“Got you, Miss Rosie Edgburn! Got you, Señor Juan Alvarez,” rapped Cleek.... “Stop him, nab him, Mr. Narkom!”
“Got you, Miss Rosie Edgburn! Got you, Señor Juan Alvarez,” rapped Cleek.... “Stop him, nab him, Mr. Narkom!”
He stopped suddenly and switched round. Miss Valmond had risen and so had her mother. He was on the pair of them like a leaping cat; there was a sharp click-click, a snarl, and a scream, and one end of a handcuff was on the wrist of each.
“Got you, Miss Rosie Edgburn! Got you, Señor Juan Alvarez!” he rapped out sharply; then in a louder tone, as the Reverend Horace made a bolt for the door: “Stop him, nab him, Mr. Narkom! Quick! Played sir, played. Come in, Petrie; come in, Hammond. Gentlemen, here they are, all three of them: Lieutenant Eric Edgburn, his daughter Rose, and Señor Juan Alvarez, the three brute beasts who sent five men to their death for the sake of a lode of sapphires and the devil’s lust for gain!”
“It’s a lie!” flung out the girl who had been known as Rose Valmond.
“Oh, no, it’s not, you vixen! You loathsome creature that prostituted holy things and made a shield of religion to carry on a vampire’s deeds. Look here, you beast of blasphemy: I know the secret of this,” he said, and walked over and laid his hand on the crucifix at the head of the bed. “Petrie! round into the oratory with you. There’s a nob at the side of the prayer desk—press it when I shout. Oh, no, Miss Edgburn; no, I shan’t dance circles nor put my fingers into my nose, nor bite the dust and die. Look how I dare it all. Now Petrie,now!”
And lo! as he spoke, out of the nostrils of the figure on the cross there rushed downward two streams of white vapour which beat upon the pillows and upon him, smothering both in white dust.
“Face powder, Miss Edgburn, only face powder from your own little case over there,” he said. “I removed the devil’s dust last night when I was in this room alone.”
She made him no reply—only, like a cornered wretch, screamed out and fainted.
“Mr. Narkom, you have seen the method of administering the thing which caused the death of those five men; it is now only fair that you should know what that thing was,” he said, turning to the superintendent. “It is known by two names—Devil’s Dust and Dust of Death, and both suit it well. It is the fine, feathery powder that grows on the young shoots of the bamboo tree—a favourite method of secret killing with the natives of the Malay Peninsula and those of Madagascar, the Philippines and Ceylon. When blown into the nostrils of a living creature it produces first an awful agony of suffocation, a feeling as though the brain is coming down and exuding from the nostrils, then delirium, during which the victim invariably falls on his face and bites the earth; then comes death. Death without a trace, my friend, for the hellish dust all but evaporates, and the slight sediment that remains is carried out of the system by the spasm of enteric it produces. That is the riddle’s solution. As for the rest, those men were lured here by letters—from Alvarez—telling them of the reef’s great fortune, of the necessity for coming at once and bringing their deeds with them, and impressing upon them the possibility of being defrauded if they breathed one word to a mortal soul about their leaving or why. They came, they were invited to spend the night and to sleep upon that accursed bed, and—the devil’s dust did the rest. I traced that out through poor Jim Peabody’s sock. It was one of the blue yarn kind that are given to the inmates of workhouses. I traced him through that; and the others through the photographs. Each had been known to have received a letter from London, and each had in turn vanished without a word. Poor chaps! Poor unhappy chaps! Let us hope, dear friend, that they have found ‘the Place of Sapphires’ after all.”
“How did I come to suspect the girl?” said Cleek, answering Narkom’s query, as they swung off through the darkness in the red limousine, leaving Edgburn and his confederates in the hands of the police. “Well, as a matter of fact, I did not suspect her at all, in the beginning—her saintly reputation saved her from any such thing as that. It was only when her father came in that I knew. And later, I knew even better—when I saw that pretended imbecile sitting there in that room; for the blundering fool had been ass enough to kick off his slippers and sit there in his stocking feet, and I spotted the Alvarez foot on the instant. Still, I didn’t know but what the girl herself might be an innocent victim—a sort of dove in a vulture’s nest—and it was not until I found that scrap of wood from a sharpened lead pencil that I began to doubt her. It was only when I promised that Barrington-Edwards should be trapped, that I actually knew. The light that flamed in her eyes in spite of her at that would have made an idiot understand. What’s that? What should I suspect from the finding of that scrap of pencil? My dear Mr. Narkom, carry your mind back to that moment when I found the stain on poor Jim Peabody’s thumb, and then examined the blade of his pocket knife. The marks on the latter showed clearly that the man had sharpened a pencil with it—and, of course, with the point of that pencil against the top of his thumb. By the peculiar bronze-like shine of the streaks, and the small particles of dust adhering to the knife blade, I felt persuaded that the pencil was an indelible one—in short,one of those which write a faint, blackish-lilac hue which, on the application of moisture, turns to a vivid and indelible purple. The moisture induced by the act of thrusting his forefingers up his nostrils to allay the horrible sensation of the brain descending, which that hellish powder produces, together with the perspiration which comes with intense agony, had made such a change in the smears his thumb and forefinger bore, and left no room for doubt that at the time he was smitten he had either just begun or just concluded writing something with an indelible pencil which he had but recently sharpened. Poor wretch! he of all the lot had some one belonging to him that was still living—his poor old mother. It is very fair to suppose that, finding the Alvarez place so lavishly furnished, and having hopes that great riches were yet to be his, he sat down on that bed and began to write a few lines in his illiterate way to that mother before wholly undressing and getting between the sheets. The mark on his palm is a clear proof that when the powder suddenly descended upon him he involuntarily closed his hand on that letter and the perspiration transferred to his flesh the shape of the scrawl upon which it rested. Pardon? How did I know through that scrawl that I was really on the track, and that it was the Bareva Reef that was at the bottom of the whole game? My dear Mr. Narkom, I won’t insult your intelligence by explaining that. All you have to do is to turn that tracing upside down and lookthroughit—or at it in a mirror—and you’ll have the answer for yourself. What’s that? The parcel the girl gave Edgburn to carry out on the pretext of taking it to an orphanage? Oh, that was how they were slowly getting rid of the victims’ clothes. Cutting them up into little pieces and throwing them into the river, I suppose, or if not——”
He stopped suddenly, his ear caught by a warning sound; then turned in his seat and glanced through the little window at the back of the limousine.
“I thought as much,” he said, half aloud; then leaned forward, caught up the pipe of the speaking tube, and signalled Lennard. “Look sharp—taxi following us!” he said. “Put on a sudden spurt—that chap will increase speed to keep pace with us—then pull up sharp and let the other fellow’s impetus carry him by before he can help himself. Out with the light, Mr. Narkom—out with it quick!”
Both Lennard and his master followed instructions. Of a sudden the lights flicked out, the car leapt forward with a bound, then pulled up with a jerk that shook it from end to end. In that moment the taxi in the rear whizzed by them, and Narkom, leaning forward to look as it flashed past, saw seated within it the figure of Count Waldemar of Mauravania.
“By James! Did you see that, Cleek?” he cried, and switched round and made a grab for Cleek’s arm.
But Cleek was not there. His seat was empty, and the door beside it was swinging ajar.
