“Let me alone!” he bit in, irritably. “Of all the asses! Of all the blind, mutton-headed idiots!” then laughed that curious, uncanny laugh again, scrambled to his feet and made a headlong bolt for the door. “Wait for me—all of you—in the music room,” he threw back from the threshold. “Don’t stir from it until I come. I want that fellow Jennifer! I want himat once!”
And here, turning sharply on his heel with yet another yapping sound, he bolted across the passage, ran down the staircase like an escaping thief, and by the time the others could lock up the boudoir and get down to the music room, there wasn’t a trace of him anywhere.
It was a full half hour later, and Sir Mawson and Lady Leake and Mr. Maverick Narkom were in the throes of the most maddening suspense, when the door of the music room flashed open and flashed shut again, and Cleek stood before them once more—quite alone still, but with that curious crooked smile which to Narkom stood for so much, looping up the corner of his mouth and mutely foreshadowing the riddle’s spectacular end.
“Cleek, dear chap!” The superintendent’s voice was sharp and thin with excitement. “You’ve found out something, then?”
“I hope, Mr. Narkom, I have found out everything,” he replied with a marked emphasis on the word hope. “But as we are told when in doubt or in difficulty to ‘look above’ for a way out, permit me to follow that advice before proceeding any further with the subject.”
Here he stepped to the centre of the room, twitched back his head, and, with chin upslanted and eyes directed toward the ceiling, moved slowly round in a narrow circle for a moment or two.
But of a sudden he came to a sharp standstill, rapped out a short, queer little laugh, and, altering these mysterious tactics, looked down and across the room at Sir Mawson Leake.
“I think the Ranee did not look to the security of those slim gold links a day too soon, Sir Mawson,” he said. “It is too much to ask a man to risk his whole fortune on the tenacity of a bit of age-worn wire as you have done, and ifI were in your shoes I’d tell the old girl’smajor domowhen he comes for the necklace, to get it repaired somewhere else—and be dashed to him.”
“Good! Wouldn’t I, in a twinkling, if I could only lay hands on the wretched thing again. But I haven’t it, as you know.”
“Quite true. But you are going to have it—presently. I know where it is!”
“Mr. Cleek!”
“Gently, gently, my friends. Don’t go quite off your heads with excitement. I repeat, I know where it is. I have found it and——Mr. Narkom! Look sharp! A chair for Lady Leake—she’s tottering. Steady, steady, your ladyship; it will only complicate matters to lose a grip on yourself now; and you have kept up so brave a front all through, it would be a pity to break down at the end.”
“I am not breaking down. I am quite all right. Please go on, Mr. Cleek—please do. I can stand anything better than this. Are you sure you have found it? Are yousure?”
“Absolutely. I have had a nice little talk with old Jennifer, and a very satisfactory visit to Master Bevis Leake’s interesting ‘pirates’ cave’ and——Gently, gently, Sir Mawson; gently, all of you. Don’t jump to conclusions too quickly. No, your ladyship, I did not find the necklace in that cave, and for the simple reason that it is not and never has been there—in short, neither your son Bevis nor the servant, Jennifer, has the least idea in the worldwhereit is. I have, however, and if in return for handing it over to him, Sir Mawson will give me his promise to take that boy, Henry, back and give him another chance, he shall have it in his hands ten seconds afterward.”
“I promise! I promise! I promise!” broke in Sir Mawson, almost shouting in his excitement. “I give you my word, Mr. Cleek, I give you my solemn oath.”
“Right you are,” said Cleek in reply. Then he twitched forward a chair, stepped on the seat of it, reached up into the midst of the chandelier’s glittering cut-glass lustres, snapped something out from their sparkling festoons, and added serenely, “Favour for favour: there you are, then!” as he dropped the Ladder of Light into Sir Mawson’s hands.
And all in a moment, what with Lady Leake laughing and crying at one and the same time, her liege lord acting pretty much as if he had suddenly gone off his head, and Mr. Maverick Narkom chiming in and asserting several times over that he’d be jiggered, there was the dickens and all to pay in the way of excitement.
“Up in the chandelier!” exclaimed Lady Leake when matters had settled down a bit. “Up there, where it might have remained unnoticed for months, so like is it to the strings of lustres. But how? But when? Oh, Mr. Cleek, who in the world put it there? And why?”
“Jennifer,” he made answer. “No, not for any evil purpose, your ladyship. He doesn’t know even yet that it was there, or that he ever in all his life held a thing so valuable in his hands. All that he does know in connection with it is that while he was cleaning those lustres out there in the hallway yesterday afternoon between four and five o’clock your son Bevis, out on one of his ‘treasure raids,’ paid him a visit, and that long after, when the old fellow came to replace the lustres on the chandelier, he discovered that one string was missing.
“‘I knowed the precious little rascal had took it, sir, of course,’ was the way he put it in explaining the matter to me; ‘and I felt sure I’d be certain to find it in his pirates’ cave. But Lord bless you, it turned out as he hadn’t took it there at all, as I found out a goodish bit afterward, when her ladyship comes down to the landing at the top of the first flight of stairs, calls me up to give me the lint for MissEastman, and then gives a jump and a cry, like she’d just recollected something, and runs back upstairs as fast as she could fly. For when I looks down, there was the missing string of lustres lying on the landing right where her ladyship had been standing, and where he, little rascal, had went and hid it from me. So I picks it up and puts it back in its place on the chandelier just as soon as I’d taken the lint to Miss Eastman like her ladyship told me.’
“In that, Lady Leake, lies the whole story of how it came to be where you saw me find it. Jennifer is still under the impression that what he picked up on that landing was nothing more than the string of twelve cut-glass lustres joined together by links of brass wire which is at this moment hanging among the ‘treasures’ in your little son’s pirates’ cave.”
“On the landing? Lying on the landing, do you say, Mr. Cleek?” exclaimed her ladyship. “But heavens above, how could the necklace ever have got there? Nobody could by any possibility have entered the boudoir after I left it to run down to the landing with the lint. You saw for yourself how utterly impossible such a thing as that would be.”
“To be sure,” he admitted. “It was the absolute certainty that nobody in the world could have actually forced the key to the solution upon me. Since it was possible for only one solitary person to have entered and left that room since Sir Mawson placed the necklace in your charge, clearly then that person was the one who carried it out. Therefore, there was but one conclusion, namely, that when your ladyship left that room the Ladder of Light left it with you: on your person, and——Gently, gently, Lady Leake; don’t get excited, I beg. I shall be able in a moment to convince you that my reasoning upon that point was quite sound, and to back it up with actual proof.
“If you will examine the necklace, Sir Mawson, you willsee that it has not come through this adventure uninjured; in short, that one of the two sections of its clasp is missing, and the link that once secured that section to the string of diamonds has parted in the middle. Perhaps a good deal which may have seemed to you sheer madness up to this point will be clearly explained when I tell you that when I lifted Lady Leake’s negligée from that chair a while ago I found this thing clinging to the lace of the right sleeve.”
