He lived up to the letter of his promise.
In an hour he had said when he walked out, and it was an hour to the very tick of the minute when he came back.
Mr. Narkom knowing him so well, knowing how, in the final moments of hiscoups, he was apt to become somewhat spectacular and theatrical, looked for him to return with a flourish of trumpets and carry all before him with a whirlwind rush; so that it came in the nature of a great surprise, when with the calmness of a man coming in to tea he entered the stable with a large stone bottle in one hand and an hostler’s sponge in the other.
“Well, gentlemen, I am here, you see,” he said with extreme calmness. “And”—indicating the bottle—“have brought something with me to do honour to the event. No, not to drink—it is hardly that sort of stuff. It is Spirit of Wine, Major. I found it over in Farrow’s cottage and have brought it with me—as he, poor chap, meant to do in time himself. There are some wonderful things in Tom Farrow’s cottage, Major; they will pay for looking into, I assure you. Pardon, Mr. Narkom? A criminal? Oh, no, my friend—a martyr!”
“A martyr?”
“Yes, your ladyship; yes, Major—a martyr. A martyr to his love, a martyr to his fidelity. As square a man and as faithful a trainer as ever set foot in a stable-yard—that’s Tom Farrow. I take off my hat to him. The world can do with more of his kind.”
“But, my dear sir, you said that it was he that spirited away the animal; that it was he and he alone who was responsible for her disappearance.”
“Quite so—and I say it again. Gently, gently, Major—I’ll come to it in a minute. Personally I should like to put it off to the last, it’s such a fine thing for a finish, by Jove! But—well it can’t be done under the circumstances. In other words, there is a part of this little business this evening which I must ask Lady Mary not to stop to either hear or see; but as she is naturally interested in the matter of Highland Lassie’s disappearance I will take up that matter first and ask her to kindly withdraw after the filly has been restored.”
“Gad! you’ve found her, then? You’ve got her?”
“Yes, Major, I’ve got her. And as I promised that I would put her bridle into your hand with the animal herself at the other end of it, why—here you are!”
Speaking, he walked across to the box where the brown filly was tethered, unbolted it, unfastened the animal and led her out.
“Here you are, Major,” he said, as he tendered him the halter. “Take hold of her, the beauty; and may she carry off the Derby Stakes with flying colours.”
“But, good lud, man, what on earth are you talking about? This is Chocolate Maid—this is Lady Mary’s horse.”
“Oh, no, Major, oh, no! Chocolate Maid is in the stable at Farrow’s cottage—hidden away and half starved, poor creature, because he couldn’t go back to feed and look after her. This is your bonny Highland Lassie—dyed to look like the other and to throw possible horse nobblers and thieves off the scent. If you doubt it, look here.”
He uncorked the bottle, poured some of the Spirit of Wine on the sponge and rubbed the animal’s brown flank. The dark colour came away, the sorrel hide and the white splotch began to appear, and before you could say JackRobinson, the major and Lady Mary had their arms about the animal’s neck and were blubbing like a couple of children.
“Oh, my bully girl! Oh, my spiffing girl! Oh, Mary, isn’t it clinking, dear? The Lassie—the Highland Lassie—her own bonny self.”
“Yes, her own bonny self, Major,” said Cleek “and you’d never have had a moment’s worry over her if that faithful fellow upstairs had been suffered to get back here that night and to tell you about it in the morning. I’ve had a little talk with—oh, well, somebody who is in a position to give me information that corroborates my own little ‘shots’ at the matter (I’ll tell you all about that later on), and so am able to tell you a thing or two that you ought to have known before this! I don’t know whether Lieutenant Chadwick’s coming here and prying about had any wish to do harm to the horse at the back of it or not. I only know that Farrow thought it had, and he played this little trick to block the game and to throw dust into the eyes of anybody that attempted to get at her. What he did then was to dye her so that she might be mistaken for Chocolate Maid, then to take Chocolate Maid over to his own stable and hide her there until the time came to start for Epsom. That’s what he wanted the pail of water for, Major—to mix the dye and to apply it. I half suspected it from the beginning, but I became sure of it when I found that scrap of paper in the bedding of the box. It was still wet—a bit of the label from the dye-bottle which came off in the operation. Between the poor chap’s fingers I found stains of the dye still remaining. Spirit of Wine would have removed it, but washing in water wouldn’t. Pardon, your ladyship? When did I begin to suspect that Farrow was at the bottom of it? Oh, when first I heard of the poisoned dog. Nobody ever heard it bark when the poisoner approached the stables. That, of course, meant that theperson who administered the poison must have been some one with whom it was familiar, and also some one who was already inside the place, since even the first approaching step of friend or foe would have called forth one solitary bark at least. Farrow didn’t do the thing by halves, you see. He meant it to look like a genuine case of horse stealing to outsiders, and killing the dog gave it just that touch of actuality which carries conviction. As for the rest—the major must tell you that in private, your ladyship. The rest of this little matter is for men alone.”
Lady Mary bowed and passed out into the fast coming dusk; and, in the stable the major, Cleek and Narkom stood together, waiting until she was well beyond earshot.
“Now, Major, we will get down to brass tacks, as our American cousins say,” said Cleek, when that time at length came. “You would like to know, I suppose, how poor Farrow came by his injuries and from whose hand. Well, you shall. He was coming back from his cottage after stabling the real Chocolate Maid there when the thing happened; and he received those injuries for rushing to the defence of the woman he loved, and attempting to thrash the blackguard who had taken advantage of her trust and belief in him to spoil her life forever. The woman was, of course, Maggie McFarland. The man was your charming guest, Captain MacTavish!”
“Good God! MacTavish? MacTavish?”
“Yes, Major—the gallant captain who received such a sudden call to rejoin his regiment as soon as he knew that Tom Farrow was likely to recover and to speak. Perhaps you can understand now why Farrow and the girl no longer seemed to ‘hit it off together as formerly.’ The gallant captain had come upon the boards. Dazzled by the beauty of him, tricked by the glib tongue of him, deluded into the belief that she had actually ‘caught a gentleman’ and that he really meant to make her his wife and take her away toIndia with him, when he went, the silly, innocent, confiding little idiot became his victim and threw over a good man’s love for a handful of Dead Sea Fruit.”
