At a point just off the road, and where the thick trees hid it, the big car waited, with lights hooded and Lennard on watch. Narkom was the first to wriggle through the broken palings and make his way to it; a short time afterward Cleek, who had lingered to make sure that everything was safe, came up and joined him.
"They'll eat the beggars out of house and home, that pair, and lead them the devil's own game of follow-my-leader to-morrow," laughed the Superintendent. "And now then—what next?"
"What I told you back there, Mr. Narkom—the beginning of action. The race now will be to the swift. Lennard, hand me out that bag of fullers' earth. Look sharp! Thanks. Mr. Narkom, take this letter; I think you must have understood that I was writing it to you. Read it, then hop into the car and act upon it at once. No questions now, please—there isn't time. Simply go. Arrange things—you can change back to your own dapper self on the way—and then get back here as soon as you can. I shall be waiting for you at this spot. That's all."
It was—it had to be; for in an instant he had swung the bag up over his shoulder, moved away, and disappeared in the darkness of the woodland.
When, at the end of half an hour, however, Narkom returned from his errand, there Cleek stood again, leaning against a tree, with arms folded, his chin on his breast, and his forehead puckered thoughtfully.
"You are just one minute too soon, Mr. Narkom," he said, with a sort of sigh as the limousine halted and the Superintendent jumped out. "I was just working out a little question in mental arithmetic, and in another sixty seconds I should have had the answer. Look here: Given a space of two hundred and eighty feet in length by about, say, three feet in breadth, and intervals of probably three and a half yards between each balk, how many cubic feet of timber, one and a half inches thick and six inches broad, do you think it would take to—— Oh! let it go! There isn't time at present. I'll work it out to-morrow. Come along—quick! We've plenty to do before those bells set up their peal to-night."
Here he sprang past the Superintendent and got briskly into the limousine. By the time Mr. Narkom joined him he was stripping off his coat.
"Now, then, down with the curtains and up with the light," he said, as Narkom shut the door and the car took the dark road at a lively clip. "Thanksvery much. Sit this side, please, and let me get at the locker, and we'll dig up our old friend 'Mr. Philip Barch' for the rest of the game."
It still wanted some few minutes of ten o'clock when the limousine, panting up to the Valehampton almshouses, swung round the angle of the buildings and made its way to the small detached one which served the double purpose of isolation hospital and, when occasion demanded, morgue.
Here, in a small, brightly lighted anteroom, Cleek and Mr. Narkom found four persons waiting to receive them: Mr. Bevington Howard, the local justice of the peace; Mr. Hamish, the master of the almshouses; Mr. Naylor, the chief constable of the district; and a certain Dr. Alexander Forsyth.
They all rose as the Superintendent and his famous ally came in, and two of them at least—Mr. Howard and Mr. Naylor—regarded Cleek with deep-seated earnestness.
"Mr. Cleek, this is a pleasure and a privilege," said Howard. "I have long desired to meet you."
"Will you forget that you have done so, Mr. Howard, until after this Valehampton business is settled? It may hamper me somewhat if my identity is known too soon. I shall be obliged if you will think of me until then as one 'Philip Barch,' anordinary civilian. And now, if you please, may I not see the body of Davis at once?"
Together the six men passed into the adjoining apartment, carrying with them the lamps which Mr. Hamish had supplied for the purpose, and in a minute's time all were standing round the bier upon which the dead man lay.
The body was that of a well-developed, muscular fellow, of about thirty years of age, big-framed, and in the very pink of physical condition, who in life must have been as strong as an ox and as difficult to handle in a rough-and-tumble fight as man could well be. Yet here he now lay, the whole back of his head crushed in, yet his face expressing no sign of any such agony as one would have thought must have convulsed it as the result of an injury so appalling. Instead, its expression was rather peaceful than otherwise. The features of a man who had died in his sleep could not have been more placid.
The curious, one-sided smile curved the corner of Cleek's mouth, and beckoning Mr. Narkom to hold the light closer, he bent down over the body, and with the aid of his lens minutely examined the ghastly wound. From that he went, in turn, to other points. With his thumb and forefinger he uncovered the dead eyes and studied the condition of cornea and pupil; from thence he turned to the lips—inspecting them with the glass, touching them, smelling them—then went to fingertips and the cuticular folds of thenails. At the end of five minutes he put his glass in his pocket and rose.
"Gentlemen," he said, gravely, "I think I shall be fairly correct in asserting that the wound on the back of this poor fellow's head was made by a sledge-hammer which had previously been used in demolishing an ordinary house wall of lath and plaster. There are distinct traces of both mortar and lime, and very minute particles of what, for want of a better term, one might call old wood dust, in the hair—those atoms which the blow of a heavy instrument upon wood that is in the primary stages of dry rot would cause to rise like dust. The man, having been addicted to the use of pomade for the hair, has furnished a very useful adhesive for the collection and retention of those particles.
"From the first, gentlemen, it has been a matter of great surprise to me that such an injury could be inflicted upon such a man without a terrific struggle and a very considerable uproar. It is a surprise to me no longer. I shall be something more than astonished if that blow was not delivered after death, and decidedlynotat the place where the body was subsequently found."
"You think it was carried to the bell-tower, then?"
"Yes, Mr. Howard, I do. It was taken to that spot and left there for just such a purpose as it has served—namely, to divert every atom of suspicionfrom channels which might lead to the identification of the murderer and still further to strike terror into the minds of the ignorant and superstitious. If this man had carried into effect what he set out to accomplish last night, somebody stood to lose a pretty high stake. It was, therefore, to the interest of that somebody to prevent his doing it, and as this poor fellow was not the kind that could be coaxed or bribed or cajoled into a crooked course, the only preventive was the desperate one of death."
Here he turned to Doctor Forsyth and addressed him personally.
"Doctor," he said, "you may have wondered why the request was made to you to bring your surgical instruments and to meet these gentlemen here in the interests of science and the law. Let me confess that I made that request merely upon the off-chance of a theory of my own proving correct and requiring such services at your hands. I am now pretty thoroughly convinced that itiscorrect, and that this man's death is the direct result of poison."
"Poison, sir, poison?"