“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” exclaimed the superintendent, fairly carried out of himself—for, even in his old Vanishing Cracksman’s days, when he had slipped the leash and eluded the police so often, the man had not made a more adroit, more silent, more successful getaway than this. “Of all the astonishing——! Gad, an eel’s a fool to him for slipping out of tight places. When did he go, I wonder, and where?”
Never very strong on matters of detail, here curiosity tricked him into absolute indiscretion. Sliding along the seat to the swinging door he thrust it open and leaned out into the darkness, for a purpose so evident that he who ran might read. That one who randid, he had good reason to understand in the next instant, for, of a sudden, the taxi in advance checked its wild flight, swung round with a noisy scroo-op, and pelted back until the two vehicles stood cheek by jowl, so to speak, and the glare of its headlights waspouring full force upon Mr. Narkom and into the interior of the red limousine.
“Here! Dash your infernal impudence,” began he, blinking up at the driver through a glare which prevented him seeing that the taxicab’s leather blinds had been discreetly pulled down, and its interior rendered quite invisible; but before he could add so much as another word to his protest the chauffeur’s voice broke in with a blandness and an accent which told its own story.
“Dix mille pardons, m’sieur,” it commenced, then pulled itself up as if the owner of it had suddenly recollected himself—and added abruptly in a farcical attempt to imitate the jargon of the fast-disappearing London cabby. “Keep of the ’air on, ole coq! Only wantin’ to arsk of the question civile. Lost my bloomin’ way. Put a cove on to the short cut to the ’Igh Street will yer, like a blessed Christian? I dunno where I are.”
Mr. Narkom was not suffered to make reply. Before he had more than grasped the fact that the speaker was undeniably a Frenchman, Lennard—out of the range of that dazzling light—had made the discovery that he was yet more undeniably a Frenchman of that class from which the Apaches are recruited, and stepped into the breach with astonishing adroitness.
“Oh, that’s the trouble, is it?” he interposed. “My hat! Why, of course we’ll put you on the way. Wot’s more, we’ll take you along and show you—won’t we, guv’ner, eh?—so as you won’t go astray till you gets there. ’Eads in and door shut, Superintendent,” bringing the limousine around until it pointed in the same direction as the taxicab. “Now then, straight ahead, and foller yer nose, Jules; we’ll be rubbin’ shoulders with you the whole blessed way. And as the Dook of Wellington said to Napoleon Bonaparte, ‘None of your larks, you blighter—you’re a-comin’ along with me!’”
That he was, was a condition of affairs so inevitable that the chauffeur made no attempt to evade it; merely put on speed and headed straight for the distant High Street for the purpose of getting rid of his escort as soon as possible; and Lennard, putting on speed, likewise, and keeping pace with him, ran him neck and neck, until the heath was left far and away behind, the darkness gave place to a glitter of street lamps, the lonely roads to populous thoroughfares, and the way was left clear for Cleek to get off unfollowed and unmolested.
Screened by that darkness, and close sheltered by the matted gorse which fringed and dotted the expanse of the nearby heath, he had been an interested witness to the entire proceeding.
“Played, my lad, played!” he commented, putting his thoughts into mumbled words of laughing approval, as Lennard, taking the taxicab under guard, escorted it and its occupants out of the immediate neighbourhood; then, excessive caution prompting him to quell even this little ebullition, he shut up like an oyster and neither spoke, nor moved, nor made any sound until the two vehicles were represented by nothing but a purring noise dwindling away into the distance.
When that time came, however, he rose, and facing the heath, forged out across its mist-wrapped breadth with that long, swinging, soldierly stride peculiar unto him, his forehead puckered with troubled thought, his jaw clamped, and his lips compressed until his mouth seemed nothing more than a bleak slit gashed in a gray, unpleasant-looking mask.
But after a while the night and the time and the place worked their own spell, and the troubled look dropped away; the dull eyes lighted, the grim features softened, and the curious crooked smile that was Nature’s birth-gift to him broke down the rigid lines of the “bleak slit” and looped up one corner of his mouth.
It was magic ground, this heath—a place thick set as the Caves of Manheur with the Sapphires of Memory—and to a nature such as his these things could not but appeal.
Here Dollops had come into his life—a starveling, an outcast; derelict even in the very morning time of youth—a bit of human wreckage that another ten minutes would have seen stranded forever upon the reefs of crime.
Here, too—on that selfsame night, when the devil had been cheated, and the boy had gone, and they two stood alone together in the mist and darkness—he had first laid aside the mask of respectability and told Ailsa Lorne the truth about himself! Of his Apache times—of his Vanishing Cracksman’s days—and, in the telling, had watched the light die out of her dear eyes and dread of him darken them, when she knew.
But not for always, thank God! For, in later days—when Time had lessened the shock, when she came to know him better, when the threads of their two lives had become more closely woven, and the hope had grown to be something more than a mere possibility....
He laughed aloud, remembering, and with a sudden rush of animal spirits twitched off his hat, flung it up and caught it as it fell, after the manner of a happy boy.
God, what a world—what a glorious, glorious world! All things were possible in it if a man but walked straight and knew how to wait.
Well, please God, a part, at least, ofhislong waiting would be over in another month.Shewould be back in England then—her long visit to the Hawksleys ended and nothing before her now but the pleasant excitement of trousseau days. For the coming autumn would see the final act of restitution made, the last Vanishing Cracksman debt paid, to the uttermost farthing; and when that time came.... He flung up his hat again and shouted from sheer excess of joy, and forged on through the mist and darkness whistling.
His way lay across the great common to the Vale of Health district, and thence down a slanting road and a slopingstreet to the Hampstead Heath Station of the Tube Railway, and he covered the distance to such good effect that half-past eleven found him “down under,” swaying to the rhythmic movement of an electric train and arrowing through the earth at a lively clip.
Ten minutes later he changed over to yet another underground system, swung on for half an hour or so through gloom and bad air and the musty smell of a damp tunnel before the drop of the land and the rise of the roadbed carried the train out into the open and the air came fresh and sweet and pure, as God made it, over field and flood and dewy garden spaces; and away to the west a prickle of lights on a quiet river told where the stars mirrored themselves in the glass of Father Thames.
At a toy station in the hush and loneliness of the pleasant country ways his long ride came to an end at last, and he swung off into the balm and fragrance of the night to face a two-mile walk along quiet, shadow-filled lanes and over wet wastes of young bracken to a wee little house in the heart of a green wilderness, with a high-walled, old-world garden surrounding it, and, in the far background, a gloom of woodland smeared in darker purple against the purple darkness of the sky.
No light shone out from the house to greet him—no light could come from behind that screening wall, unless it were one set in an upper window—yet he was certain the place was not deserted; for, as he came up out of the darkness, catlike of tread and catlike of ear, he was willing to swear that he could catch the sound of some one moving about restlessly in the shadow of that high, brick wall—and the experiences of the night made him cautious of things that moved in darkness.
He stopped short, and remained absolutely still for half a minute, then, stooping, swished his hand through the bracken in excellent imitation of a small animal running,and shrilled out a note that was uncannily like the death squeal of a stoat-caught rabbit.
“Gawd’s truth, guv’ner, is it you at last, sir? And me never seein’ nor hearin’ a blessed thing!” spoke a voice in answer, from the wall’s foot; then a latch clicked and, as Cleek rose to his feet, a garden door swung inward, a rectangle of light shone in the darkness, and silhouetted against it stood Dollops.