“Never for one instant had Tom Farrow an idea of this; but the night before last as he crossed the moor—he knew! In the darkness he stumbled upon the truth. He heard her crying out to the fellow to do her justice, to keep his word and make her the honest wife he had promised that she should be, and he heard, too, the man’s characteristic reply. You can guess what happened, Major, when you know Tom Farrow. In ten seconds he was up and at that fellow like a mad bull.
“The girl, terrified out of her life, screamed and ran away, seeing the brave captain laying about him with his heavy, silver-headed hunting crop as she fled. She never saw the end of the fight—she never dared; but in the morning when there was no Tom Farrow to be seen, she went out there on the moor and found him. She would have spoken then had she dared, poor creature, but the man’s threat was an effective one. If she spoke he would do likewise. If she kept silent she might go away and her disgrace be safely hidden. Which she chose, we know.”
“The damned hound!”
“Oh, no, Major, oh, no—that’s too hard on hounds. The only houndlike thing about that interesting gentleman was that he made an attempt to ‘get to cover’ and to run away. I knew that he would—I knew that that was his little dodge when he made that little excuse about having to pack up his effects. He saw how the game was running and he meant to slip the cable and clear out while he had the chance.”
“And you let him do it?—you never spoke a word, but let the blackguard do it? Gad, sir, I’m ashamed of you!”
“You needn’t be, Major, on that score at least. Please remember that I asked for a couple of grooms to be stationedon the moor. I gave them their orders and then went on to Farrow’s cottage alone. If they have followed out those orders we shall soon see.”
Here he stepped to the door of the stable, put his two forefingers between his lips and whistled shrilly. In half a minute more the two grooms came into the stable, and between them the gallant captain, tousled and rather dirty, and with his beautiful hair and moustache awry.
“Got him, my lads, I see,” said Cleek.
“Yes, sir. Nabbed him sneakin’ out the back way like you thought he would, sir, and bein’ as you said it was the major’s orders, we copped him on the jump and have been holdin’ of him for further orders ever since.”
“Well, you can let him go now,” said Cleek, serenely. “And just give your attention to locking the door and lighting up. Major, Doctor, Mr. Narkom, pray be seated. The dear captain is going to give you all a little entertainment and the performance is about to begin. As good with your fists as you are with a metal-headed hunting crop, Captain?”
“None of your dashed business what I’m good at,” replied the captain. “Look here, Norcross——”
“You cut that at once!” roared the major. “If you open your head to me, I’ll bang it off you, you brute.”
“Well, then you, Mr. Policeman——”
“Ready for you in a minute, Captain; don’t get impatient,” said Cleek, as he laid aside his coat and began to roll up his sleeves. “Rome wasn’t built in a day—though beauty may be wrecked in a minute. You’ll have the time of your life this evening. You are really too beautiful to live, Captain, and I’m going to come as near to killing you as I know how without actually completing the job. You see, that poor little Highland lassie hasn’t a father or brother to do this business for her, so she’s kindly consented to my taking it on in her behalf. I’m afraid I shall breakthat lovely nose of yours, my gay gallant—and I don’t give a damn if I do! A brute that spoils a woman’s life deserves to go through the world with a mark to record it, and I’m going to put one on you to the best of my ability. All seated, gentlemen? Right you are. Now then, Captain, come on. Come on—youswine!”
It was twenty minutes later.
Lady Mary Norcross—deep in the obligatory business of dressing for dinner—had just taken up a powder puff and was assiduously dabbing the back of her neck, when the door behind her opened softly and the voice of her liege lord travelled across the breadth of the room, saying:
“Mary! May I come in a minute, dear? I just want to get my cheque book out of your writing desk—that’s all.”
“Yes, certainly. Come in by all means,” gave back her ladyship. “I’m quite alone. Springer has finished with me, and oh! Good heavens! Seton! My dear, mydear!”
“All right. Don’t get frightened. It isn’t mine. And it isn’t his, either—much of it. We’ve been having a little ‘set to’ at the stable, and I got it hugging a policeman.”
“Seton!”
“Yes—I know it’s awful, but I simply couldn’t help it. Demmit it, Mary, don’t look so shocked—I’d havekissedthe beggar as well, if I thought I could acquire the trick of that heavenly ‘jab with the left’ that way. I haven’t had such a beautiful time since the day I was twenty-one, darling; he fights like a bloomingangel, that chap.”
“What chap? What on earth are you talking about?”
“That man Cleek. Weeping Widows! It was the prettiest job you ever saw. We’re sending the beggar over to the hospital—and——Tell you all about it when I get back. Can’t stop just now, dear. Bye, bye!”
Then the door closed with a smack, and man and cheque book were on their way downstairs.
It is a recognized fact in police circles that crime has a curious propensity for indulging in periodical outbursts of great energy, great fecundity, and then lapsing into a more or less sporadic condition for a time—like a gorged tiger that drowses, and stirs only to lick its chops after a hideous feast. So that following the lines of these fixed principles the recent spell of criminal activity was succeeded by a sort of lull, and the next two weeks were idle ones for Cleek.
Idle but idyllic—from his point of view; for he was back in the little house in the pleasant country lands now, with his walled garden, his ferns and his flowers, and the full glory of tulip-time was here.
And soon another “glory” would be here as well.
In twelve more daysshewould be back in England. In twelve more days he and Dollops would move out, and Ailsa Lorne would move in, and this little Eden in the green and fragrant meadowlands would have another tenant from that time forth.
But hers would not be a lonely tenancy, however; for “Captain Horatio Burdage” had recently written to Mrs. Condiment that, as the Sleeping Mermaid seemed likely to prove an unprofitable investment after all and to bring her little reward for her labours, he purposed relinquishing it and recalling “Old Joseph” to him; and with that end in view had already secured for the good lady a position as companion-housekeeper to one Miss Ailsa Lorne, who, in the early part of June, would call upon her at her presentquarters and personally conduct her and the deaf-and-dumb maid-of-all-work to their future ones.
Here, then, in this bower of bloom, would this dear girl of his heart await the coming of that glorious day when the last act of restitution had been made, the last Vanishing Cracksman debt wiped off the slate, and he could go to her—clean-handed at last—to ask the fulfilment of her promise.
Remembering that, it was a sheer delight to be free from all Yard calls for a time that he might give his whole attention to the work of getting the place ready for her; and day after day he was busy in the high-walled old-world garden—digging, planting, pruning—that when she came it might be brimming over with flowers.
But although he devoted himself mind and body to this task and lived each day within the limits of that confining wall, he had not wholly lost touch with the world at large, for each morning the telephone—installed against the time of Ailsa’s tenancy—put him into communication with Mr. Narkom at the Yard, and each night a newspaper carried in to him by Dollops kept him abreast of the topics of the times.
It was over that telephone he received the first assurance that his haste in getting out of Yorkshire had not been an unnecessary precaution, his suspicions regarding the probable action of the Nosworths not ill grounded, for Mr. Narkom was able to inform him that carefully made inquiries had elicited the intelligence that, within two days after the Round House affair, men who were undoubtedly foreigners were making diligent inquiries throughout the West Riding regarding the whereabouts of two men and a boy who had been travelling about in a two-horsed caravan.
“That sudden bolt of ours was a jolly good move, old chap,” said the superintendent, when he made this announcement. “It did the beggars absolutely. Shouldn’tbe a bit surprised if they’d chucked the business as a bad job and gone back to the Continent disgusted. At any rate, none of my plain-clothes men has seen hide nor hair of one of the lot since, either in town or out. Waldemar, too, seems to have hooked it and can’t be traced; so I reckon we’ve seen the last of him.”
But Cleek was not so sure of that. He had his own ideas as to what this disappearance of the Apaches meant, and did not allow himself to be lulled into any sense of security by it. There were more ways than one in which to catch a weasel, he recollected, and determined not to relax his precautions in the smallest iota when next the Yard’s call for his services should come.
That it would come soon he felt convinced as the days advanced that rounded out the end of his second week of freedom from it; and what form it would take when it did come was a matter upon which he could almost have staked his life, so sure he felt of it.
For a time of great national excitement, great national indignation, had arrived, and the press had made him acquainted with all the circumstances connected therewith. As why not, when the whole country was up in arms over it and every newspaper in the land headlined it in double caps and poured forth the story in full detail?
It had its genesis in something which had happened at Gosport in the preceding week, and happened in this startling manner:
In the waterway between Barrow Island and the extreme end of the Royal Clarence Victualling Yard there had been found floating the body of a man of about five-and-thirty years of age, fully and fashionably clothed and having all those outward signs which betoken a person of some standing.
It was evident at once that death must have been the result of accident, and that the victim had been unable toswim, for the hands were encased in kid gloves, the coat was tightly buttoned, and a pair of field-glasses in a leather case still hung from the long shoulder-strap which supported the weight of them. The victim’s inability to swim was established by the fact that he had made no effort to rid himself of these hampering conditions, and was clinging tightly to a foot-long bit of driftwood, which he must have clutched at as it floated by.
It was surmised, therefore, that the man must have fallen into the water in the dark—either from the foreshore or from some vessel or small boat in which he was journeying at the time—and had been carried away by the swift current and drowned without being missed, the condition of the body clearly establishing the fact that it had been in the water for something more than a fortnight when found. Later it was identified by one of the deck hands of the pleasure steamer which cruises round the Isle of Wight daily as being that of a man he had seen aboard that vessel on one of its night trips to Alum Bay between two and three weeks previously; and still later it was discovered that a boatman in that locality had been hired to take a gentleman from the Needles to a yacht “lying out to sea” that selfsame night, and that the gentleman in question never turned up.
What followed gave these two circumstances an appalling significance. For when the body was carried to the mortuary, and its clothing searched for possible clues to identification, there was found upon it a sealed packet addressed simply “A. Steinmüller, Königstrasse 8,” and inside that packet there were two unmounted photographs of the exterior of Blockhouse Fort and the Southsea Fort, a more or less accurate ground-plan drawing of the interior of the Portsmouth Dockyard, together with certain secret information relative to supplies and to the proposed armament of cruisers now undergoing alteration and reëquipment.
The wrath and amazement engendered by that discovery,however, were as nothing compared with the one which so swiftly followed.
Brought up before the Admiral Superintendent and the Board, John Beachman, the dock master—who alone knew these things outside of the Admiralty—was obliged to admit that one person, and one only—his eldest son—was in a position to obtain admission to the safe in which he kept his private papers, and that son was engaged to a young lady whom he had met during a holiday tour on the Continent.
“English or foreign?” he was asked; to which he replied that she was English—or, at least, English by birth, although her late father was a German. He had become naturalized before his death, and was wholly in sympathy with the country of his adoption. He did not die in it, however. Circumstances had caused him to visit the United States, and he had been killed in one of the horrible railway disasters for which that country was famous. It was because the daughter was thus left orphaned, and was so soon to become the wife of their son, that he and Mrs. Beachman had taken her into their home in advance of the marriage. They did not think it right that she should be left to live alone and unprotected, considering what she was so soon to become to them; so they had taken her into the home, and their son had arranged to sleep at an hotel in Portsmouth pending the date of the wedding. The lady’s name was Hilmann—Miss Greta Hilmann. She was of extremely good family, and quite well-to-do in her own right. She had never been to Germany since the date of the engagement. She had relatives there, however; one in particular—a Baron von Ziegelmundt and his son Axel. The son had visited England twice—once many months back, and the last time some seven or eight weeks ago. They liked him very much—the bridegroom-elect especially so. They had become very great friends indeed. No,Axel von Ziegelmundt was no longer in England. He had left it something like a month ago. He was on a pleasure trip round the world, he had heard, but had no idea where he had gone when he left Portsmouth.
Two hours after this statement was made, if the populace could have got hold of young Harry Beachman it would have torn him to pieces; for it was then discovered that the drowned man was no less a person than this Herr Axel von Ziegelmundt, and that they had not only spent the greater part of that particular day shut up in the former’s room in the Portsmouth hotel, but had been together up to the very moment when the excursion steamer had started on its moonlight trip to Alum Bay and to the bringing about of that providential accident which had prevented the State affairs of an unsuspecting nation from being betrayed to a secret foe.
What followed was, in the face of this, of course, but natural. John Beachman was suspended immediately, and his son’s arrest ordered. It served no purpose that he denied indignantly the charge of being a traitor, and swore by every sacred thing that the hours spent in his room at the hotel were passed in endeavouring to master the intricacies of the difficult German card game, Skaat, and that never in all their acquaintance had one word touching upon the country or the country’s affairs passed between Axel von Ziegelmundt and himself, so help him God! It was in vain, also, that Greta Hilmann—shouting hysterically her belief in him and begging wildly that if he must be put into prison she might be taken with him “and murdered when you murder him if he is to be court-martialled and shot, you wretched blunderers!”—it was in vain that Greta Hilmann clung to him and fought with all her woman’s strength to keep the guard from laying hands upon him or to tear her from his side; the outraged country demanded him, and took him in spite of all. Nor did it turn the current ofsympathy in his direction that, crazed when they tore him from her, this frantic creature had gone from swoon to swoon until her senses left her entirely, and the end was—tragedy.
The full details were never forthcoming. The bare facts were that she was carried back to Beachman’s house in a state of hysteria bordering close upon insanity, and that when, under orders from the Admiralty, that house and all its contents were impounded pending the fullest inquiry into the dock master’s books and accounts, the Admiral Superintendent and the appointed auditor entered into possession, her condition was found to be so serious that it was decided not to insist upon her removal for a day or two at least. A nurse was procured from the naval hospital and put in charge of her; but at some period during the fourth night of that nurse’s attendance—and when she, worn out by constant watching, slept in her chair—the half-delirious patient arose, and, leaving a note to say that life had lost all its brightness for her, and if they cared to find her they might look for her in the sea, vanished entirely. She could scarcely have hit upon a worse thing for the evil repute of her lover’s name or her own. For those who had never known her personally were quick to assert that this was proof enough of how the thing had been managed. In short, that she, too, was a spy, and that she had adopted this subterfuge to get back to Germany before the scent grew hot and the law could lay a hand upon her. Those who had known her took a more merciful view so far as she was concerned, but one which made things look all the blacker for her lover. What could her desperation and her utter giving up all hope even before the man was put on trial mean if it was not that she knew he was guilty, knew he would never get off with his life, and that her suicide was a tacit admission of this?
Meanwhile public indignation ran high, the investigation of the dock master’s books, papers, and accounts proceededin camera, and all England waited breathlessly for the result to be made known.
Thus matters stood when on Thursday night at half-past seven o’clock—exactly one week after the discovery of that packet on the body of the drowned man—an amazing thing happened, a thing which smacked almost of magic, and put to shame all that had gone before in the way of mystery, surprise, and terror.
The wildest storm that had been known on that coast for years had been raging steadily ever since daybreak and was raging still. A howling wind, coming straight over the Channel from France, was piling ink-black seas against an ink-black shore, and all the devils of the pit seemed to be loose in the noisy darkness.
In the suspended dock master’s house the Admiral Superintendent, Sir Charles Fordeck, together with his private secretary, Mr. Paul Grimsdick, and the auditor, Mr. Alexander MacInery, who had been continuing their investigations since morning, were now coming within sight of the work’s end—the only occupants of a locked and guarded room, outside of which a sentry was posted, while round about the house in the stormy outer darkness other guards patrolled ceaselessly. Over the books Sir Charles and the auditor bent at one end of the room; at the other Paul Grimsdick tapped on his typewriter and made transcripts from the shorthand notes beside him. It was at this instant,just when the clock on the mantel was beginning to chime the half-hour after seven, that such a crash of thunder ripped out of the heavens that the very earth seemed to tremble with the force of it, and the three men fairly jumped in their seats.
“Gad! that was a stunner, if you like!” exclaimed Sir Charles with a laugh. “Something went down that time, or I miss my guess.”
Something had “gone down”—gone down in black and white, too, at that—and before another half-hour had passed the mystery and the appalling nature of that something was made known to him and to his two companions.
The operator at the central telegraph office, sitting beside a silent instrument with the key open deciphering a message which a moment before had come through, jumped as they had jumped when that crash of thunder sounded; then without hint or warning up spoke the open instrument, beginning a sentence in the middle and chopping it off before it was half done.
“Hullo! that deflected something—crossed communication or I’m a Dutchman!” he said, and bent over to “take it.” In another moment he got more of a shock than twenty thunderbolts could possibly have given him. For, translated, that interrupted communication ran thus:
“... and eight-inch guns. The floating conning tower’s lateral plates of ...”
“... and eight-inch guns. The floating conning tower’s lateral plates of ...”
And there, as abruptly as it began, the communication left off.
“Good God! There’s another damned German spy at it!” exclaimed the operator, jumping from his seat and grabbing for his hat. “Gawdermity, Hawkins, take this instrument and watch for more. Somebody’s telegraphin’ naval secrets from the dockyard, and the storm’s ‘tapped’ awire somewhere and sent the message to us!” Then he flung himself out into the storm and darkness and ran and ran and ran.
But the mystery of the thing was all the greater when the facts came to be examined. For those two parts of sentences were found to be verbatim copies of the shorthand notes which Mr. Paul Grimsdick had just taken down. These notes had never left the sight of the three men in the guarded room of that guarded house for so much as one second since they were made. No one but they had passed either in or out of that room during the whole seven days of the inquiry. There was no telegraph instrument in the room—in the house—or within any possible reach from it. Yet somebody in that building—somebody who could only know the things by standing in that room and copying them, for never once had they been spoken of by word of mouth—some invisible, impalpable, superhuman body was wiring State secrets from it. How? And to whom?
Naturally, this state of affairs set the whole country by the ears and evoked a panicky condition which was not lessened by the Press’ frothing and screaming.
Thus matters stood on the evening of Wednesday, the twenty-second of May, and thus they still stood on the morning of the twenty-third, when the telephone rang and Dollops rushed into Cleek’s bedroom crying excitedly and disjointedly:
“Mr. Narkom, sir. Ringing up from his own house. Wants you in a hurry. National case, he says, and not a minute to lose.”
Cleek was out of bed and at the instrument in a winking; but he had no more than spoken the customary “Hello!” into the receiver, when the superintendent’s voice cut in cyclonically and swept everything before it in a small tornado of excited words.
“Call of the Country, dear chap!” he cried. “Thatinfernal dockyard business at Portsmouth. Sir Charles Fordeck just sent through a call for you. Rush like hell! Don’t stop for anything! Train it over to Guildford if you have to charter a special. Meet you there—in the Portsmouth Road—with the limousine—at seven-thirty. We’ll show ’em—by God, yes! Good-bye!”
Then “click!” went the instrument as the communication was cut off, and away went Cleek, like a gunshot, on a wild rush for his clothes.
The sun was but just thrusting a crimson arc into view in the transfigured east when he left the house—on a hard run; for part at least of the way must be covered afoot, and the journey was long—but by four o’clock it was almost as bright as midday, and the possibility of securing a conveyance for the rest of the distance was considerably increased by that fact; by five, hehadsecured one, and by seven he was in the Portsmouth Road at Guildford munching the sandwiches Dollops had thoughtfully slipped into his pocket and keeping a sharp lookout for the coming of the red limousine.
It swung up over the rise of the road and came panting toward him at a nerve-racking pace while it still lacked ten minutes of being the appointed half-hour, and so wild was the speed at which Lennard, in his furious interest, was making it travel that Cleek could think of nothing to which to liken it but a red streak whizzing across a background of leaf-green with splatters of mud flying about it and an owl-eyed demon for pilot.
It pulled up with a jerk when it came abreast of him, but so great was Lennard’s excitement, so deep seated his patriotic interest in the business he had in hand, he seemed to begrudge even the half-minute it took to get his man aboard; and before you could have turned around twice the car was rocketing on again at a demon’s pace.
“Gad! but he’s full of it, the patriotic beggar!” said Cleekwith a laugh, as he found himself deposited in Narkom’s lap instead of on the seat beside him, so sudden was the car’s start the instant he was inside. “It might give our German friends pause, don’t you think, Mr. Narkom, if they could get an insight into the spirit of the race as a fighting unit?”
“It’ll give ’em hell if they run up against it—make no blooming error about that!” rapped out the superintendent too “hot in the choler” to be choice of words. “It’s a nasty little handful to fall foul of when its temper is up; and this damned spy business, done behind a mask of friendship in times of peace——Look here, Cleek! If it comes to the point, just give me a gun with the rest. I’ll show the Government that I can lick something beside insurance stamps for my country’s good—by James, yes!”
“Just so,” said Cleek, with one of his curious, crooked smiles. He was used to these little patriotic outbursts on the part of Mr. Narkom whenever the German bogey was dragged out by the Press. “But let us hope it will not come to that. It would be an embarrassment of riches so far as our friends the editors are concerned, don’t you think, to have two wars on their hands at the same time? And I see by papers that the long-threatened Mauravanian revolution has broken out at last. In short, that our good friend Count Irma has made his escape from Sulberga, put himself at the head of the Insurgents, and is organizing a march on the capital——”
Here he pulled himself up abruptly, as if remembering something, and, before Mr. Narkom could put in a word, launched into the subject of the case in hand and set him thinking and talking of other things.
It had gone nine by all the reliable clocks in town when the wild race to the coast came to an end, and after darting swallowlike through the wind-swept streets of Portsmouth, the limousine, mud splashed and disreputable, rushed up to the guarded entrance of the suspended dock master’s house at Portsea; and precisely one and a quarter minutes thereafter Cleek stood in the presence of the three men most deeply concerned in the clearing up of this mystifying affair.
He found Sir Charles Fordeck, a dignified and courtly gentleman of polished manners and measured speech, although now, quite naturally, labouring under a distress of mind which visibly disturbed him. He found Mr. Paul Grimsdick, his secretary, a frank-faced, straight-looking young Englishman of thirty; Mr. Alexander MacInery, a stolid, unemotional Scotsman of middle age, with a huge knotted forehead, eyebrows like young moustaches, and a face like a face of granite; and he found, too, reason to believe that each of these was, in his separate way, a man to inspire confidence and respect.
“I can hardly express to you, Mr. Cleek, how glad I am to meet you and to have you make this quick response to my appeal,” said the Admiral Superintendent, offering him a welcoming hand. “I feel that if any man is likely to get to the bottom of this mysterious business you are that man. And that you should get to the bottom of it—quickly, at whatever cost, by whatever means—is a thing to be desired not only in the nation’s interest, but for the honour of myself and my two colleagues.”
“I hardly think that your honour will be called into question, Sir Charles,” replied Cleek, liking him the better for the manliness which prompted him in that hour of doubt and difficulty to lay aside all questions of position, and by the word “colleague” lift his secretary to the level of himself, so that they might be judged upon a common plane as men, and men alone. “It would be a madman indeed who would hint at anything approaching treason with regard to Sir Charles Fordeck.”
“No madder than he who would hint it of either of these,” said Sir Charles, laying a hand upon the shoulder of the auditor and the secretary, and placing himself between them. “I demand to be judged by the same rule, set upon the same plane with them. We three alone were in this house when that abominable thing happened; we three alone had access to the records from which that information was wired. It never, for so much as the fraction of one second, passed out of our keeping or our sight; if it was wired at all it must have been wired from this house, from that room, and in that case, one or other of us must positively have been the person to do so. Well,Idid not; MacInery did not; Grimsdick did not. And yet, as you know, the ‘wiring’ was done—we should never stand a chance of knowing to whom, nor by whom, but for the accident which deflected the course of the message.”
“H’m! Yes! I don’t think,” commented Cleek reflectively. “It won’t wash, that theory; no, decidedly it won’t wash. Pardon? Oh, no, Sir Charles, I am not casting any doubt upon the telegraph operator’s statement of the manner in which he received the message; it is his judgment that is at fault, not his veracity. Of course, there have been cases—very rare ones, happily—of one wire automatically tapping another through, as he suggested, there being a break and an overlapping of the broken wire on to the sound one; but in the present instance thereisn’t a ghost of a chance of such a thing having happened. In other words, Sir Charles, it is as unsound in theory as it is false in fact. Mr. Narkom has been telling me on the way here that the operator accounted for the sudden starting of the message to the falling of a storm-snapped wire upon an uninjured one, and for its abrupt cessation to the slipping off of that broken wire under the influence of the strong gale. Now, as we entered the town and proceeded through it, I particularly noted the fact that no broken wires were anywhere visible, nor was there sight or sign of men being engaged in repairing one.”
“Ah, yes,” agreed Sir Charles, a trifle dubiously, “that may be quite so, Mr. Cleek; but, if you will pardon my suggesting it, is there not the possibility of a flaw in your reasoning upon that point? The wire in question may not have been located in that particular district through which you were travelling.”
“I don’t think there is any chance of my having made an error of that sort, Sir Charles,” replied Cleek, smiling. “Had I been likely to do so, our friend the telegraph operator would have prevented it. He recognized at once that the communication was coming over the wire from the dockyard, I am told; and I have observed that every one of the dockyard wires is intact. I fancy when we come down to the bottom of it we shall discover that it was not the dockyard wire which ‘tapped’ a message from some other, but that the dockyard wire was being ‘tapped’ itself, and that the storm, causing a momentary interruption in the carrying on of that ‘tapping’ process, allowed a portion of the message to slip past and continue to the wire’s end—the telegraph office.”
“Good lud! Then in that case——”
“In that case, Mr. Narkom, there can be no shadow of a doubt that that message was sent by somebody in this house—and over the dockyard’s own private wire.”
“But how, Mr. Cleek—in the name of all that is wonderful, how?”
“Ah, that is the point, Sir Charles. I think we need not go into the matter of who is at the bottom of the whole affair, but confine ourselves to the business of discovering how the thing was done, and how much information has already gone out to the enemy. I fancy we may set our minds at rest upon one point, however, namely, the identity of the person whose hand supplied the drawing found upon the body of the drowned man. That hand was a woman’s; that woman, I feel safe in saying, was Sophie Borovonski, professionally known to the people of the underworld as ‘La Tarantula.’”
“I never heard of her, Mr. Cleek. Who is she?”
“Probably the most beautiful, unscrupulous, reckless, dare-devil spy in all Europe, Sir Charles. She is a Russian by birth, but owns allegiance to no country and to no crown. Together with her depraved brother Boris, and her equally desperate paramour, Nicolo Ferrand, she forms one of the trio of paid bravos who for years have been at the beck and call of any nation despicable enough to employ them; always ready for any piece of treachery or dirty work, so long as their price is paid—as cunning as serpents, as slippery as eels, as clever as the devil himself, and as patient. We shall not go far astray, gentlemen, if we assert that the lady’s latest disguise was that of Miss Greta Hilmann.”
“Good God! Young Beachman’s fiancée?”
“Exactly, Sir Charles. I should not be able to identify her from a photograph were one obtainable, which I doubt—she is far too clever for that sort of thing—but the evidence is conclusive enough to satisfy me, at least, of the lady’s identity.”
“But how—how?”
“Mr. Narkom will tell you, Sir Charles, that from our time of starting this morning to our arrival here we madebut one stop. That stop was at the Portsmouth mortuary before we appeared at this house. I wished to see the body of the man who was drowned. I have no hesitation, Sir Charles, in declaring that that man’s name is not, and never was, Axel von Ziegelmundt. The body is that of Nicolo Ferrand, ‘La Tarantula’s’ clever lover. The inference is obvious. ‘Miss Greta Hilmann’s’ anguish and despair were real enough, believe me (that is why it deceived everybody so completely). It is not, however, over the frightful position of young Beachman that she sorrowed, but over the death of Ferrand. Had he lived, I believe she has daring enough to have remained here and played her part to the end, but she either lost her nerve and her mental balance—which, by the way, is not in the least like her under any circumstances whatsoever—or some other disaster of which we know nothing overtook her and interfered with her carrying on the work in conjunction with her brother.”
“Her brother?”
“Yes. He would be sure to be about. They all three worked in concert. Gad! if I’d only been here before the vixen slipped the leash—if I only had! Let us have the elder Mr. Beachman in, if you please, Sir Charles; there’s a word or so I want to have with him. You’ve had him summoned, of course!”
“Yes, he and the telegraph operator as well; I thought you might wish to question both,” replied he. “Grimsdick, go—or, no! I’ll go myself. Beachman ought to know of this appalling thing; and it is best that it should be broken by a friend.”
Speaking, he left the room, coming back a few minutes later in company with the telegraph operator and the now almost hysterical dock master. He waited not one second for introduction or permission or anything else, that excited father, but rushed at Cleek and caught him by the hand.
“It’s my boy and you’re clearing him—God bless you!” he exclaimed, catching Cleek’s hand and wringing it with all his strength. “It isn’t in him to sell his country; I’d have killed him with my own hand years ago, if I thought it was. But it wasn’t—it never was! My boy! my boy! my splendid, loyal boy!”
“That’s right, old chap, have it out. Here on my shoulder, if you want to, daddy, and don’t be ashamed of it!” said Cleek, and reached round his arm over the man’s shoulder and clapped him on the back. “Let her go, and don’t apologize because it’s womanish. A man without a strain of the woman in him somewhere isn’t worth the powder to blow him to perdition. We’ll have him cleared, daddy—gad, yes! And look here! When he is cleared you take him by the ear and tell him to do his sweethearting in England, the young jackass, and to let foreign beauties alone; they’re not picking up with young Englishmen of his position for nothing, especially if they are reputed to have money of their own and to be connected with titled families. If you can’t make him realize that by gentle means, take him into the garden and bang it into him—hard.”
“Thank you, sir; thank you! I can see it now, Mr. Cleek. Not much use in shouting ‘Rule Britannia’ if you’re going to ship on a foreign craft, is there, sir? But anybody would have been taken in with her—she seemed such a sweet, gentle little thing and had such winning ways. And when she lost her father, the wife and I simply couldn’t help taking her to our hearts.”
“Quite so. Ever see that ‘father,’ Mr. Beachman?”
“Yes, sir, once; the day before he sailed—or was supposed to have sailed—for the States.”
“Short, thick-set man was he? Carried one shoulder a little lower than the other, and had lost the top of a finger on the left hand?”
“Yes, sir; the little finger. That’s him to a T.”
“Boris Borovonski!” declared Cleek, glancing over at Sir Charles. “No going to the States for that gentleman with a ‘deal’ like this on hand. He’d be close by and in constant touch with her. Did she have any friends in the town, Mr. Beachman?”
“No, not one. She appeared to be of a very retiring disposition, and made no acquaintances whatsoever. The only outside person I ever knew her to take any interest in was a crippled girl who lived with her bedridden mother and took in needlework. Greta heard of the case, and went to visit them. Afterward she used to carry work to them frequently, and sometimes fruit and flowers.”
“Ever see that bedridden woman or that cripple girl?”
“No, sir, never. Harry and I would be busy here most of the days, so she always went alone.”
“Did she ever ask Mrs. Beachman to accompany her?”
“Not that I ever heard of, sir. But it would have been to no purpose if she had. The wife is a very delicate woman; she rarely ever goes anywhere.”
“Hum-m-m! I see! So, then, you really do not know if there actually was a woman or a girl at all? Any idea where the persons were supposed to live?”
“Yes. They hired a room on the top floor of a house adjoining the Ocean Billow Hotel, sir. At least, Reggie—that’s my youngest son, Mr. Cleek—saw Greta go in there and look down from one of the top floor windows one day when he was on his way home from school. He spoke to her about it at the dinner table that night, and she said that that was where her ‘pensioners lived.’”
“Pretty good neighbourhood that, by Jove! for people who were ‘pensioners’ to be living in,” commented Cleek. “The Ocean Billow Hotel is a modern establishment—lifts, electric lights, liveried attendants, and caters to people of substance and standing.”
“Yes,” admitted Beachman. “When I was suspended, sir, during the examination and this house taken over by Sir Charles, I took Mrs. Beachman and Reggie there, and we have remained at the place, nominally under guard, ever since. You see, being convenient and in a straight line, so to speak, it offered extra advantages in case of my being summoned here at a moment’s notice.”
“H’m! Yes! I see!” said Cleek, stroking his chin. “In a straight line from here, eh? House next door would, of course, offer the same advantages; and from a room on the top floor a wire-tapping device——Yes, just so! I think, Sophie, I think I smell a very large mouse, my dear, and I shan’t be surprised if we’ve hit upon the place of reception for your messages the very first shot.”
“Messages, Mr. Cleek? Messages?” interposed Sir Charles. “You surely do not mean to infer that the woman telegraphed messages from this house? Do you forget, then, that there is no instrument, no wire, attached to the place?”
Cleek puckered up his brows. For the moment he had forgotten that fact.
“Still, there are wires passing over it, Sir Charles,” he said presently; “and if a means of communication with those were established, the ‘tapper’ at the other end could receive messages easily. She is a devil of ingenuity is Sophie. I wouldn’t put it beyond her and her confederates to have rigged up a transmitting instrument of some sort which the woman could carry on her person and attach to the wire when needed.”
Here Sir Charles threw in something which he felt to be in the nature of a facer.
“Quite so,” he admitted. “But do not forget, Mr. Cleek, that the deflected message was sent last night, and that the woman was not then in this house.”
The queer little one-sided smile cocked up the corner of Cleek’s mouth. “Sure of that, Sir Charles?” he inquired placidly. “Sure that she was not? I am told, it is true, that she left the note saying she was going to drown herself, and disappeared four nights ago; I am also told that since the date of Mr. Beachman’s suspension this place has been under constant guard night and day, but I havenotbeen told, however, that any of the guards saw her leave the place. No, no, no! Don’t jump to conclusions so readily, gentlemen. She will be out of it now,—out and never likely to return; the news of that miscarried message would warn her that something was wrong, and she would be ‘up and out of it’ like a darting swallow. The question is, how and when did she get out? Let’s have in the guard and see.”
The sentries were brought in one after the other and questioned. At no time since they were first put on guard, they declared—atno time, either by day or by night—had any living creature entered or left the house up to now, except the Admiral Superintendent, his secretary, the auditor, and the nurse who had been summoned to look after the stricken girl. To that they one and all were willing to take solemn oath.
There is an old French proverb which says: “He that protests too much leads to the truth in spite of himself.” It was the last man to be called who did this.
“No, sir, nobody passed, either in or out, I’ll take my dying oath to that,” asserted he, his feelings riled up by thethought that this constant questioning of his statement was a slur upon his devotion to his duty. “There aren’t nobody going to hint as I’m a slacker as don’t know what he’s a-doing of, or a blessed mug that don’t obey orders; no, sir—no fear! Sir Charles’s orders was, ‘Nobody in or out’ and nobody in or out it was; my hat! yuss! Why, sir”—turning to the dock master—“you must ’a’ known; he must ’a’ told you. I wouldn’t allow even young Master Reggie in last night when he came a-pleading to be let in to get the school books he’d left behind.”
“When hewhat?” almost roared the dock master, fairly jumping. “Good lord, Marshall, have you gone off your head? Do you mean to claim that you saw my boy here—last night?”
“Certainly, sir. Just after that awful clap of thunder it was—say about eight or ten minutes after; and what with that and the darkness and the way the wind was howling, I never see nor heard nothing of him coming till I got to the door, and there he was—in them light-coloured knickers and the pulled-down wideawake hat I’d seen him wear dozens of times—with his coat collar turned up and a drippin’ umbrella over his head, making like he was going up the steps to try and get in. ‘Who’s there?’ as I sings to him, though I needn’t, for the little light was streaking out through the windows showed me what he was wearing and who it was well enough. ‘It’s me—Master Reggie, Marshall,’ he says. ‘I’ve come to get my school books. I left ’em behind in the hurry, and father says he’s sure you’ll let me go in and get ’em.’ ‘Oh, does he?’ says I. ‘Well, I’m surprised at him and at you, too, Master Reggie, a-thinking I’d go against orders. Word is that nobody gets in; and nobodydoes, even the king hisself, till them orders is changed. So you just come away from that door, and trot right away back to your pa,’ I says to him, ‘and ask him from me what kind of a sentry he thinks Bill Marshall is.’Which sets him a-snivelling and a-pleading till I has to take him by the shoulder, and fair drag him away before I could get him to go as he’d been told.”
“Well done, Sophie!” exclaimed Cleek. “Gad! what a creature of resource the woman is, and what an actress she would make, the vixen! No need to ask you if your son really did come over here last night, Mr. Beachman; your surprise and indignation have answered for you.”
“I should think it would, by George!” rapped out the dock master. “What sort of an insane man must you have thought me, Marshall, to credit such a thing as that? As if I’d have been likely to let a delicate fifteen-year-old boy go out on an errand of any kind in a beast of a storm like last night’s, much less tell him that he was to ask a sentry,in my name, to disobey his orders. Good God! gentlemen, it’s simply monstrous! Why, look here, Sir Charles; look here, Mr. Cleek! Even if I’d been guilty of such a thing, and the boy was willing to go out, he couldn’t have done it to save his life. The poor little chap met with an accident last night and he’s been in bed ever since. He was going down the stairs on his way to dinner when that terrific clap of thunder came, and the blessed thing startled him so much that, in the pitch darkness, he missed his footing, fell clear to the bottom of the staircase, and broke his collar bone.”
“Poor little lad! Too bad, too bad!” sympathized Sir Charles, feelingly, and, possibly, would have said more but that Cleek’s voice broke in softly, but with a curiously sharp note underlying its sleekness.
“In the pitch darkness, Mr. Beachman?” it inquired. “The pitch darkness of a public hotelat dinner time? Isn’t that rather extraordinary?”
“It would be, under any other circumstances, sir, but that infernal clap of thunder interfered in some way with the electric current, and every blessed light in the hotel wentsmack out—whisk! like that!—and left the place as black as a pocket. Everybody thought for the moment that the wires must have fused, but it turned out that there was nothing the matter with them—only that the current had been interrupted for a bit—for the lights winked on again as suddenly as they had winked out.”
“By Jupiter!” Cleek cracked out the two words like the snapping of a whip lash, then quickly turned round on his heel and looked straight and intently at the telegraph operator.
“Speak up—quick!” he said in the sharp staccato of excitement. “I am told that when that crash came and the diverted message began there was a force that almost knocked you off your stool. Is that true?”
“Yes, sir,” the man replied, “perfectly true. It was something terrific. The Lord only knows what it would have been if I’d been touching the instrument.”
“You’d have been as dead as Julius Cæsar!” flung back Cleek. “No wonder she cut away to see what was wrong, the vixen! No wonder the lights went out! Mr. Narkom, the limousine—quick! Come along, Sir Charles; come along, Mr. Beachman—come along at once!”
“Where, Mr. Cleek—where?”
“To the top floor of the house next door to the Ocean Billow Hotel, Sir Charles, to see ‘Miss Greta Hilmann’s’ precious pensioners,” he made answer, rather excitedly. “Unless I am wofully mistaken, gentlemen, one part of this little riddle is already solved, and the very elements have conspired to protect England to become her foeman’s executioner.”
He was not mistaken—not in any point with regard to that house and the part it had played in this peculiar case—for, when they visited it and demanded in the name of the law the right to enter and to interview “the bedridden woman and the crippled girl who occupied the top floor,”they were met with the announcement that no such persons dwelt there, nor had ever done so.
“It is let to an invalid, it is true,” the landlady, a motherly, unsuspecting old soul, told them when they made the demand. “But it is a gentleman, not a lady. A professional gentleman, I believe—artist or sculptor, something of that sort—and never until last night has anybody been with him but his niece, who makes occasional calls. Last night, however, a nephew came—just for a moment; indeed, it seemed to me that he had no more than gone upstairs before he came down again and went out. Pardon? No, nobody has called to-day, neither has the gentleman left his room. But he often sleeps until late.”
He was sleeping forever this time. For when they came to mount the stairs and force open the door of the room, there, under a half-opened skylight, a dead man lay, one screwed-up, contracted hand still clutching the end of a flex, which went up and out to the telegraph wires overhead. On a table beside the body a fused and utterly demolished telegraph instrument stood; and it was evident from the scrap of flex still clinging to this that it had once formed part of that which the dead hand held; that it had snapped somehow, and that the man was attempting to re-attach it to the instrument when death overtook him.
“Gentlemen, the wire tapper—Boris Borovonski!” said Cleek, as he bent over and looked at him. “Step here, Mr. Beachman, and tell me if this is not the man who played the part of ‘Miss Greta Hilmann’s’ interesting papa.”
“Yes, yes!” declared the dock master excitedly, after he, too, had bent over and looked into the dead face. “It is the very man, sir, the very one! But who—but why—but how?” He then looked upward in a puzzled way to where the flex went up and out through the skylight and, threading through a maze of wires, hooked itself fast to one.
“Electrocuted,” said Cleek, answering that inquiringglance. “A few thousand volts—a flash of flame through heart and head and limbs, and then this! See his little game, Mr. Narkom? See it, do you, Sir Charles? He was taking the message from the tapped wire with that flex, and the fragment that reached the telegraph office only got through when the flex snapped. The furious gale did that, no doubt, whipping it away from its moorings, so to speak, and letting the message flash on before he could prevent it.
“Can’t you read the rest when you look up and see that other wire—the thick one with the insulated coating torn and frayed by contact with the chimney’s rough edge? It is not hard to reconstruct the tragedy when one sees that. When the flex snapped he jumped up and grabbed it, and was in the very act of again attaching it to the instrument when he became his own executioner. Look for yourself. The wild wind must either have blown the flex against the bared wire of the electric light or the bared wire against the flex—that we shall never know—and in the winking of an eye he was annihilated.
“No wonder the lights in the hotel went out, Mr. Beachman. The whole strength of the current was short-circuited through this man’s body, and it crumpled him up as a glove crumples when it is cast in the fire. But the dead hand, which had recovered the broken flex, still held it, you see, and no more of the ‘tapped’ message went down the dockyard wire. So long as that message continued, so long as the instrument which sent it continued to send it, it was ‘received’ here—a mere silent, unrecorded, impotent thrill locked up in the grip of a dead man’s hand.
“And look there—the pile of burnt paper beside the fused instrument and the cinder of a matchbox against it. The force which obliterated life in him infused it into the ‘dipped’ heads of those little wooden sticks, and flashed them into flame. So long as there was anything for thatflame to feed upon it continued its work, you see, and Sophie Borovonski found nothing to take away with her, after all. Gentlemen, the State secrets that were stolen will remain England’s own—the records were burnt, and the dead cannot betray.”