"Yes, Mr. Naylor, poison. Accepting, on the evidence of that fearful injury to the head, the cause of death as being the result of a blow, you would not, of course, look for any other in the face of a thing so apparent. It was quite natural. Nevertheless, I am convinced that the man was poisoned, and that that poison was administered throughthe medium of drink. There is a distinct odour of alcohol still clinging about the mouth, so there can hardly be a question that death must have ensued soon after the taking of a drink, and that the man neither smoked nor ate afterward. In the presence of these witnesses, Doctor Forsyth, have the goodness to perform an autopsy and to subject the contents of the stomach to chemical analysis. I'll lay my life that if you do—I know my man! That's all for the present, gentlemen. I will leave you to witness the autopsy, and will call for the result to-morrow. My compliments to you all; good-night!"
He turned and, beckoning Mr. Narkom to follow, walked out of the building and returned to the waiting limousine.
"Where now, sir?" questioned Lennard, as he appeared.
"To the River Colne," he replied. "Drive like the devil, and follow the river's course till I tell you to stop."
The limousine took the angle of the building with a rush and went racing off through the moonlight at a mile-a-minute clip.
The moon was high up over the tree-tops and the river, when they reached it, was a shining silver ribbon lying between sloping banks.
Cleek, as they rushed along beside it, leaned forward with his elbow on the window-ledge and his cheek in his palm, and studied its shining surface narrowly. Of a sudden, however, he called out sharply "Stop!"
The vehicle ran on for a yard or two and then came to a halt. Cleek, despite that fact, did not alight at once. Instead, he pulled down all the leather curtains, switched on the light, and taking out his note-book, began to write. His stylo travelled rapidly, but even at that it was a good six minutes before he tore out the leaves he had covered, switched off the light, and, opening the door, said "Come!" and stepped out with Mr. Narkom.
Carefully folding the written leaves, he walked round to the front of the limousine and put the little bundle into Lennard's hand.
"Take that to the vicarage of St. Saviour's, anddeliver it to the Rev. Mr. Saintly," he said. "If he asks you any questions, answer them—truthfully. After that you may return to Willowby Old Church and put up for the night. We shall not need you again until to-morrow. Move lively, lad, and the quicker you get that note into the vicar's hands and take yourself out of Valehampton, the better I shall be pleased."
"Do both inside of the next five minutes, sir; the river path has brought us round on the other side of the church—there's her spire just above those trees to the left. Good-night! I'm off."
And so he was, so swiftly that it might almost be said that at the very moment he spoke the moonlit landscape held no trace of any living thing but a silk-hatted Narkom and dapper Cleek standing in the middle of the road and looking very much out of keeping with their surroundings.
The Superintendent looked at his watch, saw that its hands pointed to twenty minutes to eleven, and then faced round on Cleek.
"And now what, old chap?" he inquired. The habit of blind obedience to the lead of his famous ally had become a fixed one with the Superintendent, who was nevertheless most alert when in charge of affairs himself. "I suppose you know what you're about, but I don't. It seems to me that, having sent Lennard off for good, you've done us out of all hope of finding a bed anywhere to-night. And I'm blestif I shall relish prowling about the neighbourhood in this sort of a get-up until morning."
"Oh, don't worry. You will get a bed, I promise you. Indeed, the matter is the one uppermost in my mind at this minute—the reason for our presence here—only it happens to be a bed of another colour from the one you're demanding. It is, in short, the bed of a river—this one beside us."
"Now what the devil can the bed of a river have to do with the matter in hand?"
"That is precisely what I am anxious to settle to my own satisfaction. It is almost the last point in the case which we have to investigate; and it is an extremely interesting one. Brush up your memory a bit, Mr. Narkom. Part of that extraordinary prophecy was that the river should become choked, and, according to the duke, choked it has become."
"Oh, ah! Yes, I remember. Shoals formed, didn't they?"
"Exactly. And I am extremely anxious to discover why. Perhaps we may, presently. You observe that we are at the point where the stream begins to narrow perceptibly. As yet, however, I perceive no sign of shoals. Still, if we follow this narrowing course for a time—— Come on."
They walked on, and for the next ten or fifteen minutes they scarcely spoke a word, keeping their eyes fixed steadily on the ever-narrowing stream,but finding nothing to reward them for their diligence.
"It will be a fake, I'm afraid, Cleek."
"Possibly; but I doubt it. It is one of the essential points—a thing so absolutely necessary that, if it doesn't exist, I'm on the wrong scent, that's all."
For another two or three minutes they walked on in silence; then Cleek gave a satisfied grunt and pointed to where the hitherto placid surface of the stream was broken into a little patch of eddies and ripples that circled round a clump of trembling river grass.
"We are coming to it, you see!" he said, and moved quickly to a spot where the eddies played closer to the shore, and the water, obstructed, encroached upon the land. By the time Mr. Narkom came up with him he had laid aside his coat and was hastily turning back the cuff of his shirt sleeve.
In another moment he had gone down the shelving bank and jumped out to where a half-submerged rock offered a footing and his arm was elbow deep in the eddying water. For a time his hand remained invisible, groping and tugging at something, then it came into view again, and Narkom could see that it held a heavy, sodden lump of something from which the water trickled in yellowish streams.
"Have a look at that," said Cleek, with an exultant laugh as he threw it over onto the bank and, dipping in his hand again, fished up another lumpand sent that flying across in the wake of the other. "And there's a second to show that it isn't merely an isolated specimen."
He whirled his hand round in the water to wash it, then rose, and jumping back to the shore, began to pull down his sleeve while Mr. Narkom was inspecting the two slimy lumps.
"Don't trust the moonlight—get out your electric torch and have a good look at them. They are worth it, Mr. Narkom—the beauties. They are a rich find all right."
"Rich?Are you off your head, old man? They're nothing but lumps of common clay."
"Certainly—that is what makes them so valuable."
"Valuable?"
"To be sure," replied Cleek, serenely. "There is a lot more where they came from, and it's worth in the aggregate something like one hundred and fifty thousand pounds in gold! If you doubt that——"
Here he stopped, and, reaching round, made a grab for his hat and coat. Of a sudden the stillness of the night was broken into by a tuneless and discordant jangle of pealing bells.
The chimes of St. Saviour's had begun their nightly ringing.
"Come!" exclaimed Cleek, excitedly, and started off up the slope and across the intervening fieldsand spinneys in the direction of the churchyard, putting on his coat as he ran.
His pace was so swift that he was already a good twenty yards on his way before Mr. Narkom could grasp his intention and start after him.
A good sprinter at all times, to-night it seemed to the Superintendent that the man was fairly outdoing himself, in this wild "cross-country" race; and, although Mr. Narkom put forth all the energy and all the speed that was in him, never once could he lessen the space which lay between him and that flying figure in front of him. And all the time the jangling bells went on, flinging their harsh discord out upon the night.
