Colliver, who had now sunk into a state of babbling incoherence, lay on his face in the wreck of the tableau, rolling his head from side to side and clasping and unclasping his manacled hands.
Trent turned his back upon the unpleasant sight and, placing three chairs at the opposite end of the room, dropped into one and lifted an eager countenance to Cleek.
“Tell me first of all,” he asked, “how under heaven you came to suspect how the disappearance of the boy was managed? It seems like magic, to me. When in the world did you get the first clue to it, Mr. Cleek?”
“Never until I heard of those two women looking into this room and seeing the vase of pink roses standing on a spindle-legged table in the centre of it,” he replied. “You see, even in the old days when I had the other case in hand and was searching for a clue to Colliver’s disappearance, never had any one mentioned the name of Loti to me. I knew, of course, that you made wax figures here, but I never heard until this afternoon that Loti was the man who was employed to model them. I also knew about the existence of the glass-room and its position, for I had been at the pains of inspecting it from the outside. That came about in this way: Just before Miss Larue closed up the case of James Colliver I had obtained the first actual clue to his movements after he left Mr. Trent, senior, and came out of the office.
“That clue came from the door porter, Felix Murchison. What careful ‘pumping’ got out of him was that when JamesColliver left the office he had asked him, Murchison, which was the way to the place where they made the waxworks, as he’d heard that they were making a head of Miss Larue to be used in the execution scene of Catharine Howard, and he’d like to have a look at it. Murchison said that he told him the figures were made in a glass-room on the top of the house, and directed him how to reach it. He went up the stairs, and that was the last that was seen of him.
“Naturally when I heard that I thought I’d like to see the exterior of the building to ascertain if there was any opening, door or window, by which he could have left the upper floor without coming down the main staircase. That led me to beg permission of the people in the house across the passage there to look from one of the side windows, and so gave me my first view of the glass-room. What I saw was exactly what Mrs. Sherman and her daughter saw yesterday—namely, that spick and span room with the table in the centre and the vase of pink roses standing on it.
“Need I go further than to say that when I heard of those women seeing a room that was badly littered a few minutes before suddenly become a tidy one with a table and a vase of roses standing in the middle of it, without anybody having come into the place for the purpose of making the change, I instantly remembered my own experience and suspected a painted blind?
“When I entered this room to-day and saw the peculiar position of that blind I became almost certain I had hit upon the truth, and sent Mr. Narkom to the house across the way to test it. That’s why I pulled the blind down. Why I stumbled and nearly fell into the tableau was because I had a faint suspicion of the horrible truth when I noticed how abominably thick the neck, hands, and ankles of that ‘dead soldier’ were; and I wanted to test the truth or falseness of the ‘straw stuffing’ assertion by actual touch, particularly as I felt sure that the presence of all these stronglyscented flowers was for the purpose of covering less agreeable odours should the heat of the weather cause decomposition to set in before he could dispose of the body. I don’t think he ever was mad enough to intend letting the thing remain a part of the tableau. I fancy he would have found an excuse to get it out somehow and to make away with it entirely, as, no doubt, he did with the body of Loti.
“What’s that, Mr. Narkom? No, I don’t think that Murchison had any actual hand in the crime or really knew the identity of the man. I fancy he must have gone up to tell the fictitious Loti that he knew James Colliver had entered that glass-room and never come out of it, and Colliver, of course, had to shut his mouth by buying him off and sending him out of the country. That is why he took yet another disguise and pawned the jewels. He had to get the money some way. As for the rest, I imagine that when Colliver went up to the room to see that wax head, and Loti caught sight of him, the old Italian jumped on him like a mad tiger; and, seeing that it was Loti’s life or his own, Colliver throttled him. When that was done, the necessity for disposing of the body arose, and the imposture was the actual outcome of a desire to save his own neck. That’s all, I think, Mr. Narkom; so you may revise your ‘notes’ and mark down the Colliver case as ‘solved’ at last and the mystery of it cleared up after all.”
Three hours of patient waiting had passed and gone. The darkness had fallen, the streets were still, save for the faint hum of life coming from districts afar, and the time for action had come at last. Cleek rose and put on his hat.
“I think we may safely venture to remove our prisoner now, Mr. Narkom,” he said, “and if you will slip out the back way and get Lennard to bring the limousine around to the head of that narrow alley——”
“They’re there already, dear chap. I stationed Lennardthere when I went across to look into that business about the painted blind. It seemed the least conspicuous place for him to wait.”
“Excellent! Then, if you will run on ahead and have the door of it open for me and everything ready so that we may whisk him in and be off like a shot, and Mr. Trent will let one of these good chaps here run down to the man’s room and fetch him a hat, I’ll attend to his removal.”
“Here’s one here, sir, that’ll do at a pinch and save time,” suggested one of the men, picking up a cavalryman’s hat from the wreck of the ruined tableau and dusting it by slapping it against his thigh. “I don’t think he’ll resist much, sir; he seems to have gone clear off his biscuit and not to know enough for that; but if you’d like me and my mate to lend a hand——”
“No, thanks; I shall be able to manage him myself, I fancy,” said Cleek, serenely. “Get him on his feet, please. That’s the business! Now then, Mr. Narkom nip off; I’m following.”
Mr. Narkom “nipped off” without an instant’s delay, and two minutes later saw him slipping out through the rear door of the building with Cleek and the jabbering, unresisting prisoner at the bottom of the last flight of stairs not twenty yards behind.
But the passage of the next half minute saw something of more moment still; for, as Narkom ran on tiptoe up the dim alley to the waiting limousine standing at its western end, and unlatching the vehicle’s door, swung it open to be ready for Cleek, out of the stillness there roared suddenly the shrill note of a dog-whistle, and all in a moment there was—mischief.