“Good heavens above! Look, Ada, look! The missing section of the clasp.”
“Exactly,” concurred Cleek. “And when you think of where I found it I fancy it will not be very difficult to reason out how the necklace came to be where Jennifer picked it up. On your own evidence, Lady Leake, you hastily laid it down on your dressing-table, when the sight of the lint bandage recalled to your mind your promise to Miss Eastman, and from that moment it was never seen again. The natural inference then is so clear I think there can hardly be a doubt that when you reached over to pick up that bandage the lace of your sleeve caught on the clasp, became entangled, and that when you left the room you carried the Ladder of Light with you. The great weight of the necklace swinging free as you ran down the staircase would naturally tell upon that weak link, and no doubt when you leaned over the banister at the landing to call Jennifer, that was, so to speak, the last straw. The weak link snapped, the necklace dropped away, and the thick carpet entirely muffled the sound of its fall. As for the rest——”
The loud jangling of the door bell cut in upon his words. He pulled out his watch and looked at it.
“That will be the Ranee’smajor domo, I fancy, Sir Mawson,” he observed, “and with your kind permission Mr. Narkom and I will be going. We have, as I have already told you, a little matter of importance still to attend to in the interest of the Yard, and although I haven’t the slightestidea we shall be able to carry it to a satisfactory conclusion for a very long time—if ever—we had better be about it. Pardon? Reward, your ladyship? Oh, but I’ve had that: Sir Mawson has given me his promise to let that bonny boy have another chance. That was all I asked, remember. There’s good stuff in him, but he stands at the crossroads, and face to face with one of life’s great crises. Now is the time when he needs a friend. Now is the time for his father tobea father; and opportunity counts for so much in the devil’s gamble for souls. Get to him, daddy—get to him and stand by him—and you’ll have given me the finest reward in the world.”
And here, making his adieus to Lady Leake, whose wet eyes followed him with something of reverence in them, and shaking heartily the hand Sir Mawson held out, he linked arms with Narkom, and together they passed out, leaving a great peace and a great joy behind them.
“Gad, what an amazing beggar you are!” declared the superintendent, breaking silence suddenly as soon as they were at a safe distance from the house. “You’ll end your days in the workhouse, you know, if you continue this sort of tactics. Fancy chucking up a reward for the sake of a chap you never saw before, and who treated you like a mere nobody. Why, man alive, you could have had almost any reward—a thousand pounds if you’d asked it—for finding a priceless thing like that.”
“I fancy I’ve helped to find something that is more priceless still, my friend, and it’s cheap at the price.”
“But a thousand pounds, Cleek! a thousand pounds! God’s truth, man, think what you could do with all that money—think what you could buy!”
“To be sure; but think what youcan’t! Not one day of lost innocence, not one hour of spoilt youth! It isn’t because they have a natural tendency toward evil thatallmen go wrong. It is not what they possess but what theylack that’s at the bottom of the downfall of four fifths of them. Given such ingredients as a young chap suffering under a sense of personal injury, a feeling that the world’s against him, that he has neither a home nor a friend to stand by him in his hour of need, and the devil will whip up the mixture and manufacture a criminal in less than no time. It is easier to save him while he’s worth the saving than it is to pull him up after he has gone down the line, Mr. Narkom, and if by refusing to accept so many pounds, shillings, and pence, a man can do the devil out of a favourable opportunity——Oh, well, let it go at that. Come on, please. We are still as far as ever from the ‘game’ we set out to bag, my friend; and as this district seems to be as unpromising in that respect as all the others—where next?”
“I’m bothered if I know,” returned Narkom helplessly. “Gad! I’m at my wits’ end. We seem to be as far as ever from any clue to that devilish pair and unless you can suggest something——” He finished the sentence by taking off his hat, and looking up at Cleek hopefully, and patting his bald spot with a handkerchief which diffused a more or less agreeable odour of the latest Parisian perfume.
“H’m!” said Cleek, reflectively. “We might cross the Heath and have a look round Gospel Oak, if you like. It’s a goodish bit of a walk and I’ve no idea that it will result in anything, I frankly admit, but it is one of the few places we havenottried, so we might have a go at that if you approve.”
“By James! yes. The very thing. There’s always a chance, you know, so long as it’s a district we’ve never done. Gospel Oak it is, then. And look here—I’ll tell you what. You just stop here a bit and wait for me, old chap, while I nip back to the house and ask Sir Mawson’s permission to use his telephone—to ring up the Yard as usual, you know, and tell them in what quarter we’re operating, in case there should be reason to send anybody out to find me in a hurry. Back with you in no time and then we’ll be off to Gospel Oak like a shot.”
“Right you are. I’ll stop here under the trees and indulge in a few comforting whiffs while you are about it. Get along!”
Narkom paused a moment to grip his cuff between fingertips and palm, and run his coat sleeve round the shiny surface of his “topper,” then shook out his handkerchief and returned it to his pocket, jerked down his waistcoat and gave it one or two sharp flicks with the backs of his nails, and before a second diffusion of scent had evaporated, or the whimsical twist it called to Cleek’s lips had entirely vanished, the scene presented nothing more striking than an ordinary man leaning back against a tree and engaged in scratching a match on the side of an ordinary wooden matchbox. The Yard’s Gentleman had gone.
It was full ten minutes later when he lurched into view again, coming down the garden path at top speed, with one hand on his hat’s crown and the other holding the flapping skirts of his frock coat together, and Cleek could tell from the expression of his round, pink face that something of importance had occurred.
It had—and he blurted it out in an outburst of joyous excitement the moment they again stood together. The search for Dutch Ella and Diamond Nick was at an end. The police of Paris had cabled news of their location and arrest that very morning in the French capital, and would hold them under lock and key until the necessary preliminaries were over, relative to their deportation as undesirables, and their return to Canada.
“The news arrived less than an hour ago,” he finished, “and that wideawake young beggar, Lennard, thought it was so important that I ought to know it as soon as possible, so he hopped on to the limousine and put off as fast as he could streak it. He’s up here in this district now—this minute—hunting for us. Come on! let’s go and find him. By James! it’s a ripping end to the business—what?”
“That depends,” replied Cleek without much enthusiasm. “Which limousine is Lennard using to-day? The new blue one?”
“Cinnamon, no! That won’t be delivered until the dayafter to-morrow. So it will be the good old red one, of course. Will it matter?”
“Come and see!” said Cleek, swinging out of the grounds into the public highway again, and walking fast. “At all events, an ounce of certainty is worth a pound of suspicion, and this littlefaux paswill decide the question. They are no fools, those Apaches; and Waldemar knows how to wait patiently for what he wants.”
“Waldemar? The Apaches? Good lud, man, what are you talking about? You are not worrying over that business again, I hope. Haven’t I told you over and over again that we couldn’t find one trace of them anywhere in London—that they cleared out bag and baggage after that fruitless trip to Yorkshire? The whole truth of the matter, to my way of thinking, is that they awoke then to the fact that you had ‘dropped’ to their being after you, and knowing you weren’t to be caught napping, gave it up as a bad job.”