As yet Cleek could get no sight of the church tower, for the centuries-old luxuriance of a group of fir trees screened tower and bells alike from view on this side of the church, and the upward slope of the land from the river's edge to the graveyard wall rendered their screen doubly effective. But presently he came abreast of that wall, vaulted over it, zigzagged his way through a wilderness of crowded tombstones, came out into the open, and looking upward—saw!
It was the first moment since the beginning of the sound that he had checked his speed or halted for so much as a second. That he did so now wasonly natural. For here was a thing totally unexpected. Here was corroboration of James Overton's story. Here was, indeed, a suggestion of the supernatural.
High up in the open space where the bells—themselves unseen—were swinging and clashing out their jarring discords, a globe of light, its radiance intensified by the black shadow of the tower's roof, was careering about as if it hung in mid-air, and was dancing a ghostly tarantella to the time of the clanging bells.
He stood stock still and looked at it, conscious of a swift, prickling sensation travelling up his spine to his very hair; then catching a gasping sort of sound and a low exclamation from somewhere behind him, he knew that Mr. Narkom, too, had come within sight of the thing, and, pulling himself together, took up the lead again and ran toward the tower.
Racing behind in a state of mind bordering closely upon panic, Mr. Narkom saw Cleek run to the tower's foot, whip out his electric torch, and splash the light of it about its base—a square now spread inches deep with fullers' earth—and then, almost immediately, he saw him throw up both hands as if to recover an equilibrium disturbed by a violent blow, and stagger backward.
"My God! What is it?" Mr. Narkom called in a shaking voice, as he made a mad rush toward him.And indeed there was sufficient cause for the horror in his voice.
For Cleek, crying out that he was burning up, had suddenly faced about, dashed through the lich-gate, and lurched out into the road, and when, presently, the Superintendent dodged out of the churchyard after him, it was in time to see him stagger to the Hurdons' cottage, fall so heavily against the door of it that it flew inward with a bang, and drop, a crumpled heap, upon the threshold—limp and inert as a man shot dead.
Narkom, a picture of terror too real to admit of any doubt, was across that road and kneeling beside him before you could have counted twenty, and to the astonished eyes of Mrs. Hurdon, drawn to the window by the uproar, and well-nigh carried off her feet by the bursting in of the door, there appeared a man's hat rolling across her floor and a fashionably dressed gentleman sprawling over her threshold in a fainting condition, while another was bending over him trying to revive him as well as terror would permit.
"Old man, wake up, pull yourself together, speak to me!" exclaimed the Superintendent with the utmost concern and then, becoming aware of the woman's presence, appealed to her.
"Help me!" he cried. "Don't stand there like a stone! Can't you see the man's ill? Get some sort of a stimulant, quick!"
Here the woman's wits came back to her.
"We haven't any," she replied, tartly. "And what's more, you can't bring him in here. There's no room for him—none at all. Besides, I never saw either of you before. Take him outside—take him where he belongs. I can't have him here, I tell you. I've got a sick husband, and—and I'm going to shut the door."
She caught hold of it as she spoke, intending to carry her words into execution, and Narkom, fairly bursting with indignation, had just begun to call her everything his concerned mind was capable of, when there came the sound of a voice and the rush of footsteps up the red-tiled path behind him. In another moment the vicar of St. Saviour's put in an unexpected appearance.
"God bless me, it will be Mr. Barch, will it not, Mr. Williams?" he said, as he met Mr. Narkom's upturned glance. "I guessed as much when I heard the noise. I told you—I told you, you foolish men! What madness to let a weak-nerved, weak-minded fellow like that go prowling about country roads in the night. Mrs. Hurdon, these are two London gentlemen, Mr. John Williams and Mr. Philip Barch, who have just come down to spend the week-end with me at the vicarage, and Mr. Barch is unhappily addicted to fainting fits."
"Deary me! That is it?" said Mrs. Hurdon with suddenly awakened sympathy. "Oh, the poor,dear gentleman. But he did scare the wits half out of me, sir, bursting into a body's house like that."
"No doubt, no doubt. Hand me his hat, please. Thank you. Now, my dear Mr. Williams, you get hold of his head, and I'll take his feet, and we'll carry him back to the vicarage between us."
Mr. Narkom, his head in a whirl with an overwhelming sense of having been taken in, acted upon the suggestion without a word, and two minutes later he and the vicar were trudging down the dark road with Cleek lying a dead weight between them.
"I'd let you put me down, only one never knows what may happen," he took the opportunity of saying in a low voice when they were some twenty or thirty yards down the road. "Mr. Saintly, you were excellent; but I had some groggy moments lying there, and not being sure if you would understand the note or not. And your worried expression, Narkom, couldn't be beaten."
"I should say not. It was perfectly genuine, and I was pretty well off my head with fright. I think you might have given me a hint."
"It wouldn't have been anything like so natural. You were positively superb. Sorry to be such a burden, gentlemen, but we shall soon be at the vicarage, and after that—— Mr. Saintly!"
"Yes, Mr. Cleek?"
"We are close to the end. If you will write andinvite the duke and a few other gentlemen at the Castle to honour you with a call at St. Saviour's vicarage to-morrow night at half-past ten o'clock, I will give them the riddle's answer as soon as the bells begin to ring!"
On the morrow the village of Valehampton knew that the vicar of St. Saviour's was entertaining two gentlemen, Mr. John Williams and Mr. Philip Barch, who had come down from town by the last train the preceding night and were to stop with him over the week-end; and, being informed that Mr. Barch was a gentleman of poor health, it was not at all surprised that he should make an early call on Doctor Forsyth.
It did not, however, know that at the time that call was made the doctor was entertaining Mr. Justice of the Peace Howard and Mr. Chief Constable Naylor, and that Mr. Barch remained in close council with all three for upward of an hour, afterward making a personal call upon His Grace the Duke of Essex and spending yet another hour at the Castle.
When that hour was over he went back to the vicarage, every link was fitted into its place, and the chain complete at last.
It was about twenty minutes past ten that evening that Mr. James Overton, answering a hand-deliverednote, was shown into the vicarage drawing-room, and found himself in the presence of a most distinguished company, made up of the Duke of Essex, the Marquis of Uppingham, Captain Weatherley, and two gentlemen who were alluded to as Mr. John Williams and Mr. Philip Barch.
Mr. Overton, who had been over at Braintree ever since noon on business for the duke, and was, of course, still wearing his ordinary riding clothes, apologized for his appearance on the score that he had not had time to change.