A crowd of quick-moving Apache figures sprang up from sheltering doors and, scudding past him, headed full tilt down the narrow alley, calling out as they ran that piercing “La, la, loi!” which is the war cry of their kind.
A blind rage—all the more maddening in that it was impotent, since he had neither weapon to defend nor the power to slay—swept down upon the superintendent as he realized the import of that mad rush, and, ducking down his head, he bolted after them, into the thick of them—punching, banging, slogging, shouting, swearing—an incarnate Passion, the Epitome of Man’s love for Man—a little fat Fury that was all a whirl of flying fists as it swept onward and that seemed to go absolutely insane at what he looked up the alley and saw.
“Get back, Cleek! Get back, for God’s sake!” he yelled, in a very panic of fear and dismay; then cleft his way with beating arms and kicking feet through the hampering crowd, arrowed out of its midst, and bore down upon the cavalry-hatted figure that had stepped out of the dark doorway of Trent & Son’s building and was standing flattened against the rear wall of it.
He reached out his hand and made a blind clutch at it, and, while he was yet far out of reaching distance of it, faced round and made a wild effort to cover it with his short, fat body and his arms outflung, like a crucifix, and looked at the Apaches and swore without one thought of being profane.
“Me, you damned devils! Me, me, not him! Not him, damn you! damn you! damn you!” he cried, hoarse-throated and—said no more!
The scuttling crowd came up with him, broke about him, swept past him. A loud explosion sounded; a flare of light broke full against the cavalry hat; a stifling odour of picric acid filled the air and gripped the throat, and with its coming, man and hat slid down the wall and dropped at its foot a crumpled heap that never in this world would stand erect again.
“Killed! Killed!” half-cried, half-groaned the superintendent, staggering a bit as the crowd flew on up the alleyand vanished around the corner of the street into which it merged. “Oh, my God! After all my care; after all my love for him! Killed like a dog. Oh, Cleek! Oh, Cleek! The dearest friend—the finest pal—the greatest detective genius of the age!” And then, swinging his arm up and across his eyes and holding it there, made a queer choking sound behind the sheltering crook of it.
But of a sudden a voice spoke up from the darkness of the open door near by and said quietly:
“That’s the finest compliment I ever had paid me in all my life, Mr. Narkom. Don’t worry over me, dear friend; I’m still able to sit up and take nourishment. The Apaches have saved the public executioner a morning’s work. Colliver has parted with his brains forever; and may God have mercy on his soul!”
“Cleek!” Mr. Narkom scarcely knew his own voice, such a screaming thing it was. “Cleek, dear chap, is it you?”
“To be sure. Come inside here if you doubt it. Come quickly; there’s a crowd of quite a different sort coming: the report of that bomb has aroused the neighbourhood; and I have quite enough of crowds for one evening, thank you.”
Narkom was inside the building before you could have said Jack Robinson, “pump-handling” Cleek with all his might and generally deporting himself like a man gone daft.
“I thought they’d finished you! I thought they’d ‘done you in.’ It was the Apache, you know—and that infernal scoundrel Waldemar: he must have found out somehow,” he said excitedly. “But we’ve got it on him at last, Cleek: he’s come within the law’s reach after all.”
“To be sure; but I doubt if the law will be able to find him, Mr. Narkom. He will have left the country before the trap was actually sprung, believe me; or failing that, will be well on his way out of it.”
“But perhaps not absolutely out of it, dear chap. Thereare the ports, you know; and so long as he is on English soil——Come and see! Come and see! We may be able to head him off. Let’s get out by way of the front of the building, Cleek, and if I can once get to the telegraph and wire to the coast—and he hasn’t yet sailed——Come on! come on! Or no: wait a moment. That’s a constable out there, asking for information. I’ll nip out and let him know that the Yard’s on the case and give him a few orders about reporting it. Wait for me at the front door, old chap. With you in a winking.”
He stepped out into the alley as he spoke and mingled with the gathering crowd.
But Cleek did not stir. The alley was no longer dark for, with the gathering of the crowd, lights had come and he stood for many minutes staring into it and breathing hard and the colour draining slowly out of his face until it was like a thing of wax.
Outside in the narrow alley the gathering of curious ones which the sound of the explosion and the sight of a running policeman had drawn to the place was every moment thickening, and with the latest addition to it there had come hurrying into the narrow space a morbid-minded newsboy with the customary bulletin sheet pinned over his chest.
“TheEvening News! Six o’clock edition!” that bulletin was headed, and under that heading there was set forth in big black type:
END OF THE MAURAVANIAN REVOLUTIONFALL OF THE CAPITALFLIGHT OF THE DEPOSED KINGOVERWHELMING SUCCESS OF IRMA’S TROOPS.
END OF THE MAURAVANIAN REVOLUTIONFALL OF THE CAPITALFLIGHT OF THE DEPOSED KINGOVERWHELMING SUCCESS OF IRMA’S TROOPS.
“Mr. Narkom,” said Cleek, when at the end of ten minutes the superintendent came bustling back, hot and eager to begin the effort to head off Count Waldemar. “Mr.Narkom, dear friend, the days of trouble and distress are over and the good old times you have so often sighed for have come back. Look at that newsboy’s bulletin. Waldemar is too late in all things and—we have seen the last of him forever.”
Mr. Maverick Narkom glanced up at the calendar hanging on the office wall, saw that it recorded the date as August 18th, and then glanced back to the sheet of memoranda lying on his desk, and forthwith began to scratch his bald spot perplexedly.