“Or altered their tactics and set out to follow some one else.”
“Some one else? Good lud, don’t talk rubbish. What good would following some one else do if they were after you?”
“Come and see,” said Cleek again, and would say no more, but merely walked on faster than ever—up one thoroughfare and down another—flicking eager glances to right and to left in search of the red limousine.
In the thick of the High Street they caught sight of it at last, tooling about aimlessly, while Lennard kept constant watch on the crowd of shoppers that moved up and down the pavement.
“Cut ahead and stop it and we shall see what weshallsee, Mr. Narkom. I’ll join you presently,” said Cleek, and he stood watching while the superintendent forged ahead in the direction of the limousine; and continued watchingeven after he saw him reach it and bring it to a halt, and stand at the kerb talking earnestly with Lennard.
But of a sudden the old crooked smile looped up the corner of his mouth; he stood at attention for a moment or two, breathing hard through his nostrils, and moving not at all until, abruptly starting into activity, he walked rapidly down the pavement and joined Narkom.
“Well?” queried the superintendent, looking up at him quizzically. “Come to any decision, old chap?”
“Yes—and so will you in a second. Don’t turn—don’t do anything hastily. Just look across the street, at the jeweller’s window, opposite, and tell me what you think of it.”
Narkom’s swift, sidelong glance travelled over the distance like a gunshot, arrowed through the small collection of persons gathered about the shop window inspecting the display of trinkets, and every nerve in his body jumped.
“Good God! Waldemar!” he said, under his breath.
“Exactly. I told you he knew how to wait. Now look farther along the kerb on this side. The closed carriage waiting there. It was dawdling along and keeping pace with him when I saw it first. The man on the box is a fellow named Serpice—an Apache.Chut!Be still, will you?—and look the other way. They will do me no harm—here. It isn’t their game, and, besides, they daren’t. It is too public, too dangerous. It will be done, when it is done, in the dark—when I’m alone, and none can see. And Waldemar will not be there. He will direct, but not participate. But it won’t be to-day nor yet to-night, I promise you. I shall slip them this time if never again.”
The superintendent spoke, but the hard hammering of his heart made his voice scarcely audible.
“How?” he asked. “How?”
“Come and see!” said Cleek for yet a third time. Then with an abruptness and a swiftness that carried everythingbefore it, he caught Narkom by the arm, swept him across the street, and without hint or warning tapped Waldemar upon the shoulder.
“Ah, bon jour, Monsieur le Comte,” he said airily, as the Mauravanian swung round and looked at him, blanching a trifle in spite of himself. “So you are back in England, it seems? Ah, well, we like you so much—tell his Majesty when next you report—that this time we shall try to keep you here.”
Taken thus by assault, the man had no words in which to answer, but merely wormed his way out of the gathering about him and, panic stricken, obliterated himself in the crowd of pedestrians teeming up and down the street.
“You reckless devil!” wheezed Narkom as he was swept back to the limousine in the same cyclonic manner he had been swept away from it. “You might have made the man savage enough to do something to you, even in spite of the publicity, by such a proceeding as that.”
“That is precisely what I had hoped to do, my friend, but you perceive he is no fool to be trapped into that. We should have had some excuse for arresting him if he had done a thing of that sort, some charge to prefer against him, whereas, as matters stand, there’s not one we can bring forward that holds good in law or that we couldproveif our lives depended upon it. You see now, I hope, Mr. Narkom, why you have seen nothing of him lately?”
“No—why?”
“You have not used the red limousine, and he has been lying low ready to follow that, just as I suspected he would. If he couldn’t trace where Cleek goes to meet the red limousine, clearly then the plan to be adopted must be to follow the red limousine and see where it goes to meet Cleek, and then to follow that much-wanted individual when he parts from you and makes his way home. That is the thing the fellow is after. To find out where I liveand to ‘get’ me some night out there. But, my friend, ‘turn about is fair play’ the world over, and having had his inning at hunting me, I’m going in for mine at hunting him. I’ll get him; I’ll trap him into something for which he can be turned over to the law—make no mistake about that.”
“My hat! What do you mean to do?”
“First and foremost, make my getaway out of the present little corner,” he replied, “and then rely upon your assistance in finding out where the beggar is located. We’re not done with him even for to-day. He will follow—either he or Serpice: perhaps both—the instant Lennard starts off with us.”
“You are going back with us in the limousine, then?”
“Yes—part of the way. Drive on, Lennard, until you can spot a plain-clothes man, then give him the signal to follow us. At the first station on the Tube or the Underground, pull up sharp and let me out. You, Mr. Narkom, alight with me and stand guard at the station entrance while I go down to the train. If either Waldemar or an Apache makes an attempt to follow, arrest him on the spot, on any charge you care to trump up—it doesn’t matter so that it holds him until my train goes—and as soon as it has gone, call up your plain-clothes man, point out Serpice to him, and tell him to follow and to stick to the fellow until he meets Waldemar, if it takes a week to accomplish it, and then to shadow his precious countship and find out where he lives. Tell him for me that there’s a ten-pound note in it for him the moment he can tell me where Waldemar is located; and to stick to his man until he runs him down. Now, then, hop in, Mr. Narkom, and let’s be off. The other chap will follow, be assured. All right, Lennard. Let her go!”
Lennard ‘let her go’ forthwith, and a quarter of an hour later saw the programme carried out in every particular,only that it was not Waldemar who made an attempt to follow when the limousine halted at the Tube station and Cleek jumped out and ran in (the count was far too shrewd for that); it was a rough-looking Frenchman who had just previously hopped out of a closed carriage driven by a fellow countryman, only to be nabbed at the station doorway by Narkom, and turned over to the nearest constable on the charge of pocket picking.
The charge, however, was so manifestly groundless that half a dozen persons stepped forward and entered protest; but the superintendent was so pig-headed that by the time he could be brought to reason, and the man was again at liberty to take his ticket and go down in the lift to the train, the platform was empty, the train gone, and Cleek already on his way.
A swift, short flight under the earth’s surface carried him to another station in quite another part of London; a swift, short walk thence landed him at his temporary lodgings in town, and four o’clock found him exchanging his workaday clothes for the regulation creased trousers and creaseless coat of masculine calling costume, and getting ready to spend the rest of the day withher.
The sky was all aflame with the glory of one of late June’s gorgeous sunsets when he came up over the long sweep of meadowland and saw her straying about and gathering wild flowers to fill the vases in the wee house’s wee little drawing-room, and singing to herself the while in a voice that was like honey—thin but very, very sweet—and at the sight something seemed to lay hold of his heart and quicken its beating until it interfered with his breathing, yet brought with it a curious sense of joy.
“Good afternoon, Mistress of the Linnets!” he called out to her as he advanced (for she had neither seen nor heard his coming) with the big sheaf of roses he had brought held behind him and the bracken and kingcups smothering him in green and gold up to the very thighs.
She turned at the sound, her face illumined, her soft eyes very bright—those wondrous eyes that had lit a man’s way back from perdition and would light it onward and upward to the end—and greeted him with a smile of happy welcome.
“Oh, it is you at last,” she said, looking at him as a woman looks at but one man ever. “Is this your idea of ‘spending the afternoon’ with one, turning up when tea is over and twilight about to begin? Do you know, I am a very busy young woman these days”—blushing rosily—“and might have spent a whole day in town shopping but that Dollops brought me word that I might look for you? But, of course——No! I shan’t say it. It might make you vain to hear that you had the power to spoil my day.”
“Not any vainer than you have made me by telling me other things,” he retorted with a laugh. “I am afraid I have spoiled a good many days for you in my time, Ailsa. But, please God, I shall make up for them all in the brightness of the ones that are to come. I couldn’t help being late to-day—I’ll tell you all about that presently—but may I offer something in atonement? Please, will you add these to your bouquet and forgive me?”
“Roses! Such beauties! How good of you! Just smell! How divine!”
“Meaning the flowers or their donor?”—quizzically. “Or, no! Don’t elucidate. Leave me in blissful ignorance. You have hurt my vanity quite enough as it is. I was deeply mortified—cut to the quick, I may say, if that will express my sense of grovelling shame any clearer—when I arrived here and saw what you were doing. Please, mum”—touching his forelock and scraping his foot backward after the manner of a groom—“did I make such a bad job of my work in that garden that when you want a bouquet you have to come out here and gather wild flowers? I put fifty-eight standard roses on that terrace just under your bedroom window, and surely there must be a bloom or two that you could gather?”
“As if I would cut one of them for anything in the world!” she gave back, indignantly. Then she laughed, and blushed and stepped back from his impetuous advance. “No—please! You fished for that so adroitly that you landed it before I thought. Be satisfied. Besides, Mrs. Condiment is at her window, and I want to preserve as much as possible of her rapidly depreciating estimate of me. She thinks me a very frivolous young person, ‘to allow that young Mr. Hamilton to call so frequent, miss, and if you’ll allow me to say it, at such unseemly hours. I don’t think as dear Captain Burbage would quite approve of it if he knew.’”
“Gad! that’s rich. What a mimic you are. It was the dear old girl to the life. She hasn’t an inkling of the truth, then?”
“Not one. She doesn’t quite approve of you, either. ‘I likes to see a gent more circumpec’, miss, and a trifle more reserved when he’s gettin’ on his thirties. Muckin’ about with a garden fork and such among a trumpery lot of roses, and racin’ here, there, and everywhere over them medders after ferns and things, like a schoolboy on a holiday, aren’t what I calls dignified deportment in full-grown men, and in my day they didn’t use to do it!’ Sometimes I am in mortal terror that she intends to give me notice and to leave me bag and baggage; for she is always saying that she’s ‘sure dear Captain Burbage couldn’t have known what he was a-doing of, poor, innocent, kind-hearted gentleman—and him somuchof a gent, too, and so wonderful quiet and sedate!’”
“Poor old girl!” said Cleek, laughing. “What a shock to her if she knew the truth. And what on earthwouldyou do if she were to chance to get a peep at Dollops? But then, of course, there’s no fear of that—the young beggar’s too careful. I told him never to come near the house when he carries any notes.”
“And he never does. Always leaves them under the stone in the path through the woods. I go there, of course, twice every day, and I never know that he has been about until I find one. I am always glad to get them, but to-day’s one made me very, very happy indeed.”
“Because I told you you might expect me?”
“Yes. But not that alone. I think I cried a little and IknowI went down on my knees—right there—out in those woods, when I read those splendid words, ‘There is but one more debt to be paid. The “some day” of my hopes is near to me at last.’”
Her voice died off. He uncovered his head, and a stillnesscame that was not broken by any sound or any movement, until he felt her hand slip into his and remain there.
“Walk with me!” he said, closing his fingers around hers and holding them fast. “Walk with me always. My God! I love you so!”
“Always!” she made answer in her gentle voice; and with her hand shut tight in his, passed onward with him—over the green meadows and into the dim, still woods, and out again into the flower-filled fields beyond, where all the sky was golden after the fierce hues of the sunset had drained away into the tender gleam of twilight, and there was not one red ray left to cross the path of him.
“You have led me this way from the first,” he said, breaking silence suddenly. “Out of the glare of fire, through the dark, into peaceful light. I had gone down to hell but for you—but that you stooped and lifted me. God!”—he threw back his head and looked upward, with his hat in his hand and the light on his face—“God, forget me if ever I forget that. Amen!” he added, very quietly, very earnestly; then dropped his chin until it rested on his breast, and was very still for a long time.
“Yes,” he said, taking up the thread of conversation where it had been broken so long a time ago, “there is but one more debt to be cleared off: the value of the Princess Goroski’s tiara. A thousand pounds will wipe that off—it was not a very expensive one—and I could have had that sum to-day if I had thought of myself alone. Mr. Narkom thinks me a fool. I wonder what you will think when you hear?” And forthwith he told her.
“If you are again ‘fishing’,” she replied with a quizzical smile, “then again you are going to be successful. I think you a hero. Kiss me, please. I am very, very proud of you. And that was what made you late in coming, was it?”
“Not altogether that. I might have been earlier but that we ran foul of Waldemar and the Apaches again, and I had to lose time in shaking them off. But I ought not to have told you that. You will be getting nervous. It was a shock to Mr. Narkom. He was so sure they had given up the job and returned home.”
“I, too, was sure. I should have thought that the rebellion would have compelled that, in Count Waldemar’s case at least,” she answered, gravely. “And particularly in such a grave crisis as his country is now called upon to face. Have you seen to-day’s papers? They are full of it. Count Irma and the revolutionists have piled victory on victory. They are now at the very gates of the capital; the royal army is disorganized, its forces going over in hordes to the insurgents; the king is in a very panic and preparing, it is reported, to fly before the city falls.”
“A judgment, Alburtus, a judgment!” Cleek cried with such vehemence that it startled her. “Your son drinks of the cup you prepared for Karma’s. The same cup, the same result: dethronement, flight, exile in the world’s wildernesses, and perhaps—death. Well done, Irma! A judgment on you, Mauravania. You pay! You pay!”
“How wonderful you are—you seem to know everything!” declared Ailsa. “But in this at least you appear to be misinformed, dear. I have been reading the reports faithfully and it seems that death was not the end of all who shared in Queen Karma’s exile and flight. Count Irma is telling a tale which is calling recruits to the standard of the revolutionists hourly. The eldest son—the Crown Prince Maximilian—is still alive. The count swears to that; swears that he has seen him; that he knows where to find him at any moment. The special correspondent of theTimeswrites that everywhere the demand is for the Restoration, the battle cry of the insurgents ‘Maximilian!’ and the whole country ringing with it.”
