he had
+given it not a morsel of food since he found it--howled and howled until
+the din became unbearable.
+
+"Monsieur, I wish you would silence that beast or else feed it," said
+madame pettishly. "The howling of the wretched thing gets on my nerves.
+Give it some food for pity's sake."
+
+"Not I," said Cleek. "Do you remember what I said, madame? I am getting
+it hungry enough to eat one--or perhaps all--of Clopin's wretched little
+parakeets."
+
+"You think they have to do with the hiding of the paper or the pearl,
+cher ami? Eh?"
+
+"I am sure of it. He would not carry the beastly little things about for
+nothing."
+
+"Ah, you are clever--you are very, very clever, monsieur," she made
+answer, with a laugh. "But he must begin his bird-eating quickly, that
+nuisance-dog, or it will be too late. See, it is already half-past nine;
+I retire to my bed in another hour and a half, as always, and then your
+last hope he is gone--z-zic! like that; for it will be the end of the
+second day, monsieur, and your promise not yet kept. Pestilence,
+monsieur," with a little outburst of temper, "do stop the little beast
+his howl. It is unbearable! I would you to sing to me like last night,
+but the noise of the dog is maddening."
+
+"Oh, if it annoys you like that, madame," said Cleek, "I'll take him
+round to the stable and tie him up there, so we may have the song
+undisturbed. Your men will not want to search me of course, when I am
+merely popping out and popping in again like that, I am sure?"
+
+Nevertheless they did, for although they had heard and did not stir when
+he left the room and ran up for the dog, when he came down with it under
+his arm and made to leave the house, he was pounced upon, dragged into
+an adjoining apartment by half a dozen burly fellows, stripped to the
+buff, and searched, as the workers in a diamond mine are searched,
+before they suffered him to leave the house. There was neither a sign of
+a pearl nor a scrap of a letter to be found upon him--they made sure of
+that before they let him go.
+
+"An enterprising lot, those lackeys of yours, madame," he said, when he
+returned from tying the dog up in the stable and rejoined her in the
+salon. "It will be an added pleasure to get the better of them, I can
+assure you."
+
+"Oui! if you can!" she answered, with a mocking laugh. "Clopin, cher
+ami, your poor little parakeets are safe for the night--unless monsieur
+grows desperate and eats them for himself."
+
+"Even that, if it were necessary to get the pearl, madame," said Cleek,
+with the utmost sang-froid. "Faugh!" looking at his watch, "a good
+twenty minutes wasted by the zealousness of those idiotic searchers of
+yours. Ten minutes to ten! Just time for one brief song. Let us make hay
+while the sun lasts, madame, for it goes down suddenly in Mauravania;
+and for some of us--it never comes up again!" Then, throwing himself
+upon the piano-seat, he ran his fingers across the keys and broke into
+the stately measures of the national anthem. And, of a sudden, while the
+song was yet in progress, the clock in the corridor jingled its musical
+chimes and struck the first note of the hour.
+
+He jumped to his feet and lifted both hands above his head.
+
+"Mauravania!" he cried. "Oh, Mauravania! For you! For you!" Then jumped
+to the mantelpiece, and catching up a lighted candle, flashed it twice
+across the window's width, and broke again into the national hymn.
+
+"Monsieur," cried out madame, "monsieur, what is the meaning of that?
+Have you lost your wits? You give a signal! For what? To whom?"
+
+"To the guards of Mauravania's king, madame, in honour of his safe
+escape from you!" he made reply; then twitched back the window curtains
+until the whole expanse of glass was bared. "Look! do you see them--do
+you, madame? His Majesty of Mauravania sends Madame Tcharnovetski a
+command to leave his kingdom, since he no longer has cause to fear a
+wasp whose sting has been plucked out."
+
+Her swift glance flashed to the fireplace, then to the corner where
+Clopin still sat with his jabbering parakeets, then flashed back to
+Cleek, and--she laughed in his face.
+
+"I think not, monsieur," she said, with a swaggering air. "Truly, I
+think not, my excellent friend."
+
+"What a pity you only think so, madame! As for me--Ah, welcome, Count,
+welcome a thousand times. The paper, my friend; you have brought it?
+Good! Give it to me. Madame, your passport--yours and your associates'.
+You leave Mauravania by the midnight train, and you have but little time
+to pack your effects. Your passport, madame, and--your bedroom candle.
+Oh, yes, the paper is still round it--see!" slipping off a sheet of note
+paper that was wrapped round the full length of the candle from top to
+bottom, "but if you will examine it, madame, you will find it is blank.
+I burned the real letter the night before last when I put this in its
+place."
+
+"You what?" she snapped; then caught the tube-shaped covering he had
+stripped from the candle, uncurled it, and--screamed.
+
+"Blank, madame, quite blank, you see," said Cleek serenely. "For one so
+clever in other things, you should have been more careful. A little
+pinch of powder in the punch at dinner-time--just that--and on the first
+night, too! It was so easy afterward to get into your room, remove the
+real paper, and wrap the candle in a blank piece while you slept."
+
+"You--you dog!" she snapped out viciously. "You drugged me?"
+
+"Yes, madame; you and the one-eyed man as well! Oh, don't excite
+yourself--don't pull at the poor wretch like that. The glass eye will
+come out quite easily, but--I assure you there is only a small lump of
+beeswax in the socket now. I removed the Rainbow Pearl from poor
+Monsieur Clopin's blind eye ten minutes after I burnt the letter,
+madame, and--it passed out of this house to-night! A clever idea to pick
+up a one-eyed pauper, madame, and hide the pearl in the empty socket of
+the lost eye, but--it was too bad, you had to supply a glass eye to keep
+it in, after the lid and the socket had withered and shrunk from so many
+years of emptiness. It worried the poor man, madame; he was always
+feeling it, always afraid that the lump behind would force it out; and,
+what is an added misfortune for your plans, the glass shell did not
+allow you to see the change when the pearl vanished and the bit of
+beeswax took its place. Madame Tcharnovetski, your passport. I know
+enough of the King of Mauravania to be sure that your life will not be
+safe if you are not past the frontier before daybreak!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Monsieur le comte--no! I thank you, but I cannot wait to be presented
+to his Majesty, for I, too, leave Mauravania to-night, and, like Madame
+yonder, return to other and more promising fields," said Cleek, an hour
+later, as he stood on the terrace of the Villa Irma and watched the slow
+progress down the moonlit avenue of the carriage which was bearing
+Madame Tcharnovetski and her effects to the railway station. "Give me
+the cheque, please; I have earned that, and--there is good use for it. I
+thank you, Count. Now do an act of charity, my friend: give the little
+dog in the stable a good meal, and then have a surgeon chloroform him
+into a peaceful and merciful death. They will find the Rainbow Pearl in
+his intestines when they come to dissect the body. I starved him,
+Count--starved him purposely, poor little wretch, so that he could be
+hungry enough to snap at anything in the way of food and bolt it
+instantly. To-night, when I went up to take him out to the stable, a
+thick smearing of beef extract over the surface of the pearl was
+sufficient; he swallowed it in a gulp! For a double reason, Count, there
+should be a cur quartered on the royal arms of this country after
+to-night."
+
+His voice dropped off into silence. The carriage containing madame had
+swung out through the gateway, and its shadow no longer blotted the
+broad, unbroken space of moonlit avenue. He turned and looked far out,
+over the square of the Aquisola, along the light-lined esplanade, to the
+palace gates and the fluttering flag that streamed against the sky above
+and beyond them.
+
+"Oh, Mauravania!" he said. "An Englishman's heritage! Dear country, how
+beautiful! My love to your Queen--my prayers for you."
+
+"Monsieur!" exclaimed the Count, "monsieur, what juggle is this? Your
+face is again the face of that other night--the face that stirs memory
+yet does not rivet it. Monsieur, speak, I beg of you. What are you? Who
+are you?"
+
+"Cleek," he made answer. "Just Cleek! It will do. Oh, Mauravania, dear
+land of desolated hopes, dear grave of murdered joys!"
+
+"Monsieur!"
+
+"Hush! Let me alone. There are things too sacred; and this--" His hands
+reached outward as if in benediction; his face, upturned, was as a face
+transfigured, and something that shone as silver gleamed in the corner
+of his eye. "Mauravania!" he said. "Oh, Mauravania! My country--my
+people--good-bye!"
+
+"Monsieur! Dear Heaven--_Majesty!_"
+
+Then came a rustling sound, and when Cleek had mastered himself and
+looked down, a figure with head uncovered knelt on one knee at his feet.
+
+"Get up, Count," he said, with a little shaky laugh. "I appreciate the
+honour, but--your fancy is playing you a trick. I tell you I never set
+foot in Mauravania before, my friend."
+
+"I know--I know. How should you. Majesty, when it was as a child at
+Queen Karma's breast Mauravania last saw--Don't leave like this!
+Majesty! Majesty! 'God guard the right'--the pearl and the kingdom are
+here."
+
+"Wrong, my good friend. The kingdom is there--where you found me--in
+England; and so, too, is the pearl. For there is no kingdom like the
+kingdom of love, no pearl like a good woman. Good night, Count, and many
+thanks for your hospitality. You are a little upset to-night, but no
+doubt you will be all right again in the morning. I will walk to the
+station and--alone, if it is all the same to you."
+
+"Majesty!"
+
+"Dreams, Count, dreams. The riddle is solved, my friend. Good luck to
+your country and--good-bye!"
+
+And, setting his back to the palace and the lights and the fluttering
+flag, and his face to the land that held her, turned and went his
+way--to the West--to England--and to those things which are higher than
+crowns and better than sceptres and more precious than thrones and
+ermine.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
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