“I wonder if I dare do it?” he queried of himself in the unspoken words of thought. “It seems such a pity when the beggar’s wedding day is so blessed near—and a man wants his last week of single blessedness all to himself, by James—if he can get it! Still, it’s a case after his own heart; the reward’s big and would be a nice little nest egg to begin married life upon. Besides, he’s had a fairly good rest as it is, when I come to think of it. Nothing much to do since the time when that Mauravanian business came to an end. I fancy he rather looked to have something come out of that in the beginning from the frequent inquiries he made regarding what that johnnie Count Irma and the new Parliament were doing; but it never did. And now, after all that rest—and this a case of so much importance——Gad! I believe I’ll risk it. He can’t do any more then decline. Yes, by James! I will.”
His indecision once conquered, he took the plunge instantly; caught up the desk telephone, called for a number, and two minutes later was talking to Cleek, thus:
“I say, old chap, don’t snap my head off for suggesting such a thing at such a time, but I’ve a most extraordinarycase on hand and I hope to heaven that you will help me out with it. What’s that? Oh, come, now, that’s ripping of you, old chap, and I’m as pleased as Punch. What? Oh, get along with you! No more than you’d do for me under the same circumstances, I’ll be sworn. Yes, to-day—as early as possible. Right you are. Then could you manage to meet me in the bar parlour of a little inn called the French Horn, out Shere way, in Surrey, about four o’clock? Could, eh? Good man! Oh, by the way, come prepared to meet a lady of title, old chap—she’s the client. Thanks very much. Good-bye.”
Then he hung up the receiver, rang for Lennard, and set about preparing for the journey forthwith.
And this, if you please, was how it came to pass that when Mr. Maverick Narkom turned up at the French Horn that afternoon he found a saddle horse tethered to a post outside, and Cleek, looking very much like one of the regular habitués of Rotten Row who had taken it into his mind to canter out into the country for a change, standing in the bar parlour window and looking out with appreciative eyes upon the broad stretch of green downs that billowed away to meet the distant hills.
“My dear chap, how on earth do you manage it?” said the superintendent, eying him with open approval, not to say admiration. “I don’t mean the mere putting on the clothes andlookingthe part—I’ve seen dozens in my time who could do that right enough, but the beggars always ‘fell down’ when it came to the acting and the talking, while you—I don’t know what the dickens it is nor how you manage to get it, but there’s a certain something or other in your bearing, your manner, your look, when you tackle this sort of thing that I always believed a man had to be born to and couldn’t possibly acquire in any other way.”
“There you are wrong, my dear friend. Itispossible, as you see. That is what makes the difference between themere actor and the realartiste,” replied Cleek, with an air of conceited self-appreciation which was either a clever illusion or an exhibition of great weakness. “If one man might not do these things better than another man, we should have no Irvings to illuminate the stage, and acting would drop at once from its place among the arts to the undignified level of a tawdry trade. And now, as our American cousins say, ‘Let’s come down to brass tacks.’ What’s the case and who’s the lady?”
“The widow of the late Sir George Essington, and grandmother of the young gentleman in whose interest you are to be consulted.”
“Grandmother, eh? Then the lady is no longer young?”
“Not as years go, although, to look at her, you would hardly suspect that she is a day over five-and-thirty. The Gentleman with the Hour Glass has dealt very, very lightly with her. Where he has failed to be considerate, however, the ladies, who conduct certain ‘parlours’ in Bond Street, have come to the rescue in fine style.”
“Oh, she is that kind of woman, is she?” said Cleek with a pitch of the shoulders. “I have no patience with the breed! As if there was anything more charming than a dear, wrinkly old grandmother who bears her years gracefully and fusses over her children’s children like an old hen with a brood of downy chicks. But a grandmother who goes in for wrinkle eradicators, cream of lilies, skin-tighteners, milk of roses, and things of that kind—faugh! It has been my experience, Mr. Narkom, that when a woman has any real cause for worrying over the condition of her face, she usually has a just one to be anxious over that of her soul. So this old lady is one of the ‘face painters,’ is she?”
“My dear chap, let me correct an error: a grandmother her ladyship may be, but she is decidedly not an old one. I believe she was only a mere girl when she married her latehusband. At any rate, she certainly can’t be a day over forty-five at the present moment. A frivolous and a recklessly extravagant woman she undoubtedly is—indeed, her extravagances helped as much as anything to bring her husband into the bankruptcy court before he died—but beyond that I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong with her ‘soul.’”
“Possibly not. There’s always an exception to every rule,” said Cleek. “Her ladyship may be the shining exception to this unpleasant one of the ‘face painters.’ Let us hope so. English, is she?”
“Oh, yes—that is, her father was English and she herself was born in Buckinghamshire. Her mother, however, was an Italian, a lineal descendant of a once great and powerful Roman family named de Catanei.”
“Which,” supplemented Cleek, with one of his curious one-sided smiles, “through an ante-papal union between Pope Alexander VI and the beautiful Giovanna de Catanei—otherwise Vanozza—gave to the world those two arch-poisoners and devils of iniquity, Cæsar and Lucretia Borgia. Lady Essington’s family tree supplies a mixture which is certainly unique: a fine, fruity English pie with a rotten apple in it. Hum-m-m! if her ladyship has inherited any of the beauty of her famous ancestress—for in 1490, when she flourished, Giovanna de Catanei was said to be the most beautiful woman in the world—she should be something good to look upon.”
“She is,” replied Narkom. “You’ll find her, when she comes, one of the handsomest and most charming women you ever met.”
“Ah, then she has inherited some of the attractions and accomplishments of her famous forbears. I wonder if there has also come down to her, as well, the formula of those remarkable secret poisons for which Lucretia Borgia and her brother Cæsar were so widely famed. They were marvellousthings, those Borgia decoctions—marvellous and abominable.”
“Horrible!” agreed Narkom, a curious shadow of unrest coming over him at this subject rising at this particular time.
“Modern chemistry has, I believe, been quite unable to duplicate them. There is, for instance, that appalling thing the aqua tofana, the very fumes of which caused instant death.”