“What are you doing out here at this time of night, you young monkey? Don’t you know it’s almost one o’clock?” said Cleek, as he went forward and joined the boy.
“Don’t I know it, says you? Don’t Ijust!” he gave back. “There aren’t a minute since the night come on that I haven’t counted, sir—not a bloomin’ one; and if you hadn’t turned up just as you did——Well, let that pass, as the Suffragette said when she heaved ’arf a brick through the shop window. Gawd’s truth, guv’ner, do you realise that you’ve been gone since yesterday afternoon and I haven’t heard a word from you in all that time?”
“Well, what of that? It’s not the first time by dozens that I’ve done the same thing. Why should it worry you at this late day? Look here, my young man, you’re not developing ‘nerves’ are you? Because, if you are——Turn round and let’s have a look at you! Why, you are as pale as a ghost, you young beggar, and shaking like a leaf. Anything wrong with you, old chap?”
“Not as I knows of,” returned Dollops, making a brave attempt to smile and be his old happy-go-lucky, whimsical self, albeit he wasn’t carrying it off quite successfully, for there was a droop to his smile and a sort of whimper underlying his voice, and Cleek’s keen eyes saw that his hand groped about blindly in its effort to find the fastenings of the garden door.
“Leastwise, nothing as matters now that you are here, sir. And Iamglad yer back, guv’ner—Lawd, yuss!‘Nothin’ like company to buck you up,’ as the bull said when he tossed the tinker; so of course——”
“Here! You let those fastenings alone. I’ll attend to them!” rapped in Cleek’s voice with a curious note of alarm in it, as he moved briskly forward and barred and locked the wall door. “If I didn’t know that eating, not drinking, was your particular failing——”
Here he stopped, his half-uttered comment cut into by a bleating cry, and he screwed round to face a startling situation. For there was Dollops, leaning heavily against a flowering almond tree, his face like a dead face for colour, and his fingers clawing frantically at the lower part of his waistcoat, doubling and twisting in the throes of an internal convulsion.
The gravelled pathway gave forth two sharp scrunches, and Cleek was just in time to catch him as he lurched forward and sprawled heavily against him. The man’s arms closed instinctively about the twisting, sweat-drenched, helpless shape, and with great haste and infinite tenderness gathered it up and carried it into the house; but he had scarcely more than laid the boy upon a sofa and lit the lamp of the small apartment which served them as a general living-room, when all the agony of uncertainty which beset his mind regarding the genesis of this terrifying attack vanished in a sudden rush of enlightenment.
All that was left of a bounteous and strikingly diversified afternoon tea still littered the small round dining table, and there, on one plate, lay the shells of two crabs, on another, the remains of a large rhubarb tart, on a third, the skins of five bananas leaning coquettishly up against the lid of an open pickle jar, and hard by there was a pint tumbler with the white blur of milk dimming it.
“Good Lord! The young anaconda!” blurted out Cleek, as he stood and stared at this appalling array. “No wonder, no wonder!” Then he turned round on his heel, lookedat the writhing and moaning boy, and in a sudden fever of doing, peeled off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and made a bolt for the kitchen stove, the hot-water kettle, and the medicine chest.
The result of Master Dollops’ little gastronomic experiment scarcely needs to be recorded. It is sufficient to say that he had the time of his life that night; that he kept Cleek busy every minute for the next twenty-four hours wringing out flannels in hot water and dosing him with homely remedies, and that when he finally came through the siege was as limp as a wet newspaper and as feeble as a good many dry ones.
“What you need to pull yourself together is a change, you reckless young ostrich—a week’s roughing it in the open country by field and stream, and as many miles as possible from so much as the odour of a pastry cook’s shop,” said Cleek, patting him gently upon the shoulder. “A nice sort of assistant you are—keeping a man out of his bed for twenty-four hours, with his heart in his mouth and his hair on end, you young beggar. Now, now, now! None of your blubbing! Sit tight while I run down and make some gruel for you. After that I’ll nip out and ’phone through to the Yard and tell Mr. Narkom to have somebody look up a caravan that can be hired, and we’ll be off for a week’s ‘gypsying’ in Yorkshire, old chap.”
He did—coming back later with a piece of surprising news. For it just so happened that the idea of a week’s holiday-making, a week’s rambling about the green lanes, the broad moors, and through the wild gorges of the West Riding, and living the simple life in a caravan, appealed to Mr. Maverick Narkom as being the most desirable thing in the world at that moment, and he made haste to ask Cleek’s permission to share the holiday with him. As nothing could have been more to his great ally’s liking, the matter was settled forthwith. A caravan was hired by telegramto Sheffield, and at ten the next morning the little party turned its back upon London and fared forth to the pleasant country lands, the charm of laughing waters, and the magic that hides in trees.
For five days they led an absolutely idyllic life; loafing in green wildernesses and sleeping in the shadow of whispering woods; and this getting back to nature proved as much of a tonic to the two men as to the boy himself—refreshing both mind and body, putting red blood into their veins, and breathing the breath of God into their nostrils.
Having amply provisioned the caravan before starting, they went no nearer to any human habitation than they were obliged to do in passing from one district to another; and one day was so exact a pattern of the next that its history might have stood for them all: up with the dawn and the birds and into woodland pool or tree-shaded river; then gathering fuel and making a fire and cooking breakfast; then washing the utensils, harnessing the horses, and moving on again—sometimes Cleek driving, sometimes Narkom, sometimes the boy—stopping when they were hungry to prepare lunch just as they had prepared breakfast, then forging on again until they found some tree-hedged dell or bosky wood where they might spend the night, crooned to sleep by the wind in the leaves, and watched over by the sentinel stars.
So they had spent the major part of the week, and so they might have spent it all, but that chance chose to thrust them suddenly out of idleness into activity, and to bring them—here, in this Arcadia—face to face again with the evils of mankind and the harsh duty of the law.
It had gone nine o’clock on that fifth night when a curious thing happened: they had halted for the night by the banks of a shallow, chattering stream which flowed through a wayside spinney, beyond whose clustering treetops they had seen, before the light failed, the castellated top of a distanttower and, farther afield, the weathercock on an uplifting church spire; they had supped and were enjoying their ease—the two men sprawling at full length on the ground enjoying a comfortable smoke, while Dollops, with a mouth harmonica, was doing “Knocked ’Em in the Old Kent Road,” his back against a tree, his eyes upturned in ecstasy, his long legs stretched out upon the turf, and his feet crossed one over the other—and all about them was peace; all the sordid, money-grubbing, crime-stained world seemed millions of miles away, when, of a sudden, there came a swift rush of bodies—trampling on dead leaves and brushing against live ones—then a voice cried out commandingly, “Surrender yourselves in the name of the king!” and scrambling to a sitting position, they looked up to find themselves confronted by a constable, a gamekeeper, and two farm labourers—the one with drawn truncheon and the other three with cocked guns.
“Hullo, I say!” began Mr. Narkom, in amazement. “Why, what the dickens——” But he was suffered to get no farther.