“I can quite believe it,” he said, with one of his queer, crooked smiles. “They are an excitable people, the Mauravanians, but, unfortunately, a fickle one as well. It is up to-day and down to-morrow with them. At present the cry is for Maximillian; this time next month it may be for Irma and a republican form of government, and—Maximillian may go hang for all they want of him. Still, if they maintain the present cry—and the House of Alburtus falls—and the followers of Irma win——But what’s the use of bothering about it? Let us talk of things that have a personal interest for us, dear. Give me to-morrow, if you can. I shall have a whole day’s freedom for the first time in weeks. The water lilies are in bloom in the upper reaches of the Thames and my soul is simply crying for the river’s solitudes, the lilies, the silence, andyou! I want you—all to myself—up there, among God’s things. Give me the day, if you can.”
She gave him not one but many, as it turned out; for that one day proved such a magic thing that she was only too willing to repeat it, and as the Yard had no especial need of him, and the plain-clothes man who had been set upon Waldemar’s track had as yet nothing to report, it grew to be a regular habit with him to spend the long days up in the river solitudes with Ailsa, picnicking among the swans, and to come home to Dollops at night tired, but very happy.
It went on like this for more than ten days, uninterruptedly; but at length there came a time when an entry in his notebook warned him that there was something he could not put off any longer—something that must certainly be attended to to-morrow, in town, early—and he went to bed that night with the melancholy feeling that the next day could only be a half holiday, not a whole one, and that his hours with her would be few.
But when that to-morrow came he knew that even thesewere to be denied him; for the long-deferred call of the Yard had come, and Narkom, ringing him up at breakfast time, asked for an immediate meeting.
“In town, dear chap, as near to Liverpool Street and as early as you can possibly make it.”
“Well, I can’t make it earlier than half-past ten. I’ve got a little private business of my own to attend to, as it happens, Mr. Narkom,” he replied. “I’d put it off if I could, but I can’t. To-day before noon is the last possible hour. But look here! I can meet you at half-past ten in Bishopsgate Street, between St. Ethelburga’s Church and Bevis Narks, if that will do. Will, eh? All right. Be on the lookout for me there, then. What? The new blue limousine, eh? Right you are. I’m your man to the tick of the half hour. Good-bye!”
And he was, as it turned out. For the new blue limousine (a glistening, spic-span sixty-horsepower machine, perfect in every detail) had no more than come to a standstill at the kerb in the exact neighbourhood stated at the exact half hour agreed upon, when open whisked the door, and in jumped Cleek with the swiftness and agility of a cat.
“Good morning, my friend. I hope I haven’t taken you too much by surprise,” he said, as the limousine sprang into activity the instant he closed the door, and settled himself down beside the superintendent.
“Not more than usual, dear chap. But I shall never get quite used to some of your little tricks. Gad! You’re the most abnormally prompt beggar that ever existed, I do believe. You absolutely break all records.”
“Well, I certainly came within a hair’s breadth of losing my reputation this morning, then,” he answered cheerily, as he fumbled in his pockets for a match. “It was a hard pull to cover the distance and get through the business in time, I can tell you, with the brief margin I had. But fortunately——Here! Take charge of that, will you? And read it over while I’m getting a light.”
“That” was a long legal-looking envelope which he had whisked out of his pocket and tossed into Narkom’s lap.
“‘Royal British Life Assurance Society,’” repeated he, reading off the single line printed on the upper left-hand corner of the envelope. “What the dickens——I say, is it a policy?”
“Aha!” assented Cleek, with his mouth full of smoke. “The medico who put me through my paces, some time ago, reported me sound in wind and limb, and warranted not to bite, shy, or kick over the traces, and I was duly ordered to turn up at the London office before noon on a given day to sign up (and pay down) and receive that interesting document, otherwise my application would be void, et cetera.This, as it happens, is the ‘given day’ in question; and as the office doesn’t open for business before ten A. M., and there wasn’t the least likelihood of my being able to get back to it before noon, when you were calling for me—‘there you have the whole thing in a nutshell,’ as the old woman said when she poisoned the filberts.”
Meanwhile, Narkom had opened the envelope and glanced over the document it contained. He now sat up with a jerk and voiced a cry of amazement.
“Good Lord, deliver us!” he exclaimed. “In favour of Dollops!”
“Yes,” said Cleek. “He’s a faithful little monkey and—I’ve nothing else to leave him. There’s always a chance, you know—with Margot’s lot and Waldemar’s. I shouldn’t like to think of the boy being forced back into the streets if—anything should happen to me.”
“Well, I’ll be——What a man! What a man! Cleek, my dear, dear friend—my comrade—my pal——”
“Chuck it! Scotland Yard with the snuffles is enough to make the gods shriek, you dear old footler! Why, God bless your old soul, I——Brakes on! Let’s talk about the new limousine. She’s a beauty, isn’t she? Locker, mirror: just like the old red one, and——Hello! I say, you are taking me into the country, I perceive; we’ve left the town behind us.”
“Yes; we’re bound for Darsham.”
“Darsham? That’s in Suffolk, isn’t it? And about ninety-five miles from Liverpool Street Station, as the crow flies. So our little business to-day is to be an out-of-town affair, eh? Well, let’s have it. What’s the case? Burglary?”
“No—murder. Happened last night. Got the news over the telephone this morning. Nearly bowled me over when I heard it, by James! for I saw the man alive—in town—only the day before yesterday. It’s a murder of apeculiarly cunning and cleverly contrived character, Cleek, with no apparent motive, and absolutely no clue as to what means the assassin used to kill his victim, nor how he managed to get in and out of the place in which the crime was committed. There isn’t the slightest mark on the body. The man was not shot, not stabbed, not poisoned, nor did he die from natural causes. There is no trace of a struggle, yet the victim’s face shows that he died in great agony, and was beyond all question the object of a murderous attack.”
“Hum-m!” said Cleek, stroking his chin. “Sounds interesting, at all events. Let’s have the facts of the case, please. But first, who was the victim? Anybody of importance?”
“Of very great importance—in the financial world,” replied Narkom. “He is—or, rather, was—an American multi-millionaire; inventor, to speak by the card, of numerous electrical devices which brought him wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, and carried his fame all over the civilized world. You will, no doubt, have heard of him. His name is Jefferson P. Drake.”
“Oho!” said Cleek, arching his eyebrows. “That man, eh? Oh, yes, I’ve heard of him often enough—very nearly everybody in England has by this time. Chap who conceived the idea of bettering the conditions of the poor by erecting art galleries that were to be filled and supported out of the rates and, more or less modestly, to be known by the donor’s name. That’s the man, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s the man.”
“Just so. Stop a bit! Let’s brush up my memory a trifle. Of English extraction, wasn’t he? And, having made his money in his own native country, came to that of his father to spend it? Had social aspirations, too, I believe; and, while rather vulgar in his habits and tastes, was exceedingly warm-hearted—indeed, actually lovable—andmade up for his own lack of education by spending barrels of money upon that of his son. Came to England something more than a year ago, if I remember rightly; bought a fine old place down in Suffolk, and proceeded forthwith to modernize it after the most approved American ideas—steam heat, electric lights, a refrigerating plant for the purpose of supplying the ice and the creams and the frozen sweets so necessary to the American palate; all that sort of thing, and set out forthwith to establish himself as a sumptuous entertainer on the very largest possible scale. That’s the ‘lay of the land,’ isn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s it precisely. The estate he purchased was Heatherington Hall, formerly Lord Fallowfield’s place. The entail was broken ages ago, but no Fallowfield ever attempted to part with the place until his present lordship’s time. And although he has but one child, a daughter, I don’t suppose that he would have been tempted to do so, either, but that he was badly crippled—almost ruined, in fact—last year by unlucky speculations in the stock market, with the result that it was either sell out to Jefferson P. Drake or be sold out by his creditors. Naturally, he chose the former course. That it turned out to be a most excellent thing for him you will understand when I tell you that Drake conceived an almost violent liking for him and his daughter, Lady Marjorie Wynde, and not only insisted upon their remaining at Heatherington Hall as his guests in perpetuity, but designed eventually to bring the property back into the possession of the original ‘line’ by a marriage between Lady Marjorie and his son.”
“Effective if not very original,” commented Cleek, with one of his curious one-sided smiles. “And how did the parties most concerned view this promising little plan? Were they agreeable to the arrangement?”
“Not they. As a matter of fact, both have what you may call a ‘heart interest’ elsewhere. Lady Marjorie, who,although she is somewhat of a ‘Yes, papa,’ and ‘Please, papa,’ young lady, and could, no doubt, be induced to sacrifice herself for the family good, is, it appears, engaged to a young lieutenant who will one day come in for money, but hasn’t more than enough to pay his mess bills at present, I believe. As for young Jim Drake—why, matters were even worse withhim. It turns out that he’d found the girlhewanted before he left the States, and it took him just about twenty seconds to make his father understand that he’d be shot, hanged, drawn, quartered, or even reduced to mincemeat, before he’d give up that girl or marry any other, at any time or at any cost, from now to the Judgment Day.”
“Bravo!” said Cleek, slapping his palms together. “That’s the spirit. That’s the boy for my money, Mr. Narkom! Get a good woman and stick to her, through thick and thin, at all hazards and at any cost. The jockey who ‘swaps horses’ in the middle of a race never yet came first under the wire nor won a thing worth having. Well, what was the result of this plain speaking on the young man’s part? Pleasant or unpleasant?”
“Oh, decidedly unpleasant. The father flew into a rage, swore by all that was holy, and by a great deal that wasn’t, that he’d cut him off ‘without one red cent,’ whatever that may mean, if he ever married that particular girl; and as that particular girl—who is as poor as Job’s turkey, by the way—happened by sheer perversity of fortune to have landed in England that very day, in company with an eminent literary person whose secretary she had been for some two or three years past, away marched the son, took out a special license, and married her on the spot.”
“Well done, independence! I like that boy more than ever, Mr. Narkom. What followed? Did the father relent, or did he invite the pair of them to clear out and hoe their own row in future?”
“He did neither; he simply ignored their existence.Young Drake brought his wife down to Suffolk and took rooms at a village inn, and then set out to interview his father. When he arrived at the Hall he was told by the lodgekeeper that strangers weren’t admitted, and, on his asking to have his name sent in, was informed that the lodgekeeper had ‘never heard of no sich person as Mr. James Drake—that there wasn’t none, and that the master said there never had been, neither’—and promptly double-locked the gates. What young James Drake did after that it appears that nobody knows, for nobody saw him again until this morning; and it was only yesterday, I must tell you, that he made that unsuccessful attempt to get into the place to see his father.Hesays, however, that he spent the time in going over to Ipswich and back in the hope of seeing a friend there to whom he might apply for work. He says, too, that when he got there he found that that friend—an American acquaintance—had given up his rooms the day before, and rushed off to Italy in answer to a cable from his sister; or so, at least, the landlady told him.”
“Which, of course, the landlady can be relied upon to corroborate if there is any question regarding the matter? Is there?”
“Well, he seems to think that there may be. He’s the client, you must know. It was he that gave me the details over the telephone, and asked me to put you on the case. As he says himself, it’s easy enough to prove about his having gone to Ipswich to see his friend, but it isn’t so easy to prove about his coming back in the manner he did. It seems he was too late for any return train, that he hadn’t money enough left in the world to waste any by taking a private conveyance, so he walked back; and that, as it’s a goodish stretch of country, and he didn’t know the way, and couldn’t at night find anybody to ask, he lost himself more than once, with the consequence that it was daylight when he got back to the inn, where his frightened wife sat awaitinghim, never having gone to bed nor closed an eye all night, poor girl, fearing that some accident had befallen him. But, be that as it may, Cleek, during those hours he was absent his father was mysteriously murdered in a round box of a room in which he had locked himself, and to which, owing to structural arrangements, it would seem impossible for anything to have entered; and, as young Drake rightly says, the worst of it is that the murder followed so close upon the heels of his quarrel and promised disinheritance, that his father had no time to alter the will which left him sole heir to everything; so that possibly people will talk.”
“Undoubtedly,” agreed Cleek. “And yet you said there was no motive and absolutely no clue. M’ yes! I wonder if I shall like this independent young gentleman quite so well after I have seen him.”
“Oh, my dear fellow! Good heavens, man, you can’t possibly think of suspecting him. Remember, it is he himself who brings the case—that the Yard would never have had anything to do with it but for him.”
“Quite so. But the local constabulary would; and the simplest way to blind a jackass is to throw dust in his eyes. They are natural born actors, the Americans; they are good schemers and fine planners. Their native game is ‘bluff,’ and they are very, very careful in the matter of detail.”
Then he pinched up his chin and sat silent for a moment, watching the green fields and the pleasant farmlands as the limousine went pelting steadily on.
“Suppose, now, that you have succeeded in putting the cart before the horse, Mr. Narkom,” Cleek said suddenly, “you proceed to give me, not the ramifications of the case, but the case itself. You have repeatedly spoken of the murder having taken place in some place which is difficult of access and under most mystifying circumstances. Now, if you don’t mind, I should like to hear what those circumstances are.”
“All right, old chap, I’ll give you the details as briefly as possible. In the first place, you must know that Heatherington Hall is a very ancient place, dating back, indeed, to those pleasant times when a nobleman’s home had to be something of a fortress as well, if he didn’t want to wake up some fine morning and find his place ‘sacked,’ his roof burnt over his head, and himself and his lady either held for ransom or freed from any possibility of having ‘headaches’ thereafter. Now, a round tower with only one door by which to enter, and no windows other than narrow slits, through which the bowmen could discharge their shafts at an attacking party without exposing themselves to the dangers of a return fire, was the usual means of defence adopted—you’ll see dozens of them in Suffolk, dear chap, but whether for reasons of economy or merely to carry out some theory of his own, the first lord of Heatherington Hall did not stick to the general plan.
“In brief, instead of building a tall tower rising from the ground itself, he chose to erect upon the roof of the west wing of the building a lower but more commodious onethan was customary. That is to say, that while his tower was less than half the height of any other in the country, its circumference was twice as great, and, by reason of the double supply of bowman’s slits, equally as effective in withstanding a siege; and, indeed, doubly difficult to assault, as before an invading force could get to the door of the place it would have to fight its way up through the main building to reach the level of it.
“Now, owing to the peculiarity of its construction—it is not more than eighteen feet high—the fact that it contained but one circular room, and all those bowman slits in the walls of it, this unusual ‘tower’ gained an equally unusual name for itself, and became known everywhere as the ‘Stone Drum of Heatherington,’ and is even mentioned by that name in theInquisitio Eliensisof the “Domesday Book,” which, as you doubtless know, is the particular volume of that remarkable work which records the survey, et cetera, of the counties of Cambridge, Hertford, Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Huntingdon.”
“I see,” said Cleek, with an amused twinkle in his eye. “You are getting on, Mr. Narkom. We shall have you lecturing on archæology one of these fine days. But to return to our mutton—or, rather, our stone drum—was it in that place, then, that the murder was committed?”
“Yes. It is one of the few, very few, parts of the building to which Mr. Jefferson P. Drake did nothing in the way of modernizing, and added nothing in the way of ’improvements.’ That, probably, was because, as it stood, it offered him a quiet, secluded, and exclusive retreat for the carrying on of his experiments; for wealth had brought with it no inclination to retire, and he remained to the last in the lists of the world’s active forces. As a general thing, he did not do much in the way of burning the midnight oil, but conducted most of his experiments in the daytime. But last night was an exception. It may be that the newsof his son’s appeal to the lodgekeeper that afternoon had upset him, for he was restless and preoccupied all the evening, Lord Fallowfield says—or, at least, so young Drake reports him as having said—and instead of retiring with the rest of the house party when bedtime came and his Japanese valet carried up his customary carafe of ice-water——”
“Oh, he has a Japanese valet, has he? But, of course, in these days no American gentleman with any pretence to distinction whatsoever would be without one. Go on, please. His Japanese valet carried up the ice-water, and—then what?”
“Then he suddenly announced his intention of going into the Stone Drum and working for a few hours. Lord Fallowfield, it appears, tried his best to dissuade him, but to no purpose.”
“Why did he do that? Or don’t you know?”
“Yes. I asked that very question myself. I was told that it was because his lordship saw very plainly that he was labouring under strong mental excitement, and he thought that rest would be the best thing for him in the circumstances. Then, too, his lordship and he are warmly attached to each other. In fact, the earl was as fond of him as if he had been a brother. As well he ought to be, by James! when you recollect that before he got the idea into his head of marrying his son to Lady Marjorie he added a codicil to his will bequeathing the place to Lord Fallowfield, together with all the acres and acres of land he had added to it, and all the art treasures he had collected, absolutely free from death duties.”
“Oho!” said Cleek, then smiled and pinched his chin and said no more.
“Well, it appears that when his lordship found that he couldn’t make the stubborn old johnnie change his mind, he accompanied him to the Stone Drum, together with thevalet, to see that everything was as it should be, and that nothing was wanting that might tend to the comfort and convenience of a night worker. When there was nothing more that could be done, the valet was dismissed, his lordship said good-night to his friend and left him there alone, hearing, as he passed along the railed walk over the roof of the wing to the building proper (a matter of some twenty-odd feet) the sound of the bolt being shot, the bar put on, and the key being turned as Mr. Drake locked himself in.
“What happened from that moment, Cleek, nobody knows. At seven o’clock this morning the valet, going to his master’s room with his shaving-water, found that he had never gone to bed at all, and, on hastening to the Stone Drum, found that a light was still burning within and faintly illuminating the bowman’s slits; but although he knocked on the door and called again and again to his master, he could get no answer. Alarmed, he aroused the entire household; but despite the fact that a dozen persons endeavoured to get word from the man within, not so much as a whisper rewarded them. The bolt was still ‘shot,’ the bar still on, the key still turned on the inner side of the door, so they could force no entry to the place; and it was never until the village blacksmith had been called in and his sledge had battered down the age-weakened masonry in which that door was set that any man knew for certain what that burning light and that unbroken silence portended. When, however, they finally got into the place there lay the once famous inventor at full length on the oaken floor close to the barred door, as dead as George Washington, and with never a sign of what killed him either on the body or in any part of the place. Yet the first look at his distorted features was sufficient to prove that he had died in agony, and the position of the corpse showed clearly that when the end came he was endeavouring to get to the door.”
“Heart failure, possibly,” said Cleek.
“Not a hope of it,” replied Narkom. “A doctor was sent for immediately; fortunately one of the most famous surgeons in England happened to be in the neighbourhood at the time—called down from town to perform an operation. He is willing, so young Mr. Drake tells me, to stake his professional reputation that the man’s heart was as sound as a guinea; that he had not imbibed one drop of anything poisonous; that he had not been asphyxiated, as, of course, he couldn’t have been, for the bowman’s slits in the wall gave free ventilation to the place, if nothing more; that he had not been shot, stabbed, or bludgeoned, but, nevertheless, he had died by violence, and that violence was not, and could not be, attributed to suicide, for there was everything to prove to the contrary. In short, that whatever had attacked him had done so unexpectedly and while he was busy at his work-table, for there was the chair lying on its back before it, just as it had fallen over when he jumped up from his seat, and there on the ‘working plan’ he was drawing up was the pen lying on a blob of India ink, just as it had dropped from his hand when he was stricken. Some murderous force had entered that room, and passed out of it again, leaving the door barred, bolted, and locked upon the inside. Some weapon had been used, and yet no weapon was there and no trace upon the body to indicate what its character might be. Indeed, everything in the room was precisely as it had been when Lord Fallowfield walked out last night and left him, beyond the fact of the overturned chair and a little puddle of clear water lying about a yard or so from the work-table and, owing to the waxing and polishing, not yet absorbed by the wood of the floor. As no one could account for the presence of that, and as it was the only thing there which might offer a possible clue to the mystery, the doctor took a small sample of that water and analyzed it. It was simply plain, everyday, common, orgarden pure water, and nothing more, without the slightest trace of any foreign matter or of any poisonous substance in it whatsoever. There, old chap, that’s the ‘case’—that’s the little riddle you’re asked to come down and solve. What do you make of it, eh?”
“Tell you better when I’ve seen Mr. James Drake and Lord Fallowfield and—the doctor,” said Cleek, and would say no more than that for the present.
It was somewhere in the neighbourhood of half-past three when the opportunity to interview those three persons was finally vouchsafed him; and it may be recorded at once that the meeting did some violence to his emotions. In short, he found Mr. James Drake (far from being the frank-faced, impulsive, lovable young pepper-pot which his actions and words would seem to stand sponsor for) a rather retiring young man of the “pale and studious” order, absolutely lacking in personal magnetism, and about the last person in the world one would expect to do the “all for love” business of the average hero in the manner he had done. On the other hand, he found the Earl of Fallowfield an exceedingly frank, pleasant-mannered, rather boyish-looking gentleman, whose many attractions rendered it easy to understand why the late Mr. Jefferson P. Drake had conceived such a warm affection for him, and was at such pains to have him ever by his side. It seemed, indeed, difficult to believe that he could possibly be the father of Lady Marjorie Wynde, for his manner and appearance were so youthful as to make him appear to be nothing closer than an elder brother. The doctor—that eminent Harley Street light, Mr. John Strangeways Hague—he found to be full of Harley Street manners and Harley Street ideas, eminently polite, eminently cold, and about as pleased to meet a detective police officer as he would be to find an organ-grinder sitting on his doorstep.
“Have you come to any conclusions as to the means of death, Doctor?” asked Cleek after he had been shown intothe Stone Drum, where the body of the dead man still lay and where the local coroner and the local J. P. were conducting a sort of preliminary examination prior to the regulation inquest, which must, of course, follow. “The general appearance would suggest asphyxia, if asphyxia were possible.”
“Which it is not,” volunteered Doctor Hague, with the geniality of a snowball. “You have probably observed that the many slits in the wall permit of free ventilation; and asphyxia with free ventilation is an impossibility.”
“Quite so,” agreed Cleek placidly. “But if by any chance those slits could have been closed from the outside—I observe that at some period and for some purpose Mr. Drake has made use of a charcoal furnace”—indicating it by a wave of the hand—“and apparently with no other vent to carry off the fumes than that supplied by the slits. Now if they were closed and the charcoal left burning, the result would be an atmosphere charged with carbon monoxide gas, and a little more than one per cent. of that in the air of a room deprived of ventilation would, in a short time, prove fatal to any person breathing that air.”
The doctor twitched round an inquiring eye, and looked him over from head to foot.
“Yes,” he said, remembering that, after all, there were Board Schools, and even the humblest might sometimes learn, parrot-like, to repeat the “things that are in books.” “But we happen to know that the slits were not closed and that neither carbon oxide nor carbon monoxide was the cause of death.”
“You have taken samples of the blood, of course, to establish that fact beyond question, as one could so readily do?” ventured Cleek suavely. “The test for carbon monoxide is so simple and so very certain that error is impossible. It combines so tensely, if one may put it that way, withthe blood, that the colouring of the red corpuscles is utterly overcome and destroyed.”
“My good sir, those are elementary facts of which I do not stand in need of a reminder.”
“Quite so, quite so. But in my profession, Doctor, one stands in constant need of ‘reminders.’ A speck, a spot, a pin-prick—each and all are significant, and——But is this not a slight abrasion on the temple here?” bending over and, with his glass, examining a minute reddish speck upon the dead man’s face. “Hum-m-m! I see, I see! Have you investigated this thing, Doctor? It is interesting.”
“I fail to see the point of interest, then,” replied Doctor Hague, bending over and examining the spot. “The skin is scarcely more than abraded—evidently by the finger nail scratching off the head of some infinitesimal pustule.”
“Possibly,” agreed Cleek, “but on the other hand, it may be something of a totally different character—for one thing, the possible point at which contact was established between the man’s blood and something of a poisonous character. An injection of cyanide of potassium, for instance, would cause death, and account in a measure for this suggestion of asphyxia conveyed by the expression of the features.”
“True, my good sir; but have the goodness to ask yourself who could get into the place to administer such hypodermic? And, if self-administered, what can have become of the syringe? If thrown from one of the bowman’s slits, it could only have fallen upon the roof of the wing, and I assure you that was searched most thoroughly long before your arrival. I don’t think you will go so far as to suggest that it was shot in, attached to some steel missile capable of making a wound; for no such missile is, as you see, embedded in the flesh nor was one lying anywhere about the floor. The cyanide of potassium theory is ingenious, but I’m afraid it won’t hold water.”
“Hold water!” The phrase brought Cleek’s thoughts harking back to what he had been told regarding the little puddle of water lying on the floor, and of a sudden his eyes narrowed, and the curious one-sided smile travelled up his cheek.
“No, I suppose not,” he said, replying to the doctor’s remark. “Besides, your test tubes would have settled that when it settled the carbon monoxide question. Had cyanide been present, the specimens of blood would have been clotted and blue.”
Of a sudden it seemed to dawn upon the doctor that this didn’t smack quite so much of Board School intelligence as he had fancied, and, facing round, he looked at Cleek with a new-born interest.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, “but I don’t think I caught your name, Mr.—er—er——”
“Cleek, Doctor; Hamilton Cleek, at your service.”
“Good Lord! That is, I—er—er—my dear sir, my dear Mr. Cleek, if there is any intelligence I can possibly supply, pray command me.”
“With pleasure, Doctor, and thank you very much indeed for the kind offer. I have been told that there was a little puddle of water on the floor at the time the murder was discovered, also that you took a sample of it for analysis. As I don’t see any sign of that puddle now, would you mind telling me what that analysis established. I have heard, I may tell you, that you found the water to contain no poisonous substance; but I should be obliged if you can tell me if it was water drawn from a well or such as might have been taken from a river or pond.”
“As a matter of fact, my dear Mr. Cleek, I don’t think it came from any of the three.”
“Hum-m-m! A manufactured mineral water, then?”
“No, not that, either. If it had been raining and there was any hole or leak in this roof, I should have said it wasrainwater that had dripped in and formed a little puddle on the floor. If it had been winter, I should have said it was the result of melted snow. As a matter of fact, I incline more to the latter theory than to any other, although it is absurd, of course, to think of snow being obtainable anywhere in England in the month of July.”
“Quite so, quite so—unless—it doesn’t matter. That’s all, thank you, Doctor, and very many thanks.”
“A word, please, Mr. Cleek,” interposed the doctor as he turned to move away and leave him. “I am afraid I was not very communicative nor very cordial when you asked me if I had any idea of the means employed to bring about the unfortunate man’s death; may I hope that you will be better mannered than I, Mr. Cleek, if I ask you if you have? Thanks, very much. Then, have you?”
“Yes,” said Cleek. “And so, too, will you, if you will make a second blood test, with the specimens you have, at a period of about forty-eight hours after the time of decease. It will take quite that before the presence of the thing manifests itself under the influence of any known process or responds to any known test. And even then it will only be detected by a faintly alcoholic odour and excessively bitter taste. The man has been murdered—done to death by that devil’s drug woorali, if I am not mistaken. But who administered it andhowit was administered are things I can’t tell you yet.”
“Woorali! Woorali! That is the basis of the drug curarin, produced by Roulin and Boussingault in 1828 from a combination of the allied poisons known to the savages of South America and of the tropics by the names of corroval and vao, is it not?”
“Yes. And a fiend’s thing it is, too. A mere scratch from anything steeped in it is enough to kill an ox almost immediately. The favourite ‘native’ manner of using the hellish thing is by means of a thorn and a blowpipe. Butno such method has been employed in this case. No thorn nor, indeed, any other projectile has entered the flesh, nor is there one lying anywhere about the floor. Be sure I looked, Doctor, the instant I suspected that woorali had been used. Pardon me, but that must be all for the present. I have other fish to fry.”