“Aqua tofana was not a Bornean poison, my friend,” said Cleek, with a smile. “It was discovered more than two hundred years aftertheirtime—in 1668, to be exact—by one Jean Baptiste de Gaudin, Signeur de St. Croix, the paramour and accomplice of that unnatural French fiend, Marie Marquise de Brinvilliers. Its discoverer himself died through dropping the glass mask from his face and inhaling the fumes while he was preparing the hellish mixture. The secret of its manufacture did not, however, die with him. Many chemists can, to-day, reproduce it. Indeed, I, myself, could give you the formula were it required.”
“You?Gad, man! what don’t you know? In heaven’s name, Cleek, what caused you to dip into all these unholy things?”
“The same impulse which causes a drowning man to grip at a straw, Mr. Narkom—the desire for self-preservation. Remember what I was in those other days, and with whom I associated. Believe me, the statement that there is honour among thieves is a pleasant fiction and nothing more; for once a man sets out to be a professional thief, he and honour are no longer on speaking terms. I never could be wholly sure, with that lot; and my biggestcoupswere always a source of danger to me after they had been successfully completed. It became necessary for me to studyallpoisons, all secret arts of destruction, that I might guard against them and might know the proper antidote. As for the rest—Sh!Mumm’s a fine wine. Here comes the landlady with the tea. We’ll drop the ‘case’ until afterward.”
“Now tell me,” said Cleek, after the landlady had gone and they were again in sole possession of the room, “what is it this Lady Essington wants of me? And what sort of a chap is this grandson in whose interest she is acting? Is he with her in this appeal to the Yard?”
“Certainly not, my dear fellow. Why, he’s little more than a baby—not over three at the most. Ever hear anybody speak of the ‘Golden Boy,’ old chap?”
“What! The baby Earl of Strathmere? The little chap who inherited a title and a million through the drowning of his parents in the wreck of the yachtMystery?”
“That’s the little gentleman: the Right Honourable Cedric Eustace George Carruthers, twenty-seventh Earl Strathmere, variously known as the ‘Millionaire Baby’ and the ‘Golden Boy.’ His mother was Lady Essington’s only daughter. She was only eighteen when she married Strathmere: only twenty-two when she and her husband were drowned, a little over a year ago.”
“Early enough to go out of the world, that—poor girl!” said Cleek, sympathetically. “And to leave that little shaver all alone—robbed at one blow of both father and mother. Hard lines, my friend, hard lines! It is fair to suppose, is it not, that, with the death of his parents, the care and guidance of his little lordship fell to the lot of his grandmother, Lady Essington?”
“No, it did not,” replied Narkom. “One might have supposed that it would, seeing that there was no paternal grandmother, but—well, the fact of the matter is, Cleek, that the late Lord Strathmere did not altogether approve of his mother-in-law’s method of living (he was essentially a quiet, home-loving man and had little patience with frivolity of any sort), and it occasioned no surprise amongthose who knew him when it was discovered that he had made a will leaving everything he possessed to his little son and expressly stipulating that the care and upbringing of the boy were to be entrusted to his younger brother, the Honourable Felix Camour Paul Carruthers, who was to enjoy the revenue from the estate until the child attained his majority.”
“I see! I see!” said Cleek, appreciatively. “Then that did her extravagant ladyship out of a pretty large and steady income for a matter of seventeen or eighteen years. Humm-m! Wise man—always, of course, provided that he didn’t save the boy from the frying-pan only to drop him into the fire. What kind of a man is this brother—this Honourable Felix Carruthers—into whose hands he entrusted the future of his little son? I seem to have a hazy recollection of hearing that name, somewhere or somehow, in connection with some other affair. Wise choice, was it, Mr. Narkom?”
“Couldn’t have been better, to my thinking. I know the Honourable Felix quite well: a steady-going, upright, honourable young fellow (he isn’t over two or three-and-thirty), who, being a second son, naturally inherited his mother’s fortune, and that being considerable, he really did not need the income from his little nephew’s in the slightest degree. However, he undertook the charge willingly, for he is much attached to the boy; and he and his wife—to whom he was but recently married, by the way—entered into residence at his late brother’s splendid property, Boskydell Priory, just over on the other side of those hills—you can see from the window, there—where they are at present entertaining a large house party, among whom are Lady Essington and her son Claude.”
“Oho! Then her ladyship has a son, has she? The daughter who died was not her only child?”
“No. The son was born about a year after the daughter.A nice lad—bright, clever, engaging; fond of all sorts of dumb animals—birds, monkeys, white mice—all manner of such things—and as tender-hearted as a girl. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. Carruthers is immensely fond of him and has him at the Priory whenever he can. That, of course, means having the mother, too, which is a bit of a trial, in a way, for I don’t believe that her ladyship and Mrs. Carruthers care very much for each other. But that’s another story. Now, then, let’s see—where was I? Oh, ah! about the house party at the Priory and Carruthers’ fondness for the boy. You can judge of my surprise, my dear Cleek, when last night’s post brought me a private letter from Lady Essington asking me to meet her here at this inn—which, by the way, belongs to the Strathmere estate and is run by a former servant at the Priory—and stating that she wished me to bring one of the shrewdest and cleverest of my detectives, as she was quite convinced there was an underhand scheme afoot to injure his little lordship—in short, she had every reason to believe that somebody was secretly attacking the life of the Golden Boy. She then went on to give me details of a most extraordinary and bewildering nature.”
“Indeed? What were those details, Mr. Narkom?”
“Let her tell you for herself—here she is!” replied the superintendent, as a veiled and cloaked figure moved hurriedly past the window; and he and Cleek had barely more than pushed back their chairs and risen when that figure entered the room.