“You mind your P’s and Q’s! I warn you that anything you say will be used against you!” interjected sharply and authoritatively the voice of the constable. “Hawkins, you and Marlow keep close guard over these chaps while me and Mr. Simpkins looks round for the animal. I said it would be the work of gypsies, didn’t I now, Mr. Simpkins?” addressing the gamekeeper. “Come on and let’s have a look for the beast. Keep eyes peeled and gun at full cock, Mr. Simpkins, and give un both barrels if un makes to spring at us. This be a sharp capture, Mr. Simpkins—what?”
“Aye, but un seems to take it uncommon cool, Mr. Nippers—one of ’em’s larfiin’ fit to bust hisself!” replied the gamekeeper as Cleek slapped both thighs, and throwing back his head, voiced an appreciative guffaw. “Un doan’t look much loike gypsies either from t’ little as Ah can see of ’em in this tomfool loight. Wait a bit till Ah scoop up an armful o’ leaves and throw ’em on the embers o’ fire yon.”
He did so forthwith; and the moment the dry leaves fell on the remnants of the fire which the caravanners had used to cook their evening meal there was a gush of aromatic smoke, a sudden puff, and then a broad ribbon of light rushed upward and dispelled every trace of darkness. And by the aid of that ribbon of light Mr. Nippers saw somethingwhich made him almost collapse with astonishment and chagrin.
The great of the world may, and often do, forget their meetings with the small fry, but the small fry never cease to remember their meetings with the great, or to treasure a vivid remembrance of that immortal day when they were privileged to rub elbows with the elect.
Five years had passed since Mrs. Maverick Narkom, seeking a place wherein to spend the summer holidays with the little Narkoms and their nurses, had let her choice fall upon Winton-Old-Bridges and had dwelt there for two whole months. Three times during her sojourn her liege lord had come down for a week-end with his wife and children, and during one of these brief visits, meeting Mr. Ephraim Nippers, the village constable in the public highway, he had deigned to stop and speak to the man and to present him with a sixpenny cigar.
Times had changed since then; Mr. Nippers was now head constable for the district, but he still kept that cigar under a glass shade on the drawing-room whatnot, and he still treasured a vivid recollection of the great man who had given it to him and whom he now saw sitting on the ground with his coat off and his waistcoat unbuttoned, his moustache uncurled, wisps of dried grass clinging to his tousled hair, and all the dignity of office conspicuous by its absence.
“Oh, lummy!” said Mr. Nippers with a gulp. “Put down the hammers of them guns, you two—put ’em down quick! It’s Mr. Narkom—Mr. Maverick Narkom, superintendent at Scotland Yard!”
“Hullo!” exclaimed Mr. Narkom, shading his eyes from the firelight and leaning forward to get a clearer view of the speaker. “How the dickens do you know that, my man? And who the dickens are you, anyway? Can’t say that I remember ever seeing your face before.”
Mr. Nippers hastened to explain that little experience offive years ago; but the circumstance which had impressed itself so deeply upon his memory had passed entirely out of the superintendent’s.
“Oh, that’s it, is it?” said he. “Can’t say that I recall the occasion; but Mrs. Narkom certainly did stop at Winton-Old-Bridges some four or five summers ago, so of course it’s possible. By the way, my man, what caused you to make this sudden descent upon us? And what are these chaps who are with you bearing arms for? Anything up?”
“Oh, lummy, sir, yes! A murder’s just been committed—leastwise it’s only just been discovered; but it can’t have been long since itwascommitted, Mr. Narkom, for Miss Renfrew, who found him, sir, and give the alarm, she says as the poor dear gentleman was alive at a quarter to eight, ’cause she looked into the room at that time to ask him if there was anything he wanted, and he spoke up and told her no, and went on with his figgerin’ just the same as usual.”
“As usual?” said Cleek. “Why do you say ‘as usual,’ my friend? Was the man an accountant of some sort?”
“Lummy! no, sir. A great inventor is what he is—or was, poor gentleman. Reckon you must ’a’ heard of un some time or another—most everybody has. Nosworth is the name, sir—Mr. Septimus Nosworth of the Round House. You could see the tower of it over yon if you was to step out into the road and get clear of these trees.”
Cleek was on his feet like a flash.
“Not the great Septimus Nosworth?” he questioned eagerly. “Not the man who invented Lithamite?—the greatest authority on high explosives in England? Not that Septimus Nosworth, surely?”
“Aye—him’s the one, poor gentleman. I thought it like as the name would be familiar, sir. A goodish few have heard of un, one way and another.”
“Yes,” acquiesced Cleek. “Lithamite carried his name from one end of the globe to the other; and his familyaffairs came into unusual prominence in consequence. Widower, wasn’t he?—hard as nails and bitter as gall. Had an only son, hadn’t he?—a wild young blade who went the pace: took up with chorus girls, music hall ladies, and persons of that stripe, and got kicked out from under the parental roof in consequence.”
“Lummy, now! think of you a-knowin’ about all that!” said Mr. Nippers, in amazement. “But then, your bein’ with Mr. Narkom and him bein’ what he is—why, of course! Scotland Yard it do know everything, I’m told, sir.”
“Yes—it reads the papers occasionally, Mr. Nippers,” said Cleek. “I may take it from your reply, may I not, that I am correct regarding Mr. Septimus Nosworth’s son?”
“Indeed, yes, sir—right as rain. Leastwise, from what I’ve heard. I never see the young gentleman, myself. Them things you mention happened before Mr. Nosworth come to live in these parts—a matter of some four years or more ago. Alwuss had his laboratory here, sir—built it on the land he leased from Sir Ralph Droger’s father in the early sixties—and used to come over frequent and shut hisself in the Round House for days on end; but never come here to live until after that flare-up with Master Harry. Come then and built livin’ quarters beside the Round House and, after a piece, fetched Miss Renfrew and old Patty Dax over to live with un.”
“Miss Renfrew and old Patty Dax? Who are they?”
“Miss Renfrew is his niece, sir—darter of a dead sister. Old Patty Dax, she war the cook. I dunno what her be now, though—her died six months ago and un hired Mistress Armroyd in her place. French piece, her am, though bein’ widder of a Lancashire man, and though I doan’t much fancy foreigners nor their ways, this I will say: her keeps the house like a pin and her cookin’s amazin’ tasty—indeed, yes.”
“You are an occasional caller in the servants’ hall, I see, Mr. Nippers,” said Cleek, serenely, as he took up his coat and shook it, preparatory to putting it on. “I think, Mr. Narkom, that in the interests of the public at large it will be well for some one a little more efficient than the local constabulary to look into this case, so, if you don’t mind making yourself a trifle more presentable, it will be as well for us to get Mr. Nippers to show us the way to the scene of the tragedy. While you are doing it I will put a few ‘Headland’ questions to our friend here if you don’t mind assuring him that I am competent to advise.”
“Right you are, old chap,” said Narkom, taking his cue. “Nippers, this is Mr. George Headland, one of the best of my Yard detectives. He’ll very likely give you a tip or two in the matter of detecting crimes, if you pay attention to what he says.”
Nippers “paid attention” forthwith. The idea of being in consultation with any one connected with Scotland Yard tickled his very soul; and, in fancy, he already saw his name getting into the newspapers of London, and his fame spreading far beyond his native weald.
“I won’t trouble you for the full details of the murder, Mr. Nippers,” said Cleek. “Those, I fancy, this Miss Renfrew will be able to supply when I see her. For the present, tell me: how many other occupants does the house hold beyond these two of whom you have spoken—Miss Renfrew and the cook, Mrs. Armroyd?”