"I found Your Grace's man waiting for me with your note when I arrived at the Lodge," he said; "and, of course, came on immediately, as requested. But surely there must be some error—the thing seems so impossible. You said in the note that the man, George Headland, would be here by eleven o'clock to offer a solution of the mystery, and that simply can't be. I saw him myself over at Earl's Colne as I rode through this afternoon, he and his deaf companion. They were sitting outside an inn drinking stout and smoking their pipes as contentedly as you please; and when I stopped and asked them what on earth they were doing there, Headland told me that their effects had not come down from London as they expected, and they were taking a holiday until they did. As I came back I learned that they were strolling about Pebmarsh as late as seven o'clock this evening, and had been over in that sectionof this county pretty much all day. How can it be possible for them to have discovered anythinghere?"
"That I can't tell you, I'm sure, Overton," replied the duke. "I merely know that he sent word to me through the vicar that if I would be here at eleven o'clock to-night he would give me a full and clear explanation of the diabolical affair. It occurred to me at the last moment that you, probably, would like to hear that explanation with the rest of us, so I left Roberts to deliver that note as soon as you returned."
"Thank you—it was very kind. Naturally I am very deeply interested; but I am more mystified than ever when Your Grace tells me that Headland sent the message through the vicar. Have you then seen the man to-day, Mr. Saintly?"
"Oh, dear, no. The message came to me through Mr. Philip Barch here."
"Meaning the gentleman who is your guest, sir?"
"Meaning me—yes, Mr. Overton," remarked Cleek. "We met quite accidentally while I was out this morning. Personally, I must admit that I haven't very much faith in our actually seeing the man to-night."
"You couldn't be blamed for not having much faith in the man's ability, I am sure, Mr. Barch. To tell you the truth, sir, I have very little myself.I never even heard of him until yesterday. He seemed a stupid sort of fellow."
Here Captain Weatherley chimed in:
"Judging from his appearance when he was pointed out to me, I should say that he was nothing less than an idiot!" was his contribution.
"With the odds on the idiot," supplemented Cleek. "Still, let's give him his chance. We shall know the best or the worst in half an hour, Captain Weatherley. Eleven o'clock will tell the tale."
And eleven o'clock did tell it.
Cleek, to pass away the tedium of waiting, had taken his seat before the vicarage organ and was deep in a selection from Handel when, all of a sudden, a clanging noise broke through the outer stillness and all the night echoed to the clash of the discordant bells.
"Hallo! There's our friend the ghost starting in with his nightly jamboree," he said, screwing round on the organ stool and rising, as the sound of hasty feet coming up the vicarage steps and along the vicarage hall followed on the peal of bells. "He's a prompt beggar to-night, that spook—a very prompt beggar indeed."
"But no prompter than that Headland fellow," exclaimed Captain Weatherley, catching the sound of the running footsteps and jumping to his feet. "Here he comes now, by Jove!—and it's two minutes short of the hour."
In his excitement, he jumped to the door and whirled it open, and almost in the same instant there entered the room, in a state of breathless excitement, no less a person than Mr. Justice of the Peace Howard, with Chief Constable Naylor close upon his heels.
"They've started—don't you hear them?" he cried, looking up at Cleek. "That was to be the signal, wasn't it? Shall Naylor give the word?"
"By all means," replied Cleek, calmly. "Start them going, Mr. Naylor, and start them goinghard!"
Mr. Naylor's response was not given in words. Facing about instantly, he ran down the hall and out into the forecourt of the vicarage, blowing a police whistle, and shouting at the top of his voice: "In with you, my boys! Get 'em."
Almost instantly there was a sound of rushing feet, a banging and a smashing of hammers on wood, the crash of a door going down, and the sound of a dozen voices crying lustily, "Come out of it! Come out of it!" voices which soon dwindled off in the distance.
The duke and Mr. Overton were on their feet at once. There could be no mistake about the direction whence these sounds came. A force of men, acting upon a given signal, had made an attack upon the Castle cottages.
"Oh, don't be alarmed, Duke. Don't be alarmed, Mr. Overton," said Cleek, coming up with them asmaster and man, realizing the state of affairs, moved hastily to the nearest window and tried vainly to peer through the intervening trees. "It is nothing very serious—only a small detachment of police, aided by some of your own gamekeepers, paying their respects to Mr. and Mrs. John Hurdon. It will be over soon, and the interesting party will take a turn at oakum-picking with this gentleman—dear, clever man!"
Here his hands reached over quickly toward those of the land-steward; there was a jingle and a click, and by the time Overton became aware that something cold had touched his wrists, the handcuffs were locked and the thing was done.
He gave a queer sort of cry—half gasp, half howl—and lurched backward in a panic.
"In the name of God——" he began, but got no farther, for Cleek's hand was on his shoulder and Cleek's voice was saying soothingly:
"Oh, fie, my friend! So tender a heart should be mated with a reverent tongue. And if you must cry out, surely there is another name more fitting to the occasion? But why cry at all? You cannot alter matters. It is fated, you see, that none of you is ever to go up that underground tunnel or touch one article of that splendid gold service, even though Captain Paul Sandringham is dead and, as Carstairs said, 'It makes one the less to reckon with!' Sit down, Mr. Overton, and make yourselfcomfortable until Mr. Naylor comes back to take care of you. And let me take this opportunity to thank you for our very pleasant walk up from the station yesterday. Do you know, I always did like that ghost story from the time when I first read it in a fiction magazine, and it lost none of its charm through your telling. Oh, yes—I'm the same person—I'm the George Headland you told it to. The one your sister and the gypsy woman have been following all day is a fake. I expect he and his mate have rounded on them by this time and have taken them into custody, and—— Fainted, by jupiter! Ah, they are a weak-nerved lot, this sneaking kind, when it comes to the final corner, and it's the wall behind them and the law in front. Pardon? Oh, yes, Marquis! Oh, yes, Captain Weatherley. That was the game: tunnelling from the Hurdons' cottage to the Castle to get at the Essex gold service which they knew would be brought down from the bank for Lady Adela's wedding; and they have been at it for eleven months. Captain Paul Sandringham's was the mind that conceived the thing—how I know this I'll tell you in due time—and he planned the scheme with this fellow a year ago in Ostend when first the duke made public his intention to marry again. He has been over, too, off and on, and taken an actual hand in the work, has the late captain, and I dare say he would have been over again to-morrow night to take part in the final act of the little drama if thecurtain had not been rung down on all the dramas for him the day before yesterday. Oh! he was a clever schemer, was Captain Paul Sandringham, and he neglected nothing. That is the strongest point in the whole armour of the educated criminal: the brains to reason and the wit to provide for all contingencies. You cannot tunnel the earth for a distance of ninety-six yards without having a deal of refuse to dispose of, you know; therefore, the prophecy had to take in the question of a choked river, and there had to be phantom wheels to account for the vehicle which conveyed it to the stream by night; there had to be those bells which are ringing now to account for the supernatural agency, and there had to be a curse on the adjoining cottage to prevent——"
Here he stopped—his ear caught by a confused murmur of voices rising above the clashing of the bells.
"Let us go and see the rest of the interesting collection," he said. "I think the raid is over, and Mr. Naylor's fishers are pulling in the nets."
He turned and walked briskly out of the vicarage and, taking a short cut across the churchyard, made his way to the curve of the road, the bells still clashing out discordantly as he passed through the lich-gate and turned to the Castle cottages—and the duke and the marquis, the captain and the vicar, and Mr. Maverick Narkom, too, followed close upon his heels.
AS they issued from the churchyard a couple of gamekeepers, standing on guard with loaded shotguns, challenged them.
"That's all right, Norton," said Cleek, as one of them stepped forward to bar the way. "It is only His Grace and the rest of us coming to see the final kick-up. You can let us pass with impunity."
"Right, sir," said Norton, and stepped aside.
"The beggars made fine work of it, didn't they, Mr. Narkom?" said Cleek with a laugh, as he pointed to the battered condition of the raided cottage. "Door, window, and half the wall battered down! Theywerean energetic lot! Did they all go in, then, Norton?"
"Yes, sir, every blessed one of them; and Mr. Naylor himself with the lot. They'll be coming out in a minute, I'm thinking—fancy I can hear someone running."
He had scarcely more than finished speaking than there came a clatter of hasty footsteps running up wooden steps, and presently a man, smeared and streaked with yellow clay, dashed in through thescullery door of the cottage and flung himself across the main room, as if running for dear life.
The two gamekeepers rushed forward, and their guns went up like clockwork.
"Now, then,you! Stop where you are," sang out Norton. "You don't take your hook without there's a line on it—and a sinker, too, if you don't look sharp. Hands up!"
The runner obeyed one part of the command at least. That is to say, he stopped short, but instead of throwing up his hands he shouted out in a voice of great excitement:
"Don't make a fool of yourself, Norton; it is only I—Naylor. Get a litter! Get a doctor! We've nabbed the two Hurdons and the gypsy, Costivan; but that fellow Carstairs had a pistol with him, the brute, and after putting a ball through Weston's leg and another into Farley's cap, the beggar shot himself."
"What's that? Shot himself? Carstairs?"
"Oh, that you, Mr. Cleek, is it? Yes, sir, shot himself—through the temple, and I'm afraid he's done himself in."
"Dead?"
"As a doornail, sir. Hole in his head you could put your two fingers in! It's Weston I want the doctor and the litter for. Carstairs won't need anything any more—his little jig is done!"
"And I let the beggar slip me like that!" saidCleek, striking his tongue against the roof of his mouth with a mild clicking sound thrice repeated. "A cold-blooded butcher of that fellow's type—the one real tiger in the whole skulking pack of jackals—and to get off so easily! Too bad, too bad. Well, it can't be helped, I suppose. You got the others all safe and sound, didn't you?"
"Yes, sir, all three."
"Close to the end, were they?"
"Very close, sir. Just as you reckoned. They'd have been in before morning. The floor of the strong-room was just beginning to show in places, and they had the soup all ready and waiting. We nabbed them just in time."
Here the sound of a woman's smothered screams and of men's curses became dimly audible. Mr. Naylor jerked his thumb backward over his shoulder in the direction from which they came.
"That will be them now," he said. "They are bringing the lot up."
"Get down and stop them, then," said Cleek. "All these good people will not care to see an exhibition of that sort now that it has taken a tragic turn. Hold them there for another ten minutes. Don't bring even Weston up. The sight would not be a pleasant one for the duke."
Here Mr. Narkom, waiting only for Naylor to take his departure, chose to deliver a dig at his friend.
"I notice," he said in an undertone, "that forall your fine scorn of dukes you are taking devilish good care of this one."
"Excellent, my friend! Your powers of observation are improving. Notice anything else as well?"
"Yes. You are conducting this affair somewhat off your usual lines, and instead of being bowled over with astonishment by your revelations, this particular duke doesn't seem surprised at anything."
"He isn't. I told him everything beforehand. Doctor Forsyth advised it; his heart is weak. Any more questions, please?"
"Yes, one. In the name of Heaven, what did you cut up that fainting caper for last night?"
"Come over to the cottage door. Look there. See that thing in the corner? By the sofa there—with the quilt half over it?"
"Mean the box with the wire netting over the front?"
"Exactly. That's what I did it for. I wanted to see if there was such a thing here. It was necessary to get down on the floor to see it, and there it was."
"But what on earth——?"
Mr. Narkom did not bother to complete the sentence. It would have been useless. Cleek had walked away and left him—going back to the place where the duke and the others were standing.
"I think, Duke, it will be as well to return to the vicarage," he said, "and leave the rest of this unpleasant business to the law alone. I am sorry,gentlemen, that I have put you all to the useless trouble of coming out here. I should not have done so had I known or even guessed of Carstairs' act. Still, it doesn't matter. You know the result; you know the game. The robbery of the gold service has been prevented, the criminals unmasked, and—that's all. I think we may be satisfied that the riddle has been solved."
"Do you? Well, I'm blest if I do, then!" exclaimed Captain Weatherley. "There is one little point which you decidedly have not cleared up, if you don't mind my saying so. That thing!" Here he flung out his hand and made a sweeping gesture in the direction of the bell-tower, from which the discordant clang had all the time been sounding. "How about that, please? Who has been managing that little dodge, and—how?"
"Oh, the ghost, you mean?"
"Yes, the ghost, the power—the thing, or whatever it is, that rings bells without ropes, and yet—Uppingham, Essex, look round, look round, for Heaven's sake. It has got beyond mere sound alone—it has become visible now—visible! Look, there's a light there—a light!"
"Yes," said Cleek. "It appeared for the first time last night. It gave me quite a shock for the minute, until I remembered."
"Remembered?"
"Yes. Our friend Mr. Overton arranged it for me.He knew, of course, that 'George Headland' would inspect the place some time or another, and he wanted to back up his little ghost story of the night before."
"Overton? Overton, Mr. Cleek?"
"Yes; he is a quite ingenious gentleman when you come to know him—only he is not very original at bottom, I fear. Would you like to see the Valehampton ghost laid, Captain? Would you like to know how bells can be rung without hands or ropes, or wires, or anything of that sort, gentlemen? Very well, then, step this way, and you shall."
Here, beckoning Norton to follow, he walked to the lich-gate, opened it, and, accompanied by the six men, led the way to the belfry.
The clanging bells still flung their discord upon the air, the globe of light still circled in the darkness of the tower's top, and, although the head which had devised it was laid low and the hand which had directed it was now a manacled one, the Valehampton ghost still played its uncanny part.
Cleek turned to the gamekeeper, a smile hovering around his lips.
"Gun for a minute, please, Norton. Thanks. Keep your eyes on the light, gentlemen, and stand back a bit. All ready, are you?"
Bang! Bang!
The gun barked twice in rapid succession, and two charges of buckshot rattled against the bells. Ascream, almost human in its note, shrilled out from the tower's top, the ball of light lurched outward and came tumbling downward till it struck the earth with a curious crunching sound, and then lay quiet in a cloud of fullers' earth.
"Gentlemen, the Valehampton Ghost," said Cleek; then he whipped out his torch and switched a circle of light upon it where it lay—a little black monkey with a wire muzzle over its mouth and a sponge that glowed brightly and smelt strongly of phosphorus fastened to the top of its shattered head. And hard by the spot where it lay there was one single trail of its footprints going across the fullers' earth and pointing toward the stone tower.
"How did I manage to find the thing out?" said Cleek, answering the duke's query as they all sat together in the vicarage drawing-room, an hour or more afterward, discussing the affair. "Well, to tell you the truth, I think I got the very first inkling from the ringing of the bells. Oh, no, not through any special power of deduction or any super-human nonsense of that sort, but simply and solely through my memory. You will remember that I said Overton was not very original in his methods. Well, it so happened that I recalled the circumstance of a monkey which escaped from its cage and terrorized a Swiss village some years ago by climbing into the church belfry and inadvertently setting the bells ringing in the middle of the night by hopping from one to the other in an effort to maintain its equilibrium. That, of course, suggested a similar possibility here, and I set about deciding the point by means of the fullers' earth. By the way, Mr. Narkom, I chose fullers' earth not alone because of its yielding quality and its ability to receive impressions of even very slight things fallingupon it, but because by reason of its weight and its rather tenacious character it was not so likely as another medium to be blown away by any sudden rising of the wind. I suppose you know that I placed the stuff about the tower's base when I left you at the limousine?"
"I judged that," replied the Superintendent. "The thing which amazed me, however, was all that meaningless stuff about timber and cubic feet you talked about when you came back. I can't even yet get the hang of that."
"Can't you? It will be getting in advance of the story a bit, but I may as well explain it now as later. I had come to the point of certainty regarding the making of a tunnel—how, you shall hear later—and as a tunnel of 288 feet in length will require shoring up and bracing with balks at intervals if one doesn't want it to become one's grave, timber for that purpose becomes a necessity. Now, as it would have been a pretty risky business to have left a trail by purchasing timber, and a worse one to attempt to smuggle it into the Hurdons' cottage, I had to figure out just where those beauties were going to get it. Old or new, they simply must have it, and the idea ofoldtimber set my thoughts going—opened up, as it were, the possibility of the adjoining house being kept tenantless so that they could quietly demolish it and get the wood from there. So, when I went to lay the fullers' earth about the tower, I determinedto have a look inside that other cottage and decide the point. A skeleton key let me in, and one flicker of my torch settled the question. The floors were up, the walls had been broken with a sledge-hammer until the place was fairly littered with mortar and lime from end to end, and every joist and beam that could be removed without bringing the place down had been taken away. I made a rapid inventory, calculated roughly about how much timber it would take to supply what had been removed, reduced that to the requirements of the tunnel, and when you caught me going about that little problem in mental arithmetic, I was trying to discover just how far those chaps must have progressed with the tunnel on the basis of the cubic feet of timber used.
"Now, to get back to the beginning. The tunnel idea was really the outcome of speculating with regard to Sir Julius Solinski's possible connection with the matter. That, of course, set me to thinking on the subject of digging for the purpose of getting something out of the earth by secret means and defeating the duke that way; then, when I got to thinking over Captain Paul Sandringham's position in the event of the proposed marriage and the possibility of an heir coming between him and his expectations, and added to that my knowledge of the dishonest character of the man—why, there you are! The tunnel and the reason for it simply evolve themselvesby natural means out of such fertile soil as that; and, this much accomplished, it was but a step to the Hurdons and that very delightful garden which was so delightfully kept."
"How?"
"I didn't like the idea of that garden in that particular place for one thing, and then, for another, I didn't like its being so wonderfully kept up by a couple of people who couldn't apparently be scared into neglecting it or frightened out of the neighbourhood by all the ghosts and bells and curses in Christendom. I asked myself: 'Why do people of position and means so humble that they have to live in a little thatched cottage go to the expense of a garden so ornamental that even a ducal residence is enhanced by the presence of it?' The answer appeared to be that they were doing it for the purpose of making the duke pleased to have them remain there; and if they had any reason for spending a lot of money in plants and flowers simply to prevent the duke from tearing down the cottages and putting an end to the nuisance of that ill-kept one next door, there must be something at the bottom of it that would not stand looking into. If there was to be a tunnel, then, why should not that be the starting point? The more I thought over the thing the more promising it looked. For, I said to myself, to keep up a garden in the state of constant bloom and continual perfection, as that one appears to be, willneed a lot of work; in fact, will keep that one old man and woman busy in it pretty much all their time, if there is no fake about it; but if there is, and they are digging in the tunnel, and the garden still bears those outward signs of constant care, why, there will be only one possible solution, one possible way to do it. In other words, there will have to be a constant supply of fresh plants that can be popped into the place of any that show the slightest trace of neglect, and that means that they will have to be shallow-rooted things like geraniums, fuchsias, lilies, and the like, so that the change cannot only be accomplished quickly, but will show no sign to the casual observer."
"Ah, now I understand what you meant by all that stuff about geraniums which I couldn't make head or tail of at the time. And that's why you were so interested and so anxious to go over and talk with the Hurdon woman the minute you caught sight of the place."
"That's it precisely, Mr. Narkom. I saw at once that I had hit upon something very like the truth; and as I also saw that the woman was very particular in rising from her work to see that her gardening apron was brushed down over her skirt, I wondered what she was so anxious to hide, and took means to find out by tossing the wall plant to her on the plea of its being a very choice plant. When she caught it in her apron and I saw those marks of cakedyellow clay about her knees, I was both gratified and—disappointed."
"Disappointed, old chap?"
"Yes, in the colour of the stuff. I'd expected it to be blue. For, as you know, the county of Essex may be said to rest almost entirely on a foundation of what is geologically known as 'London clay' and that is decidedly blue. All in a moment, however, I remembered that we were close to the border line of Suffolk, and consequently on the edge of the yellow clay belt, and—there you are. Pardon, Duke? How did I get the idea of Captain Sandringham's connection with the affair? Oh, that fellow Carstairs gave me the first hint of that at the vicarage gate when the news of the man's death was made known, and Overton clinched the nail at once. He was obviously distressed by the news, and didn't know how to proceed; but when Carstairs flung out that little hint about there being 'one the less to reckon with' the fellow's eyes lit up in a manner not to be mistaken. They are expressive eyes. To-day, when I went over to the Castle and got the duke to send him off to Braintree so that I could slip into the Lodge and search his effects I found all the proof of 'Miss Emmy Costivan's' identity and of the beggar's arrangements with Captain Sandringham.
"I also made use of my time at the Castle to question the duke's valet and to learn what happened when Tom Davis went out to investigate the matterof the bells that night. Just before he went, Carstairs had treated him to half a bottle of the ducal champagne. When I heard that, I knew at once how the morphia had been administered. I had known from the first, however, that, if morphia should turn out to be the drug employed, Carstairs would be the man, because the rascal had it handy. How did I know that? Well, you remember that time when Sir Julius Solinski passed us in his motor? Carstairs saluted him. As the beggar put his hand to his hat, his sleeve slipped down, and I could see the evidence of the thing. The man was addicted to the use of hypodermic injections of morphia—the scars of the needle were clearly visible. I don't think there is any doubt of how poor Davis died. The drug overcame him on the road, and he dropped down in a stupor. There is clear evidence of that. You saw me examine his nails? The flint dust of the road was under them. After that, I suppose, Carstairs, who had been following him and watching him out for just such a time, pounced on him, carried him into the half-demolished cottage, and brained him with the hammer that was being used to batter down the walls and beat out the joists. As for the other tragic affair connected with the same cottage—namely, the mysterious disappearance of the child and the insanity and suicide of the father? I don't suppose we need regard that as other than a pleasant little fiction upon the part of Mr. James Overton.The duke tells me that the body of the man Smale was never recovered, and that his going insane and drowning himself rests only upon a 'farewell note' from him to Mr. Overton, who afterward declared that he had seen his body fished out of the river a good ten miles away. Of course the story of the child's vanishing in the dead of the night was another piece of fiction of the same sort. Nor would it surprise me in the slightest if the man called Smale, who posed as her father, was really no less a person than Captain Paul Sandringham himself.
"One thing, however, I think we can assert positively, and that is that Mrs. Mallory, the widow who set the ball rolling, was no other than Miss Emily Overton, otherwise Emily Costivan, and that the person who figured as her sister is the woman who passed as her mother."
"Mrs. Costivan?"
"Yes. I think we shall find that she and her husband were admitted into the game simply because they had at the time a nephew who was in the last stages of consumption. Of course the story about the gypsy who was beating him and who told the curse that would follow if he were buried here was made from whole cloth. The youth was simply carried into the house in the night, and Doctor Forsyth was right in the matter of his not having been able to lift a hand for days before he was called in to him. Since then it would appear that Mrs. Costivan haddirected her energies toward washing the clay-stained overalls of one and the other of the 'tunnellers' when her husband carried them to her—for I dare say that every one of them—Carstairs, Overton, Costivan, all of them, took a hand in it at times; and if it hadn't been for poor Tom Davis, they might have carried it through successfully, after all. Which shows again that 'there's many a slip——!'"
And so ended the case of the Mysterious Light which nearly lost a duke a most valuable heritage and to which only Cleek could find the solution.
Some few days later, Mr. Narkom, breathing noisily and obviously hard pressed for time, pushed open the door of Cleek's apartment on Portman Square and carefully inserted his head into the room. His face lighted up and he drew a deep sigh of relief as he caught sight of Cleek, reclining in an easy-chair and apparently day-dreaming.
He glanced up as the Superintendent entered.
"Well, for once you have caught me napping, Mr. Narkom," he said. "I was so deep in thought, I never heard a sound. But sit down, old friend. You look worried."
"I am," admitted the Superintendent. "I was on pins and needles for fear this gorgeous day might have drawn you up the river, and I didn't dare use the public telephone."
"Which tells me very plainly that you have not come directly from the Yard. So I may assume it is a case of some importance that has brought you here in post haste," said Cleek.
"It is indeed," said Narkom, "and it is a case connected with jewels.
"You remember that young American chap I pointed out in a motor last week—the fellow who came over about the Panama Canal, intending to go back, but wound up by getting engaged to an English girl and settling down here...?"
"Anthony Winton, do you mean? Yes, of course I do. If my memory holds right, he is the son of a California millionaire, and with a pretty taste in jewels. Made a hobby of outlandish settings, photographs were in theConnoisseur. The woman who marries him will never go short of unique jewels. Wasn't he to have been married to-day, by the way, according to the papers?"
"'Was' is the correct word, Cleek," said Narkom in a hushed tone. "There will be no wedding for him, poor chap. The man has been murdered——"
"Murdered!" Cleek interrupted, sitting up suddenly. "Winton murdered! How? When?"
"Last night," said Narkom. "Robbery is supposed to have been the motive, and suspicion points in half-a-dozen directions."
"What has been stolen, something from his collection?"
"Yes. As you yourself said, he had a mania for queer jewels, and the one that is missing is the queerest of the lot—rubies mounted on a stem. A Burmese thing, known as the 'Rose of Fire,' made of priceless pigeon-blood rubies, and supposed to have been stolen from the temple of Buddha in Mandalay.
"I was told it was a rose with ruby petals and emerald stem and worth thousands."
"Of course; everyone knows of it. Thousands won't replace it," said Cleek. "Its historical value alone makes it priceless. It is supposed to have belonged to Buddha himself. But to come back to Winton. How was he killed? Stabbed? Shot?"
"I can't say for certain," said Narkom, "save that he was certainly not shot or stabbed. There is no mark or blemish on the body at all. All that is positive, according to the doctor, who did not arrive until after his death, is that he had been asphyxiated by some unknown fumes. He was found by his servant, who says he heard him struggling with an assailant, but when he forced the door in, the room was empty, the windows shut, and he was only just in time to reach his master and hear him say with his last gasp 'Death's Head!' Then he fell back, dead as the skeleton to which he pointed."
"'Death's Head'," repeated Cleek, knitting his brows. "Does anybody know what he meant?"
"Not unless he was still thinking of his words with Miss Parradine, the bride-to-be."
"What had she to do with it?" asked Cleek.
"A great deal, I should say. As you know, Winton had queer taste in jewels and it seems that he had had some of his finest diamonds mounted in skull-and-crossbones brooches as his present to the bride and as bridesmaid gifts. He was obsessed withbreaking superstitions—insisted on sitting down thirteen at table when possible, had the knives crossed, had skull and crossbones on his notepaper and cutlery. He defied, in fact, every legend and superstition known, even to having a skeleton present at the table."
"H'm, cheerful companion! Every man has some whim, but for a young man all this was peculiar, to say the least of it. I suppose he wanted his future wife to indulge in the same tricks, eh?"
"Yes, that's just it, Cleek, and evidently she resisted. Anyhow, with the exception of Calvert, the valet, she was the last person to see him alive last night. She arrived unexpectedly during the evening, and was shown in to him. It seems that they were not entirely on the best of terms. Both have, or had I suppose I must say, strong wills, and Miss Parradine was obviously in a furious temper, for Calvert declared that he heard her voice raised high and shrill more than once. He even goes further than that, for he swears that as he was passing the door, just before she flung herself out, flushed with rage and mortification, he heard her say distinctly: 'I won't have it. I'd sooner see you a skull and crossbones yourself than ask such a thing'."
"Humph," commented Cleek. "I wonder if Calvert is to be trusted. Sure he wasn't making the words fit those of the dying man? Possibly Miss Parradine was angry at the gift and carried away bytemper. Vanity plays a great part with women at the best of times, and a wedding, after all, is a trying experience."
"In this case vanity, or rather wealth, plays the chief part, I fear, Cleek, for to all accounts the lady only consented to the marriage because of the pressure brought to bear upon her by her family, and secondly because of her own love of precious stones. According to the marriage settlements, on his death all jewels go to her."
"Oho!" said Cleek in two different inflections.
"The lady herself," continued Mr. Narkom, "was really engaged to a neighbouring land-owner, Robert Bristol, but she had to give him up. Probably Winton had a financial hold over her father. Anyhow, the marriage was hastened, and Winton had decided to take his bride back to America before settling down here."
"And where did the murder take place—in London?" queried Cleek, diving for his cigarette-case.
"No, in Essex, in the village of Grays, where Winton had leased a very old solidly built manor house, and had had his jewel collection, which he made while travelling from place to place, transferred to the big picture gallery there. This collection included the famous 'Rose of Fire'."
"H'm. I see. And considering that the Burmese priests will never rest till they regain that holy relic, it was positively asking for trouble. TheDeath's Head, sign of the skull and crossbones, is an emblem of one of their rites, I believe, and if one of them were in the neighbourhood, might Winton not have recognized the instigator of his death? The hypothesis is rather far-fetched, I admit, but still——Well, continue with the story, please. How long had the lady left before Calvert began to suspect trouble?"
"About ten minutes. As a matter of fact, she let herself out, apparently. Calvert was called away by the telephone down another passage, and when he came back she was gone. He took the 'phone message to Mr. Winton and found the door locked. According to him, he called, and at last broke in the door on hearing a funny scuffling noise inside, but getting no answer to his knocks found his master dying, and later discovered the loss of the 'Rose of Fire' from his table. That is as far as I can get."
"How was it that Miss Parradine was able to make such an inopportune call? Does she live in Grays, too?"
"Yes, she does. She is, as you doubtless are aware, the daughter of Colonel Parradine, late of the Bengal Lancers, and——"
"Stop a moment," cut in Cleek, sharply. "It isn't often my memory fails me. Wasn't it about '74 when the Bengal Lancers were stationed at Mandalay? I seem to remember some yarns about ragging. If I am not wrong, I expect it must havebeen that same Colonel, or Captain Parradine as he then was, who nearly got cashiered. Is he still up to high jinks?"
"Well, he acts pretty queerly," said Narkom, "according to Winton's butler, Wills. It was he, by the way, who went flying off for the doctor when they found that the telephone was out of order at the same time as the lights."
"What's that? The lights wrong?"
"Yes, he said, and Calvert, too, that every light in the place went out just as Calvert got into the room. Then they flashed on again, and that's how he looked for the jewels, directly he saw his master was dead, in order to find whether they had been stolen."
"Very thoughtful of him," put in Cleek, pinching up his chin. "Very!"
"Yes, and that's not the only funny thing. Nothing else but the 'Rose' was missing, although other stones of the collection were there. Winton had evidently been polishing or looking at them. You would have thought the thief would have cleared the lot."
"Possibly! And yet, too, he might have banked on one single jewel not being missed immediately and let him get a good start away."
"But to come back to Colonel Parradine," said Narkom. "Wills tells me he met him half-way down the lane as he was going for the doctor eithervery ill and shaken or much the worse for drink. His clothes were dusty and awry as if he had had a fall, and that's how he accounted for his condition. He said he had been knocked down by a motor on his way from the station. But there were scratches on his face and hands which gave him the appearance of having dropped from a high window rather than of having been in a motor accident. As Winton's gallery is a sheer drop of thirty feet from the ground, you can imagine it looks strange. Anyhow, Wills told him what had happened and left the Colonel to come on to the Manor Lodge as best he could."
"Looks bad, I must say. Still, if he had had any hand in it, he would hardly have been hanging about the lane near the scene of the murder. But you never know. Anyhow, it's easy to round up someone who saw or heard of that accident. It remains to be seen what the Colonel has to say. Any possibility of his secreting the jewel himself?"
"Hardly," said Narkom. "Considering that he drew my attention to its loss. Besides, to make things worse, I phoned through to headquarters on my way up and learned that some loose rubies were pawned in London at nine o'clock this morning by a woman who answers vaguely a description of Miss Parradine herself."
"That looks worst of all," said Cleek. "Give me five minutes to jump into another suit, Mr. Narkom, and we'll see what Mr. George Headland can do."