A sweep of her hand carried back her veil; and Cleek, looking round, saw what he considered one of the handsomest women he had ever beheld: a good woman, too, for all her frivolous life and her dark ancestry, if clear, straight-looking eyes could be taken as a proof, which he knew that they couldnot; for he had seen men and women in his day, as crafty as the fox and as dangerous as the serpent, whocould look you straight in the eyes and never flinch; while others—as true as steel and as clean-lifed as saints—would send shifting glances flicking all round the room and could no more fix those glances on the face of the person to whom they were talking than they could take unto themselves wings and fly.
But good or ill, whichever the future might prove this lovely lady to be, one thing about her was certain: she was violently agitated, and nervousness was making her shake perceptibly and breathe hard, like a spent runner.
“It is good of you to come, Mr. Narkom,” she said, moving forward with a grace which no amount of excitement could dispel or diminish—the innate grace of the womanbornto her station and schooled by Mother Nature’s guiding hand. “I had hoped that I might steal away and come here to meet you unsuspected. But, secretly as I wrote, carefully as I planned this thing, I have every reason to believe that my efforts are suspected and that I have, indeed, been followed. So, then, this interview must be a very hurried one, and you must not be surprised if it becomes necessary for me to run off without a moment’s notice; for believe me, I am quite, quite sure that the Honourable Mr. Felix Carruthers is already following me.”
“The Honourable—my dear Lady Essington, you don’t mean to suggest that he—he of all men——God bless my soul!”
“Oh, it may well amaze you, Mr. Narkom. It well-nigh stupefied me when I first began to suspect. Indeed, I can’t do any more than suspect even yet. Perhaps it is he, perhaps that abominable woman he has married. You must decide that when you have heard. I perceive”—glancing over at Cleek—“you have been unable to bring a detective police officer to listen to what I have to say, but if you and your friend will listen carefully and convey the story to one in due course——”
“Pardon, your ladyship, but my companion is a detective officer,” interposed Narkom. “So if you will state the case at once he will be able to advise.”
“A detective? You?” She flashed round on Cleek and looked at him in amazement, her lower lip indrawn, a look almost of horror in her eyes. One may not tell a lion that another lion is a jackass, though he masquerade in the skin of one. Birth spoke to Birth. She saw, she knew, she understood. “By what process could such as you—” she began; then stopped and made a slight inclination of the head. “Pardon,” she continued; “that was rude. Your private affairs are of course your own, Mr.—er——”
“Headland, your ladyship,” supplied Cleek. “My name is George Headland!” And Narkom knew from that that for all her grace and charm he neither liked nor trusted her soft-eyed ladyship.
“Thank you,” said Lady Essington, accepting this self-introduction with a graceful inclination of the head. “No doubt Mr. Narkom has given you some idea of my reason for consulting you, Mr. Headland; but as time is very short let me give you the further details as briefly as possible. I am convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt that some one who has an interest in his death is secretly attacking the life of my little grandson; and I have every reason to believe that the ‘some one’ is either the Honourable Felix Carruthers or his wife.”
“But to what purpose, your ladyship? People do not commit so desperate an act as murder without some powerful motive, either of gain or revenge, behind it, and from what I have heard, neither the uncle nor the aunt can have anything to win by injuring his little lordship.”
“Can they not?” she answered, with a despairing gesture. “How little you know! Mrs. Carruthers is an ambitious woman, Mr. Headland, and, like all women of the class from which she was recruited, she aspires to a title. She wasformerly an actress. The Honourable Felix married and took her from the theatre. It is abominable that a person of that type should be foisted upon society and brought into contact with her betters.”
“Oho! that’s where the shoe pinches, is it?” thought Cleek; but aloud he merely said: “The day has long passed, your ladyship, when the followers of Thespis have to apologize for their existence. There are many ladies of the stage in these times whose lives are exemplary and whose names call forth nothing but respect and admiration; and so long as this particular lady bore an unblemished reputation——Did she?”
“Oh, yes. There was never a word against her in that respect. Felix would never have married her if there had been. But I believe in persons of that class remaining in their own circle, and not intruding themselves into others to which they were notborn. She is an ambitious woman, as I have told you. She aspires to a title aswellas to riches, and if little Lord Strathmere should die, her husband would inherit both. Surely that is ‘motive’ enough for a woman of that type. As for her husband——”
“There, I am afraid, your suspicion confounds itself, your ladyship,” interrupted Cleek. “I am told that the Honourable Mr. Carruthers is extremely fond of the boy; besides which, being rich in his own right, he has no reason to covet the riches of his brother’s baby son.”
“Pardon me: ‘wasrich’ is the proper expression, not ‘is,’ Mr. Headland. The failure, a fortnight or so ago, of the West Coast Diamond Mining Company, in which the greater part of his fortune was invested and of which he was the chairman, has sadly crippled his resources, and he has now nothing but the income from his nephew’s estate to live upon.”
“Hum-m-m! Ah! Just so!” said Cleek, pinching his chin. “Now I recollect what made the name seem familiar,Mr. Narkom. I remember reading of the failure, and of the small hope that was held out of anything being saved from the wreckage. Still, the income from the Strathmere estate is enormous; and by dint of care, in the seventeen or eighteen years which must elapse before his little lordship comes of age——”
“He will never come of age! He will be killed first—he is being killed now!” interposed Lady Essington, agitatedly. “Oh, Mr. Headland, help me! I love the boy—he is my own child’s child. I love him as I never loved anything else in all the world; and if he were to die——Dear God! what should I do? And he is dying: I tell you he is. And they won’t let me go near him: they won’t let me have him all to myself, these two! If his cries in the night wring my heart and I run to his nursery, one or the other of them is always there, and never for one moment will they let me hold him in my arms nor be with him alone.”
“Hum-m-m! Cries out in the night, does he, your ladyship? What kind of cries? Those of fright or of pain?”