“None, sir, but the scullery maid, Emily, and the parlour maid, Clark. But both of them is out to-night, sir—havin’ went to a concert over at Beattie Corners. A friend of Mistress Armroyd’s sent her two tickets, and her not bein’ able to go herself, her thought it a pity for ’em to be wasted, so her give ’em to the maids.”
“I see, no male servants at all, then?”
“No, sir; not one. There’s Jones—the handy man—ascomes in mornin’s to do the rough work and the haulin’ and carryin’ and things like that; and there’s the gardener and Mr. Kemper—him as is Mr. Nosworth’s assistant in the laboratory, sir—but none of ’em is ever in the house after five o’clock. Set against havin’ men sleep in the house was Mr. Nosworth—swore as never another should after him and Master Harry had their fallin’ out. Why, sir, he was that bitter he’d never even allow Mr. Charles to set foot in the place, just because him and Master Harry used to be friends—which makes it precious hard on Miss Renfrew, I can tell you.”
“As how? Is this ‘Mr. Charles’ connected with Miss Renfrew in any way?”
“Lummy! yes, sir—he’s her young man. Been sweet on each other ever since they was in pinafores; but never had no chance to marry because Mr. Charles—Mr. Charles Drummond is his full name, sir—he hasn’t one shillin’ to rub against another, and Miss Renfrew she’s a little worse off than him. Never gets nothin’, I’m told, for keepin’ house for her uncle—just her food and lodgin’ and clothes—and her slavin’ like a nigger for him the whole blessed time. Keeps his books and superintends the runnin’ of the house, she do, but never gets a brass farthin’ for it, poor girl. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, Mr. Headland, sir, but this I must say: A rare old skinflint was Mr. Septimus Nosworth—wouldn’t part with a groat unless un was forced to. But praise be, her’ll get her dues now; fegs, yes! unless old skinflint went and changed his will without her knowin’.”
“Oho!” said Cleek, with a strong rising inflection. “His will was made in Miss Renfrew’s favour, was it?”
“Aye. That’s why her come and put up with un and all his hardheartedness—denyin’ her the pleasure o’ ever seein’ her young man just because him and Master Harry had been friends and playmates when t’ pair of un was justboys in knickers and broad collars. There be a stone heart for you.”
“Rather. Now one more question: I think you said it was Miss Renfrew who gave the alarm when the murder was discovered, Mr. Nippers. How did she give it and to whom?”
“Eh, now! to me and Mistress Armroyd, of course. Me and her war sittin’ in the kitchen havin’ a bite o’ supper at the time. Gorham, he war there, too, in the beginnin’; but un didn’t stop, of course—’twouldn’t ’a’ done for the pair of us to be off duty together.”
“Oh! is Gorham a constable, then?”
“Aye—under constable: second to me. Got un appointed six months ago. Him had just gone a bit of a time when Miss Renfrew come rushin’ in and shrieked out about the murder; but he heard the rumpus and came poundin’ back, of course. I dunno what I’d ’a’ done if un hadn’t, for Miss Renfrew her went from one faintin’ fit to another—’twas just orful. Gorham helped Ah to carry her up to the sittin’-room, wheer Mistress Armroyd burnt feathers under her nose, and when we’d got her round a bit we all three went outside and round to the laboratory. That’s when we first see the prints of the animal’s feet. Mistress Armroyd spied ’em first—all over the flower bed just under the laboratory window.”
“Oho! then that is what you meant when you alluded to an ‘animal’ when you pounced down upon us, was it? I see. One word more: what kind of an animal was it? Or couldn’t you tell from the marks?”
“No, sir, I couldn’t—nobody could unless it might be Sir Ralph Droger. He’ll be like to, if anybody. Keeps all sorts of animals and birds and things in great cages in Droger Park, does Sir Ralph. One thing I can swear to, though, sir: they warn’t like the footprints of any animal as I ever see. Theer be a picture o’ St. Jarge and the Dragonon the walls o’ Town Hall at Birchampton, Mr. Headland, sir, and them footprints is more like the paws of that dragon than anything else I can call to mind. Scaly and clawed they is—like the thing as made ’em was part bird and part beast—and they’re a good twelve inches long, every one of ’em.”
“Hum-m-m! That’s extraordinary. Deeply imprinted, are they?”
“Lummy! yes, sir. The animal as made ’em must have weighed ten or twelve stone at least. Soon as I see them, sir, I knowed I had my work cut out, so I left Gorham in charge of the house, rattled up these two men and Mr. Simpkins, here—which all three is employed at Droger Park, sir—and set out hot foot to look for gypsies.”
“Why?”
“’Cause Mistress Armroyd she says as she see a gypsy lurkin’ round the place just before dark, sir; and he had a queer thing like a bear’s muzzle in his hand.”
“Ah, I see!” said Cleek; and gave one of his odd smiles as he turned round and looked at the superintendent. “All ready, Mr. Narkom? Good! Let us go over to the Round House and investigate this interesting case. Dollops, stop where you are and look after the caravan. If we are away more than a couple of hours, tumble into bed and go to sleep. We may be a short time or we may be a long one. In affairs like this one never knows.”
“Any ideas, old chap?” queried Narkom in a whisper as they forged along together in the wake of Nippers and his three companions.
“Yes—a great many,” answered Cleek. “I am particularly anxious, Mr. Narkom, to have a look at those footprints and an interview with Miss Renfrew. I want to meet that young lady very much indeed.”
Twenty minutes later his desires in that respect were granted; and, having been introduced by Mr. Nippers to the little gathering in the sitting-room of the house of disaster as “a friend of mine from Scotland Yard, miss,” he found himself in the presence of one of those meek-faced, dove-eyed, “mousy” little bodies who seem born to be “patient Griseldas”; and in looking at her he was minded of the description of “Lady Jane” in the poem:
“Her pulse was slow, milk white her skin—She had not blood enough to sin.”
“Her pulse was slow, milk white her skin—
She had not blood enough to sin.”
Years of repression had told upon her, and she looked older than she really was—so old and so dragged out, in fact, that Mrs. Armroyd, the cook, appeared youthful and attractive in contrast. Indeed, it was no wonder that Mr. Ephraim Nippers had been attracted by that good soul; for, although her hair was streaked with gray, and her figure was of the “sack of flour” order, and her eyes were assisted in their offices by a pair of steel-bowed spectacles, her face was still youthful in contour, and Mr. Narkom, looking at her, concluded that at twenty-four or twenty-five she must have been a remarkably pretty and remarkably fascinating woman. What Cleek’s thoughts were upon that subject it is impossible to record; for he merely gave her one look on coming into the room, and then took no further notice of her whatsoever.
“Indeed, Mr. Headland, I am glad—I am very, veryglad—that fortune has sent you into this neighbourhood at this terrible time,” said Miss Renfrew when Cleek was introduced. “I do not wish to say anything disparaging of Mr. Nippers, but you can see for yourself how unfitted such men as he and his assistant are to handle an affair of this importance. Indeed, I cannot rid my mind of the thought that if more competent police were on duty here the murder would not have happened. In short, that the assassin, whoever he maybe, counted upon the blundering methods of these men as his passport to safety.”