“Of pain—of excruciating pain: it would wring the heart of a stone to hear him, and, though there is never a spot of blood nor a sign of violence, he declares that some one comes in the night and sticks something into his neck—something which, in his baby way, he likens to ‘a long, long needle that goes yite froo my neck and sets uvver needles prickin’ and prickin’ all down my arm.’”
“Hello! what’s that? Let’s have that again, please!” rapped out Cleek, before he thought; then recollected himself and added apologetically, “I beg your ladyship’s pardon, but I am apt to get a little excited at times. Something like a needle being run into his neck, eh? And other needles continuing the sensation down the arm? Hum-m-m! Had a doctor called in?”
“No. I wished to, but neither the uncle nor aunt would let me do so. They say it is nothing—a mere ‘growing pain’which he will overcome in time. But it is not—Iknowit is not! If it were natural, why did it never manifest itself before the failure of that wretched diamond company? Why did it wait to begin until after the Honourable Felix Carruthers had lost his money? And why is it going on, night after night, ever since? Why has he begun to fail in health?—to change from a happy, laughing, healthy child into a peevish, fretful, constantly complaining one? I tell you they are killing him, those two; I tell you they are using some secret diabolical thing which is sapping his very life; and if——”
She stopped and sucked her breath in with a little gasp of fright, and, whisking down her veil, turned and made hurriedly for the door.
“I told you he guessed; I told you I should be followed!” she said in a shaking voice. “He is coming—that man: along the road there! look through the window and you will see. Oh, come to my assistance, Mr. Headland! Find some way to do it, for God’s sake! Good-bye!”
Then the door opened and shut and she was gone, darting out from the rear of the inn into the shelter of the scattered clumps of furze bushes and the thick growth of bracken which covered the downs, and running like a hare pursued.
“Well, what do you make of it, old chap?” asked Narkom anxiously, turning to Cleek after ascertaining past all doubt that the Honourable Felix Carruthers was riding up the road toward the French Horn.
“Oh, a crime beyond doubt,” he replied. “But whose I am in no position to determine at present. A hundred things might produce that stabbing sensation in the neck, from the prick of a pin-point dipped in curare to a smear of the ‘Pope’s balm,’ that hellish ointment of the Borgias. Hum-m-m! And so that’s the Honourable Felix Carruthers, is it? Keep back from the window, my friend. When you are out gunning for birds, it never does to raisean alarm. And we should be hard put to it to explain our presence here at this particular time if he were to see you.”
“My dear chap, you don’t surely mean that you thinkheis really at the bottom of it?” began Narkom, in surprise; but before he could say a word further,thatsurprise was completely overwhelmed by another and a greater one. For the Honourable Felix had reined in and dismounted at the French Horn’s door, and, with a clear-voiced, “No, don’t put him up; I shan’t be long, Betty. Just want a word or two with some friends I’m expecting,” walked straightway into the bar parlour and advanced toward the superintendent with hand outstretched.
“Thank God, you got my letter in time, Mr. Narkom,” he said, with a breath of intense relief. “Although I sent it by express messenger, it was after three o’clock and I was afraid you wouldn’t. What a friend you are to come to my relief like this! I shall owe you a debt no money can repay. This then is the great and amazing Cleek, is it? I thank you, Mr. Cleek, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for accepting the case. Now weshallget to the bottom of the mystery, I am sure.”
It was upon the tip of Narkom’s tongue to inquire what he meant by all this; but Cleek, rightly suspecting that the letter to which he alluded had been delivered at the Yard after the superintendent’s departure, jumped into the breach and saved the situation.
“Very good of you indeed to place such great reliance in me, Mr. Carruthers,” he said. “We had to scramble for it, Mr. Narkom and I—the letter was so late in arriving—but, thank fortune, we managed to get here, as you see. And now, please, may I have the details of the case?”
He spoke guardedly, lest it should be upon some matter other than the interest of the “Golden Boy” and to prevent the Honourable Felix from guessing that he had already been approached upon that subject by Lady Essington. Itwas not some other matter, however. It was again the mystery of the secret attacks upon his little lordship he was asked to dispel; and the Honourable Felix, plunging forthwith into the details connected with it, gave him exactly the same report as Lady Essington had done.
“Come to the rescue, Mr. Cleek,” he finished, rather excitedly. “Both my wife and I feel that you and you alone are the man to get at the bottom of this diabolical thing; and the boy is as dear to us as if he were our own. Help me to get proof—unimpeachable proof—of the hand which is engineering these diabolical attacks, that we may not only put an end to them before they go too far, but may avert the disgrace which publicity must inevitably bring.”
“Publicity, Mr. Carruthers? What publicity are you in dread of, please?”
“That which could only bring shame to a dear, lovable young fellow if any hint of what I believe to be the truth should get out, Mr. Cleek,” he replied. “To you I may confess it: I appeal to no medical man because I fear, for young Claude’s sake, that investigation may lead to a discovery of the truth; for both my wife and I feel—indeed, we almostknow—that it is his own grandmother, Lady Essington, who is injuring the boy and that it will not be long before she attempts to direct suspicion againstus.”
“Indeed? For what purpose?”
“To have us removed by the courts as not being fit to have the care of the child, and to get him transferred to her care, that she may enjoy the revenue from his estate.”
“Phew!” whistled Cleek softly. “Well done, my lady!”
“We do our best to keep her from getting at him,” went on the Honourable Felix, “but she succeeds in spite of us. His nursery was on the same floor as her rooms, but for greater safety I last night had him carried to my own bedchamber and double-locked all the windows and doors. Isaid to myself that nothing could get to him then; but—it did, just the same! In the middle of the night he woke up screaming and crying out that some one had come and stuck a long needle in his neck, and then for the first time—God! I nearly went off my head when I saw it—for the first time, Mr. Cleek, there was a mark upon him—three red raw little spots just over the collarbone on the left side of the neck, as if a bird had pecked him.”
“Hum-m-m! And all the windows closed, you say?”
“All but one—the window of my dressing-room—but as that is barred so that nobody could possibly get in, I thought it did not matter, and so left it partly open for the sake of air.”
“I see,” said Cleek. “I see! Hum-m-m! A fortnight without any outward sign and then of a sudden three small raw spots! Indented in the centre are they, and much inflamed about the edges? Thanks! Quite so, quite so! And the doors locked and all the windows but one closed and secured on the inside, so that no human body——What’s that? Take the case? Certainly I will, Mr. Carruthers. You are entertaining a house party at present, I hear. Now if you can make it convenient to put me up in the Priory for a night or two, and will inform your guests that an old ‘Varsity friend named—er—let’s see! Oh, ah! Deland, that will do as well as any—Lieutenant Arthur Deland, home on leave from India—if you will inform your guests that that friend will join the house party to-morrow afternoon, I’ll be with you in time for lunch, and will bring my man servant with me.”
“Thank you! thank you!” said the Honourable Felix, wringing his hand. “I’ll do exactly as you suggest, Mr. Cleek, and rooms shall be ready for you when you arrive.”
And the matter being thus arranged, the Honourable Felix took his departure; and Cleek, calling the landlady to furnish him with pen, ink, and paper, sat down then andthere to write a private note to Lady Essington, telling her to look out for Mr. George Headland to put in an appearance at the Priory in three days’ time.
It was exactly half-past one o’clock when Lieutenant Arthur Deland, a big, handsome, fair-haired, fair-moustached fellow, with the stamp of the Army all over him, turned up at Boskydell Priory with an undersized Indian servant and an oversized kit and was presented to his hostess and to the several members of the house party, by all of whom he was voted a decided acquisition before he had been an hour under the Priory’s roof.
It is odd how one’s fancies sometimes go. He found the Honourable Mrs. Carruthers a sweet, gentle, dovelike little woman for whom he did not care in the least degree, and he found Lady Essington’s son a rollicking, bubbling, overgrown boy of two-and-twenty, whom, in spite of frivolous upbringing and a rather pronounced brusqueness toward his mother, he fancied very much indeed. In fact, he “played right up” to Mr. Claude Essington, as our American cousins say; and Mr. Claude Essington, fancying him hugely, took him to his heart forthwith and blurted out his sentiments with almost small-boy candour.
“I say, Deland, you’re a spiffing sort—I like you!” he said bluntly, after they’d played one or two sets of tennis with the ladies and done their “social duties” generally. “If things look up a bit and I’m able to go back to Oxford for the next term (and the Lord knows how I shall, if the mater doesn’t succeed in ‘touching’ Carruthers for some money for we’re jolly near broke and up to our eyes in debt), but if I do go back and you’re in England still, I’ll have you up for the May week and give you the time of your life. Oh, Lord! here’s the mater coming now. Let’s hook it. Come round to the stables, will you, and have a look at my collection. Pippin’ lot—they’ll interest you.”
They did; for on investigation the “collection” proved to be made up of pigeons, magpies, parrakeets, white mice, monkeys, and even a tame squirrel, all of which came forth at their master’s call and swarmed or flocked all over him.
“Now then, Dolly Varden, you keep your thieving tongs away from my scarfpin, old lady!” exclaimed this enthusiast to a magpie which perched upon his shoulder and immediately made a peck at the small pearl in his necktie. “Awfullest old thief and vagrant that ever sprouted a feather, this beauty,” he explained to Cleek as he smoothed the magpie’s head. “Steal your eye teeth if she could get at them, and goes off on the loose like a blessed wandering gypsy. Lost her for three days and nights a couple of weeks ago, and the Lord knows where the old vagrant put in her time. What’s that? The white stuff on her beak? Blest if I know. Been pecking at a wall or something, I reckon, and—hullo! There’s Carruthers and his little lordship strolling about hand in hand. Let’s go and have a word with them. Strathmere’s amazingly fond of my mice and birds.”
With that he walked away with the mice and the monkeys and the squirrel clinging to him, and those of the birds that were not perched upon his shoulders or his hands circling round his head with a flurry of moving wings. Cleek followed. A word in private with the Honourable Felix was accountable for his appearance in the grounds with the boy, and Cleek was anxious to get a good look at him without exciting any possible suspicion in Lady Essington’s mind regarding the “Lieutenant’s” interest in him.
He was a bonny little chap, this last Earl of Strathmere, with a head and face that might have done duty for one of Raphael’s “Cherubim” and the big “wonder eyes” that make baby faces so alluring.
“Strathmere, this is Lieutenant Deland, come all the way from India to visit us,” said the Honourable Felix, as Cleekwent down on his knees and spoke to the boy (examining him carefully the while). “Won’t you tell him you are pleased to see him?”
“Pleased to see oo,” said the boy, then broke into a shout of glee as he caught sight of young Essington with the animals and birds. “Pitty birdies! pitty mouses! Give! give!” he exclaimed eagerly, stretching forth his little hands.
“Certainly. Which will you have, old chap—magpie, parrakeet, pigeon, monkey, or mice?” said young Essington, gayly. “Here! take the lot and be happy!” Then he made as if to bundle them all into the child’s arms, and might have succeeded in doing so, but that Cleek rose up and came between them and the boy.
“Do have some sense, Essington!” he rapped out sharply. “Those things may not bite nor claw you, but one can’t be sure when they are handled by some one else. Besides, the boy is not well and he ought not to be frightened.”
“Sorry, old chap—always puttin’ my foot into it. But Strathmere likes ’em, don’t you, bonny boy? and I didn’t think.”
“Take them back to the stables and let’s have a go at billiards for an hour or two before tea,” said Cleek, turning as Essington walked away, and looking after him with narrowed eyes and lips indrawn. When man and birds were out of sight, however, he made a sharp and sudden sound, and almost in a twinkling his “Indian servant” slipped into sight from behind a nearby hedge.