“My own thought precisely,” said Cleek. “Mr. Nippers has given me a brief outline of the affair—would you mind giving me the full details, Miss Renfrew? At what hour did Mr. Nosworth go into his laboratory? Or don’t you know, exactly?”
“Yes, I know to the fraction of a moment, Mr. Headland. I was looking at my watch at the time. It was exactly eight minutes past seven. We had been going over the monthly accounts together, when he suddenly got up, and without a word walked through that door over there. It leads to a covered passage connecting the house proper with the laboratory. That, as you may have heard, is a circular building with a castellated top. It was built wholly and solely for the carrying on of his experiments. There is but one floor and one window—a very small one about six feet from the ground, and on the side of the Round House which looks away from this building. Nothing but the door to that is on this side, light being supplied to the interior by a roof made entirely of heavy corrugated glass.”
“I see. Then the place is like a huge tube.”
“Exactly—and lined entirely with chilled steel. Such few wooden appliances as are necessary for the equipment of the place are thickly coated with asbestos. I made no comment when my uncle rose and walked in there without a word. I never did. For the past six or seven monthshe had been absorbed in working out the details of a new invention; and I had become used to his jumping up like that and leaving me. We never have supper in this house—my uncle always called it a useless extravagance. Instead, we defer tea until six o’clock and make that the final meal of the day. It was exactly five minutes to seven when I finished my accounts, and as I had had a hard day of it, I decided to go to bed early, after having first taken a walk as far as the old bridge where I hoped that somebody would be waiting for me.”
“I know,” said Cleek, gently. “I have heard the story. It would be Mr. Charles Drummond, would it not?”
“Yes. He was not there, however. Something must have prevented his coming.”
“Hum-m-m! Go on, please.”
“Before leaving the house, it occurred to me that I ought to look into the laboratory and see if there was anything my uncle would be likely to need for the night, as I intended to go straightway to bed on my return. I did so. He was sitting at his desk, immediately under the one window of which I have spoken, and with his back to me, when I looked in. He answered my inquiry with a curt ‘No—nothing. Get out and don’t worry me!’ I immediately shut the door and left him, returning here by way of the covered passage and going upstairs to make some necessary changes in my dress for the walk to the old bridge. When I came down, ready for my journey, I looked at the clock on the mantel over there. It was exactly seventeen minutes to eight o’clock. I had been a little longer in dressing than I had anticipated being; so, in order to save time in getting to the trysting place, I concluded to make a short cut by going out of the rear door and crossing diagonally through our grounds instead of going by the public highway as usual. I had scarcely more than crossed the threshold when I ran plump into Constable Gorham. As he is rather a favouritewith good Mrs. Armroyd here, I fancied that he had been paying her a visit, and was just coming away from the kitchen. Instead, he rather startled me by stating that he had seen something which he thought best to come round and investigate. In short, that, as he was patrolling the highway, he had seen a man vault over the wall of our grounds and, bending down, dart out of sight like a hare. He was almost positive that that man was Sir Ralph Droger. Of course that frightened me almost out of my wits.”
“Why?”
“There was bad blood between my uncle and Sir Ralph Droger—bitter, bad blood. As you perhaps know, my uncle held this ground on a life lease from the Droger estate. That is to say, so long as he lived or refused to vacate that lease, no Droger could oust him nor yet lift one spadeful of earth from the property.”
“Does Sir Ralph desire to do either?”
“He desires to do both. Borings secretly made have manifested the fact that both Barnsley thick-coal and iron ore underlie the place. Sir Ralph wishes to tear down the Round House and this building and to begin mining operations. My uncle, who has been offered the full value of every stick and stone, has always obstinately refused to budge one inch or to lessen the lease by one half hour. ‘It is for the term of my life,’ he has always said, ‘and for the term of my life I’ll hold it!’”
“Oho!” said Cleek; and then puckered up his lips as if about to whistle.
“Under such circumstances,” went on Miss Renfrew, “it was only natural that I should be horribly frightened, and only too willing to act upon the constable’s suggestion that we at once look into the Round House and see if everything was right with my uncle.”
“Why should the constable suggest that?”
“Everybody in the neighbourhood knows of the bitterill feeling existing between the two men; so, of course, it was only natural.”
“Hum-m-m! Yes! Just so. Did you act on Constable Gorham’s suggestion, then?”
“Yes. I led the way in here and then up the covered passage to the laboratory and opened the door. My uncle was sitting exactly as he had been when I looked in before—his back to me and his face to the window—but although he did not turn, it was evident that he was annoyed by my disturbing him, for he growled angrily, ‘What the devil are you coming in here and disturbing me like this for, Jane? Get out and leave me alone.’”
“Hum-m-m!” said Cleek, drawing down his brows and pinching his chin. “Any mirrors in the Round House?”
“Mirrors? No, certainly not, Mr. Headland. Why?”
“Nothing—only that I was wondering, if as you say, he never turned and you never spoke, how in the world he knew that it reallywasyou, that’s all.”
“Oh, I see what you mean,” said Miss Renfrew, knotting up her brows. “It does seem a little peculiar when one looks at it in that way. I never thought of it before. Neither can I explain it, Mr. Headland, any more than to say that I suppose he took it for granted. And, as it happened, he was right. Besides, as you will remember, I had intruded upon him only a short time before.”
“Quite so,” said Cleek. “That’s what makes it appear stranger than ever. Under the circumstances one might have expected him to saynot‘What are you coming in here for,’ but, ‘What are you coming in foragain.’ Still, of course, there’s no accounting for little lapses like that. Go on, please—what next?”
“Why, of course I immediately explained what Constable Gorham had said, and why I had looked in. To which he replied, ‘The man’s an ass. Get out!’ Upon which I closed the door, and the constable and I went away at once.”
“Constable there with you during it all, then?”
“Yes, certainly—in the covered passage, just behind me. He saw and heard everything; though, of course, neither of us actually entered the laboratory itself. There was really no necessity when we knew that my uncle was safe and sound, you see.”
“Quite so,” agreed Cleek. “So you shut the door and went away—and then what?”
“Constable Gorham went back to his beat, and I flew as fast as I could to meet Mr. Drummond. It is only a short way to the old bridge at best, and by taking that short cut through the grounds, I was there in less than ten minutes. And by half-past eight I was back here in a greater state of terror than before.”
“And why? Were you so much alarmed that Mr. Drummond did not keep the appointment?”
“No. That did not worry me at all. He is often unable to keep his appointments with me. He is filling the post of private secretary to a large company promoter, and his time is not his own. What terrified me was that, after waiting a few minutes for him, I heard somebody running along the road, and a few moments later Sir Ralph Droger flew by me as if he were being pursued. Under ordinary circumstances I should have thought that he was getting into training for the autumn sports (he is, you may know, very keen on athletics, and holds the County Club’s cup for running and jumping), but when I remembered what Constable Gorham had said, and saw that Sir Ralph was coming from the direction of this house, all my wits flew; I got into a sort of panic and almost collapsed with fright.”
“And all because the man was coming from the direction of this house?”
“Not that alone,” she answered with a shudder. “I have said that I should under ordinary circumstances have thought he was merely training for the autumn sports—for,you see, he was in a running costume of white cotton stuff and his legs were bare from the knee down—but as he shot past me in the moonlight I caught sight of something like a huge splash of blood on his clothes, and coupling that with the rest I nearly went out of my senses. It wasn’t until long afterward I recollected that the badge of the County Club is the winged foot of Mercury wrought in brilliant scarlet embroidery. To me, just then, that thing of red was blood—my uncle’s blood—and I ran and ran and ran until I got back here to the house and flew up the covered passage and burst into the Round House. He was sitting there still—just as he had been sitting before. But he didn’t call out to me this time; he didn’t reprove me for disturbing him; didn’t make one single movement, utter one single sound. And when I went to him I knew why. He was dead—stone dead! The face and throat of him were torn and rent as if some furious animal had mauled him, and there were curious yellow stains upon his clothes. That’s all, Mr. Headland. I don’t know what I did nor where I went from the moment I rushed shrieking from that room until I came to my senses and found myself in this one with dear, kind Mrs. Armroyd here bending over me and doing all in her power to soothe and to comfort me.”
“There, there, cherie, you shall not more distress yourself. It is of a hardness too great for the poor mind to bear,” put in Mrs. Armroyd herself at this, bending over the sofa as she spoke and softly smoothing the girl’s hair. “It is better she should be at peace for a little, is it not, monsieur?”
“Very much better, madame,” replied Cleek, noting how softly her hand fell, and how gracefully it moved over the soft hair and across the white forehead. “No doubt the major part of what still remains to be told, you in the goodness of your heart, will supply——”
“Of a certainty, monsieur, of a certainty.”
“—But for the present,” continued Cleek, finishing the interrupted sentence, “there still remains a question or two which must be asked, and which only Miss Renfrew herself can answer. As those are of a private and purely personal nature, madame, would it be asking too much——” He gave his shoulders an eloquent Frenchified shrug, looked up at her after the manner of her own countrymen, and let the rest of the sentence go by default.
“Madame” looked at him and gave her little hands an airy and a graceful flirt.
“Of a certainty, monsieur,” she said, with charming grace. “Cela m’est egal,” and walked away with a step remarkably light and remarkably graceful for one of such weight and generous dimensions.
“Miss Renfrew,” said Cleek, sinking his voice and looking her straight in the eyes, as soon as Mrs. Armroyd had left them, “Miss Renfrew, tell me something please: Have you any suspicion regarding the identity or the purpose of the person who murdered your uncle?”
“Not in the slightest, Mr. Headland. Of course, in the beginning, my thoughts flew at once to Sir Ralph Droger, but I now see how absurd it is to think that such as he——”
“I am not even hinting at Sir Ralph Droger,” interposed Cleek. “Two other people in the world have a ‘motive’ quite as strong as any that might be assigned to him. You, of course, feel every confidence in the honour and integrity of Mr. Charles Drummond?”
“Mr. Headland!”
“Gently, gently, please! I merely wished to know if in your heart you had any secret doubt; and your flaring up like that has answered me. You see, one has to remember that the late Mr. Nosworth is said to have made a will in your favour. The statement is correct, is it not?”
“To the best of my belief—yes.”
“Filed it with his solicitors, did he?”
“That I can’t say. I think not, however. He was always sufficient unto himself, and had a rooted objection to trusting anything of value to the care of any man living. Even his most important documents—plans and formulas of his various inventions, even the very lease of this property—have always been kept in the desk in the laboratory.”
“Hum-m-m!” said Cleek, and pinched his chin hard. Then, after a moment. “One last question,” he went on suddenly. “What do you know, Miss Renfrew, of the recent movements of Mr. Harry Nosworth—the son who was kicked out?”
“Nothing, absolutely nothing!” she answered, with a look of something akin to horror. “I know what you are thinking of, but although he is as bad as man can be, it is abominable to suppose that he would lift his hand against his own father.”
“Hum-m-m! Yes, of course! But still, it has been known to happen; and, as you say, he was a bad lot. I ran foul of the young gentleman once when——No matter; it doesn’t signify. So you don’t know anything about him, eh?”
“Nothing, thank God. The last I did hear, he had gone on the stage and taken up with some horrible creature, and the pair of them were subsequently sent to prison for enticing people to dreadful places and then drugging and robbing them. But even that I heard from an outside source; for my uncle never so much as mentioned him. No, I know nothing of him—nothing at all. In fact, I’ve never seen him since he was a boy. He never lived here, you know; and until I came here, I knew next to nothing of my uncle himself. We were poor and lived in a quite different town, my mother and I. Uncle Septimus never came to see us while my mother lived. He came for the first time when she was dead and his son had gone away: and I was so poorand so friendless I was glad to accept the home he offered. No, Mr. Headland, I know nothing of Harry Nosworth. I hope, for his own sake, he is dead.”
Cleek made no reply. He sat for a minute pinching his chin and staring at the carpet, then he got up suddenly and faced round in the direction of the little group at the far end of the room.
“That’s all for the present,” he said. “Mr. Narkom, Mr. Nippers—get a light of some sort, please, and let’s go out and have a look at those footprints.”
The suggestion was acted upon immediately—even Mrs. Armroyd joining in the descent upon the portable lamps and filing out with the rest into the gloom and loneliness of the grounds; and Miss Renfrew, finding that she was likely to be left alone in this house of horrors, rose quickly and hurried out with them.
One step beyond the threshold brought them within sight of the famous Round House. Bulked against the pale silver of the moonlit sky, there it stood—a grim, unlovely thing of stone and steel with a trampled flower bed encircling the base of it, and a man on guard—Constable Gorham.
“Lummy! I’d clean forgothim!” exclaimed Mr. Nippers as he caught sight of him. “And theer un be keepin’ guard, like I told un, out here in the grounds whiles weem ben talkin’ comfortable inside. ’E do be a chap for doin’ as heem tole, that Gorham—indeed, yes!”
Nobody replied to him. All were busily engaged in following the lead of Scotland Yard, as represented by Cleek and Superintendent Narkom, and bearing down on that huge stone tube within whose circular walls a dead man sat alone.
“Dreary post this, Constable,” said Cleek, coming abreast of the silent guard.
“Yes, sir, very. But dooty’s dooty—and there you be!” replied Gorham, touching his helmet with his finger; then, as the light from the lamps fell full upon Cleek’s face and let him see that it was no face he had ever seen in this district before, his eyes widened with a puzzled stare whichnever quite left them even when the entire group had passed on and turned the curve of the Round House wall.
And beyond that curve Cleek came to a sudden halt. Here, a curtainless window cut a square of light in the wall’s dark face and struck a glare on the trunk and the boughs of a lime tree directly opposite, and under that window a trampled flower bed lay, with curious marks deep sunk in the soft, moist surface of it.
Cleek took the lamp from Mrs. Armroyd’s hand, and, bending, looked at them closely. Mr. Nippers had not exaggerated when he said that they were all of twelve inches in length. Nor was he far out when he declared that they looked like the footprints of some creature that was part animal and part bird; for there they were, with three huge clawlike projections in front and a solitary one behind, and so like to the mark which a gigantic bird could have made that one might have said such a creaturehadmade them, only that it was impossible for anything to fly that was possessed of weight sufficient to drive those huge footprints so deeply into the earth as they had been driven, by the mere walking of the Thing. Claws and the marks of scales, Mr. Nippers had asserted; and claws and the marks of scales the prints in the soft earth showed.
“La! la! the horror of them,” exclaimed Mrs. Armroyd, putting up her little hands and averting her face. “It could kill and kill and kill—horses, oxen, anything—an abominable creature like that! What do you figure it to have been, monsieur?—souls of the saints,what?”
“Blest if I know,” said Cleek. “Only, of course, it couldn’t possibly be anything human; so we may put the idea of the old chap having been killed by anything of his kind out of our minds altogether. It is perfectly clear that the creature, whatever it might be, got in through the window there (you see it is open) and killed him before he could call out for help or strike a blow in his own defence.”
“Eh, but window’s six foot up, Mr. Headland, sir,” put in Nippers excitedly; “and howm a thing the weight o’ that goin’ to fly in?”
“Didn’t fly in, my friend,” replied Cleek with an air of lofty superiority. “Use your wits, man. Itjumpedin—from the tree there. Look here—see!” going to it and tapping certain abrasions upon the trunk. “Here’s where it peeled off the bark in climbing up. Lord, man! why, it’s plain as the nose on your face. Ten to one we shall find the same sort of footprints when we go into the laboratory—damp ones, you know, from the moisture of the earth; and to make sure, in case we do find ’em let’s take the length of the things and see. Got a tape measure with you? No? Oh, well, lend me your handcuffs, if you’ve got a pair with you, and we can manage a measurement with those. Thanks very much. Now, then, let’s see. One, two, three, by Jupiter—three fingers longer than these things, chain and all. That’ll do. Now, then, let’s go in and see about the others. Lead the way, Miss Renfrew, if you will.”
She would, and did. Leading the way back to the covered passage, she opened a door in the side of it—a door designed to let the inventor out into the grounds without going through the house, if he so desired—and conducted them to the laboratory, leaving Constable Gorham to continue his dreary sentry duty outside.
At any time the interior of that huge, stone-walled, steel-lined tube must have been unlovely and depressing to all but the man who laboured in it. But to-night, with that man sitting dead in it, with his face to the open window, a lamp beside him, and stiff hands resting on the pages of a book that lay open on the desk’s flat top, it was doubly so; for, added to its other unpleasant qualities, there was now a disagreeable odour and a curious, eye-smarting, throat-roughening heaviness in the atmosphere which was like tonothing so much as the fumes thrown off by burnt chemicals.
Cleek gave one or two sniffs at the air as he entered, glanced at Mr. Narkom, then walked straightway to the desk and looked into the dead man’s face. Under the marks of the scratches and cuts upon it—marks which would seem to carry out the idea of an animal’s attack—the features were distorted and discoloured, and the hair of beard and moustache was curiously crinkled and discoloured.
Cleek stopped dead short as he saw that face, and his swaggering, flippant, cocksure air of a minute before dropped from him like a discarded mantle.
“Hullo! this doesn’t look quite so promising for the animal theory as it did!” he flung out sharply. “This man has been shot—shot with a shell filled with his own soundless and annihilating devil’s invention, lithamite—and bomb throwing isnota trick of beasts of a lower order than the animal tribe! Look here, Mr. Narkom—see! The lock of the desk has been broken. Shut the door there, Nippers. Let nobody leave the room. There has been murder and robbery here; and the thing that climbed that tree was not an animal nor yet a bird. It was a cut-throat and a thief!”
Naturally enough, this statement produced something in the nature of a panic; Miss Renfrew, indeed, appearing to be on the verge of fainting, and it is not at all unlikely that she would have slipped to the floor but for the close proximity of Mrs. Armroyd.
“That’s right, madame. Get a chair; put her into it. She will need all her strength presently, I promise you. Wait a bit! Better have a doctor, I fancy, and an inquiry into the whereabouts of Mr. Charles Drummond. Mr. Narkom, cut out, will you, and wire this message to that young man’s employer.”
Pens and papers were on the dead man’s desk. Cleek bent over, scratched off some hurried lines, and passed them to the superintendent.
“Sharp’s the word, please; we’ve got ugly business on hand and we must know about that Drummond chap without delay. Miss Renfrew has not been telling the truth to-night! Look at this man.Rigor mortispronounced. Feel him—muscles like iron, flesh like ice!Shesays that he spoke to her at a quarter to eight o’clock.Itell you that at a quarter to eight this man had been dead upward of an hour!”
“Good God!” exclaimed Mr. Narkom; but his cry was cut into by a wilder one from Miss Renfrew.
“Oh, no! Oh, no!” she protested, starting up from her seat, only to drop back into it, strengthless, shaking, ghastly pale. “It could not be—it could not. I have told the truth—nothing but the truth. He did speak to me at a quarter to eight—he did, he did! Constable Gorham was there—he heard him; he will tell you the same.”
“Yes, yes, I know you said so, but—will he? He looks a sturdy, straightgoing, honest sort of chap who couldn’t be coaxed or bribed into backing up a lie; so send him in as you go out, Mr. Narkom; we’ll see what he has to say.”
What he had to say when he came in a few moments later was what Miss Renfrew had declared—an exact corroboration of her statement. Hehadseen a man whom he fancied was Sir Ralph Droger run out of the grounds, and he had suggested to Miss Renfrew that they had better look into the Round House and see if all was right with Mr. Nosworth. They had looked in as she had said; and Mr. Nosworth had called out and asked her what the devil she was coming in and disturbing him for, and it was a quarter to eight o’clock exactly.
“Sure about that, are you?” questioned Cleek.
“Yes, sir, sure as that I’m telling you so this minute.”
“How do you fix the exact time?”
“As we came out of the covered passage Miss Renfrew looked at her wrist-watch and says, impatient like, ‘There, I’ve lost another two minutes and am that much later for nothing. See! It’s a quarter to eight. Good night.’ Then she cut off over the grounds and leaves me.”
“La! la!” exclaimed Mrs. Armroyd approvingly. “There’s the brave heart, to come to mademoiselle’s rescue so gallantly. But, yes, I make you the cake of plums for that,mon cher. Monsieur of the yard of Scotland, he can no more torture the poor stricken child after that—not he.”
But Cleek appeared to be less easy to convince than she had hoped, for he pursued the subject still; questioning Gorham to needless length it seemed; trying his best to trip him up, to shake his statement, but always failing; and, indeed, going over the same ground to such length that one might have thought he was endeavouring to gain time. If he was, he certainly succeeded; for it was quite fifteen minutes later when Mr. Narkom returned to the Round House, and he was at it still. Indeed, he did not conclude to give it up as a bad job until the superintendent came.
“Get it off all right, did you, Mr. Narkom?” he asked, glancing round as he heard him enter.
“Quite all right, old chap. Right as rain—in every particular.”
“Thanks very much. I’m having rather a difficult task of it, for our friend the constable here corroborates Miss Renfrew’s statement to the hair; and yet I am absolutely positive that there is a mistake.”
“There is no mistake—no, not one! The wicked one to say it still!”
“Oh, that’s all very well, madame, but I know what I know; and when you tell me that a dead man can ask questions—Pah! The fact of the matter is the constable merely fancies he heard Mr. Nosworth speak. That’swhere the mistake comes in. Now, look here! I once knew of an exactly similar case and I’ll tell you just how it happened. Let us suppose”—strolling leisurely forward—“let us suppose that this space here is the covered passage, and you, madame—step here a moment, please. Thanks very much—and you are Miss Renfrew, and Gorham here is himself, and standing beside her as he did then.”