“Get round there and examine those birds after he’s left them,” said Cleek, in a swift whisper. “There’s one—a magpie—with something smeared on its beak. Find out what it is and bring me a sample. Look sharp!”
“Right you are, sir,” answered in excellent Cockney the undersized person addressed. “I’ll spread one of me famous ‘Tickle Tootsies’ and nip in and ketch the bloomin’ ’awk as soon as the josser’s back is turned, guv’ner. I’m off, asthe squib said to the match when it started blowin’ of him up.” Then the face disappeared again, and the child and the two men were again alone together.
“Good God, man!” exclaimed the Honourable Felix in a lowered voice of strong excitement. “You can’t possibly believe that he—that dear, lovable boy——Oh, it is beyond belief!”
“Nothing is ‘beyond belief’ inmyline, my friend. Recollect that even Lucifer was an angelonce. I know the means employed to bring about this”—touching softly the three red spots on his little lordship’s neck—“but I have yet to decide how the thing is administered and by whom. Frankly I do not believe it is done with a bird’s beak—though that, too, is possible, wild as it seems—but by this time to-morrow I promise you the riddle shall be solved. Sh-h! Don’t speak—he’s coming back. Take the boy into your own room to-night, but leave the door unfastened. I’m coming down to watch by him with you. Let him first be put into the regular nursery, however, then take him out without the knowledge of any living soul—ofany, you hear?—and I will be with you before midnight.”
That night two curious things happened: The first was that at a quarter to seven, when Martha, the nursemaid, coming up into the nursery to put his little lordship to bed, found Lieutenant Deland—who was supposed to be dressing for dinner at the time—standing in the middle of the room looking all about the place.
“Don’t be startled, Nurse,” he said, as he looked round and saw her. “Your master has asked me to design a new decoration for this room, and I’m having a peep about in quest of inspiration. Ah, Strathmere, ‘Dustman’s time,’ I see. Pleasant dreams to you, old chap. See you in the morning when you’re awake.”
“Say good night to the gentleman, your lordship,” saidthe nurse, laying both hands on his shoulders and leading him forward, whereupon he began to whine sleepily: “Want Sambo! Want Sambo!” and to rub his fists into his eyes.
“Yes, dearie, Nanny’ll get Sambo for your lordship after your lordship has said good night to the gentleman,” soothed the nurse; and held him gently until he had done so.
“Good night, old chap,” said Cleek. “Hello, Nurse, got a sore finger, have you, eh? How did that happen? It looks painful.”
“It is, sir, though I can’t for the life of me think whatever could have made a thing so bad from just scratching one’s finger, unless it could have happened that there was something poisonous on the wretched magpie’s claws. One never can be sure where those nasty things go nor what they dip into.”
“The magpie?” repeated Cleek. “What do you mean by that, Nurse? Have you had an unpleasant experience with a magpie, then?”
“Yes, sir, that big one of Mr. Essington’s: the nasty creature that’s always flying about. It was a fortnight ago, sir. Mistress’ pet dog had got into the nursery and laid hold of Sambo—which is his lordship’s rag doll, sir, as he never will go to sleep without—tore it well nigh to pieces did the dog; and knowing how his lordship would cry and mourn if he saw it like that, I fetched in my work-basket and started to mend it. I’d just got it pulled into something like shape and was about to sew it up when I was called out of the room for a few minutes, and when I came back there was that wretched Magpie that had been missing for several days right inside my work-basket trying to steal my reels of cotton, sir. It had come in through the open window—like it so often does, nasty thing. I loathe magpies and I believe that that one knows it. Anyway, when I caught up a towel and began to flick at it to get it out of the room, itturned on me and scratched or pecked my finger, and it’s been bad ever since. Cook says she thinks I must have touched it against something poisonous after the skin was broken. Maybe I did, sir, but I can’t think what.”
Cleek made no comment; merely turned on his heel and walked out of the room.
The second curious thing occurred between nine o’clock and half-past, when the gentlemen of the party were lingering at the table over post-prandial liqueurs and cigars, and the ladies had adjourned to the drawing-room. A recollection of having carelessly left his kit-bag unlocked drew Cleek to invent an excuse for leaving the room for a minute or two and sent him speeding up the stairs. The gas in the upper halls had been lowered while the members of the household were below; the passages were dim and shadowy, and the thick carpet on halls and stairs gave forth never a murmur of sound from under his feet nor from under the feet of yet another person who had gone like he, but by a different staircase, to the floors above.
It was, therefore, only by the merest chance that he looked down one of the passages in passing and saw a swift-moving figure—a woman’s—cross it at the lower end and pass hastily into the nursery of the sleeping boy. And—whether her purpose was a good or an evil one—it was something of a shock to realize that the woman who was doing this was the Honourable Mrs. Carruthers.
He locked the kit-bag, and went back to the dining-room just as the little gathering was breaking up, and Mr. Claude Essington, who always fed his magpies and his other pets himself, was bewailing the fact that he had “forgotten the beauties until this minute” and was smoothing out an old newspaper in which to wrap the scraps of cheese and meat he had sent the butler to the kitchen to procure.
The Honourable Felix looked up at Cleek with a question in his eye.
“No,” he contrived to whisper in reply. “It was not anything poisonous—merely candle wax. The bird had flown in through the store-room window, and the housekeeper caught it carrying away candles one by one.”
The Honourable Felix made no response, nor would it have been heard had he done so; for just at that moment young Essington, whose eye had been caught by something in the paper, burst out into a loud guffaw.
“I say, this is rich. Listen here, you fellows! Lay you a tenner that the chap who wrote this was a Paddy Whack, for a finer bull never escaped from a Tipperary paddock: