Cleek of Scotland Yard: Detective Stories

by Thomas W. Hanshew · English · Gutenberg #32198 · 636,132 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Cleek of Scotland Yard: Detective Stories

Author: Thomas W. Hanshew

Release date: May 1, 2010 [eBook #32198]

Language: English

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CLEEK OF SCOTLAND YARD

[Illustration: "My only kingdom is here ... in this dear woman's
arms. Walk with me, Ailsa ... as my queen _and_ my wife."]

The International Adventure Library

Three Owls Edition

CLEEK OF SCOTLAND YARD

Detective Stories

T. P. Hanshew

Author of "Cleek the Master Detective",
"Cleek's Government Cases" etc.

W. R. Caldwell & Co.
New York

Cleek of Scotland Yard

_PROLOGUE_

The Affair of the Man Who Vanished

Mr. Maverick Narkom, Superintendent at Scotland Yard, flung aside
the paper he was reading and wheeled round in his revolving
desk-chair, all alert on the instant, like a terrier that scents a
rat.

He knew well what the coming of the footsteps toward his private
office portended; his messenger was returning at last.

Good! Now he would get at the facts of the matter, and be relieved
from the sneers of carping critics and the pin pricks of overzealous
reporters, who seemed to think that the Yard was to blame, and all
the forces connected with it to be screamed at as incompetents if
every evildoer in London was not instantly brought to book and his
craftiest secrets promptly revealed.

Gad! Let them take on his job, then, if they thought the thing so
easy! Let them have a go at this business of stopping at one's post
until two o'clock in the morning trying to patch up the jumbled
fragments of a puzzle of this sort, if they regarded it as such
child's play--finding an assassin whom nobody had seen and who struck
with a method which neither medical science nor legal acumen could
trace or name. _Then_, by James....

The door opened and closed, and Detective Sergeant Petrie stepped
into the room, removing his hat and standing at attention.

"Well?" rapped out the superintendent, in the sharp staccato of
nervous impatience. "Speak up! It was a false alarm, was it not?"

"No, sir. It's even worse than reported. Quicker and sharper than
any of the others. He's gone, sir."

"Gone? Good God! you don't mean _dead_?"

"Yes, sir. Dead as Julius Cæsar. Total collapse about twenty minutes
after my arrival and went off like that"--snapping his fingers and
giving his hand an outward fling. "Same way as the others, only,
as I say, quicker, sir; and with no more trace of what caused it
than the doctors were able to discover in the beginning. That makes
five in the same mysterious way, Superintendent, and not a ghost
of a clue yet. The papers will be ringing with it to-morrow."

"Ringing with it? Can they 'ring' any more than they are doing
already?" Narkom threw up both arms and laughed the thin, mirthless
laughter of utter despair. "Can they say anything worse than they
have said? Blame any more unreasonably than they have blamed? It
is small solace for the overburdened taxpayer to reflect that he
may be done to death at any hour of the night, and that the heads
of the institution he has so long and so consistently supported
are capable of giving his stricken family nothing more in return
than the "Dear me! dear me!" of utter bewilderment; and to prove
anew that the efficiency of our boasted police-detective system
may be classed under the head of "Brilliant Fiction." That sort
of thing, day after day--as if I had done nothing but pile up
failures of this kind since I came into office. No heed of the
past six years' brilliant success. No thought for the manner in which
the police departments of other countries were made to sit up and
to marvel at our methods. Two months' failure and _that_ doesn't
count! By the Lord Harry! I'd give my head to make those newspaper
fellows eat their words--gad, yes!"

"Why don't you, then, sir?" Petrie dropped his voice a tone or
two and looked round over the angle of his shoulder as he spoke;
then, recollecting the time and the improbability of anybody being
within earshot, took heart of grace and spoke up bolder. "There's
no use blinking the fact, Mr. Narkom; it was none of us--none of
the regular force, I mean--that made the record of those years what
it was. That chap Cleek was the man that did it, sir. You know
that as well as I. I don't know whether you've fallen out with
him or not; or if he's off on some secret mission that keeps him
from handling Yard matters these days. But if he isn't, take my
advice, sir, and put him on this case at once."

"Don't talk such rot!" flung out Narkom, impatiently. "Do you think
I'd have waited until now to do it if it could be done? Put him on
the case, indeed! How the devil am I to do it when I don't know
where on earth to find him? He cleared out directly after that
Panther's Paw case six months ago. Gave up his lodgings, sacked
his housekeeper, laid off his assistant, Dollops, and went the
Lord knows where and why."

"My hat! Then that's the reason we never hear any more of him in Yard
matters, is it? I wondered! Disappeared, eh? Well, well! You don't
think he can have gone back to his old lay--back to the wrong 'uns
and his old 'Vanishing Cracksman's' tricks, do you, sir?"

"No, I don't. No backslider about that chap, by James! He's not built
that way. Last time I saw him he was out shopping with Miss Ailsa
Lorne--the girl who redeemed him--and judging from their manner
toward each other, I rather fancied--well, never mind! That's got
nothing to do with you. Besides, I feel sure that if they had, Mrs.
Narkom and I would have been invited. All he said was that he was
going to take a holiday. He didn't say why, and he didn't say where.
I wish to heaven I'd asked him. I could have kicked myself for not
having done so when that she-devil of a Frenchwoman managed to slip
the leash and get off scot free."

"Mean that party we nabbed in the house at Roehampton along with
the Mauravanian baron who got up that Silver Snare fake, don't you,
sir? Margot, the Queen of the Apaches. Or, at least, that's who you
declared she was, I recollect."

"And that's who I still declare she was!" rapped in Narkom, testily,
"and what I'll continue to say while there's a breath left in me.
I never actually saw the woman until that night, it is true, but
Cleek told me she was Margot; and who should know better than
he, when he was once her pal and partner? But it's one of the
infernal drawbacks of British justice that a crook's word's as good
as an officer's if it's not refuted by actual proof. The woman
brought a dozen witnesses to prove that she was a respectable
Austrian lady on a visit to her son in England; that the motor in
which she was riding broke down before that Roehampton house about
an hour before our descent upon it, and that she had merely been
invited to step in and wait while the repairs were being attended
to by her chauffeur. Of course such a chauffeur was forthcoming
when she was brought up before the magistrate; and a garage-keeper
was produced to back up his statement; so that when the Mauravanian
prisoner 'confessed' from the dock that what the lady said was
true, that settled it. _I_ couldn't swear to her identity, and
Cleek, who could, was gone--the Lord knows where; upon which the
magistrate admitted the woman to bail and delivered her over to the
custody of her solicitors pending my efforts to get somebody
over from Paris to identify her. And no sooner is the vixen set at
large than--presto!--away she goes, bag and baggage, out of the
country, and not a man in England has seen hide nor hair of her
since. Gad! if I could but have got word to Cleek at that time--just
to put him on his guard against her. But I couldn't. I've no more
idea than a child where the man went--not one."

"It's pretty safe odds to lay one's head against a brass farthing as
to where the woman went, though, I reckon," said Petrie, stroking
his chin. "Bunked it back to Paris, I expect, sir, and made for her
hole like any other fox. I hear them French 'tecs are as keen to get
hold of her as we were, but she slips 'em like an eel. Can't lay
hands on her, and couldn't swear to her identity if they did. Not one
in a hundred of 'em's ever seen her to be sure of her, I'm told."

"No, not one. Even Cleek himself knows nothing of who and what she
really is. He confessed that to me. Their knowledge of each other
began when they threw in their lot together for the first time, and
ceased when they parted. Yes, I suppose she did go back to Paris,
Petrie--it would be her safest place; and there'd be rich pickings
there for her and her crew just now. The city is _en fête_, you know."

"Yes, sir. King Ulric of Mauravania is there as the guest of the
Republic. Funny time for a king to go visiting another nation, sir,
isn't it, when there's a revolution threatening in his own? Dunno
much about the ways of kings, Superintendent, but if there was a
row coming up in _my_ house, you can bet all you're worth I'd be
mighty sure to stop at home."

"Diplomacy, Petrie, diplomacy! he may be safer where he is. Rumours
are afloat that Prince What's-his-name, son and heir of the late
Queen Karma, is not only still living, but has, during the present
year, secretly visited Mauravania in person. I see by the papers
that that ripping old royalist, Count Irma, is implicated in the
revolutionary movement and that, by the king's orders, he has been
arrested and imprisoned in the Fort of Sulberga on a charge of
sedition. Grand old johnny, that--I hope no harm comes to him. He
was in England not so long ago. Came to consult Cleek about some
business regarding a lost pearl, and I took no end of a fancy to
him. Hope he pulls out all right; but if he doesn't--oh, well, we
can't bother over other people's troubles--we've got enough of
our own just now with these mysterious murders going on, and the
newspapers hammering the Yard day in and day out. Gad! how I wish
I knew how to get hold of Cleek--how I wish I did!"

"Can't you find somebody to put you on the lay, sir? some friend of
his--somebody that's seen him, or maybe heard from him since you
have?"

"Oh, don't talk rubbish!" snapped Narkom, with a short, derisive
laugh. "Friends, indeed! What friends has he outside of myself? Who
knows him any better than I know him--and what do I know of him, at
that? Nothing--not where he comes from; not what his real name may
be; not a living thing but that he chooses to call himself Hamilton
Cleek and to fight in the interest of the law as strenuously as he
once fought against it. And where will I find a man who has 'seen'
him, as you suggest--or would know if he had seen him--when he has
that amazing birth gift to fall back upon? _You_ never saw his
real face--never in all your life. _I_ never saw it but twice, and
even I--why, he might pass me in the street a dozen times a day and
I'd never know him if I looked straight into his eyes. He'd come
like a shot if he knew I wanted him--gad, yes! But he doesn't; and
there you are."

Imagination was never one of Petrie's strong points. His mind moved
always along well-prepared grooves to time-honoured ends. It found
one of those grooves and moved along it now.

"Why don't you advertise for him, then?" he suggested. "Put a
Personal in the morning papers, sir. Chap like that's sure to read
the news every day; and it's bound to come to his notice sooner
or later. Or if it doesn't, why, people will get to knowing that the
Yard's lost him and get to talking about it and maybe he'll learn
of it that way."

Narkom looked at him. The suggestion was so bald, so painfully
ordinary and commonplace, that, heretofore, it had never occurred to
him. To associate Cleek's name with the banalities of the everyday
Agony Column; to connect _him_ with the appeals of the scullery
and the methods of the raw amateur! The very outrageousness of the
thing was its best passport to success.

"By James, I believe there's something in that!" he said, abruptly.
"If you get people to talking.... Well, it doesn't matter, so that
he _hears_--so that he finds out I want him. You ring up the _Daily
Mail_ while I'm scratching off an ad. Tell 'em it's simply got to
go in the morning's issue. I'll give it to them over the line myself
in a minute."

He lurched over to his desk, drove a pen into the ink pot, and made
such good haste in marshalling his straggling thoughts that he had
the thing finished before Petrie had got farther than "Yes; Scotland
Yard. Hold the line, please; Superintendent Narkom wants to speak to
you."

The Yard's requests are at all times treated with respect and
courtesy by the controlling forces of the daily press, so it fell
out that, late as the hour was, "space" was accorded, and, in the
morning, half a dozen papers bore this notice prominently displayed:

"CLEEK--Where are you? Urgently needed. Communicate at
once.--_Maverick Narkom._"

The expected came to pass; and the unexpected followed close upon
its heels. The daily press, publishing the full account of the
latest addition to the already long list of mysterious murders which,
for a fortnight past, had been adding nervous terrors to the public
mind, screamed afresh--as Narkom knew that it would--and went
into paroxysms of the Reporters' Disease until the very paper was
yellow with the froth of it. The afternoon editions were still
worse--for, between breakfast and lunch time, yet another man had
fallen victim to the mysterious assassin--and sheets pink and
sheets green, sheets gray and sheets yellow were scattering panic
from one end of London to the other. The police-detective system
of the country was rotten! The Government should interfere--must
interfere! It was a national disgrace that the foremost city of the
civilized world should be terrorized in this appalling fashion and
the author of the outrages remain undetected! Could anything be
more appalling?

It could, and--it was! When night came and the evening papers
were supplanting the afternoon ones, that something "more
appalling"--known hours before to the Yard itself--was glaring out on
every bulletin and every front page in words like these:

LONDON'S REIGN OF TERROR
APPALLING ATROCITY IN
CLARGES STREET
SHOCKING DYNAMITE
OUTRAGE

Clarges Street! The old "magic" street of those "magic" old times of
Cleek, and the Red Limousine, and the Riddles that were unriddled for
the asking! Narkom grabbed the report the instant he heard that name
and began to read it breathlessly.

It was the usual station advice ticked through to headquarters and
deciphered by the operator there, and it ran tersely, thus:

"4:28 P. M. Attempt made by unknown parties to blow up house in
Clarges Street, Piccadilly. Partially successful. Three persons
injured and two killed. No clue to motive. Occupants, family
from Essex. Only moved in two days ago. House been vacant for
months previously. Formerly occupied by retired seafaring man
named Capt. Horatio Burbage, who----"

Narkom read no farther. He flung the paper aside with a sort of
mingled laugh and blub and collapsed into his chair with his eyes
hidden in the crook of an upthrown arm, and the muscles of his mouth
twitching.

"Now I know why he cleared out! Good old Cleek! Bully old Cleek!"
he said to himself; and stopped suddenly, as though something had got
into his throat and half choked him. But after a moment or two he
jumped to his feet and began walking up and down the room, his face
fairly glowing; and if he had put his thoughts into words they would
have run like this:

"Margot's crew, of course. And he must have guessed that something of
the sort would happen _some_ time if he stopped there after that
Silver Snare business at Roehampton--either from her lot or from the
followers of that Mauravanian johnnie who was at the back of it.
They were after him even in that little game, those two. I wonder
why? What the dickens, when one comes to think of it, could have made
the Prime Minister of Mauravania interest himself in an Apache trick
to 'do in' an ex-cracksman? Gad! she flies high, sometimes, that
Margot! Prime Minister of Mauravania! And the fool faced fifteen
years hard to do the thing and let her get off scot free! Faced it
and--took it; and is taking it still, for the sake of helping her
to wipe off an old score against a reformed criminal. Wonder if
Cleek ever crossed _him_ in something? Wonder if he, too, was on the
'crooked side' once, and wanted to make sure of its never being
shown up? Oh, well, he got his medicine. And so, too, will this
unknown murderer who's doing the secret killing in London, now that
this Clarges Street affair is over. Bully old Cleek! Slipped 'em
again! Had their second shot and missed you! Now you'll come out
of hiding, old chap, and we shall have the good old times once more."

His eye fell upon the ever-ready telephone. He stopped short in his
purposeless walking and nodded and smiled to it.

"We'll have you singing your old tune before long, my friend," he
said, optimistically. "I know my man--gad, yes! He'll let no grass
grow under _his_ feet now that this thing's over. I shall hear
soon--yes, by James! I shall."

His optimism was splendidly rewarded. Not, however, from the quarter
nor in the manner he expected. It had but just gone half-past seven
when a tap sounded, the door of his office swung inward, and the
porter stepped into the room.

"Person wanting to speak with you, sir, in private," he announced.
"Says it's about some Personal in the morning paper."

"Send him in--send him in at once!" rapped out Narkom excitedly.
"Move sharp; and don't let anybody else in until I give the word."

Then, as soon as the porter had disappeared, he crossed the room,
twitched the thick curtains over the window, switched on the electric
light, wheeled another big chair up beside his desk and, with face
aglow, jerked open a drawer and got out a cigarette box which had
not seen the light for weeks.

Quick as he was, the door opened and shut again before the lid of
the box could be thrown back, and into the room stepped Cleek's
henchman--Dollops.

"Hullo! You, is it, you blessed young monkey?" said Narkom gayly,
as he looked up and saw the boy. "Knew I'd hear to-day--knew it, by
James! Sent you for me, has he, eh? Is he coming himself or does he
want me to go to him? Speak up, and--Good Lord! what's the matter
with you? What's up? Anything wrong?"

Dollops had turned the colour of an under-baked biscuit and was
looking at him with eyes of absolute despair.

"Sir," he said, moving quickly forward and speaking in the breathless
manner of a spent runner--"Sir, I was a-hopin' it was a fake, and
to hear you speak like that--Gawd's truth, guv'ner, you don't mean
as it's real, sir, do you? That _you_ don't know either?"

"Know? Know what?"

"Where he is--wot's become of him? Mr. Cleek, the guv'ner, sir.
I made sure that you'd know if anybody would. That's wot made me
come, sir. I'd 'a' gone off me bloomin' dot if I hadn't--after you
a-puttin' in that Personal and him never a-turnin' up like he'd
ort. Sir, do you mean to say as you don't know _where_ he is, and
haven't seen him even yet?"

"No, I've not. Good Lord! haven't you?"

"No, sir. I aren't clapped eyes on him since he sent me off to the
bloomin' seaside six months ago. All he told me when we come to part
was that Miss Lorne was goin' out to India on a short visit to Cap'n
and Mrs. 'Awksley--Lady Chepstow as was, sir--and that directly
she was gone he'd be knockin' about for a time on his own, and I
wasn't to worry over him. I haven't seen hide nor hair of him, sir,
since that hour."

"Nor heard from him?" Narkom's voice was thick and the hand he laid
on the chair-back hard shut.

"Oh, yes, sir, I've heard--I'd have gone off my bloomin' dot if I
hadn't done _that_. Heard from him twice. Once when he wrote and
gimme my orders about the new place he's took up the river--four
weeks ago. The second time, last Friday, sir, when he wrote me the
thing that's fetched me here--that's been tearin' the heart out of me
ever since I heard at Charing Cross about wot's happened at Clarges
Street, sir."

"And what was that?"

"Why, sir, he wrote that he'd jist remembered about some papers as
he'd left behind the wainscot in his old den, and that he'd get the
key and drop in at the old Clarges Street house on the way 'ome.
Said he'd arrive in England either yesterday afternoon or this one,
sir; but whichever it was, he'd wire me from Dover before he took
the train. And he never done it, sir--my Gawd! he never done it in
this world!"

"Good God!" Narkom flung out the words in a sort of panic, his lips
twitching, his whole body shaking, his face like the face of a dead
man.

"He never done it, I tell you!" pursued Dollops in an absolute
tremble of fright. "I haven't never had a blessed line; and now
this here awful thing has happened. And if he done what he said
he was a-goin' to do--if he come to town and went to that house----"

If he said more, the clanging of a bell drowned it completely. Narkom
had turned to his desk and was hammering furiously upon the call
gong. A scurry of flying feet came up the outer passage, the door
opened in a flash, and the porter was there. And behind him Lennard,
the chauffeur, who guessed from that excited summons that there
would be a call for _him_.

"The limousine--as quick as you can get her round!" said Narkom in
the sharp staccato of excitement. "To the scene of the explosion in
Clarges Street first, and if the bodies of the victims have been
removed, then to the mortuary without an instant's delay."

He dashed into the inner room, grabbed his hat and coat down from the
hook where they were hanging, and dashed back again like a man in
a panic.

"Come on!" he said, beckoning to Dollops as he flung open the door
and ran out into the passage. "If they've 'done him in'--_him!_--if
they've 'got him' after all----Come on! come on!"

Dollops "came on" with a rush; and two minutes later the red
limousine swung out into the roadway and took the distance between
Scotland Yard and Clarges Street at a mile-a-minute clip.

* * * * *

Arrival at the scene of the disaster elicited the fact that the
remains--literally "remains," since they had been well-nigh blown
to fragments--had, indeed, been removed to the mortuary; so thither
Narkom and Dollops followed them, their fears being in no wise
lightened by learning that the bodies were undeniably those of men.
As the features of both victims were beyond any possibility of
recognition, identification could, of course, be arrived at only
through bodily marks; and Dollops's close association with Cleek
rendered him particularly capable of speaking with authority
regarding those of his master. It was, therefore, a source of
unspeakable delight to both Narkom and himself, when, after close and
minute examination of the remains, he was able to say, positively,
"Sir, whatever's become of him, praise God, neither of these here two
dead men is him, bless his heart!"

"So they didn't get him after all!" supplemented Narkom, laughing
for the first time in hours. "Still, it cannot be doubted that
whoever committed this outrage was after him, since the people
who have suffered are complete strangers to the locality and had
only just moved into the house. No doubt the person or persons who
threw the bomb knew of Cleek's having at one time lived there as
'Captain Burbage'--Margot did, for one--and finding the house still
occupied, and not knowing of his removal--why, there you are."

"Margot!" The name brought back all Dollops' banished fears. He
switched round on the superintendent and laid a nervous clutch on
his sleeve. "And Margot's 'lay' is Paris. Sir, I didn't tell you,
did I, that it was from there the guv'ner wrote those two letters
to me?"

"Cinnamon! From Paris?"

"Yes, sir. He didn't say from wot part of the city nor wot he was
a-doin' there, anyways, but--my hat! listen here, sir. _They're_
there--them Mauravanian johnnies--and the Apaches and Margot there,
too, and you know how both lots has their knife into him. I dunno
wot the Mauravanians is got against him, sir (he never tells
nothin' to nobody, he don't), but most like it's summink he done
to some of 'em that time he went out there about the lost pearl; but
_they're_ after him, and the Apaches is after him, and between the
two!... Guv'ner!"--his voice rose thin and shrill--"guv'ner, if one
lot don't get him, the other may; and--sir--there's Apaches in
London this very night. I know! I've seen 'em."

"Seen them? When? Where?"

"At Charing Cross station, sir, jist before I went to the Yard
to see you. As I hadn't had no telegram from the guv'ner, like I
was promised, I went there on the off chance, hopin' to meet him when
the boat train come in. And there I see 'em, sir, a-loungin' round
the platform where the Dover train goes out at nine to catch the
night boat back to Calais, sir. I spotted 'em on the instant--from
their walk, their way of carryin' of theirselves, their manner of
wearin' of their bloomin' hair. Laughin' among themselves they was
and lookin' round at the entrance every now and then like as they
was expectin' some one to come and join 'em; and I see, too, as
they was a-goin' back to where they come from, 'cause they'd the
return halves of their tickets in their hatbands. One of 'em, he
buys a paper at the bookstall and sees summink in it as tickled
him wonderful, for I see him go up to the others and point it out
to 'em, and then the whole lot begins to larf like blessed hyenas. I
spotted wot the paper was and the place on the page the blighter
was a-pointin' at, so I went and bought one myself to see wot it
was. Sir, it was that there Personal of yours. The minnit I read
that, I makes a dash for a taxi, to go to you at once, sir, and
jist as I does so, a newsboy runs by me with a bill on his chest
tellin' about the explosion; and then, sir, I fair went off me dot."

They were back on the pavement, within sight of the limousine,
when the boy said this. Narkom brought the car to his side with
one excited word, and fairly wrenched open the door.

"To Charing Cross station--as fast as you can streak it!" he said,
excitedly. "The last train for the night boat leaves at nine sharp.
Catch it, if you rack the motor to pieces."

"Crumbs! A minute and a half!" commented Lennard, as he consulted
the clock dial beside him; then, just waiting for Narkom and Dollops
to jump into the vehicle, he brought her head round with a swing,
threw back the clutch, and let her go full tilt.

But even the best of motors cannot accomplish the impossible. The
gates were closed, the signal down, the last train already outside
the station when they reached it, and not even the mandate of the
law might hope to stay it or to call it back.

"Plenty of petrol?" Narkom faced round as he spoke and looked at
Lennard.

"Plenty, sir."

"All right--_beat it!_ The boat sails from Dover at eleven. I've got
to catch it. Understand?"

"Yes, sir. But you could wire down and have her held over till we get
there, Superintendent."

"Not for the world! She must sail on time; I must get aboard without
being noticed--without some persons I'm following having the least
cause for suspicion. Beat that train--do you hear me?--_beat_ it! I
want to get there and get aboard that boat before the others arrive.
Do you want any further incentive than that? If so, here it is for
you: Mr. Cleek's in Paris! Mr. Cleek's in danger!"

"Mr. Cleek? God's truth! Hop in sir, hop in! I'll have you there
ahead of that train if I dash down the Admiralty Pier in flames from
front to rear. Just let me get to the open road, sir, and I'll show
you something to make you sit up."

He did. Once out of the track of all traffic, and with the lights
of the city well at his back, he strapped his goggles tight, jerked
his cap down to his eyebrows, and leaned over the wheel.

"For Mr. Cleek--do you hear?" he said, addressing the car as if it
were a human being. "Now, then, show what you're made of! There! Take
your head! Now _go_, you vixen! GO!"

There was a sudden roar, a sudden leap; then the car shot forward as
though all the gales of all the universe were sweeping it on, and
the wild race to the coast began.

Narkom jerked down the blinds, turned on the light, and flung open
the locker, as they pounded on.

"Dip in. Get something that can be made to fit you," he said to
Dollops. "We can't risk any of those fellows identifying you as
the chap who was hanging round the station to-night. Toss me over
that wig--the gray one--in the far corner there. God knows what
we're on the track of, but if it leads to Cleek I'll follow it to
the end of time!" Then, lifting his voice until it sounded above
the motor's roar, "Faster, Lennard, faster!" he called. "Give it
to her! give it to her! We've got to beat that train if it kills us!"

They did beat it. The engine's light was not even in sight when the
bright glare of the moon on the Channel's waters flashed up out of
the darkness before them; nor was the sound of the train's coming
even faintly audible as yet, when, a few minutes later, the limousine
swung down the incline and came to a standstill within a stone's
throw of the entrance to the pier, at whose extreme end the packet
lay, with gangways down and fires up and her huge bulk rising and
falling with the movements of the waves.

"Beat her, you see, sir," said Lennard, chuckling as he got down and
opened the door for the superintendent to alight. "Better not go
any nearer, sir, with the car. There's a chap down there standing
by the gangplank and he seems interested in us from the way he's
watching. Jumped up like a shot and came down the gangplank the
instant he heard us coming. Better do the rest of the journey afoot,
sir, and make a pretence of paying me--as if I was a public taxi.
What'll I do? Stop here until morning?"

"Yes. Put up at a garage; and if I don't return by the first boat,
get back to town. Meantime, cut off somewhere and ring up the Yard.
Tell 'em where I've gone. Now then, Dollops, come on!"

A moment later the limousine had swung off into the darkness and
disappeared, and what might properly have been taken for a couple
of English curates on their way to a Continental holiday moved
down the long pier between the glimmering and inadequate lamps
to the waiting boat. But long before they reached it the figure
at the gangplank--the tall, erect figure of a man whom the most
casual observer must have recognized as one who had known military
training--had changed its alert attitude and was sauntering up
and down as if, when they came nearer and the light allowed him
to see what they were, he had lost all interest in them and their
doings. Narkom gave the man a glance from the tail of his eye as
they went up the gangplank and boarded the boat, and brief as that
glance was, it was sufficient to assure him of two things: First,
that the man was not only strikingly handsome but bore himself with
an air which spoke of culture, birth, position; second, that he
was a foreigner, with the fair hair and the slightly hooked nose
which was so characteristic of the Mauravanians.

With Dollops at his side, Narkom slunk aft, where the lights were
less brilliant and the stern of the boat hung over the dark, still
waters, and pausing there, turned and looked back at the waiting man.

A French sailor was moving past in the darkness. He stopped the man
and spoke to him.

"Tell me," he said, slipping a shilling into the fellow's hand, "do
you happen to know who that gentleman is, standing on the pier there?"

"Yes, m'sieur. He is equerry to his Majesty King Ulric of Mauravania.
He has crossed with us frequently during his Majesty's sojourn in
Paris."

"Gawd's truth, sir," whispered Dollops, plucking nervously at the
superintendent's sleeve as the sailor, after touching his cap with
his forefinger, passed on. "Apaches at one end and them Mauravanian
johnnies at the other! I tell you they're a-workin' hand in hand for
some reason--workin' against _him_!"

Narkom lifted a silencing hand and turned to move away where there
would be less likelihood of anything they might say being overheard;
for at that moment a voice had sounded and from a most unusual
quarter. Unnoticed until now, a fisher's boat, which for some time
had been nearing the shore, swept under the packet's stern and
grazed along the stone front of the pier.

"Voila, m'sieur," said, in French, the man who sailed it. "Have I
not kept my word and brought your excellency across in safety and
with speed?"

"Yes," replied the passenger whom the fisher addressed. He spoke in
perfect French, and with the smoothness of a man of the better class.
"You have done well indeed. Also it was better than waiting about at
Calais for the morning boat. I can now catch the very first train
to London. Fast is she? There is your money. Adieu!"

Then came the sound of some one leaving the boat and scrambling
up the water stairs, and hard on the heels of it the first whistle of
the coming train. Narkom, glancing round, saw a slouching, ill-clad
fellow whose appearance was in distinct contrast with his voice and
manner of speaking, come into view upon the summit of the pier.
His complexion was sallow, his matted hair seemed to have gone for
years uncombed; a Turkish fez, dirty and discoloured, was on his
head, and over his arm hung several bits of tapestry and shining
stuff which betokened his calling as that of a seller of Oriental
draperies.

This much Narkom saw and would have gone on his way, giving the
fellow no second thought, but that a curious thing happened. Moving
away toward the footpath which led from the pier to the town, the
pedler caught sight suddenly of the man standing at the gangplank;
he halted abruptly, looked round to make sure that no one was
watching, then, without more ado, turned round suddenly on his
heel, walked straightway to the gangplank and boarded the boat.
The Mauravanian took not the slightest heed of him, nor he of the
Mauravanian. Afterward, when the train had arrived, Narkom thought
he knew why. For the present he was merely puzzled to understand why
this dirty, greasy Oriental pedler who had been at the pains to
cross the Channel in a fisher's boat should do so for the apparent
purpose of merely going back on the packet to Calais.

By this time the train had arrived, the pier was alive with people,
porters were running back and forth with luggage, and there was
bustle and confusion everywhere. Narkom looked along the length of
the vessel to the teeming gangway. The Mauravanian was still there,
alert as before, his fixed eyes keenly watching.

A crowd came stringing along, bags and bundles done up in gaudy
handkerchiefs in their hands, laughing, jostling, jabbering together
in low-class French.

"Here they are, guv'ner--the Apaches!" said Dollops in a whisper.
"That's the lot, sir. Keep your eye on them as they come aboard,
and if they are with him--Crumbs! Not a sign; not a blessed one!"
For the Apaches, stringing up the gangplank by twos and threes and
coming within brushing distance of the waiting man, passed on as the
Oriental pedler had passed on, taking no notice of him, nor he of
them, nor yet of how, as they advanced, the pedler slouched forward
and slipped into the thick of them.

"By James! one of them--that's what the fellow is!" said Narkom, as
he observed this. "If during the voyage the Mauravanian speaks to
one man of the lot----"

He stopped and sucked in his breath and let the rest of the sentence
go by default. For of a sudden there had come into sight upon the
pier a dapper little French dandy, fuzzy of moustache, mincing of
gait, with a flower in his buttonhole and a shining "topper" on his
beautifully pomaded head; and it came upon Narkom with a shock of
remembrance that he had seen this selfsame living fashion plate
pass by Scotland Yard twice that very day!

Onward he came, this pretty monsieur, with his jaunty air and his
lovely "wine-glass waist," onward, and up the gangway and aboard the
packet; and there the Mauravanian still stood, looking out over the
crowd and taking no more heed of him than he had taken of anybody
else. But with the vanishing of this exquisite, to whom he had
paid no heed, his alertness and his interest seemed somehow to
evaporate; for he turned now and again to watch the sailors and the
longshoremen at their several duties, and strolled leisurely aboard
and stood lounging against the rail of the lower deck when the call
of "All ashore that's going!" rang through the vessel's length,
and was still lounging there when the packet cast off her mooring,
and swinging her bows round in the direction of France, creamed
her way out into the Channel and headed for Calais.

A wind, unnoticed in the safe shelter of the harbour, played
boisterously across the chopping waves as the vessel forged outward,
sending clouds of spray sweeping over the bows and along the decks,
and such passengers as refrained from seeking the shelter of the
saloon and smoke-room sought refuge by crowding aft.

"Come!" whispered Narkom, tapping Dollops' arm. "We can neither
talk nor watch here with safety in this crowd. Let us go 'forrard.'
Better a drenching in loneliness than shelter with a crowd like this.
Come along!"

The boy obeyed without a murmur, following the larger and heavier
built "curate" along the wet decks to the deserted bows, and
finding safe retreat with him there in the dark shadow cast by a
tarpaulin-covered lifeboat. From this safe shelter they could,
by craning their necks, get a half view of the interior of the
smoke-room through its hooked-back door; and their first glance in
that direction pinned their interest, for the pretty "Monsieur"
was there, smoking a cigarette and sipping now and again at a glass
of absinthe which stood on a little round table at his elbow.
But of the Mauravanian or the Apaches or of the Oriental pedler,
there was neither sight nor sound, nor had there been since the
vessel started.

"What do you make of it?" queried Narkom, when at the end of an hour
the dim outlines of the French coast blurred the clear silver of the
moonlit sky. "Have we come on a wild goose chase, do you think? What
do you suppose has become of the Apaches and of the pedler chap?"

"Travellin' second class," said Dollops, after stealing out and
making a round of the vessel and creeping back into the shadow of
the lifeboat unseen. "Pallin' with 'em, he is, sir. Makin' a play of
sellin' 'em things for their donahs--for the sake of appearances.
One of 'em, he is; and if either that Frenchy or that Mauravanian
johnny is mixed up with them--lay low! Smeller to the ground, sir,
and eyes and ears wide open! We'll know wot's wot now!"

For of a sudden the Mauravanian had come into view far down the wet
and glistening promenade deck and was whistling a curious, lilting
air as he strolled along past the open door of the smoke-room.

Just the mere twitch of "Monsieur's" head told when he heard that
tune. He finished his absinthe, flung aside his cigarette, and
strolled leisurely out upon the deck. The Mauravanian was at the
after end of the promenade--a glance told him that. He set his face
resolutely in the direction of the bows and sauntered leisurely
along. He moved on quietly, until he came to the very end of the
covered promenade where the curving front of the deckhouse looked
out upon the spray-washed forward deck, then stopped and planted his
back against it and stood silently waiting, not ten feet distant
from where Narkom and Dollops crouched.

A minute later the Mauravanian, continuing what was to all
appearances a lonely and aimless promenade round the vessel,
came abreast of that spot and of him.

And then, the deluge!

"Monsieur" spoke out--guardedly, but in a clear, crisp tone that left
no room for doubt upon _one_ point, at least.

"Mon ami, it is done--it is accomplished," that crisp voice said.
"You shall report that to his Majesty's ministers. Voila, it is done!"

"It is not done!" replied the Mauravanian, in a swift, biting,
emphatic whisper. "You jump to conclusions too quickly. Here! take
this. It is an evening paper. The thing was useless--he was not
there!"

"Not there! Grande Dieu!"

"Sh-h! Take it--read it. I will see you when we land. Not here--it
is too dangerous. Au revoir!"

Then he passed on and round the curve of the deckhouse to the
promenade on the other side; and "Monsieur," with the paper hard
shut in the grip of a tense hand, moved fleetly back toward the
smoke-room.

But not unknown any longer.

"Gawd's truth--a woman!" gulped Dollops in a shaking voice.

"No, not a woman--a devil!" said Narkom through his teeth. "Margot,
by James! Margot, herself! And what is he--what is Cleek?--that a
king should enter into compact with a woman to kill him? Margot, dash
her! Well, I'll have you now, my lady--yes, by James, I will!"

"Guv'ner! Gawd's truth, sir, where are you going?"

"To the operator in charge of the wireless--to send a message to the
chief of the Calais police to meet me on arrival!" said Narkom in
reply. "Stop where you are. Lay low! Wait for me. We'll land in a
dozen minutes' time. I'll have that Jezebel and her confederates and
I'll rout out Cleek and get him beyond the clutches of them if I tear
up all France to do it."

"Gawd bless you, sir, Gawd bless you and forgive me!" said Dollops
with a lump in his throat and a mist in his eyes. "I said often you
was a sosidge and a muff, sir, but you aren't--you're a man!"

Narkom did not hear. He was gone already--down the deck to the cabin
of the wireless operator. In another moment he had passed in, shut
the door behind him, and the Law at sea was talking to the Law ashore
through the blue ether and across the moonlit waves.

* * * * *

It was ten minutes later. The message had gone its way and Narkom was
back in the lifeboat's shadow again, and close on the bows the
lamps of Calais pier shone yellow in the blue-and-silver darkness.
On the deck below people were bustling about and making for the
place where the gangplank was to be thrust out presently, and link
boat and shore together. On the quay, customs officials were making
ready for the coming inspection, porters were scuttling about in
their blue smocks and peaked caps, and, back of all, the outlines
of Calais Town loomed, shadowy and grim through the crowding gloom.

The loneliness of the upper deck offered its attractions to the
Mauravanian and to Margot, and in the emptiness of it they met
again--within earshot of the lifeboat where Narkom and the boy lay
hidden--for one brief word before they went ashore.

"So, you have read: you understand how useless it was?" the
Mauravanian said, joining her again at the deckhouse, where she
stood with the crumpled newspaper in her hand. "His Majesty's purse
cannot be lightened of all that promised sum for any such bungle as
this. Speak quickly; where may we go to talk in safety? I cannot
risk it here--I will not risk it in the train. Must we wait until
we reach Paris, mademoiselle? Or have you a lair of your own here?"

"I have 'lairs,' as you term them, in half the cities of France,
Monsieur le Comte," she answered with a vicious little note of
resentment in her voice. "And I do not work for nothing--no, not I! I
paid for my adherence to his Majesty's Prime Minister and I intend
to be paid for my services to his Majesty's self, even though I have
this once failed. It must be settled, that question, at once and
for all--now--to-night."

"I guessed it would be like that," he answered, with a jerk of his
shoulders. "Where shall it be, then? Speak quickly. They are making
the landing and I must not be seen talking with you after we go
ashore. Where, then?"

"At the Inn of the Seven Sinners--on the Quai d'Lorme--a gunshot
distant. Any cocher will take you there."

"Is it safe?"

"All my 'lairs' are safe, monsieur. It overhangs the water. And if
strangers come, there is a trap with a bolt on the under side. One
way: to the town and the sewers and forty other inns. The other:
to a motor boat, always in readiness for instant use. You could
choose for yourself should occasion come. You will not find the
place shut--my 'lairs' never are. A password? No, there is none--for
any but the Brotherhood. Nor will you need one. You remember old
Marise of the 'Twisted Arm' in Paris? Well, she serves at the Seven
Sinners now. I have promoted Madame Serpice to the 'Twisted Arm'.
She will know you, will Marise. Say to her I am coming shortly. She
and her mates will raise the roof with joy, and--la! la! The gangway
is out. They are calling all ashore. Look for me and my lads close
on your heels when you arrive. Au revoir."

"Au revoir," he repeated, and slipping by went below and made his
way ashore.

She waited that he might get well on his way--that none might by any
possibility associate them--then turning, went down after him and
out to the pier, where her crew were already forgathering; and when
or how she passed the word to them that it was not Paris to-night
but the Inn of the Seven Sinners, neither Narkom nor Dollops could
decide, close as they came on after her, for she seemed to speak to
no one.

"No Inn of the Seven Sinners for you to-night, my lady, if my friend
M. Ducroix has attended to that wireless message properly," muttered
Narkom as he followed her. "Look sharp, Dollops, and if you see
a Sergeant de Ville let me know. They've no luggage, that lot,
and, besides, they are natives, so they will pass the customs in a
jiffy. Hullo! there goes that pedler chap--and without his fez or
his draperies, b'gad! Through the customs like a flash, the bounder!
And there go the others, too. And she after them--she, by James! God!
Where are Ducroix and his men? Why aren't they here?"--looking
vainly about for some sign of the Chief of Police. "I can't do
anything without _him_--here, on foreign soil. Why in heaven's name
doesn't the man come?"

"Maybe he hasn't had time, guv'ner--maybe he wasn't on hand when the
message arrived," hazarded Dollops. "It's not fifteen minutes all
told since it was dispatched. So if----"

"There she goes! there she goes! Passed, and through the customs in a
wink, the Jezebel!" interposed Narkom, in a fever of excitement, as
he saw Margot go by the inspector at the door and walk out into the
streets of the city. "Lord! if she slips me now----"

"She shan't!" cut in Dollops, jerking down his hat brim and turning
up his collar. "Wait here till the cops come. I'll nip out after her
and see where she goes. Like as not the cops'll know the place when
you mention it; but if they don't--watch out for me; I'll come back
and lead 'em."

Then he moved hurriedly forward, passed the inspector, and was gone
in a twinkling.

For ten wretched minutes after he, too, had passed the customs and
was at liberty to leave, Narkom paced up and down and fretted and
fumed before a sound of clanking sabres caught his ear and, looking
round, he saw M. Ducroix enter the place at the head of a detachment
of police. He hurried to him and in a word made himself known.

"Ten million pardons, m'sieur; but I was absent when the message he
shall be deliver," exclaimed Ducroix in broken English. "I shall come
and shall bring my men as soon as he shall be receive. M'sieur, who
shall it be this great criminal you demand of me to arrest? Is he
here?"

"No, no. A moment, Ducroix. Do you know a place called the Inn of
the Seven Sinners?"

"Perfectly. It is but a stone's throw distant--on the Quai d'Lorme."

"Come with me to it, then. I'll make you the most envied man in
France, Ducroix: I'll deliver into your hands that witch of the
underworld, Margot, the Queen of the Apaches!"

Ducroix's face lit up like a face transfigured.

"M'sieur!" he cried. "That woman? You can give me that woman? You
know her? You can recognize her? But, yes, I remember! You shall have
her in your hands once in your own country, but she shall slip you,
as she shall slip everybody!"

"She won't slip _you_, then, I promise you that!" said Narkom.
"Reward and glory, both shall be yours. I have followed her across
the channel, Ducroix. I know where she is to be found for a
certainty. She is at the Inn of the Seven Sinners. Just take me
there and I'll turn the Jezebel over to you."

Ducroix needed no urging. The prospect of such a capture made
him fairly beside himself with delight. In twenty swift words he
translated this glorious news to his men--setting them as wild with
excitement as he was himself--then with a sharp, "Come, m'sieur!" he
turned on his heel and led the breathless race for the goal.

Halfway down the narrow, ink-black street that led to the inn they
encountered Dollops pelting back at full speed.

"Come on, guv'ner, come on, all of you!" he broke out as he came
abreast of them. "She's there--they're all there--kickin' up Meg's
diversions, sir, and singin' and dancin' like mad. And, sir, he's
there, too--the pedler chap! I see him come up and sneak in with the
rest. Come on! This way, all of you."

If they had merely run before, they all but flew now; for this
second assurance that Margot, the great and long-sought-for Margot,
was actually within their reach served to spur every man to
outdo himself; so that it was but a minute or two later when
they came in sight of the inn and bore down upon it in a solid
phalanx. And then--just then--when another minute would have
settled everything--the demon of mischance chose to play them a
scurvy trick.

All they knew of it was that an Apache coming out of the building for
some purpose of his own looked up and saw them, then faced round
and bent back in the doorway; that of a sudden a very tornado of
music and laughter and singing and dancing rolled out into the
night, and that when they came pounding up to the doorway, the fellow
was lounging there serenely smoking; and, inside, his colleagues
were holding a revel wild enough to wake the dead.

In the winking of an eye he was carried off his feet and swept on by
this sudden inrush of the law; the door clashed open, the little
slatted barrier beyond was knocked aside, and the police were pouring
into the room and running headlong into a spinning mass of wild
dancers.

The band ceased suddenly as they appeared, the dancers cried out as
if in a panic of alarm, and at Ducroix's commanding "Surrender in the
name of the Law!" a fat woman behind the bar flung up her arms and
voiced a despairing shriek.

"Soul of misfortune! for what, m'sieur--for what?" she cried. "It
is no sin to laugh and dance. We break no law, my customers and I.
What is it you want that you come in upon us like this?"

Ah, what indeed? Not anything that could be seen. A glance round the
room showed nothing and no one but these suddenly disturbed dancers,
and of Margot and the Mauravanian never a sign.

"M'sieur!" began Ducroix, turning to Narkom, whose despair was only
too evident, and who, in company with Dollops, was rushing about the
place pushing people here and there, looking behind them, looking
in all the corners, and generally deporting themselves after the
manner of a couple of hounds endeavouring to pick up a lost scent.
"M'sieur, shall it be an error, then?"

Narkom did not answer. Of a sudden, however, he remembered what had
been said of the trap and, pushing aside a group of girls standing
over it, found it in the middle of the floor.

"Here it is--this is the way she got out!" he shouted. "Bolted, by
James! bolted on the under side! Up with it, up with it--the Jezebel
got out this way." But though Ducroix and Dollops aided him, and
they pulled and tugged and tugged and pulled, they could not budge
it one inch.

"M'sieur, no--what madness! He is not a trap--? no, he is not a trap
at all!" protested old Marise. "It is but a square where the floor
broke and was mended! Mother of misfortune, it is nothing but that."

What response Narkom might have made was checked by a sudden
discovery. Huddling in a corner, feigning a drunken sleep, he
saw a man lying with his face hidden in his folded arms. It was
the pedler. He pounced on the man and jerked up his head before
the fellow could prevent it or could dream of what was about to
happen.

"Here's one of them at least!" he cried, and fell to shaking him with
all his force. "Here's one of Margot's pals, Ducroix. You shan't go
empty-handed after all."

A cry of consternation fluttered through the gathering as he brought
the man's face into view. Evidently they were past masters of the
art of acting, these Apaches, for one might have sworn that every
man and every woman of them was taken aback by the fellow's presence.

"Mother of Miracles! who shall the man be?" exclaimed Marise.
"Messieurs, I know him not. I have not seen him in all my life
before. Cochon, speak up! Who are you, that you come in like this and
get a respectable widow in trouble, dog? Eh?"

The man made a motion first to his ears, then to his mouth, then fell
to making movements in the sign language, but spoke never a word.

"La, la! he is a deaf mute, m'sieur," said Ducroix. "He hears not
and speaks not, poor unfortunate."

"Oh, doesn't he?" said Narkom with an ugly laugh. "He spoke well
enough a couple of hours back, I promise you. My young friend here
and I heard him when he paid off the fisherman who had carried him
over to Dover just before he sneaked aboard the packet to come back
with Margot and the Mauravanian."

The eyes of the Apaches flew to the man's face with a sudden keen
interest which only they might understand; but he still stood,
wagging his great head either drunkenly or idiotically, and pointing
to ears and mouth.

"Lay hold of him--run him in!" said Narkom, whirling him across into
the arms of a couple of stalwart Sergeants de Ville. "I'll go before
the magistrate and lay a charge against him in the morning that will
open your eyes when you hear it. One of a bloodthirsty, dynamiting
crew, the dog! Lay fast hold of him! don't let him get away on your
lives! God! to have lost that woman! to have lost her after all!"

It was a sore blow, certainly, but there was nothing to do but to
grin and bear it; for to seek Margot at any of the inns which might
communicate with the sewer trap, or to hunt for her and a motor boat
on the dark water's surface, was in very truth like looking for a
needle in a haystack, and quite as hopeless. He therefore, decided
to go, for the rest of the night, to the nearest hotel; and waiting
only to see the pedler carried away in safe custody, and promising to
be on hand when he was brought up before the local magistrate in the
morning, took Dollops by the arm and dejectedly went his way.

* * * * *

The morning saw him living up to his promise; and long before the
arrival of the magistrate or, indeed, before the night's harvest
of prisoners was brought over from the lockup and thrust into
the three little "detention rooms" below the court, he was there
with Dollops and Ducroix, observing with wonder that groups of
evil-looking fellows of the Apache breed were hanging round the
building as he approached, and that later on others of the same
kidney slipped in and took seats in the little courtroom and kept
constantly whispering one to the other while they waited for the
morning session to begin.

"Gawd's truth, guv'ner, look at 'em--the 'ole blessed place is alive
with the bounders," whispered Dollops. "Wot do you think they are
up to, sir? Makin' a rush and settin' the pedler free when he comes
up before the Beak? There's twenty of 'em waitin' round the door if
there's one."

Narkom made no reply. The arrival of the magistrate focussed all eyes
on the bench and riveted his attention with the rest.

The proceedings opened with all the trivial cases first--the
night's sweep of the dragnet: drunks and disorderlies, vagrants
and pariahs. One by one these were brought in and paid their fines
and went their way, unheeded; for this part of the morning's
proceedings interested nobody, not even the Apaches. The list was
dragged through monotonously; the last blear-eyed sot--a hideous,
cadaverous, monkey-faced wretch whose brutal countenance sickened
Narkom when he shambled up in his filthy rags--had paid his fine, and
gone his way, and there remained now but a case of attempted
suicide to be disposed of before the serious cases began. This latter
occupied the magistrate's time and attention for perhaps twenty
minutes or so, then that, too, was disposed of; and then a voice
was heard calling out for the unknown man arrested last night at the
Inn of the Seven Sinners to be brought forward.

In an instant a ripple of excitement ran through the little court.
The Apache fraternity sat up within and passed the word to the Apache
fraternity without, and these stood at attention--close-lipped,
dark-browed, eager, like human tigers waiting for the word to
spring. Every eye was fixed on the door through which that pretended
mute should be led in; but although others had come at the first
call, he came not even at the second, and the magistrate had just
issued an impatient command for the case to be called yet a third
time, when there was a clatter of hasty footsteps and the keeper of
the detention rooms burst into the court pale as a dead man and
shaking in every nerve.

"M'sieur le Juge!" he cried out, extending his two arms. "Soul of
Misfortunes, how shall I tell? He is not there--he is gone--he is
escape, that unknown one. When I shall unlock the room and call
for Jean Lamareau, the drunkard, at the case before the last,
there shall come out of the dimness to me what I shall think is he
and I shall bring him here and he shall be fine and dismissed. But,
m'sieur, he shall not be Jean Lamareau after all! I shall go now and
call for the unknown and I shall get no answer; I shall go in and
make of the place light, and there he shall be, that real Jean
Lamareau--stripped of his clothes, choked to unconsciousness, alone
on the floor, and the other shall have paid his fine and gone!"

A great cry went up, a wild confusion filled the court. The Apaches
within rose and ran with the news to the Apaches without; and
these, joining forces, scattered and ran through the streets in the
direction the escaped prisoner had been seen to take.

But through it all Narkom sat there squeezing his hands together
and laughing in little shaking gusts that had a heart throb wavering
through them; for to him this could mean but one thing.

"Cleek!" he said, leaning down and shrilling a joyous whisper into
Dollops' ear. "But one man in all the world could have done that
thing--but one man in all the world would have dared. It was he--it
was Cleek! God bless his bully soul!"

"Amen, sir," said Dollops, swallowing something; then he rose at
Narkom's bidding and followed him outside.

A minute later a gamin brushing against them put out a grimy hand
and said whiningly:

"Boulogne, messieurs. Quai des Anges. Third house back from the
waterside; in time for the noon boat across to Folkestone. Give
me two francs, please. The monsieur said you would if I said that to
you when you came out."

The two francs were in his hand almost as he ceased speaking, and in
less than a minute later a fiacre was whirling Narkom and Dollops off
to the railway station and the next outgoing train to Boulogne. It
was still short of midday when they arrived at the Quai des Anges
and made their way to the third house back from the waterside--a
little tavern with a toy garden in front and a sort of bowered
arcade behind--and there under an almond tree, with a cigarette
between his fingers and a bunch of flowers in his buttonhole, they
came upon _him_ at last.

"Guv'ner! Oh, Gawd bless you, guv'ner, is it really you again?" said
Dollops, rushing up to him like a girl to a lover.

"Yes, it is really I," he answered with one of his easy laughs. Then
he rose and held out his hand as Narkom advanced; and for a moment
or two they stood there palm in palm, saying not one word, making
not one sound.

"Nearly did for me, my overzealous friend," said Cleek, after a
time. "I could have kicked you when you turned up with that lot at
the Seven Sinners. Another ten minutes and I'd have had that in my
hands which would have compelled his Majesty of Mauravania to give
Irma his liberty and to abdicate in his consort's favour. But you
came, you dear old blunderer; and when I looked up and recognized
you--well, let it pass! I was on my way back to London when I chanced
to see Count Waldemar on watch beside the gangway of the Calais
packet--he had slipped me, the hound, slipped me in Paris--and I saw
my chance to run him down. Gad! it was a close squeak that, when
you let those Apaches know that I had just crossed over from this
side and had gone aboard the packet because I saw Waldemar. They
guessed then. I couldn't speak there, and I dared not speak in the
court. They were there, on every hand--inside the building and
out--waiting to knife me the instant they were sure. I had to get
out--I had to get past them, and--voila."

He turned and laid an affectionate hand on Dollops' shoulder and
laughed softly and pleasantly.

"New place all right, old chap? Garden doing well, and all my traps
in shipshape order, eh?"

"Yes, sir, Gawd bless you, sir. Everything, sir, everything."

"Good lad! Then we'll be off to them. My holiday is over, Mr. Narkom,
and I'm going back into harness again. You want me, I see, and I
said I'd come if you did. Give me a few days' rest in old England,
dear friend, and then--out with your riddles and I'm your man again."

CHAPTER I

"This will be it, I think, sir," said Lennard, bringing the limousine
to a halt at the head of a branching lane, thick set with lime and
chestnut trees between whose double wall of green one could catch a
distant glimpse of the river, shining golden in the five o'clock
light.

"Look! see! There's the sign post--'To the Sleeping Mermaid'--over
to the left there."

"Anything pinned to it or hanging on it?" Mr. Narkom spoke from the
interior of the vehicle without making even the slightest movement
toward alighting, merely glancing at a few memoranda scribbled on
the back of a card whose reverse bore the words "Taverne Maladosie
Quai des Anges, Boulogne," printed upon it in rather ornate script.

"A bit of rag, a scrap of newspaper, a fowl's feather--anything? Look
sharp!"

"No, sir, not a thing of any sort that I can see from here. Shall
I nip over and make sure?"

"Yes. Only don't give away the fact that you are examining it in case
there should be anybody on the lookout. If you find the smallest
thing--even a carpet tack--attached to the post, get back into your
seat at once and cut off townward as fast as you can make the car
travel."

"Right you are, sir," said Lennard, and forthwith did as he had been
bidden. In less than ninety seconds, however, he was back with word
that the post's surface was as smooth as your hand and not a thing
of any sort attached to it from top to bottom.

Narkom fetched a deep breath of relief at this news, tucked the card
into his pocket, and got out immediately.

"Hang round the neighbourhood somewhere and keep your ears open in
case I should have to give the signal sooner than I anticipate," he
said; then twisted round on his heel, turned into the tree-bordered
lane, and bore down in the direction of the river.

When still short, by thirty yards or so, of its flowered and
willow-fringed brim, he came upon a quaint little diamond-paned,
red-roofed, low-eaved house set far back from the shore, with a
garden full of violets and primroses and flaunting crocuses in
front of it, and a tangle of blossoming things crowding what once
had been a bower-bordered bowling green in the rear.

"Queen Anne, for a ducat!" he commented as he looked at the place
and took in every detail from the magpie in the old pointed-topped
wicker cage hanging from a nail beside the doorway to the rudely
carved figure of a mermaid over the jutting, flower-filled
diamond-paned window of the bar parlour with its swinging sashes and
its oak-beam sill, shoulder high from the green, sweet-smelling earth.

"How the dickens does he ferret out these places, I wonder? And
what fool has put his money into a show like this in these days of
advancement and enterprise? Buried away from the line of traffic
ashore and shut in by trees from the river. Gad! they can't do a
pound's worth of business in a month at an out-of-the-way roost
like this!"

Certainly, they were not doing much of it that day; for, as he
passed through the taproom, he caught a glimpse of the landlady
dozing in a deep chair by the window, and of the back of a
by-no-means-smartly-dressed barmaid--who might have been stone deaf
for all notice she took of his entrance--standing on a stool
behind the bar dusting and polishing the woodwork of the shelves. The
door of the bar parlour was open, and through it Narkom caught a
glimpse of a bent-kneed, stoop-shouldered, doddering old man
shuffling about, filling match-boxes, wiping ash trays, and carefully
refolding the rumpled newspapers that lay on the centre table.
That he was not the proprietor, merely a waiter, the towel over his
arm, the shabby old dress coat, the baggy-kneed trousers would
have been evidence enough without that added by the humble tasks
he was performing.

"Poor devil! And at his age!" said Narkom to himself, as he noted the
pale, hopeless-looking, time-worn face and the shuffling, time-bent
body; then, moved by a sense of keen pity, he walked into the room
and spoke gently to him.

"Tea for two, uncle--at a quarter-past five to the tick if you can
manage it," he said, tossing the old man a shilling. "And say to the
landlady that I'd like to have exclusive use of this room for an hour
or two, so she can charge the loss to my account if she has to turn
any other customers away."

"Thanky, sir. I'll attend to it at once, sir," replied the old
fellow, pocketing the coin, and moving briskly away to give the
order. In another minute he was back again, laying the cloth and
setting out the dishes, while Narkom improved the time of waiting by
straying round the room and looking at the old prints and cases of
stuffed fishes that hung on the oak-panelled walls.

It still wanted a minute or so of being a quarter-past five when
the old man bore in the tea tray itself and set it upon the waiting
table; and, little custom though the place enjoyed, Narkom could
not but compliment it upon its promptness and the inviting quality
of the viands served.

"You may go," he said to the waiter, when the man at length bowed low
and announced that all was ready; then, after a moment, turning
round and finding him still shuffling about, "I say you may go!"
he reiterated, a trifle sharply. "No, don't take the cosy off the
teapot--leave it as it is. The gentleman I am expecting has not
arrived yet, and--look here! will you have the goodness to let
that cosy alone and to clear out when I tell you? By James! if you
don't----Hullo! What the dickens was that?"

"That" was undoubtedly the tingle of a handful of gravel against the
panes of the window.

"A sign that the coast is quite clear and that you have not been
followed, dear friend," said a voice--Cleek's voice--in reply.
"Shall we not sit down? I'm famishing." And as Narkom turned round
on his heel--with the certainty that no one had entered the room
since the door was closed and he himself before it--the tea cosy
was whipped off by a hand that no longer shook, the waiter's bent
figure straightened, his pale, drawn features writhed, blent, settled
into placid calmness and--the thing was done!

"By all that's wonderful--Cleek!" blurted out Narkom, delightedly,
and lurched toward him.

"Sh-h-h! Gently, gently, my friend," he interposed, putting up a
warning hand. "It is true Dollops has signalled that there is no
one in the vicinity likely to hear, but although the maid is both
deaf and dumb, recollect that Mrs. Condiment is neither; and I have
no more wish for her to discover my real calling than I ever had."

"Mrs. Condiment?" repeated Narkom, sinking his voice, and speaking in
a tone of agitation and amazement. "You don't mean to tell me that
the old woman you employed as housekeeper when you lived in Clarges
Street is here?"

"Certainly; she is the landlady. Her assistant is that same deaf and
dumb maid-of-all-work who worked with her at the old house, and is
sharing with her a sort of 'retirement' here. 'Captain Burbage' set
the pair of them up in business here two days after his departure
from Clarges Street and pays them a monthly wage sufficient to make
up for any lack of 'custom.' All that they are bound to do is to
allow a pensioner of the captain's--a poor old half-witted ex-waiter
called Joseph--to come and go as he will and to gratify a whim for
waiting upon people if he chooses to do so. What's that? No, the
'captain' does not live here. He and his henchman, Dollops, are
supposed to be out of the country. Mrs. Condiment does not know
_where_ he lives--nor will she ever be permitted to do so. You may,
some day, perhaps----that is for the future to decide; but not at
present, my dear friend; it is too risky."

"Why risky, old chap? Surely I can come and go in disguise as I did
in the old days, Cleek? We managed secret visits all right then,
remember."

"Yes--I know. But things have changed, Mr. Narkom. You may disguise
yourself as cleverly as you please, but you can't disguise the red
limousine. It is known and it will be followed; so, until you can get
another of a totally different colour and appearance I'll ring you up
each morning at the Yard and we can make our appointments over your
private wire. For the present we must take no great risks. In the
days that lie behind, dear friend, I had no 'tracker' to guard
against but Margot, no enemies but her paltry crew to reckon with
and to outwit. In these, I have many. They have brains, these new
foes; they are rich, they are desperate, they are powerful; and
behind them is the implacable hate and the malignant hand of----No
matter! You wouldn't understand."

"I can make a devilish good guess, then," rapped in Narkom, a trifle
testily, his vanity a little hurt by that final suggestion, and
his mind harking back to the brief enlightening conversation between
Margot and Count Waldemar that night on the spray-swept deck of
the Channel packet. "Behind them is 'the implacable hate and the
malignant hand' of the King of Mauravania!"

"What utter rubbish!" Cleek's jeering laughter fairly stung, it was
so full of pitying derision. "My friend, have you taken to reading
penny novelettes of late? A thief-taker and a monarch! An ex-criminal
and a king! I should have given you credit for more common sense."

"It was the King of Mauravania's equerry who directed that attempt to
kill you by blowing up the house in Clarges Street."

"Very possibly. But that does not incriminate his royal master.
Count Waldemar is not only equerry to King Ulric of Mauravania,
but is also nephew to its ex-Prime Minister--the gentleman who is
doing fifteen years' energetic labour for the British Government
as a result of that attempt to trap me with his witless 'Silver
Snare.'"

"Oh!" said Narkom, considerably crestfallen; then grasped at yet
another straw with sudden, breathless eagerness. "But even then the
head of the Mauravanian Government must have had some reason for
wishing to 'wipe you out,'" he added, earnestly. "There could be no
question of avenging an uncle's overthrow at that time. Cleek!"--his
voice running thin and eager, his hand shutting suddenly upon his
famous ally's arm--"Cleek, trust me! Won't you? Can't you? As God
hears me, old chap, I'll respect it. Who are you? What are you, man?"

"Cleek," he made answer, calmly drawing out a chair and taking his
seat at the table. "Cleek of Scotland Yard; Cleek of the Forty
Faces--which you will. Who should know that better than you whose
helping hand has made me what I am?"

"Yes, but before, Cleek? What were you, who were you, in the days
before?"

"The Vanishing Cracksman--a dog who would have gone on, no doubt,
to a dog's end but for your kind hand and the dear eyes of Ailsa
Lorne. Now give me my tea--I'm famishing--and after that we'll talk
of this new riddle that needs unriddling for the honour of the Yard.
Yes, thanks, two lumps, and just a mere dash of milk. Gad! It's good
to be back in England, dear friend; it's good, it's good!"

CHAPTER II

"Five men, eh?" said Cleek, glancing up at Mr. Narkom, who for two
or three minutes past had been giving him a sketchy outline of the
case in hand. "A goodish many that. And all inside of the past six
weeks, you say? No wonder the papers have been hammering the Yard,
if, as you suggest, they were not accidental deaths. Sure they are
not?"

"As sure as I am that I'm speaking to you at this minute. I had
my doubts in the beginning--there seemed so little to connect the
separate tragedies--but when case after case followed with exactly,
or nearly exactly, the same details in every instance, one simply
_had_ to suspect foul play."

"Naturally. Even a donkey must know that there's food about if he
smells thistles. Begin at the beginning, please. How did the affair
start? When and where?"

"In the neighbourhood of Hampstead Heath at two o'clock in the
morning. The constable on duty in the district came upon a man clad
only in pajamas lying face downward under the wall surrounding a
corner house--still warm but as dead as Queen Anne."

"In his pajamas, eh?" said Cleek, reaching for a fresh slice of
toast. "Pretty clear evidence that that poor beggar's trouble,
whatever it was, must have overtaken him in bed and that that bed was
either in the vicinity of the spot where he was found, or else the
man had been carried in a closed vehicle to the place where the
constable discovered him. A chap can't walk far in that kind of a
get-up without attracting attention. And the body was warm, you
say, when found. Hum-m! Any vehicle seen or heard in the vicinity of
the spot just previously?"

"Not the ghost of one. The night was very still, and the constable
must have heard if either cab, auto, carriage, or dray had passed in
any direction whatsoever. He is positive that none did. Naturally,
he thought, as you suggested just now, that the man must have come
from some house in the neighbourhood. Investigation, however,
proved that he did not--in short, that nobody could be found who
had ever seen him before. Indeed, it is hardly likely that he
could have been sleeping in any of the surrounding houses, for
the neighbourhood is a very good one, and the man had the appearance
of being a person of the labouring class."

"Any marks on the clothing or body?"

"Not one--beyond a tattooed heart on the left forearm, which caused
the coroner to come to the conclusion later that the man had at some
time been either a soldier or a sailor."

"Why?"

"The tattooing was evidently of foreign origin, he said, from
the skilful manner in which it had been performed and the brilliant
colour of the pigments used. Beyond that, the body bore no
blemish. The man had not been stabbed, he had not been shot, and a
post-mortem examination of the viscera proved conclusively that he
had not been poisoned. Neither had he been strangled, etherized,
drowned, or bludgeoned, for the brain was in no way injured and the
lungs were in a healthy condition. It was noticed, however, that the
passages of the throat and nose were unduly red, and that there was a
slightly distended condition of the bowels. This latter, however,
was set down by the physicians as the natural condition following
enteric, from which it was positive that the man had recently
suffered. They attributed the slightly inflamed condition of the
nasal passage and throat to his having either swallowed or snuffed
up something--camphor or something of that sort--to allay the
progress of the enteric, although even by analysis they were unable
to discover a trace of camphor or indeed of any foreign substance
whatsoever. The body was held in the public mortuary for several
days awaiting identification, but nobody came forward to claim it; so
it was eventually buried in the usual way and a verdict of 'Found
Dead' entered in the archives against the number given to it. The
matter had excited but little comment on the part of the public or
the newspapers, and would never have been recalled but for the
astonishing fact that just two nights after the burial a second man
was found under precisely similar circumstances--only that this
second man was clad in boots, undervest, and trousers. He was
found in a sort of gulley (down which, from the marks on the
side, he had evidently fallen), behind some furze bushes at a far
and little frequented part of the heath. An autopsy established
the fact that this man had died in a precisely similar manner to the
first, but, what was more startling, that he had evidently
pre-deceased that first victim by several days; for, when found,
decomposition had already set in."

"Hum-m-m! I see!" said Cleek, arching his brows and stirring his tea
rather slowly. "A clear case of what Paddy would term 'the second
fellow being the first one.' Go on, please. What next?"

"Oh, a perfect fever of excitement, of course; for it now became
evident that a crime had been committed in both instances; and
the Press made a great to-do over it. Within the course of the
next fortnight it was positively frothing, throwing panic into the
public mind by the wholesale, and whipping up people's fears like a
madman stirring a salad; for, by that time a third body had been
found--under some furze bushes, upward of half a mile distant from
where the second had been discovered. Like the first body, this
one was wearing night clothes; but it was in an even more advanced
state of decomposition than the second, showing that the man must
have died long before either of them!"

"Oho!" said Cleek, with a strong rising inflection. "What a
blundering idiot! Our assassin is evidently a raw hand at the
game, Mr. Narkom, and not, as I had begun to fancy, either a
professional or the appointed agent of some secret society following
a process of extermination against certain marked men. Neither
the secret agent nor the professional bandit would be guilty of
the extreme folly of operating several times in the same locality,
be assured; and here is this muddling amateur letting himself be
lulled into a feeling of security by the failure of anybody to
discover the bodies of the first victims, and then going at it
again in the same place and the same way. For it is fair to assume,
I daresay, that the fourth man was discovered under precisely
similar circumstances to the first."

"Not exactly--very like them, but not exactly like them, Cleek. As a
matter of fact, he was alive when found. I didn't credit the report
when I first heard it (a newspaper man brought it to me), and sent
Petrie to investigate the truth of it."

"Why didn't you believe the report?"

"Because it seemed so wildly improbable. And, besides, they had
hatched up so many yarns, those newspaper reporters, since the
affair began. According to this fellow, a tramp, crossing the heath
in quest of a place to sleep, had been frightened half out of his
wits by hearing a voice which _he_ described as being like the voice
of some one strangling, calling out in the darkness, 'Sapphires!
Sapphires!' and a few moments later, when, as the reporter said, the
tramp told him, he was scuttling away in a panic, he came suddenly
upon the figure of a man who was dancing round and round like a
whirling dervish, with his mouth wide open, his tongue hanging
out, and the forefinger of each hand stuck in his nostril as if----"

"What's that? What's that?" Cleek's voice flicked in like the crack
of a whip. "Good God! Dancing round in circles? His mouth open? His
tongue hanging out? His fingers thrust into his nostrils? Was that
what you said?"

"Yes. Why? Do you see anything promising in that fact, Cleek? It
seems to excite you."

"Never mind about that. Stick to the subject. Was that report found
to be correct, then?"

"In a measure, yes. Only, of course, one had to take the tramp's
assertion that the man had been calling out 'Sapphires' upon
faith, for when discovered and conveyed to the hospital, he was in a
comatose condition and beyond making any sound at all. He died,
without recovering consciousness, about twenty minutes after
Petrie's arrival; and, although the doctors performed a post-mortem
immediately after the breath had left his body, there was not a
trace of anything to be found that differed in the slightest from
the other cases. Heart, brain, liver, lungs--all were in a healthy
condition, and beyond the reddened throat and the signs of recent
enteric there was nothing abnormal."

"But his lips--his lips, Mr. Narkom? Was there a smear of earth upon
them? Was he lying on his face when found? Were his fingers clenched
in the grass? Did it look as if he had been biting the soil?"

"Yes," replied Narkom. "As a matter of fact there was both earth and
grass in the mouth. The doctors removed it carefully, examined it
under the microscope, even subjected it to chemical test in the hope
of discovering some foreign substance mixed with the mass, but failed
utterly to discover a single trace."

"Of course, of course! It would be gone like a breath, gone like a
passing cloud if it were that."

"If it were what? Cleek, my dear fellow! Good Lord! you don't mean
to tell me you've got a clue?"

"Perhaps--perhaps--don't worry me!" he made answer testily; then rose
and walked over to the window and stood there alone, pinching his
chin between his thumb and forefinger and staring fixedly at things
beyond. After a time, however:

"Yes, it could be that--assuredly it could be that," he said in a
low-sunk voice, as if answering a query. "But in England--in this
far land. In Malay, yes; in Ceylon, certainly. And sapphires,
too--sapphires! Hum-m-m! They mine them there. One man had travelled
in foreign parts and been tattooed by natives. So that the selfsame
country----Just so! Of course! Of course! But who? But how? And in
England?"

His voice dropped off. He stood for a minute or so in absolute
silence, drumming noiselessly with his finger tips upon the
window-sill, then turned abruptly and spoke to Mr. Narkom.

"Go on with the story, please," he said. "There was a fifth man, I
believe. When and how did his end come?"

"Like the others, for the most part, but with one startling
difference: instead of being undressed, nothing had been removed but
his collar and boots. He was killed on the night I started with
Dollops for the Continent in quest of you; and his was the second
body that was not actually found _on_ the heath. Like the first man,
he was found under the wall which surrounds Lemmingham House."

"Lemmingham House? What's that--a hotel or a private residence?"

"A private residence, owned and occupied by Mr. James
Barrington-Edwards."

"Any relation to that Captain Barrington-Edwards who was cashiered
from the army some twenty years ago for 'conduct unbecoming an
officer and a gentleman'?"

"The same man!"

"Oho! the same man, eh?" Cleek's tone was full of sudden interest.
"Stop a bit! Let me put my thinking box into operation. Captain
Barrington-Edwards--hum-m-m! That little military unpleasantness
happened out in Ceylon, did it not? The gentleman had a fancy for
conjuring tricks, I believe; even went so far as to study them
firsthand under the tutelage of native fakirs, and was subsequently
caught cheating at cards. That's the man, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Narkom, "that's the man. I'll have something startling
to tell you in connection with him presently, but not in connection
with that card-cheating scandal. He always swore that he was innocent
of that. In fact, that it was a put-up job by one of the other
officers for the sake of ruining him."

"Yes, I know--they all say that. It's the only thing they can say."

"Still, I always believed him, Cleek. He's been a pretty
straightforward man in all my dealings with him, and I've had
several. Besides which, he is highly respected these days. Then,
too, there's the fact that the fellow he said put up the job against
him for the sake of blackening him in the eyes of his sweetheart,
eventually married the girl, so it does look rather fishy.
However, although it ruined Barrington-Edwards for the time being,
and embittered him so that he never married, he certainly had
the satisfaction of knowing that the fellow who had caused this
trouble turned out an absolute rotter, spent all his wife's money and
brought her down to absolute beggary, whereas, if she'd stuck to
Barrington-Edwards she'd have been a wealthy woman indeed,
to-day. He's worth half a million at the least calculation."

"How's that? Somebody die and leave him a fortune?"

"No. He had a little of his own. Speculated, while he was in the
East, in precious stones and land which he had reason to believe
likely to produce them; succeeded beyond his wildest hopes, and is
to-day head of the firm of Barrington-Edwards, Morpeth & Firmin,
the biggest dealers in precious stones that Hatton Garden can boast
of."

"Oho!" said Cleek. "I see! I see!" and screwed round on his heel
and looked out of the window again. Then, after a moment: "And Mr.
Barrington-Edwards lives in the neighbourhood of Hampstead Heath,
does he?" he asked quite calmly. "Alone?"

"No. With his nephew and heir, young Mr. Archer Blaine, a dead
sister's only child. As a matter of fact, it was Mr. Archer Blaine
himself who discovered the body of the fifth victim. Coming home at
a quarter to one from a visit to an old college friend, he found
the man lying stone dead in the shadow of the wall surrounding
Lemmingham House, and, of course, lost no time in dashing indoors
for a police whistle and summoning the constable on point duty in
the district. The body was at once given in charge of a hastily
summoned detachment from the Yard and conveyed to the Hampstead
mortuary, where it still lies awaiting identification."

"Been photographed?"

"Not as yet. Of course it will be--as were the other four--prior to
the time of burial should nobody turn up to claim it. But in this
instance we have great hopes that identification _will_ take place on
the strength of a marked peculiarity. The man is web-footed and----"

"The man is _what_?" rapped in Cleek excitedly.

"Web-footed," repeated Narkom. "The several toes are attached one to
the other by a thin membrane, after the manner of a duck's feet; and
on the left foot there is a peculiar horny protuberance like----"

"Like a rudimentary sixth toe!" interrupted Cleek, fairly flinging
the eager query at him. "It is, eh? Well, by the Eternal! I once
knew a fellow--years ago, in the Far East--whose feet were malformed
like that; and if by any possibility----Stop a bit! A word more.
Is that man a big fellow--broad shouldered, muscular, and about forty
or forty-five years of age?"

"You've described him to a T, dear chap. There is, however, a certain
other peculiarity which you have not mentioned, though that, of
course, maybe a recent acquirement. The palm of the right hand----"

"Wait a bit! Wait a bit!" interposed Cleek, a trifle irritably. He
had swung away from the window and was now walking up and down the
room with short nervous steps, his chin pinched up between his thumb
and forefinger, his brows knotted, and his eyes fixed upon the floor.

"Saffragam--Jaffna--Trincomalee! In all three of them--in all three!"
he said, putting his running thoughts into muttered words. "And
now a dead man sticks his fingers in his nostrils and talks of
sapphires. Sapphires, eh? And the Saffragam district stuck thick
with them as spangles on a Nautch girl's veil. The Bareva for a
ducat! The Bareva Reef or I'm a Dutchman! And Barrington-Edwards
was in that with the rest. So was Peabody; so was Miles; and so,
too, were Lieutenant Edgburn and the Spaniard, Juan Alvarez. Eight of
them, b'gad--eight! And I was ass enough to forget, idiot enough
not to catch the connection until I heard again of Jim Peabody's
web foot! But wait! Stop--there should be another marked foot if
this is indeed a clue to the riddle, and so----"

He stopped short in his restless pacing and faced round on Mr. Narkom.

"Tell me something," he said in a sharp staccato. "The four other
dead men--did any among them have an injured foot--the left or the
right, I forget which--from which all toes but the big one had been
torn off by a crocodile's bite, so that in life the fellow must
have limped a little when he walked? Did any of the dead men bear a
mark like that?"

"No," said Narkom. "The feet of all the others were normal in every
particular."

"Hum-m-m! That's a bit of a setback. And I am either on the wrong
track or Alvarez is still alive. What's that? Oh, it doesn't matter;
a mere fancy of mine, that's all. Now let us get back to our mutton,
please. You were going to tell me something about the right hand
of the man with the web foot. What was it?"

"The palm bore certain curious hieroglyphics traced upon it in bright
purple."

"Hieroglyphics, eh? That doesn't look quite so promising," said Cleek
in a disappointed tone. "It is quite possible that there may be more
than one web-footed man in the world, so of course----Hum-m-m! What
were these hieroglyphics, Mr. Narkom? Can you describe them?"

"I can do better, my dear chap," replied the superintendent, dipping
into an inner pocket and bringing forth a brown leather case. "I
took an accurate tracing of them from the dead hand this morning,
and--there you are. That's what's on his palm, Cleek, close to the
base of the forefinger running diagonally across it."

Cleek took the slip of tracing paper and carried it to the window,
for the twilight was deepening and the room was filling with shadows.
In the middle of the thin, transparent sheet was traced this:

[Illustration of a handwritten message]

He turned it up and down, he held it to the light and studied it
for a moment or two in perplexed silence, then of a sudden he faced
round, and Narkom could see that his eyes were shining and that the
curious one-sided smile, peculiar unto him, was looping up his cheek.

"My friend," he said, answering the eager query in the
superintendent's look, "this is yet another vindication of Poe's
theory that things least hidden are best hidden, and that the most
complex mysteries are those which are based on the simplest
principles. With your permission, I'll keep this"--tucking the
tracing into his pocket--"and afterward I will go to the mortuary
and inspect the original. Meantime, I will go so far as to tell
you that I know the motive for these murders, I know the means, and
if you will give me forty-eight hours to solve the riddle, at the
end of that time I'll know the man. I will even go farther and
tell you the names of the victims; and all on the evidence of your
neat little tracing. The web-footed man was one, James Peabody, a
farrier, at one time attached to the Blue Cavalry at Trincomalee,
Ceylon. Another was Joseph Miles, an Irishman, bitten early with
the 'wanderlust' which takes men everywhere, and in making rolling
stones of them, suffers them to gather no moss. Still another--and
probably, from the tattoo mark on his arm, the first victim
found--was Thomas Hart, ablebodied seaman, formerly in service
on the P & O line; the remaining two were Alexander McCurdy, a
Scotchman, and T. Jenkins Quegg, a Yankee. The latter, however,
was a naturalized Englishman, and both were privates in her late
Majesty's army and honourably discharged."

"Cleek, my dear fellow, are you a magician?" said Narkom, sinking
into a chair, overcome.

"Oh, no, my friend, merely a man with a memory, that's all; and I
happen to remember a curious little 'pool' that was made up of eight
men. Five of them are dead. The other three are Juan Alvarez, a
Spaniard, that Lieutenant Edgburn who married and beggared the girl
Captain Barrington-Edwards lost when he was disgraced, and last
of all the ex-Captain Barrington-Edwards himself. Gently, gently, my
friend. Don't excite yourself. All these murders have been committed
with a definite purpose in view, with a devil's instrument, and
for the devil's own stake--riches. Those riches, Mr. Narkom, were
to come in the shape of precious stones, the glorious sapphires of
Ceylon. And five of the eight men who were to reap the harvest of
them died mysteriously in the vicinity of Lemmingham House."

"Cleek! My hat!" Narkom sprang up as he spoke, and then sat down
again in a sort of panic. "And he--Barrington-Edwards, the man that
lives there--_deals_ in precious stones. Then that man----"

"Gently, my friend, gently--don't bang away at the first rabbit that
bolts out of the hole--it may be a wee one and you'll lose the buck
that follows. _Two_ men live in that house, remember; Mr. Archer
Blaine is Mr. Barrington-Edwards' heir as well as his nephew and--who
knows?"

CHAPTER III

"Cinnamon! what a corroboration--what a horrible corroboration!
Cleek, you knock the last prop from under me; you make certain a
thing that I thought was only a woman's wild imaginings," said
Narkom, getting up suddenly, all a-tremble with excitement. "Good
heavens! to have Miss Valmond's story corroborated in this dreadful
way."

"Miss Valmond? Who's she? Any relation to that Miss Rose Valmond
whose name one sees in the papers so frequently in connection with
gifts to Catholic Orphanages and Foundling Homes?"

"The same lady," replied Narkom. "Her charities are numberless,
her life a psalm. I think she has done more good in her simple,
undemonstrative way than half the guilds and missions in London.
She has an independent fortune, and lives, in company with an
invalid and almost imbecile mother, and a brother who is, I am told,
studying for the priesthood, in a beautiful home surrounded by
splendid grounds, the walls of which separate her garden from that
of Lemmingham House."

"Ah, I see. Then she is a neighbour of Barrington-Edwards?"

"Yes. From the back windows of her residence one can look into
the grounds of his. That is how--Cleek!" Mr. Narkom's voice shook
with agitation--"You will remember I said, a little time back, that
I would have something startling to tell you in connection with
Barrington-Edwards--something that was not connected with that old
army scandal? If it had not been for the high character of my
informant; if it had been any other woman in all England I should
have thought she was suffering from nerves--fancying things as the
result of an overwrought mind sent into a state of hysteria through
all those abominable crimes in the neighbourhood; but when it was
she, when it was Miss Valmond----"

"Oho!" said Cleek, screwing round suddenly. "Then Miss Valmond told
you something with regard to Barrington-Edwards?"

"Yes--a horrible something. She came to me this morning looking
as I hope I shall never see a good woman look again--as if she had
been tortured to the last limit of human endurance. She had been
fighting a silent battle for weeks and weeks she said, but her
conscience would not let her keep the appalling secret any longer,
neither would her duty to Heaven. Wakened in the dead of night by
a sense of oppression, she had gone to her window to open it for
air, and, looking down by chance into the garden of Lemmingham
House, she had seen a man come rushing out of the rear door of
Barrington-Edwards' place in his pajamas, closely followed by
another, whom she believed to be Barrington-Edwards himself, and
she had seen that man unlock the door in the side wall and push the
poor wretch out into the road where he was afterward found by
the constable."

"By Jupiter!"

"Ah, you may be moved when you connect that circumstance with what
you have yourself unearthed. But there is worse to come. Unable
to overcome a frightful fascination which drew her night after
night to that window, she saw that same thing happen again to the
fourth, and finally, the fifth man--the web-footed one--and that
last time she saw the face of the pursuer quite plainly. It _was_
Barrington-Edwards!"

"Sure of that, was she?"

"Absolutely. It was the positive certainty it was he that drove her
at last to speak!"

Cleek made no reply, no comment; merely screwed round on his heel and
took to pacing the floor again. After a minute however:

"Mr. Narkom," he said halting abruptly. "I suppose all my old duds
are still in the locker of the limousine, aren't they? Good! I
thought so. Give Lennard the signal, will you? I must risk the old
car in an emergency like this. Take me first to the cable office,
please; then to the mortuary, and afterward to Miss Valmond's home.
I hate to torture her further, poor girl, but I must get all the
facts of this, first hand."

He did. The limousine was summoned at once, and inside of an hour it
set him down (looking the very picture of a solicitor's clerk) at
the cable office, then picked up and set him down at the Hampstead
mortuary, this time, making so good a counterpart of Petrie that
even Hammond, who was on guard beside the dead man, said "Hullo,
Pete, that you? Thought you was off duty to-day," as he came in with
the superintendent.

"Jim Peabody fast enough, Mr. Narkom," commented Cleek, when they
were left together beside the dead man. "Changed, of course, in
all the years, but still poor old Jim. Good-hearted, honest, but
illiterate. Could barely more than write his name, and even that
without a capital, poor chap. Let me look at the hand. A violet
smudge on the top of the thumb as well as those marks on the palm, I
see. Hum-m-m! Any letters or writing of any sort in the pockets
when found? None, eh? That old bone-handled pocket knife there
his? Yes, I'd like to look at it. Open it, please. Thanks. I thought
so, I thought so. Those the socks he had on? Poor wretch! Down to
that at last, eh?--down to that! Let me have one of them for a
day or so, will you? and--yes--the photographs of the other four,
please. Thanks very much. No, that's all. Now then, to call on
Miss Valmond, if you don't mind. Right you are. Let her go, Lennard.
Down with the blinds and open with the locker again, Mr. Narkom,
and we'll 'dig' Mr. George Headland out of his two-months' old
grave." And at exactly ten minutes after eight o'clock, Mr. George
Headland _was_ 'dug up' and was standing with Mr. Narkom in Rose
Valmond's house listening to Rose Valmond's story from her own lips,
and saying to himself, the while, that here surely was that often
talked-of, seldom-seen creature, a woman with an angel's face.

How it distressed her, to tell again this story which might take away
a human life, was manifest from the trembling of her sweet voice, the
painful twitching of her tender mouth, and the tears that rose so
readily to her soft eyes.

"Oh, Mr. Headland, I can hardly reconcile myself to having done
it even yet," she said pathetically. "I do not know this Mr.
Barrington-Edwards but by sight, and it seems such a horrible
thing to rise up against a stranger like that. But I couldn't keep it
any longer; I felt that to do so would be equivalent to sharing his
guilt, and the thought that if I kept silent I might possibly be
paving the way to the sacrifice of other innocent lives almost drove
me out of my mind."

"I can quite understand your feelings, Miss Valmond," said Cleek,
touched to the very heart by the deep distress of her. "But may I say
I think you have done right? I never yet knew Heaven to be anything
but tender to those who do their duty, and you certainly have done
yours--to yourself, to your fellow creatures, and to God!"

Before she could make any response to this, footsteps sounded from
the outer passage, and a deep, rich, masculine voice said, "Rose,
Rose dear, I am ready now," and almost in the same moment a tall,
well-set-up man in priestly clothing crossed the threshold and
entered the room. He stopped short as he saw the others and made a
hasty apology.

"Oh, pardon me," he said. "I did not know that you had visitors,
dear, otherwise----Eh, what? Mr. Narkom, is it not?"

"Yes, Mr. Valmond," replied the superintendent, holding out a
welcoming hand. "It is I, and this is my friend and assistant, Mr.
George Headland. We have just been talking with your sister over
her trying experience."

"Terrible--terrible is the proper word, Mr. Narkom. Like you, I
never heard of it until to-day. It shocked me to the very soul,
you may believe. Delighted to meet you, Mr. Headland. A new disciple,
eh, Mr. Narkom? Another follower in the footsteps of the great
Cleek? By the way, I see you have lost touch with that amazing man. I
saw your advertisement in the paper the other day. Any clue to his
whereabouts as yet?"

"Not the slightest!"

"Ah, that's too bad. From what I have heard of him he would have
made short work of this present case had he been available. But
pray pardon me if I rush off, my time is very limited. Rose, dear, I
am going to visit Father Burns this evening and shall stop at the
orphanage on the way, so if you have the customary parcel for the
children----"

"It is upstairs, in my oratory, dear," she interposed. "Come with
me--if the gentlemen will excuse us for a moment--and I will get it
for you."

"May we not all go up, Miss Valmond?" interposed Cleek. "I should
like, if you do not mind, to get a view of the garden of Lemmingham
House from the window where you were standing that night, and to
have you explain the positions of the two men if you will."

"Yes, certainly--come, by all means," she replied, and led the way
forthwith. They had scarcely gone halfway down the passage to the
staircase, however, when they came abreast of the open doorway of
a room, dimly lit by a shaded lamp, wherein an elderly woman sat
huddled up in a deep chair, with her shaking head bowed over hands
that moved restlessly and aimlessly--after the uneasy manner of
an idiot's--and the shape of whose face could be but faintly seen
through the veil of white hair that fell loosely over it.

Cleek had barely time to recall Narkom's statement regarding the
semi-imbecile mother, when Miss Valmond gave a little cry of wonder
and ran into the room.

"Why, mother!" she said in her gentle way, "whatever are you doing
down here, dearest? I thought you were still asleep in the oratory.
When did you come down?"

The imbecile merely mumbled and muttered, and shook her nodding head,
neither answering nor taking any notice whatsoever.

"It is one of her bad nights," explained Miss Valmond, as she came
out and rejoined them. "We can do nothing with her when she is
like this. Horace, you will have to come home earlier than usual
to-night and help me to get her to bed." Then she went on, leading
the way upstairs, until they came at length to a sort of sanctuary
where Madonna faces looked down from sombre niches, and wax lights
burnt with a scented flame on a draped and cushioned prie dieu.
Here Miss Valmond, who was in the lead, went in, and, taking a
paper-wrapped parcel from beside the little altar, came back and put
it in her brother's hand and sent him on his way.

"Was it from there you saw the occurrence, Miss Valmond?" asked
Cleek, looking past her into "the dim religious light" of the
sanctuary.

"Oh, no," she made reply. "From the window of my bedroom, just on
the other side of the wall. In here, look, see!" And she opened a
door to the right and led them in, touching a key that flashed an
electric lamp into radiance and illuminated the entire room.

It was a large room furnished in dull oak and dark green after the
stately, sombre style of a Gothic chapel, and at one end there
was a curtained recess leading to a large bow window. At the other
there was a sort of altar banked high with white flowers, and at
the side there was a huge canopied bed over the head of which hung
an immense crucifix fastened to the wall that backed upon the
oratory. It was a majestic thing, that crucifix, richly carved
and exquisitely designed. Cleek went nearer and looked at it, his
artistic eye captured by the beauty of it; and Miss Valmond, noting
his interest, smiled.

"My brother brought me that from Rome," she said. "Is it not divine,
Mr. Headland?"

"Yes," he said. "But you must be more careful of it, I fear, Miss
Valmond. Is it not chipping? Look! Isn't this a piece of it?" He
bent and picked a tiny curled sliver of wood from the narrow space
between the two down-filled pillows of the bed, holding it out to
her upon his palm. But, of a sudden, he smiled, lifted the sliver
to his nose, smelt it, and cast it away. "The laugh is on me, I
fear--it's only a cedar paring from a lead pencil. And now, please,
I'd like to investigate the window."

She led him to it at once, explaining where she stood on the eventful
night; where she had seen the two figures pass, and where was the
wall door through which the dying man had been thrust.

"I wish I might see that door clearer," said Cleek; for night had
fallen and the moon was not yet up. "Don't happen to have such a
thing as a telescope or an opera glass, do you, Miss Valmond?"

"My brother has a pair of field glasses downstairs in his room. Shall
I run and fetch them for you?"

"I'd be very grateful if you would," said Cleek; and a moment after
she had gone. "Run down and get my sketching materials out of the
locker, will you, Mr. Narkom?" he added. "I want to make a diagram
of that house and garden." Then he sat down on the window-seat and
for five whole minutes was alone.

The field glasses and the sketching materials were brought, the
garden door examined and the diagram made, Miss Valmond and Narkom
standing by and watching eagerly the whole proceeding.

"That's all!" said Cleek, after a time, brushing the charcoal dust
from his fingers, and snapping the elastic band over the sketch
book. "I know my man at last, Mr. Narkom. Give me until ten o'clock
to-morrow night, and then, if Miss Valmond will let us in here again,
I'll capture Barrington-Edwards red-handed."

"You are sure of him, then?"

"As sure as I am that I'm alive. I'll lay a trap that will catch him.
I promise you that. So if Miss Valmond will let us in here again----"

"Yes, Mr. Headland, I will."

"Good! Then let us say at ten o'clock to-morrow night--here in
this room; you, I, your brother, Mr. Narkom--all concerned!" said
Cleek. "At ten to the tick, remember. Now come along, Mr. Narkom,
and let me be about weaving the snare that shall pull this Mr.
Barrington-Edwards to the scaffold." Speaking, he bowed to Miss
Valmond, and taking Mr. Narkom's arm, passed out and went down the
stairs to prepare for the last great act of tragedy.

CHAPTER IV

At ten to the tick on the following night, he had said, and at ten
to the tick he was there--the old red limousine whirling him up to
the door in company with Mr. Narkom, there to be admitted by Miss
Valmond's brother.

"My dear Mr. Headland, I have been on thorns ever since I heard,"
said he. "I hope and pray it is right, this assistance we are giving.
But tell me, please--have you succeeded in your plans? Are you sure
they will not fail?"

"To both questions, yes, Mr. Valmond. We'll have our man to-night.
Now, if you please, where is your sister?"

"Upstairs--in her own room--with my mother. We tried to get the mater
to bed, but she is very fractious to-night and will not let Rose
out of her sight for a single instant. But she will not hamper your
plans, I'm sure. Come quickly, please--this way." Here he led them
on and up until they stood in Miss Valmond's bedroom and in Miss
Valmond's presence again. She was there by the window, her imbecile
mother sitting at her feet with her face in her daughter's lap, that
daughter's solicitous hand gently stroking her tumbled hair, and
no light but that of the moon through the broad window illuminating
the hushed and stately room.

"I keep my word, you see, Miss Valmond," said Cleek, as he entered.
"And in five minutes' time if you watch from that window you all
shall see a thing that will amaze you."

"You have run the wretched man down, then, Mr. Headland?"

"Yes--to the last ditch, to the wall itself," he answered, making
room for her brother to get by him and make a place for himself at
the window. "Oh, it's a pretty little game he's been playing, that
gentleman, and it dates back twenty years ago when he was kicked out
of his regiment in Ceylon."

"In Ceylon! I--er--God bless my soul, was he ever in Ceylon, Mr.
Headland?"

"Yes, Mr. Valmond, he was. It was at a time when there was what
you might call a sapphire fever raging there, and precious stones
were being unearthed in every unheard-of quarter. He got the fever
with the rest, but he hadn't much money, so when he fell in with
a lot of fellows who had heard of a Cingalese, one Bareva Singh,
who had a reef to sell in the Saffragam district, they made a pool
between them and bought the blessed thing, calling it after the man
they had purchased it from, the Bareva Reef, setting out like a
party of donkeys to mine it for themselves, and expecting to pull
out sapphires by the bucketful."

"Dear me, dear me, how very extraordinary! Of course they didn't?
Or--did they?"

"No, they didn't. A month's work convinced them that the ground
was as empty of treasure as an eggshell, so they abandoned it,
separated, and went their several ways. A few months ago, however,
it was discovered that if they had had the implements to mine
deeper, their dream would have been realized, for the reef was a
perfect bed of sapphires--and eight men held an equal share in it.
The scheme, then, was to get rid of these men, secretly, one by one;
for one--perhaps two men--to get the deeds held by the others; to
pretend that they had been purchased from the original owners,
and to prevent by murder those original owners from----"

[Illustration: "Got you, Miss Rosie Edgburn! Got you, Señor Juan
Alvarez," rapped Cleek.... "Stop him, nab him, Mr. Narkom!"]

He stopped suddenly and switched round. Miss Valmond had risen and
so had her mother. He was on the pair of them like a leaping cat;
there was a sharp click-click, a snarl, and a scream, and one end of
a handcuff was on the wrist of each.

"Got you, Miss Rosie Edgburn! Got you, Señor Juan Alvarez!" he rapped
out sharply; then in a louder tone, as the Reverend Horace made a
bolt for the door: "Stop him, nab him, Mr. Narkom! Quick! Played sir,
played. Come in, Petrie; come in, Hammond. Gentlemen, here they are,
all three of them: Lieutenant Eric Edgburn, his daughter Rose,
and Señor Juan Alvarez, the three brute beasts who sent five men
to their death for the sake of a lode of sapphires and the devil's
lust for gain!"

"It's a lie!" flung out the girl who had been known as Rose Valmond.

"Oh, no, it's not, you vixen! You loathsome creature that prostituted
holy things and made a shield of religion to carry on a vampire's
deeds. Look here, you beast of blasphemy: I know the secret of this,"
he said, and walked over and laid his hand on the crucifix at
the head of the bed. "Petrie! round into the oratory with you.
There's a nob at the side of the prayer desk--press it when I shout.
Oh, no, Miss Edgburn; no, I shan't dance circles nor put my fingers
into my nose, nor bite the dust and die. Look how I dare it all. Now
Petrie, _now_!"

And lo! as he spoke, out of the nostrils of the figure on the cross
there rushed downward two streams of white vapour which beat upon
the pillows and upon him, smothering both in white dust.

"Face powder, Miss Edgburn, only face powder from your own little
case over there," he said. "I removed the devil's dust last night
when I was in this room alone."

She made him no reply--only, like a cornered wretch, screamed out
and fainted.

"Mr. Narkom, you have seen the method of administering the thing
which caused the death of those five men; it is now only fair that
you should know what that thing was," he said, turning to the
superintendent. "It is known by two names--Devil's Dust and Dust of
Death, and both suit it well. It is the fine, feathery powder
that grows on the young shoots of the bamboo tree--a favourite
method of secret killing with the natives of the Malay Peninsula
and those of Madagascar, the Philippines and Ceylon. When blown
into the nostrils of a living creature it produces first an awful
agony of suffocation, a feeling as though the brain is coming down
and exuding from the nostrils, then delirium, during which the
victim invariably falls on his face and bites the earth; then comes
death. Death without a trace, my friend, for the hellish dust all
but evaporates, and the slight sediment that remains is carried out
of the system by the spasm of enteric it produces. That is the
riddle's solution. As for the rest, those men were lured here by
letters--from Alvarez--telling them of the reef's great fortune, of
the necessity for coming at once and bringing their deeds with
them, and impressing upon them the possibility of being defrauded
if they breathed one word to a mortal soul about their leaving or
why. They came, they were invited to spend the night and to sleep
upon that accursed bed, and--the devil's dust did the rest. I traced
that out through poor Jim Peabody's sock. It was one of the blue
yarn kind that are given to the inmates of workhouses. I traced him
through that; and the others through the photographs. Each had been
known to have received a letter from London, and each had in turn
vanished without a word. Poor chaps! Poor unhappy chaps! Let us
hope, dear friend, that they have found 'the Place of Sapphires'
after all."

CHAPTER V

"How did I come to suspect the girl?" said Cleek, answering
Narkom's query, as they swung off through the darkness in the red
limousine, leaving Edgburn and his confederates in the hands of
the police. "Well, as a matter of fact, I did not suspect her at
all, in the beginning--her saintly reputation saved her from any
such thing as that. It was only when her father came in that I
knew. And later, I knew even better--when I saw that pretended
imbecile sitting there in that room; for the blundering fool had been
ass enough to kick off his slippers and sit there in his stocking
feet, and I spotted the Alvarez foot on the instant. Still, I
didn't know but what the girl herself might be an innocent victim--a
sort of dove in a vulture's nest--and it was not until I found that
scrap of wood from a sharpened lead pencil that I began to doubt
her. It was only when I promised that Barrington-Edwards should be
trapped, that I actually knew. The light that flamed in her eyes in
spite of her at that would have made an idiot understand. What's
that? What should I suspect from the finding of that scrap of
pencil? My dear Mr. Narkom, carry your mind back to that moment
when I found the stain on poor Jim Peabody's thumb, and then examined
the blade of his pocket knife. The marks on the latter showed
clearly that the man had sharpened a pencil with it--and, of
course, with the point of that pencil against the top of his
thumb. By the peculiar bronze-like shine of the streaks, and the
small particles of dust adhering to the knife blade, I felt persuaded
that the pencil was an indelible one--in short, one of those
which write a faint, blackish-lilac hue which, on the application
of moisture, turns to a vivid and indelible purple. The moisture
induced by the act of thrusting his forefingers up his nostrils to
allay the horrible sensation of the brain descending, which that
hellish powder produces, together with the perspiration which comes
with intense agony, had made such a change in the smears his thumb
and forefinger bore, and left no room for doubt that at the time he
was smitten he had either just begun or just concluded writing
something with an indelible pencil which he had but recently
sharpened. Poor wretch! he of all the lot had some one belonging
to him that was still living--his poor old mother. It is very fair to
suppose that, finding the Alvarez place so lavishly furnished, and
having hopes that great riches were yet to be his, he sat down on
that bed and began to write a few lines in his illiterate way to
that mother before wholly undressing and getting between the
sheets. The mark on his palm is a clear proof that when the
powder suddenly descended upon him he involuntarily closed his hand
on that letter and the perspiration transferred to his flesh the
shape of the scrawl upon which it rested. Pardon? How did I know
through that scrawl that I was really on the track, and that it
was the Bareva Reef that was at the bottom of the whole game? My
dear Mr. Narkom, I won't insult your intelligence by explaining
that. All you have to do is to turn that tracing upside down and
look _through_ it--or at it in a mirror--and you'll have the answer
for yourself. What's that? The parcel the girl gave Edgburn to
carry out on the pretext of taking it to an orphanage? Oh, that
was how they were slowly getting rid of the victims' clothes.
Cutting them up into little pieces and throwing them into the
river, I suppose, or if not----"

He stopped suddenly, his ear caught by a warning sound; then turned
in his seat and glanced through the little window at the back of the
limousine.

"I thought as much," he said, half aloud; then leaned forward,
caught up the pipe of the speaking tube, and signalled Lennard. "Look
sharp--taxi following us!" he said. "Put on a sudden spurt--that chap
will increase speed to keep pace with us--then pull up sharp and
let the other fellow's impetus carry him by before he can help
himself. Out with the light, Mr. Narkom--out with it quick!"

Both Lennard and his master followed instructions. Of a sudden the
lights flicked out, the car leapt forward with a bound, then pulled
up with a jerk that shook it from end to end. In that moment the
taxi in the rear whizzed by them, and Narkom, leaning forward to
look as it flashed past, saw seated within it the figure of Count
Waldemar of Mauravania.

"By James! Did you see that, Cleek?" he cried, and switched round
and made a grab for Cleek's arm.

But Cleek was not there. His seat was empty, and the door beside it
was swinging ajar.

"Well, I'll be jiggered!" exclaimed the superintendent, fairly
carried out of himself--for, even in his old Vanishing Cracksman's
days, when he had slipped the leash and eluded the police so often,
the man had not made a more adroit, more silent, more successful
getaway than this. "Of all the astonishing----! Gad, an eel's a
fool to him for slipping out of tight places. When did he go, I
wonder, and where?"

Never very strong on matters of detail, here curiosity tricked him
into absolute indiscretion. Sliding along the seat to the swinging
door he thrust it open and leaned out into the darkness, for a
purpose so evident that he who ran might read. That one who ran
_did_, he had good reason to understand in the next instant, for,
of a sudden, the taxi in advance checked its wild flight, swung
round with a noisy scroo-op, and pelted back until the two vehicles
stood cheek by jowl, so to speak, and the glare of its headlights
was pouring full force upon Mr. Narkom and into the interior of
the red limousine.

"Here! Dash your infernal impudence," began he, blinking up at
the driver through a glare which prevented him seeing that the
taxicab's leather blinds had been discreetly pulled down, and its
interior rendered quite invisible; but before he could add so much
as another word to his protest the chauffeur's voice broke in with
a blandness and an accent which told its own story.

"Dix mille pardons, m'sieur," it commenced, then pulled itself
up as if the owner of it had suddenly recollected himself--and
added abruptly in a farcical attempt to imitate the jargon of the
fast-disappearing London cabby. "Keep of the 'air on, ole coq!
Only wantin' to arsk of the question civile. Lost my bloomin' way.
Put a cove on to the short cut to the 'Igh Street will yer, like a
blessed Christian? I dunno where I are."

Mr. Narkom was not suffered to make reply. Before he had more
than grasped the fact that the speaker was undeniably a Frenchman,
Lennard--out of the range of that dazzling light--had made the
discovery that he was yet more undeniably a Frenchman of that class
from which the Apaches are recruited, and stepped into the breach
with astonishing adroitness.

"Oh, that's the trouble, is it?" he interposed. "My hat! Why, of
course we'll put you on the way. Wot's more, we'll take you along
and show you--won't we, guv'ner, eh?--so as you won't go astray till
you gets there. 'Eads in and door shut, Superintendent," bringing
the limousine around until it pointed in the same direction as the
taxicab. "Now then, straight ahead, and foller yer nose, Jules;
we'll be rubbin' shoulders with you the whole blessed way. And
as the Dook of Wellington said to Napoleon Bonaparte, 'None of
your larks, you blighter--you're a-comin' along with me!'"

That he was, was a condition of affairs so inevitable that the
chauffeur made no attempt to evade it; merely put on speed and
headed straight for the distant High Street for the purpose of
getting rid of his escort as soon as possible; and Lennard, putting
on speed, likewise, and keeping pace with him, ran him neck and neck,
until the heath was left far and away behind, the darkness gave
place to a glitter of street lamps, the lonely roads to populous
thoroughfares, and the way was left clear for Cleek to get off
unfollowed and unmolested.

CHAPTER VI

Screened by that darkness, and close sheltered by the matted gorse
which fringed and dotted the expanse of the nearby heath, he had been
an interested witness to the entire proceeding.

"Played, my lad, played!" he commented, putting his thoughts into
mumbled words of laughing approval, as Lennard, taking the taxicab
under guard, escorted it and its occupants out of the immediate
neighbourhood; then, excessive caution prompting him to quell even
this little ebullition, he shut up like an oyster and neither
spoke, nor moved, nor made any sound until the two vehicles were
represented by nothing but a purring noise dwindling away into
the distance.

When that time came, however, he rose, and facing the heath, forged
out across its mist-wrapped breadth with that long, swinging,
soldierly stride peculiar unto him, his forehead puckered with
troubled thought, his jaw clamped, and his lips compressed until
his mouth seemed nothing more than a bleak slit gashed in a gray,
unpleasant-looking mask.

But after a while the night and the time and the place worked their
own spell, and the troubled look dropped away; the dull eyes lighted,
the grim features softened, and the curious crooked smile that was
Nature's birth-gift to him broke down the rigid lines of the "bleak
slit" and looped up one corner of his mouth.

It was magic ground, this heath--a place thick set as the Caves of
Manheur with the Sapphires of Memory--and to a nature such as his
these things could not but appeal.

Here Dollops had come into his life--a starveling, an outcast;
derelict even in the very morning time of youth--a bit of human
wreckage that another ten minutes would have seen stranded forever
upon the reefs of crime.

Here, too--on that selfsame night, when the devil had been cheated,
and the boy had gone, and they two stood alone together in the mist
and darkness--he had first laid aside the mask of respectability and
told Ailsa Lorne the truth about himself! Of his Apache times--of
his Vanishing Cracksman's days--and, in the telling, had watched
the light die out of her dear eyes and dread of him darken them,
when she knew.

But not for always, thank God! For, in later days--when Time had
lessened the shock, when she came to know him better, when the
threads of their two lives had become more closely woven, and the
hope had grown to be something more than a mere possibility....

He laughed aloud, remembering, and with a sudden rush of animal
spirits twitched off his hat, flung it up and caught it as it fell,
after the manner of a happy boy.

God, what a world--what a glorious, glorious world! All things were
possible in it if a man but walked straight and knew how to wait.

Well, please God, a part, at least, of _his_ long waiting would be
over in another month. _She_ would be back in England then--her
long visit to the Hawksleys ended and nothing before her now but
the pleasant excitement of trousseau days. For the coming autumn
would see the final act of restitution made, the last Vanishing
Cracksman debt paid, to the uttermost farthing; and when that time
came.... He flung up his hat again and shouted from sheer excess of
joy, and forged on through the mist and darkness whistling.

His way lay across the great common to the Vale of Health district,
and thence down a slanting road and a sloping street to the
Hampstead Heath Station of the Tube Railway, and he covered the
distance to such good effect that half-past eleven found him
"down under," swaying to the rhythmic movement of an electric
train and arrowing through the earth at a lively clip.

Ten minutes later he changed over to yet another underground system,
swung on for half an hour or so through gloom and bad air and the
musty smell of a damp tunnel before the drop of the land and the
rise of the roadbed carried the train out into the open and the air
came fresh and sweet and pure, as God made it, over field and flood
and dewy garden spaces; and away to the west a prickle of lights
on a quiet river told where the stars mirrored themselves in the
glass of Father Thames.

At a toy station in the hush and loneliness of the pleasant country
ways his long ride came to an end at last, and he swung off into
the balm and fragrance of the night to face a two-mile walk along
quiet, shadow-filled lanes and over wet wastes of young bracken to
a wee little house in the heart of a green wilderness, with a
high-walled, old-world garden surrounding it, and, in the far
background, a gloom of woodland smeared in darker purple against the
purple darkness of the sky.

No light shone out from the house to greet him--no light could
come from behind that screening wall, unless it were one set in an
upper window--yet he was certain the place was not deserted; for,
as he came up out of the darkness, catlike of tread and catlike
of ear, he was willing to swear that he could catch the sound of
some one moving about restlessly in the shadow of that high, brick
wall--and the experiences of the night made him cautious of things
that moved in darkness.

He stopped short, and remained absolutely still for half a minute,
then, stooping, swished his hand through the bracken in excellent
imitation of a small animal running, and shrilled out a note that
was uncannily like the death squeal of a stoat-caught rabbit.

"Gawd's truth, guv'ner, is it you at last, sir? And me never seein'
nor hearin' a blessed thing!" spoke a voice in answer, from the
wall's foot; then a latch clicked and, as Cleek rose to his feet, a
garden door swung inward, a rectangle of light shone in the darkness,
and silhouetted against it stood Dollops.

"What are you doing out here at this time of night, you young monkey?
Don't you know it's almost one o'clock?" said Cleek, as he went
forward and joined the boy.

"Don't I know it, says you? Don't I _just_!" he gave back. "There
aren't a minute since the night come on that I haven't counted,
sir--not a bloomin' one; and if you hadn't turned up just as you
did----Well, let that pass, as the Suffragette said when she heaved
'arf a brick through the shop window. Gawd's truth, guv'ner, do
you realise that you've been gone since yesterday afternoon and
I haven't heard a word from you in all that time?"

"Well, what of that? It's not the first time by dozens that I've
done the same thing. Why should it worry you at this late day? Look
here, my young man, you're not developing 'nerves' are you? Because,
if you are----Turn round and let's have a look at you! Why, you
are as pale as a ghost, you young beggar, and shaking like a leaf.
Anything wrong with you, old chap?"

"Not as I knows of," returned Dollops, making a brave attempt to
smile and be his old happy-go-lucky, whimsical self, albeit he wasn't
carrying it off quite successfully, for there was a droop to his
smile and a sort of whimper underlying his voice, and Cleek's keen
eyes saw that his hand groped about blindly in its effort to find
the fastenings of the garden door.

"Leastwise, nothing as matters now that you are here, sir. And I _am_
glad yer back, guv'ner--Lawd, yuss! 'Nothin' like company to buck
you up,' as the bull said when he tossed the tinker; so of course----"

"Here! You let those fastenings alone. I'll attend to them!" rapped
in Cleek's voice with a curious note of alarm in it, as he moved
briskly forward and barred and locked the wall door. "If I didn't
know that eating, not drinking, was your particular failing----"

Here he stopped, his half-uttered comment cut into by a bleating
cry, and he screwed round to face a startling situation. For there
was Dollops, leaning heavily against a flowering almond tree, his
face like a dead face for colour, and his fingers clawing frantically
at the lower part of his waistcoat, doubling and twisting in the
throes of an internal convulsion.

The gravelled pathway gave forth two sharp scrunches, and Cleek was
just in time to catch him as he lurched forward and sprawled heavily
against him. The man's arms closed instinctively about the twisting,
sweat-drenched, helpless shape, and with great haste and infinite
tenderness gathered it up and carried it into the house; but he
had scarcely more than laid the boy upon a sofa and lit the lamp
of the small apartment which served them as a general living-room,
when all the agony of uncertainty which beset his mind regarding
the genesis of this terrifying attack vanished in a sudden rush of
enlightenment.

All that was left of a bounteous and strikingly diversified afternoon
tea still littered the small round dining table, and there, on one
plate, lay the shells of two crabs, on another, the remains of a
large rhubarb tart, on a third, the skins of five bananas leaning
coquettishly up against the lid of an open pickle jar, and hard by
there was a pint tumbler with the white blur of milk dimming it.

"Good Lord! The young anaconda!" blurted out Cleek, as he stood
and stared at this appalling array. "No wonder, no wonder!" Then he
turned round on his heel, looked at the writhing and moaning boy,
and in a sudden fever of doing, peeled off his coat, rolled up his
sleeves, and made a bolt for the kitchen stove, the hot-water kettle,
and the medicine chest.

The result of Master Dollops' little gastronomic experiment scarcely
needs to be recorded. It is sufficient to say that he had the time
of his life that night; that he kept Cleek busy every minute for
the next twenty-four hours wringing out flannels in hot water and
dosing him with homely remedies, and that when he finally came
through the siege was as limp as a wet newspaper and as feeble as a
good many dry ones.

"What you need to pull yourself together is a change, you reckless
young ostrich--a week's roughing it in the open country by field and
stream, and as many miles as possible from so much as the odour of
a pastry cook's shop," said Cleek, patting him gently upon the
shoulder. "A nice sort of assistant you are--keeping a man out
of his bed for twenty-four hours, with his heart in his mouth and
his hair on end, you young beggar. Now, now, now! None of your
blubbing! Sit tight while I run down and make some gruel for you.
After that I'll nip out and 'phone through to the Yard and tell
Mr. Narkom to have somebody look up a caravan that can be hired, and
we'll be off for a week's 'gypsying' in Yorkshire, old chap."

He did--coming back later with a piece of surprising news. For
it just so happened that the idea of a week's holiday-making, a
week's rambling about the green lanes, the broad moors, and through
the wild gorges of the West Riding, and living the simple life
in a caravan, appealed to Mr. Maverick Narkom as being the most
desirable thing in the world at that moment, and he made haste to
ask Cleek's permission to share the holiday with him. As nothing
could have been more to his great ally's liking, the matter was
settled forthwith. A caravan was hired by telegram to Sheffield, and
at ten the next morning the little party turned its back upon
London and fared forth to the pleasant country lands, the charm of
laughing waters, and the magic that hides in trees.

For five days they led an absolutely idyllic life; loafing in green
wildernesses and sleeping in the shadow of whispering woods; and
this getting back to nature proved as much of a tonic to the two men
as to the boy himself--refreshing both mind and body, putting red
blood into their veins, and breathing the breath of God into their
nostrils.

Having amply provisioned the caravan before starting, they went no
nearer to any human habitation than they were obliged to do in
passing from one district to another; and one day was so exact a
pattern of the next that its history might have stood for them all:
up with the dawn and the birds and into woodland pool or tree-shaded
river; then gathering fuel and making a fire and cooking breakfast;
then washing the utensils, harnessing the horses, and moving on
again--sometimes Cleek driving, sometimes Narkom, sometimes the
boy--stopping when they were hungry to prepare lunch just as they
had prepared breakfast, then forging on again until they found
some tree-hedged dell or bosky wood where they might spend the
night, crooned to sleep by the wind in the leaves, and watched
over by the sentinel stars.

So they had spent the major part of the week, and so they might
have spent it all, but that chance chose to thrust them suddenly
out of idleness into activity, and to bring them--here, in this
Arcadia--face to face again with the evils of mankind and the harsh
duty of the law.

It had gone nine o'clock on that fifth night when a curious thing
happened: they had halted for the night by the banks of a shallow,
chattering stream which flowed through a wayside spinney, beyond
whose clustering treetops they had seen, before the light failed,
the castellated top of a distant tower and, farther afield, the
weathercock on an uplifting church spire; they had supped and
were enjoying their ease--the two men sprawling at full length on
the ground enjoying a comfortable smoke, while Dollops, with a
mouth harmonica, was doing "Knocked 'Em in the Old Kent Road," his
back against a tree, his eyes upturned in ecstasy, his long legs
stretched out upon the turf, and his feet crossed one over the
other--and all about them was peace; all the sordid, money-grubbing,
crime-stained world seemed millions of miles away, when, of a
sudden, there came a swift rush of bodies--trampling on dead
leaves and brushing against live ones--then a voice cried out
commandingly, "Surrender yourselves in the name of the king!" and
scrambling to a sitting position, they looked up to find themselves
confronted by a constable, a gamekeeper, and two farm labourers--the
one with drawn truncheon and the other three with cocked guns.

CHAPTER VII

"Hullo, I say!" began Mr. Narkom, in amazement. "Why, what the
dickens----" But he was suffered to get no farther.

"You mind your P's and Q's! I warn you that anything you say will be
used against you!" interjected sharply and authoritatively the
voice of the constable. "Hawkins, you and Marlow keep close guard
over these chaps while me and Mr. Simpkins looks round for the
animal. I said it would be the work of gypsies, didn't I now, Mr.
Simpkins?" addressing the gamekeeper. "Come on and let's have a
look for the beast. Keep eyes peeled and gun at full cock, Mr.
Simpkins, and give un both barrels if un makes to spring at us.
This be a sharp capture, Mr. Simpkins--what?"

"Aye, but un seems to take it uncommon cool, Mr. Nippers--one of
'em's larfiin' fit to bust hisself!" replied the gamekeeper as
Cleek slapped both thighs, and throwing back his head, voiced an
appreciative guffaw. "Un doan't look much loike gypsies either
from t' little as Ah can see of 'em in this tomfool loight. Wait
a bit till Ah scoop up an armful o' leaves and throw 'em on the
embers o' fire yon."

He did so forthwith; and the moment the dry leaves fell on the
remnants of the fire which the caravanners had used to cook their
evening meal there was a gush of aromatic smoke, a sudden puff, and
then a broad ribbon of light rushed upward and dispelled every trace
of darkness. And by the aid of that ribbon of light Mr. Nippers
saw something which made him almost collapse with astonishment
and chagrin.

The great of the world may, and often do, forget their meetings
with the small fry, but the small fry never cease to remember their
meetings with the great, or to treasure a vivid remembrance of that
immortal day when they were privileged to rub elbows with the elect.

Five years had passed since Mrs. Maverick Narkom, seeking a place
wherein to spend the summer holidays with the little Narkoms and
their nurses, had let her choice fall upon Winton-Old-Bridges
and had dwelt there for two whole months. Three times during her
sojourn her liege lord had come down for a week-end with his wife
and children, and during one of these brief visits, meeting Mr.
Ephraim Nippers, the village constable in the public highway, he
had deigned to stop and speak to the man and to present him with a
sixpenny cigar.

Times had changed since then; Mr. Nippers was now head constable
for the district, but he still kept that cigar under a glass
shade on the drawing-room whatnot, and he still treasured a vivid
recollection of the great man who had given it to him and whom he
now saw sitting on the ground with his coat off and his waistcoat
unbuttoned, his moustache uncurled, wisps of dried grass clinging
to his tousled hair, and all the dignity of office conspicuous by its
absence.

"Oh, lummy!" said Mr. Nippers with a gulp. "Put down the hammers of
them guns, you two--put 'em down quick! It's Mr. Narkom--Mr. Maverick
Narkom, superintendent at Scotland Yard!"

"Hullo!" exclaimed Mr. Narkom, shading his eyes from the firelight
and leaning forward to get a clearer view of the speaker. "How the
dickens do you know that, my man? And who the dickens are you,
anyway? Can't say that I remember ever seeing your face before."

Mr. Nippers hastened to explain that little experience of five years
ago; but the circumstance which had impressed itself so deeply upon
his memory had passed entirely out of the superintendent's.

"Oh, that's it, is it?" said he. "Can't say that I recall the
occasion; but Mrs. Narkom certainly did stop at Winton-Old-Bridges
some four or five summers ago, so of course it's possible. By the
way, my man, what caused you to make this sudden descent upon us? And
what are these chaps who are with you bearing arms for? Anything up?"

"Oh, lummy, sir, yes! A murder's just been committed--leastwise it's
only just been discovered; but it can't have been long since it _was_
committed, Mr. Narkom, for Miss Renfrew, who found him, sir, and
give the alarm, she says as the poor dear gentleman was alive at a
quarter to eight, 'cause she looked into the room at that time to
ask him if there was anything he wanted, and he spoke up and told
her no, and went on with his figgerin' just the same as usual."

"As usual?" said Cleek. "Why do you say 'as usual,' my friend? Was
the man an accountant of some sort?"

"Lummy! no, sir. A great inventor is what he is--or was, poor
gentleman. Reckon you must 'a' heard of un some time or another--most
everybody has. Nosworth is the name, sir--Mr. Septimus Nosworth of
the Round House. You could see the tower of it over yon if you
was to step out into the road and get clear of these trees."

Cleek was on his feet like a flash.

"Not the great Septimus Nosworth?" he questioned eagerly. "Not
the man who invented Lithamite?--the greatest authority on high
explosives in England? Not that Septimus Nosworth, surely?"

"Aye--him's the one, poor gentleman. I thought it like as the name
would be familiar, sir. A goodish few have heard of un, one way and
another."

"Yes," acquiesced Cleek. "Lithamite carried his name from one end
of the globe to the other; and his family affairs came into unusual
prominence in consequence. Widower, wasn't he?--hard as nails and
bitter as gall. Had an only son, hadn't he?--a wild young blade who
went the pace: took up with chorus girls, music hall ladies, and
persons of that stripe, and got kicked out from under the parental
roof in consequence."

"Lummy, now! think of you a-knowin' about all that!" said Mr.
Nippers, in amazement. "But then, your bein' with Mr. Narkom and
him bein' what he is--why, of course! Scotland Yard it do know
everything, I'm told, sir."

"Yes--it reads the papers occasionally, Mr. Nippers," said Cleek. "I
may take it from your reply, may I not, that I am correct regarding
Mr. Septimus Nosworth's son?"

"Indeed, yes, sir--right as rain. Leastwise, from what I've heard. I
never see the young gentleman, myself. Them things you mention
happened before Mr. Nosworth come to live in these parts--a matter
of some four years or more ago. Alwuss had his laboratory here,
sir--built it on the land he leased from Sir Ralph Droger's father
in the early sixties--and used to come over frequent and shut
hisself in the Round House for days on end; but never come here to
live until after that flare-up with Master Harry. Come then and
built livin' quarters beside the Round House and, after a piece,
fetched Miss Renfrew and old Patty Dax over to live with un."

"Miss Renfrew and old Patty Dax? Who are they?"

"Miss Renfrew is his niece, sir--darter of a dead sister. Old Patty
Dax, she war the cook. I dunno what her be now, though--her died
six months ago and un hired Mistress Armroyd in her place. French
piece, her am, though bein' widder of a Lancashire man, and though I
doan't much fancy foreigners nor their ways, this I will say: her
keeps the house like a pin and her cookin's amazin' tasty--indeed,
yes."

"You are an occasional caller in the servants' hall, I see, Mr.
Nippers," said Cleek, serenely, as he took up his coat and shook
it, preparatory to putting it on. "I think, Mr. Narkom, that in
the interests of the public at large it will be well for some one
a little more efficient than the local constabulary to look into
this case, so, if you don't mind making yourself a trifle more
presentable, it will be as well for us to get Mr. Nippers to show
us the way to the scene of the tragedy. While you are doing it I
will put a few 'Headland' questions to our friend here if you don't
mind assuring him that I am competent to advise."

"Right you are, old chap," said Narkom, taking his cue. "Nippers,
this is Mr. George Headland, one of the best of my Yard detectives.
He'll very likely give you a tip or two in the matter of detecting
crimes, if you pay attention to what he says."

Nippers "paid attention" forthwith. The idea of being in consultation
with any one connected with Scotland Yard tickled his very soul;
and, in fancy, he already saw his name getting into the newspapers
of London, and his fame spreading far beyond his native weald.

"I won't trouble you for the full details of the murder, Mr.
Nippers," said Cleek. "Those, I fancy, this Miss Renfrew will be
able to supply when I see her. For the present, tell me: how many
other occupants does the house hold beyond these two of whom you
have spoken--Miss Renfrew and the cook, Mrs. Armroyd?"

"None, sir, but the scullery maid, Emily, and the parlour maid,
Clark. But both of them is out to-night, sir--havin' went to a
concert over at Beattie Corners. A friend of Mistress Armroyd's sent
her two tickets, and her not bein' able to go herself, her thought
it a pity for 'em to be wasted, so her give 'em to the maids."

"I see, no male servants at all, then?"

"No, sir; not one. There's Jones--the handy man--as comes in mornin's
to do the rough work and the haulin' and carryin' and things
like that; and there's the gardener and Mr. Kemper--him as is Mr.
Nosworth's assistant in the laboratory, sir--but none of 'em is
ever in the house after five o'clock. Set against havin' men sleep
in the house was Mr. Nosworth--swore as never another should after
him and Master Harry had their fallin' out. Why, sir, he was
that bitter he'd never even allow Mr. Charles to set foot in the
place, just because him and Master Harry used to be friends--which
makes it precious hard on Miss Renfrew, I can tell you."

"As how? Is this 'Mr. Charles' connected with Miss Renfrew in any
way?"

"Lummy! yes, sir--he's her young man. Been sweet on each other
ever since they was in pinafores; but never had no chance to marry
because Mr. Charles--Mr. Charles Drummond is his full name, sir--he
hasn't one shillin' to rub against another, and Miss Renfrew she's a
little worse off than him. Never gets nothin', I'm told, for keepin'
house for her uncle--just her food and lodgin' and clothes--and
her slavin' like a nigger for him the whole blessed time. Keeps
his books and superintends the runnin' of the house, she do, but
never gets a brass farthin' for it, poor girl. I don't like to
speak ill of the dead, Mr. Headland, sir, but this I must say: A rare
old skinflint was Mr. Septimus Nosworth--wouldn't part with a
groat unless un was forced to. But praise be, her'll get her dues
now; fegs, yes! unless old skinflint went and changed his will
without her knowin'."

"Oho!" said Cleek, with a strong rising inflection. "His will was
made in Miss Renfrew's favour, was it?"

"Aye. That's why her come and put up with un and all his
hardheartedness--denyin' her the pleasure o' ever seein' her young
man just because him and Master Harry had been friends and
playmates when t' pair of un was just boys in knickers and broad
collars. There be a stone heart for you."

"Rather. Now one more question: I think you said it was Miss Renfrew
who gave the alarm when the murder was discovered, Mr. Nippers. How
did she give it and to whom?"

"Eh, now! to me and Mistress Armroyd, of course. Me and her war
sittin' in the kitchen havin' a bite o' supper at the time. Gorham,
he war there, too, in the beginnin'; but un didn't stop, of
course--'twouldn't 'a' done for the pair of us to be off duty
together."

"Oh! is Gorham a constable, then?"

"Aye--under constable: second to me. Got un appointed six months
ago. Him had just gone a bit of a time when Miss Renfrew come
rushin' in and shrieked out about the murder; but he heard the
rumpus and came poundin' back, of course. I dunno what I'd 'a' done
if un hadn't, for Miss Renfrew her went from one faintin' fit to
another--'twas just orful. Gorham helped Ah to carry her up to
the sittin'-room, wheer Mistress Armroyd burnt feathers under her
nose, and when we'd got her round a bit we all three went outside
and round to the laboratory. That's when we first see the prints of
the animal's feet. Mistress Armroyd spied 'em first--all over the
flower bed just under the laboratory window."

"Oho! then that is what you meant when you alluded to an 'animal'
when you pounced down upon us, was it? I see. One word more: what
kind of an animal was it? Or couldn't you tell from the marks?"

"No, sir, I couldn't--nobody could unless it might be Sir Ralph
Droger. He'll be like to, if anybody. Keeps all sorts of animals and
birds and things in great cages in Droger Park, does Sir Ralph. One
thing I can swear to, though, sir: they warn't like the footprints
of any animal as I ever see. Theer be a picture o' St. Jarge and the
Dragon on the walls o' Town Hall at Birchampton, Mr. Headland, sir,
and them footprints is more like the paws of that dragon than
anything else I can call to mind. Scaly and clawed they is--like
the thing as made 'em was part bird and part beast--and they're a
good twelve inches long, every one of 'em."

"Hum-m-m! That's extraordinary. Deeply imprinted, are they?"

"Lummy! yes, sir. The animal as made 'em must have weighed ten or
twelve stone at least. Soon as I see them, sir, I knowed I had my
work cut out, so I left Gorham in charge of the house, rattled up
these two men and Mr. Simpkins, here--which all three is employed
at Droger Park, sir--and set out hot foot to look for gypsies."

"Why?"

"'Cause Mistress Armroyd she says as she see a gypsy lurkin' round
the place just before dark, sir; and he had a queer thing like a
bear's muzzle in his hand."

"Ah, I see!" said Cleek; and gave one of his odd smiles as he
turned round and looked at the superintendent. "All ready, Mr.
Narkom? Good! Let us go over to the Round House and investigate
this interesting case. Dollops, stop where you are and look after
the caravan. If we are away more than a couple of hours, tumble
into bed and go to sleep. We may be a short time or we may be a
long one. In affairs like this one never knows."

* * * * *

"Any ideas, old chap?" queried Narkom in a whisper as they forged
along together in the wake of Nippers and his three companions.

"Yes--a great many," answered Cleek. "I am particularly anxious, Mr.
Narkom, to have a look at those footprints and an interview with Miss
Renfrew. I want to meet that young lady very much indeed."

CHAPTER VIII

Twenty minutes later his desires in that respect were granted; and,
having been introduced by Mr. Nippers to the little gathering in
the sitting-room of the house of disaster as "a friend of mine from
Scotland Yard, miss," he found himself in the presence of one of
those meek-faced, dove-eyed, "mousy" little bodies who seem born to
be "patient Griseldas"; and in looking at her he was minded of the
description of "Lady Jane" in the poem:

"Her pulse was slow, milk white her skin--
She had not blood enough to sin."

Years of repression had told upon her, and she looked older than she
really was--so old and so dragged out, in fact, that Mrs. Armroyd,
the cook, appeared youthful and attractive in contrast. Indeed,
it was no wonder that Mr. Ephraim Nippers had been attracted by
that good soul; for, although her hair was streaked with gray, and
her figure was of the "sack of flour" order, and her eyes were
assisted in their offices by a pair of steel-bowed spectacles, her
face was still youthful in contour, and Mr. Narkom, looking at
her, concluded that at twenty-four or twenty-five she must have
been a remarkably pretty and remarkably fascinating woman. What
Cleek's thoughts were upon that subject it is impossible to record;
for he merely gave her one look on coming into the room, and then
took no further notice of her whatsoever.

"Indeed, Mr. Headland, I am glad--I am very, very glad--that fortune
has sent you into this neighbourhood at this terrible time," said
Miss Renfrew when Cleek was introduced. "I do not wish to say
anything disparaging of Mr. Nippers, but you can see for yourself
how unfitted such men as he and his assistant are to handle an
affair of this importance. Indeed, I cannot rid my mind of the
thought that if more competent police were on duty here the murder
would not have happened. In short, that the assassin, whoever he
maybe, counted upon the blundering methods of these men as his
passport to safety."

"My own thought precisely," said Cleek. "Mr. Nippers has given me
a brief outline of the affair--would you mind giving me the full
details, Miss Renfrew? At what hour did Mr. Nosworth go into his
laboratory? Or don't you know, exactly?"

"Yes, I know to the fraction of a moment, Mr. Headland. I was looking
at my watch at the time. It was exactly eight minutes past seven. We
had been going over the monthly accounts together, when he suddenly
got up, and without a word walked through that door over there. It
leads to a covered passage connecting the house proper with the
laboratory. That, as you may have heard, is a circular building with
a castellated top. It was built wholly and solely for the carrying on
of his experiments. There is but one floor and one window--a very
small one about six feet from the ground, and on the side of the
Round House which looks away from this building. Nothing but the door
to that is on this side, light being supplied to the interior by a
roof made entirely of heavy corrugated glass."

"I see. Then the place is like a huge tube."

"Exactly--and lined entirely with chilled steel. Such few wooden
appliances as are necessary for the equipment of the place are
thickly coated with asbestos. I made no comment when my uncle rose
and walked in there without a word. I never did. For the past six
or seven months he had been absorbed in working out the details of a
new invention; and I had become used to his jumping up like that and
leaving me. We never have supper in this house--my uncle always
called it a useless extravagance. Instead, we defer tea until six
o'clock and make that the final meal of the day. It was exactly
five minutes to seven when I finished my accounts, and as I had had
a hard day of it, I decided to go to bed early, after having first
taken a walk as far as the old bridge where I hoped that somebody
would be waiting for me."

"I know," said Cleek, gently. "I have heard the story. It would be
Mr. Charles Drummond, would it not?"

"Yes. He was not there, however. Something must have prevented his
coming."

"Hum-m-m! Go on, please."

"Before leaving the house, it occurred to me that I ought to look
into the laboratory and see if there was anything my uncle would
be likely to need for the night, as I intended to go straightway to
bed on my return. I did so. He was sitting at his desk, immediately
under the one window of which I have spoken, and with his back
to me, when I looked in. He answered my inquiry with a curt
'No--nothing. Get out and don't worry me!' I immediately shut the
door and left him, returning here by way of the covered passage and
going upstairs to make some necessary changes in my dress for the
walk to the old bridge. When I came down, ready for my journey, I
looked at the clock on the mantel over there. It was exactly
seventeen minutes to eight o'clock. I had been a little longer in
dressing than I had anticipated being; so, in order to save time
in getting to the trysting place, I concluded to make a short cut
by going out of the rear door and crossing diagonally through our
grounds instead of going by the public highway as usual. I had
scarcely more than crossed the threshold when I ran plump into
Constable Gorham. As he is rather a favourite with good Mrs.
Armroyd here, I fancied that he had been paying her a visit, and
was just coming away from the kitchen. Instead, he rather startled me
by stating that he had seen something which he thought best to come
round and investigate. In short, that, as he was patrolling the
highway, he had seen a man vault over the wall of our grounds
and, bending down, dart out of sight like a hare. He was almost
positive that that man was Sir Ralph Droger. Of course that
frightened me almost out of my wits."

"Why?"

"There was bad blood between my uncle and Sir Ralph Droger--bitter,
bad blood. As you perhaps know, my uncle held this ground on a life
lease from the Droger estate. That is to say, so long as he lived
or refused to vacate that lease, no Droger could oust him nor yet
lift one spadeful of earth from the property."

"Does Sir Ralph desire to do either?"

"He desires to do both. Borings secretly made have manifested the
fact that both Barnsley thick-coal and iron ore underlie the place.
Sir Ralph wishes to tear down the Round House and this building and
to begin mining operations. My uncle, who has been offered the full
value of every stick and stone, has always obstinately refused to
budge one inch or to lessen the lease by one half hour. 'It is for
the term of my life,' he has always said, 'and for the term of my
life I'll hold it!'"

"Oho!" said Cleek; and then puckered up his lips as if about to
whistle.

"Under such circumstances," went on Miss Renfrew, "it was only
natural that I should be horribly frightened, and only too willing
to act upon the constable's suggestion that we at once look into
the Round House and see if everything was right with my uncle."

"Why should the constable suggest that?"

"Everybody in the neighbourhood knows of the bitter ill feeling
existing between the two men; so, of course, it was only natural."

"Hum-m-m! Yes! Just so. Did you act on Constable Gorham's suggestion,
then?"

"Yes. I led the way in here and then up the covered passage to the
laboratory and opened the door. My uncle was sitting exactly as he
had been when I looked in before--his back to me and his face to
the window--but although he did not turn, it was evident that he
was annoyed by my disturbing him, for he growled angrily, 'What the
devil are you coming in here and disturbing me like this for, Jane?
Get out and leave me alone.'"

"Hum-m-m!" said Cleek, drawing down his brows and pinching his chin.
"Any mirrors in the Round House?"

"Mirrors? No, certainly not, Mr. Headland. Why?"

"Nothing--only that I was wondering, if as you say, he never turned
and you never spoke, how in the world he knew that it really _was_
you, that's all."

"Oh, I see what you mean," said Miss Renfrew, knotting up her brows.
"It does seem a little peculiar when one looks at it in that way. I
never thought of it before. Neither can I explain it, Mr. Headland,
any more than to say that I suppose he took it for granted. And,
as it happened, he was right. Besides, as you will remember, I
had intruded upon him only a short time before."

"Quite so," said Cleek. "That's what makes it appear stranger than
ever. Under the circumstances one might have expected him to say
_not_ 'What are you coming in here for,' but, 'What are you coming
in for _again_.' Still, of course, there's no accounting for little
lapses like that. Go on, please--what next?"

"Why, of course I immediately explained what Constable Gorham had
said, and why I had looked in. To which he replied, 'The man's an
ass. Get out!' Upon which I closed the door, and the constable and I
went away at once."

"Constable there with you during it all, then?"

"Yes, certainly--in the covered passage, just behind me. He saw and
heard everything; though, of course, neither of us actually entered
the laboratory itself. There was really no necessity when we knew
that my uncle was safe and sound, you see."

"Quite so," agreed Cleek. "So you shut the door and went away--and
then what?"

"Constable Gorham went back to his beat, and I flew as fast as I
could to meet Mr. Drummond. It is only a short way to the old bridge
at best, and by taking that short cut through the grounds, I was
there in less than ten minutes. And by half-past eight I was back
here in a greater state of terror than before."

"And why? Were you so much alarmed that Mr. Drummond did not keep
the appointment?"

"No. That did not worry me at all. He is often unable to keep his
appointments with me. He is filling the post of private secretary
to a large company promoter, and his time is not his own. What
terrified me was that, after waiting a few minutes for him, I
heard somebody running along the road, and a few moments later
Sir Ralph Droger flew by me as if he were being pursued. Under
ordinary circumstances I should have thought that he was getting
into training for the autumn sports (he is, you may know, very keen
on athletics, and holds the County Club's cup for running and
jumping), but when I remembered what Constable Gorham had said, and
saw that Sir Ralph was coming from the direction of this house, all
my wits flew; I got into a sort of panic and almost collapsed with
fright."

"And all because the man was coming from the direction of this house?"

"Not that alone," she answered with a shudder. "I have said that
I should under ordinary circumstances have thought he was merely
training for the autumn sports--for, you see, he was in a running
costume of white cotton stuff and his legs were bare from the knee
down--but as he shot past me in the moonlight I caught sight of
something like a huge splash of blood on his clothes, and coupling
that with the rest I nearly went out of my senses. It wasn't
until long afterward I recollected that the badge of the County
Club is the winged foot of Mercury wrought in brilliant scarlet
embroidery. To me, just then, that thing of red was blood--my
uncle's blood--and I ran and ran and ran until I got back here to
the house and flew up the covered passage and burst into the Round
House. He was sitting there still--just as he had been sitting
before. But he didn't call out to me this time; he didn't reprove me
for disturbing him; didn't make one single movement, utter one single
sound. And when I went to him I knew why. He was dead--stone dead!
The face and throat of him were torn and rent as if some furious
animal had mauled him, and there were curious yellow stains upon his
clothes. That's all, Mr. Headland. I don't know what I did nor
where I went from the moment I rushed shrieking from that room
until I came to my senses and found myself in this one with dear,
kind Mrs. Armroyd here bending over me and doing all in her power
to soothe and to comfort me."

"There, there, cherie, you shall not more distress yourself. It is
of a hardness too great for the poor mind to bear," put in Mrs.
Armroyd herself at this, bending over the sofa as she spoke and
softly smoothing the girl's hair. "It is better she should be at
peace for a little, is it not, monsieur?"

"Very much better, madame," replied Cleek, noting how softly her hand
fell, and how gracefully it moved over the soft hair and across the
white forehead. "No doubt the major part of what still remains to be
told, you in the goodness of your heart, will supply----"

"Of a certainty, monsieur, of a certainty."

"--But for the present," continued Cleek, finishing the interrupted
sentence, "there still remains a question or two which must be
asked, and which only Miss Renfrew herself can answer. As those are
of a private and purely personal nature, madame, would it be asking
too much----" He gave his shoulders an eloquent Frenchified shrug,
looked up at her after the manner of her own countrymen, and let
the rest of the sentence go by default.

"Madame" looked at him and gave her little hands an airy and a
graceful flirt.

"Of a certainty, monsieur," she said, with charming grace. "_Cela
m'est egal_," and walked away with a step remarkably light and
remarkably graceful for one of such weight and generous dimensions.

"Miss Renfrew," said Cleek, sinking his voice and looking her
straight in the eyes, as soon as Mrs. Armroyd had left them, "Miss
Renfrew, tell me something please: Have you any suspicion regarding
the identity or the purpose of the person who murdered your uncle?"

"Not in the slightest, Mr. Headland. Of course, in the beginning, my
thoughts flew at once to Sir Ralph Droger, but I now see how absurd
it is to think that such as he----"

"I am not even hinting at Sir Ralph Droger," interposed Cleek. "Two
other people in the world have a 'motive' quite as strong as any
that might be assigned to him. You, of course, feel every confidence
in the honour and integrity of Mr. Charles Drummond?"

"Mr. Headland!"

"Gently, gently, please! I merely wished to know if in your heart you
had any secret doubt; and your flaring up like that has answered me.
You see, one has to remember that the late Mr. Nosworth is said to
have made a will in your favour. The statement is correct, is it not?"

"To the best of my belief--yes."

"Filed it with his solicitors, did he?"

"That I can't say. I think not, however. He was always sufficient
unto himself, and had a rooted objection to trusting anything of
value to the care of any man living. Even his most important
documents--plans and formulas of his various inventions, even
the very lease of this property--have always been kept in the
desk in the laboratory."

"Hum-m-m!" said Cleek, and pinched his chin hard. Then, after a
moment. "One last question," he went on suddenly. "What do you know,
Miss Renfrew, of the recent movements of Mr. Harry Nosworth--the
son who was kicked out?"

"Nothing, absolutely nothing!" she answered, with a look of something
akin to horror. "I know what you are thinking of, but although he
is as bad as man can be, it is abominable to suppose that he would
lift his hand against his own father."

"Hum-m-m! Yes, of course! But still, it has been known to happen;
and, as you say, he was a bad lot. I ran foul of the young gentleman
once when----No matter; it doesn't signify. So you don't know
anything about him, eh?"

"Nothing, thank God. The last I did hear, he had gone on the stage
and taken up with some horrible creature, and the pair of them were
subsequently sent to prison for enticing people to dreadful places
and then drugging and robbing them. But even that I heard from an
outside source; for my uncle never so much as mentioned him. No, I
know nothing of him--nothing at all. In fact, I've never seen him
since he was a boy. He never lived here, you know; and until I came
here, I knew next to nothing of my uncle himself. We were poor and
lived in a quite different town, my mother and I. Uncle Septimus
never came to see us while my mother lived. He came for the first
time when she was dead and his son had gone away: and I was so poor
and so friendless I was glad to accept the home he offered. No,
Mr. Headland, I know nothing of Harry Nosworth. I hope, for his
own sake, he is dead."

Cleek made no reply. He sat for a minute pinching his chin and
staring at the carpet, then he got up suddenly and faced round in
the direction of the little group at the far end of the room.

"That's all for the present," he said. "Mr. Narkom, Mr. Nippers--get
a light of some sort, please, and let's go out and have a look at
those footprints."

CHAPTER IX

The suggestion was acted upon immediately--even Mrs. Armroyd joining
in the descent upon the portable lamps and filing out with the rest
into the gloom and loneliness of the grounds; and Miss Renfrew,
finding that she was likely to be left alone in this house of
horrors, rose quickly and hurried out with them.

One step beyond the threshold brought them within sight of the
famous Round House. Bulked against the pale silver of the moonlit
sky, there it stood--a grim, unlovely thing of stone and steel
with a trampled flower bed encircling the base of it, and a man on
guard--Constable Gorham.

"Lummy! I'd clean forgot _him_!" exclaimed Mr. Nippers as he caught
sight of him. "And theer un be keepin' guard, like I told un, out
here in the grounds whiles weem ben talkin' comfortable inside. 'E
do be a chap for doin' as heem tole, that Gorham--indeed, yes!"

Nobody replied to him. All were busily engaged in following the lead
of Scotland Yard, as represented by Cleek and Superintendent Narkom,
and bearing down on that huge stone tube within whose circular walls
a dead man sat alone.

"Dreary post this, Constable," said Cleek, coming abreast of the
silent guard.

"Yes, sir, very. But dooty's dooty--and there you be!" replied
Gorham, touching his helmet with his finger; then, as the light
from the lamps fell full upon Cleek's face and let him see that it
was no face he had ever seen in this district before, his eyes
widened with a puzzled stare which never quite left them even when
the entire group had passed on and turned the curve of the Round
House wall.

And beyond that curve Cleek came to a sudden halt. Here, a
curtainless window cut a square of light in the wall's dark face
and struck a glare on the trunk and the boughs of a lime tree
directly opposite, and under that window a trampled flower bed lay,
with curious marks deep sunk in the soft, moist surface of it.

Cleek took the lamp from Mrs. Armroyd's hand, and, bending, looked
at them closely. Mr. Nippers had not exaggerated when he said
that they were all of twelve inches in length. Nor was he far
out when he declared that they looked like the footprints of some
creature that was part animal and part bird; for there they were,
with three huge clawlike projections in front and a solitary one
behind, and so like to the mark which a gigantic bird could have
made that one might have said such a creature _had_ made them, only
that it was impossible for anything to fly that was possessed of
weight sufficient to drive those huge footprints so deeply into the
earth as they had been driven, by the mere walking of the Thing.
Claws and the marks of scales, Mr. Nippers had asserted; and claws
and the marks of scales the prints in the soft earth showed.

"La! la! the horror of them," exclaimed Mrs. Armroyd, putting up her
little hands and averting her face. "It could kill and kill and
kill--horses, oxen, anything--an abominable creature like that!
What do you figure it to have been, monsieur?--souls of the saints,
_what_?"

"Blest if I know," said Cleek. "Only, of course, it couldn't possibly
be anything human; so we may put the idea of the old chap having
been killed by anything of his kind out of our minds altogether. It
is perfectly clear that the creature, whatever it might be, got
in through the window there (you see it is open) and killed him
before he could call out for help or strike a blow in his own
defence."

"Eh, but window's six foot up, Mr. Headland, sir," put in Nippers
excitedly; "and howm a thing the weight o' that goin' to fly in?"

"Didn't fly in, my friend," replied Cleek with an air of lofty
superiority. "Use your wits, man. It _jumped_ in--from the tree
there. Look here--see!" going to it and tapping certain abrasions
upon the trunk. "Here's where it peeled off the bark in climbing
up. Lord, man! why, it's plain as the nose on your face. Ten to
one we shall find the same sort of footprints when we go into the
laboratory--damp ones, you know, from the moisture of the earth; and
to make sure, in case we do find 'em let's take the length of the
things and see. Got a tape measure with you? No? Oh, well, lend
me your handcuffs, if you've got a pair with you, and we can manage
a measurement with those. Thanks very much. Now, then, let's see.
One, two, three, by Jupiter--three fingers longer than these things,
chain and all. That'll do. Now, then, let's go in and see about the
others. Lead the way, Miss Renfrew, if you will."

She would, and did. Leading the way back to the covered passage,
she opened a door in the side of it--a door designed to let the
inventor out into the grounds without going through the house, if he
so desired--and conducted them to the laboratory, leaving Constable
Gorham to continue his dreary sentry duty outside.

At any time the interior of that huge, stone-walled, steel-lined
tube must have been unlovely and depressing to all but the man who
laboured in it. But to-night, with that man sitting dead in it,
with his face to the open window, a lamp beside him, and stiff hands
resting on the pages of a book that lay open on the desk's flat top,
it was doubly so; for, added to its other unpleasant qualities,
there was now a disagreeable odour and a curious, eye-smarting,
throat-roughening heaviness in the atmosphere which was like to
nothing so much as the fumes thrown off by burnt chemicals.

Cleek gave one or two sniffs at the air as he entered, glanced at Mr.
Narkom, then walked straightway to the desk and looked into the dead
man's face. Under the marks of the scratches and cuts upon it--marks
which would seem to carry out the idea of an animal's attack--the
features were distorted and discoloured, and the hair of beard and
moustache was curiously crinkled and discoloured.

Cleek stopped dead short as he saw that face, and his swaggering,
flippant, cocksure air of a minute before dropped from him like a
discarded mantle.

"Hullo! this doesn't look quite so promising for the animal theory
as it did!" he flung out sharply. "This man has been shot--shot
with a shell filled with his own soundless and annihilating devil's
invention, lithamite--and bomb throwing is _not_ a trick of beasts of
a lower order than the animal tribe! Look here, Mr. Narkom--see! The
lock of the desk has been broken. Shut the door there, Nippers.
Let nobody leave the room. There has been murder and robbery here;
and the thing that climbed that tree was not an animal nor yet a
bird. It was a cut-throat and a thief!"

Naturally enough, this statement produced something in the nature
of a panic; Miss Renfrew, indeed, appearing to be on the verge of
fainting, and it is not at all unlikely that she would have slipped
to the floor but for the close proximity of Mrs. Armroyd.

"That's right, madame. Get a chair; put her into it. She will need
all her strength presently, I promise you. Wait a bit! Better have a
doctor, I fancy, and an inquiry into the whereabouts of Mr. Charles
Drummond. Mr. Narkom, cut out, will you, and wire this message to
that young man's employer."

Pens and papers were on the dead man's desk. Cleek bent over,
scratched off some hurried lines, and passed them to the
superintendent.

"Sharp's the word, please; we've got ugly business on hand and we
must know about that Drummond chap without delay. Miss Renfrew has
not been telling the truth to-night! Look at this man. _Rigor mortis_
pronounced. Feel him--muscles like iron, flesh like ice! _She_ says
that he spoke to her at a quarter to eight o'clock. _I_ tell you
that at a quarter to eight this man had been dead upward of an hour!"

"Good God!" exclaimed Mr. Narkom; but his cry was cut into by a
wilder one from Miss Renfrew.

"Oh, no! Oh, no!" she protested, starting up from her seat, only to
drop back into it, strengthless, shaking, ghastly pale. "It could not
be--it could not. I have told the truth--nothing but the truth. He
did speak to me at a quarter to eight--he did, he did! Constable
Gorham was there--he heard him; he will tell you the same."

"Yes, yes, I know you said so, but--will he? He looks a sturdy,
straightgoing, honest sort of chap who couldn't be coaxed or bribed
into backing up a lie; so send him in as you go out, Mr. Narkom;
we'll see what he has to say."

What he had to say when he came in a few moments later was what
Miss Renfrew had declared--an exact corroboration of her statement.
He _had_ seen a man whom he fancied was Sir Ralph Droger run out
of the grounds, and he had suggested to Miss Renfrew that they had
better look into the Round House and see if all was right with
Mr. Nosworth. They had looked in as she had said; and Mr. Nosworth
had called out and asked her what the devil she was coming in and
disturbing him for, and it was a quarter to eight o'clock exactly.

"Sure about that, are you?" questioned Cleek.

"Yes, sir, sure as that I'm telling you so this minute."

"How do you fix the exact time?"

"As we came out of the covered passage Miss Renfrew looked at her
wrist-watch and says, impatient like, 'There, I've lost another two
minutes and am that much later for nothing. See! It's a quarter to
eight. Good night.' Then she cut off over the grounds and leaves me."

"La! la!" exclaimed Mrs. Armroyd approvingly. "There's the brave
heart, to come to mademoiselle's rescue so gallantly. But, yes, I
make you the cake of plums for that, _mon cher_. Monsieur of the
yard of Scotland, he can no more torture the poor stricken child
after that--not he."

But Cleek appeared to be less easy to convince than she had hoped,
for he pursued the subject still; questioning Gorham to needless
length it seemed; trying his best to trip him up, to shake his
statement, but always failing; and, indeed, going over the same
ground to such length that one might have thought he was endeavouring
to gain time. If he was, he certainly succeeded; for it was quite
fifteen minutes later when Mr. Narkom returned to the Round House,
and he was at it still. Indeed, he did not conclude to give it up
as a bad job until the superintendent came.

"Get it off all right, did you, Mr. Narkom?" he asked, glancing round
as he heard him enter.

"Quite all right, old chap. Right as rain--in every particular."

"Thanks very much. I'm having rather a difficult task of it, for our
friend the constable here corroborates Miss Renfrew's statement to
the hair; and yet I am absolutely positive that there is a mistake."

"There is no mistake--no, not one! The wicked one to say it still!"

"Oh, that's all very well, madame, but I know what I know; and when
you tell me that a dead man can ask questions--Pah! The fact of the
matter is the constable merely fancies he heard Mr. Nosworth speak.
That's where the mistake comes in. Now, look here! I once knew of
an exactly similar case and I'll tell you just how it happened. Let
us suppose"--strolling leisurely forward--"let us suppose that
this space here is the covered passage, and you, madame--step here
a moment, please. Thanks very much--and you are Miss Renfrew, and
Gorham here is himself, and standing beside her as he did then."

"Wasn't beside her, sir--at least not just exactly. A bit behind
her--like this."

"Oh, very well, then, that will do. Now, then. Here's the passage and
here are you, and I'll just show you how a mistake could occur, and
how it did occur, under precisely similar circumstances. Once upon
a time when I was in Paris----"

"In Paris, monsieur?"

"Yes, madame--this little thing I'm going to tell you about happened
there. You may or may not have heard that a certain Frenchy
dramatist wrote a play called _Chanticler_--or maybe you never heard
of it? Didn't, eh? Well, it's a play where all the characters are
barnyard creatures--dogs, poultry, birds and the like--and the odd
fancy of men and women dressing up like fowls took such a hold on
the public that before long there were Chanticler dances and
Chanticler parties in all the houses, and Chanticler 'turns' on
at all the music halls, until wherever one went for an evening's
amusement one was pretty sure to see somebody or another dressed
up like a cock or a hen, and running the thing to death. But
that's another story, and we'll pass over it. Now, it just so
happened that one night--when the craze for the thing was dying out
and barnyard dresses could be bought for a song--I strolled into
a little fourth-rate café at Montmarte and there saw the only
Chanticler dancer that I ever thought was worth a sou. She was a
pretty, dainty little thing--light as a feather and graceful as a
fairy. Alone, I think she might have made her mark; but she was
one of what in music-halldom they call 'a team.' Her partner was a
man--bad dancer, an indifferent singer, but a really passable
ventriloquist."

"A ventriloquist, monsieur--er--er!"

"Cleek, madame--name's Cleek, if you don't mind."

"Cleek! Oh, Lummy!" blurted out Mr. Nippers. But neither "madame"
nor Constable Gorham said anything. They merely swung round and made
a sudden bolt; and Cleek, making a bolt, too, pounced down on them
like a leaping cat, and the sharp click-click of the handcuffs he
had borrowed from Mr. Nippers told just when he linked their two
wrists together.

"Game's up, Madame Fifine, otherwise Madame Nosworth, the worthless
wife of a worthless husband!" he rapped out sharply. "Game's up, Mr.
Henry Nosworth, bandit, pickpocket, and murderer! There's a hot
corner in hell waiting for the brute-beast that could kill his own
father, and would, for the simple sake of money. Get at him, quick,
Mr. Narkom. He's got one free hand! Nip the paper out of his pocket
before the brute destroys it! Played, sir, played! Buck up, Miss
Renfrew, buck up, little girl--you'll get your 'Boy' and you'll get
Mr. Septimus Nosworth's promised fortune after all! 'God's in his
heaven, and all's right with the world.'"

CHAPTER X

"Yes, a very, very clever scheme indeed, Miss Renfrew," agreed
Cleek. "Laid with great cunning and carried out with extreme
carefulness--as witness the man's coming here and getting appointed
constable and biding his time, and the woman serving as cook for six
months to get the entrée to the house and to be ready to assist when
the time of action came round. I don't think I had the least inkling
of the truth until I entered this house and saw that woman. She had
done her best to pad herself to an unwieldy size and to blanch
portions of her hair, but she couldn't quite make her face appear
old without betraying the fact that it was painted--and hers is one
of those peculiarly pretty faces that one never forgets when one
has ever seen it. I knew her the instant I entered the house;
and, remembering the Chanticler dress with its fowl's-foot boots, I
guessed at once what those marks would prove to be when I came to
investigate them. She must have stamped on the ground with all
her might, to sink the marks in so deeply--but she meant to make
sure of the claws and the exaggerated scales on the toes leaving
their imprint. I was certain we should find that dress and those
boots among her effects; and--Mr. Narkom did. What I wrote on that
pretended telegram was for him to slip away into the house proper
and search every trunk and cupboard for them. Pardon? No, I don't
think they really had any idea of incriminating Sir Ralph Droger.
That thought came into the fellow's mind when you stepped out and
caught him stealing away after the murder had been committed. No
doubt he, like you, had seen Sir Ralph practising for the sports,
and he simply made capital of it. The main idea was to kill his
father and to destroy the will; and of course, when it became
apparent that the old gentleman had died intestate, even a discarded
son must inherit. Where he made his blunder, however, was in his
haste to practise his ventriloquial accomplishment to prevent your
going into the Round House and discovering that his father was
already dead. He ought to have waited until you had spoken, so
that it would appear natural for the old man to know, without
turning, who it was that had opened the door. That is what put me
on the track of him. Until that moment I hadn't the slightest
suspicion where he was nor under what guise he was hiding. Of
course I had a vague suspicion, even before I came and saw her, that
'the cook' was in it. Her readiness in inventing a fictitious
gypsy with a bear's muzzle, coupled with what Nippers had told me of
the animal marks she had pointed out, looked a bit fishy; but
until I actually met her nothing really tangible began to take
shape in my thoughts. That's all, I think. And now, good-night
and good luck to you, Miss Renfrew. The riddle is solved; and Mr.
Narkom and I must be getting back to the wilderness and to our
ground-floor beds in the hotel of the beautiful stars!"

Here, as if some spirit of nervous unrest had suddenly beset him,
he turned round on his heel, motioned the superintendent to follow,
and brushing by the awed and staring Mr. Ephraim Nippers, whisked
open the door and passed briskly out into the hush and darkness of
the night.

The footpath which led through the grounds to the gate and thence
to the long lonely way back to Dollops and the caravan lay before
him. He swung into it with a curious sort of energy and forged away
from the house at such speed that Narkom's short, fat legs were hard
put to it to catch up with him before he came to the path's end.

"My dear chap, are you going into training for a match with that Sir
Ralph What's-his-name of whom Miss Renfrew spoke?" he wheezed when
he finally overtook him. "You long, lean beggars are the very old
boy for covering the ground. But wait until you get to be _my_ age,
by James!"

"Perhaps I shan't. Perhaps they won't let me!" threw back Cleek,
in a voice curiously blurred, as if he spoke with his teeth hard
shut. "Donkeys do die, you know--that little bit of tommyrot about
the absence of their dead bodies to the contrary."

"Meaning what, old chap?"

"That I've been as big an ass as any of the thistle-eating kind that
ever walked. Gad! such an indiscretion! Such an example of pure
brainlessness! And the worst of it is that it's all due to my own
wretched vanity--my own miserable weakness for the theatrical and the
spectacular! It came to me suddenly--while I was standing there
explaining things to Miss Renfrew--and I could have kicked myself for
my folly."

"Folly? What folly?"

"'What folly?' What? Good heavens, man, use your wits! Isn't it
enough for me to be a blockhead without you entering the lists
along with me?" said Cleek, irritably. "Or, no! Forgive that, dear
friend. My nerves were speaking, not my heart. But in moments like
this--when we had built a safe bridge, and my own stupidity has
hacked it down--Faugh! I tell you I could kick myself. Didn't you
hear? Didn't you see?"

"I saw that for some special reason you were suddenly obsessed with
a desire to get out of the house in the midst of your talking with
Miss Renfrew, if that's what you refer to--is it?"

"Not altogether. It's part of it, however. But not the worst part,
unfortunately. It was at that moment then the recollection of my
indiscretion came to me and I realized what a dolt I had been--how
completely I had destroyed our splendid security, wrecked what
little still remains of this glorious holiday--when I couldn't let
'George Headland' have the centre of the stage, but needs must come
in like the hero of a melodrama and announce myself as Cleek. To
Nosworth and his wife! To Nippers! To all that gaping crowd! You
remember that incident, surely?"

"Yes. Of course I do. But what of it?"

"What of it? Man alive, with a chap like that Nippers, how long do
you suppose it will remain a secret that Cleek is in Yorkshire?
In the West Riding of it? In this particular locality? Travelling
about with Mr. Maverick Narkom in a caravan--a _caravan_ that can't
cover five miles of country in the time a train or a motor car is
able to get over fifty!"

"Good lud! I never thought of that. But wait a bit. There's a way to
overcome that difficulty, of course. Stop here a minute or two and
I'll run back and pledge that Nippers fool to keep his mouth shut
about it. He'll give me his promise, _I_ know."

"To be sure he will. But how long do you suppose he will keep it?
How long do you suppose that an empty-headed, gabbling old fool
like that fellow will refrain from increasing his own importance
in the neighbourhood by swaggering about and boasting of his
intimacy with the powers at Scotland Yard and--the rest of it? And
even if he shouldn't, what about the others? The gathering of
rustics that heard what he heard? The gamekeepers from the Droger
estate? The Nosworths, as well as they? Can their mouths, too, be
shut? They will not love me for this night's business, be sure.
Then, too, they have lived in Paris. The woman is French by birth.
Of Montmartre--of the Apache class, the Apache kind--and she
will know of the 'Cracksman,' be assured. So will her husband.
And they won't take their medicine lying down, believe me. An
accused man has the right to communicate with counsel, remember;
and a wire up to London will cost less than a shilling. So, as
between Margot's crew and our friend Count Waldemar--_la, la!_
There you are."

Mr. Narkom screwed up his face and said something under his breath.
He could not but follow this line of reasoning when the thing was
put before him so plainly.

"And we had been so free from all worry over the beggars up to this!"
he said, savagely. "But to get a hint--to pick up the scent--out
here--in a wild bit of country like this! Cinnamon, it makes me
sweat! What do you propose to do?"

"The only thing that's left us to do," gave back Cleek. "Get out of
it as quickly as possible and draw a red herring over the scent. In
other words, put back to Dollops, abandon the caravan, make our way
to some place where it is possible to telephone for the chap we hired
it from to send out and get it; then, to make tracks for home."

"Yes, but why bother about telephoning, old chap? Why can't we drop
in ourselves and tell the man when we get back to Sheffield on our
way to London?"

"Because we are not going back to Sheffield, my friend--not going
in for anything so silly as twice travelling over the same ground,
if it's all the same to you," replied Cleek, as he swung off from the
highway on to the dark, still moor and struck out for the place
where they had left Dollops and the caravan. "At best, we can't
be more than thirty miles from the boundary line of Cumberland. A
night's walking will cover that. There we can rest a while--at some
little out-of-the-way hostelry--then take a train over the Scottish
border and make for Dumfries. From that point on, the game is easy.
There are six trains a day leaving for St. Pancras and eight for
Euston. We can choose which we like, and a seven hours' ride will
land us in London without having once 'doubled on our tracks' or
crossed the route by which we came out of it."

"By James! what a ripping idea," said Mr. Narkom approvingly. "Come
along then, old chap--let's get back to the boy and be about it as
soon as possible." Then he threw open his coat and waistcoat to get
the full benefit of the air before facing the ordeal, and, falling
into step with Cleek, struck out over the moor at so brisk a dog
trot that his short, fat legs seemed fairly to twinkle.

CHAPTER XI

By the side of the little chattering stream that flowed through
the bit of woodland where Mr. Nippers and his associates had come
upon them, they found Dollops, with his legs drawn up, his arms
folded across his knees and his forehead resting upon them, sleeping
serenely over the embers of a burnt-out fire. He was still "making
music," but of a kind which needed no assistance from a mouth
harmonica to produce it.

They awoke him and told him of the sudden change in the programme
and of the need for haste in carrying it out.

"Oh, so help me! Them Apaches, eh? And that foreign josser, Count
What's-his-name, too?" said he, rubbing his eyes and blinking
sleepily. "Right you are, guv'ner! Gimme two seconds to get the
cobwebs out of my thinking-box and I'm ready to face marching orders
as soon as you like. My hat! though, but this is a startler. I
can understand wot them Apache johnnies has got against you, sir,
of course; but wot that Mauravanian biscuit is getting after you
for beats me. Wot did you ever do to the blighter, guv'ner? Trip
him up in some little bit of crooked business, sir, and 'did him
down,' as the 'Mericans say?"

"Something like that," returned Cleek. "Don't waste time in talking.
Simply get together such things as we shall need and let us be off
about our business as soon as possible."

Dollops obeyed instructions upon both points--obeyed them, indeed,
with such alacrity that he shut up like an oyster forthwith, dived
into the caravan and bounced out again, and within five minutes
of the time he had been told of the necessity for starting, had
started, and was forging away with the others over the dark, still
moor and facing cheerily the prospect of a thirty-mile walk to
Cumberlandshire.

All through the night they pressed onward thus--the two men walking
shoulder to shoulder and the boy at their heels--over vast stretches
of moorland where bracken and grass hung heavy and glittering
under their weight of dew; down the craggy sides of steep gullies
where the spring freshets had quickened mere trickles into noisy
water-splashes that spewed over the rocks, to fall into chuckling,
froth-filled pools below; along twisting paths; through the dark,
still woodland stretches, and thence out upon the wild, wet moor
again, with the wind in their faces and the sky all a-prickle
with steadily dimming stars. And by and by the mist-wrapped moon
dropped down out of sight, the worn-out night dwindled and died,
and steadily brightening Glory went blushing up the east to flower
the pathway for the footfalls of the Morning.

But as yet the farthermost outposts of Cumberland were miles beyond
the range of vision, so that the long tramp was by no means ended,
and, feeling the necessity for covering as much ground as possible
while the world at large was still in what Dollops was wont to
allude to as "the arms of Murphy's house," the little party continued
to press onward persistently.

By four o'clock they were again off the moors and in the depths of
craggy gorges; by five they were on the borders of a deep, still
tarn, and had called a halt to light a fire and get things out of
the bag which Dollops carried--things to eat and to drink and to
wear--and were enjoying a plunge in the ice-cold water the while
the coffee was boiling; and by six--gorged with food and soothed by
tobacco--they were lying sprawled out on the fragrant earth and
blinking drowsily while their boots were drying before the fire. And
after that there was a long hiatus until Cleek's voice rapped out
saying sharply, "Well, I'll be dashed! Rouse up there, you lazy
beggars. Do you know that it's half-past twelve and we've been
sleeping for hours?"

They knew it then, be assured, and were up and on their way again
with as little delay as possible. Rested and refreshed, they made
such good time that two o'clock found them in the Morcam Abbey
district, just over the borders of Cumberland, and, with appetites
sharpened for luncheon, bearing down on a quaint little hostlery
whose signboard announced it as the Rose and Thistle.

"Well, there's hospitality if you like," said Cleek, as, at their
approach, a cheery-faced landlady bobbed up at an open window and,
seeing them, bobbed away again and ran round to welcome them with
smiles and curtseys delivered from the arch of a vine-bowered door.

"Welcome, gentlemen, welcome," beamed she as they came up and joined
her. "But however in the world did you manage to get over here
so soon?--the train not being due at Shepperton Old Cross until
five-and-twenty past one, and that a good mile and a quarter away as
the crow flies. However, better too early than too late--Major
Norcross and Lady Mary being already here and most anxious to meet
you."

As it happened that neither Cleek nor Mr. Narkom had any personal
acquaintance with the lady and gentleman mentioned, it was so
clearly a case of mistaken identity that the superintendent had
it on the tip of his tongue to announce the fact, when there
clashed out the sound of a door opening and shutting rapidly, a
clatter of hasty footsteps along the passage, and presently there
came into view the figure of a bluff, hearty, florid-faced man of
about five-and-forty, who thrust the landlady aside and threw a
metaphorical bombshell by exclaiming excitedly:

"My dear sir, I never was so delighted. Talk about English slowness.
Why, this is prompt enough to satisfy a Yankee. I never dispatched
my letter to you until late yesterday afternoon, Mr. Narkom,
and--by the way, which _is_ Mr. Narkom, and which that amazing Mr.
Cleek? Or, never mind--perhaps that clever johnnie will be coming
later; you can tell me all about that afterward. For the present,
come along. Let's not keep Lady Mary waiting--she's anxious. This
way, please."

Here--as Mr. Narkom had lost no time in acknowledging his identity,
it being clear that no mistake had been made after all--here he
caught the superintendent by the arm, whisked him down the passage,
and throwing open the door at the end of it, announced excitedly,
"All right, Mary. The Yard's answered--the big reward's caught 'em,
as I knew it would--and here's Narkom. That chap Cleek will come
by a later train, no doubt."

The response to this came from an unexpected quarter. Of a sudden
the man he had left standing at the outer door, under the impression
that he was in no way connected with the superintendent, but merely
a gentleman who had reached the inn at the same time, came down
the passage to the open door, brushed past him into the room,
and announced gravely, "Permit me to correct an error, please,
Major. The 'man Cleek' is not coming later--he is here, and very
much at your and Lady Mary Norcross' service, believe me. I have
long known the name of Major Seton Norcross as one which stands high
in the racing world--as that, indeed, of the gentleman who owns the
finest stud in the kingdom and whose filly, Highland Lassie, is
first favourite for the forthcoming Derby--and I now have the honour
of meeting the gentleman himself, it seems."

The effect of this was somewhat disconcerting. For, as he concluded
it, he put out his hand and rested it upon Mr. Narkom's shoulder,
whereat Lady Mary half rose from her seat, only to sit down again
suddenly and look round at her liege lord with uplifted eyebrows
and lips slightly parted. Afterward she declared of the two men
standing side by side in that familiar manner: "One reminded me
of an actor trying to play the part of a person of distinction, and
the other of a person of distinction trying to play the part of an
ordinary actor and not quite able to keep what he really was from
showing through the veneer of what he was trying to be."

The major, however, was too blunt to bottle up his sentiments at any
time, and being completely bowled over in the present instance put
them into bluff, outspoken, characteristic words.

"Oh, gum games!" he blurted out. "If you really are Cleek----"

"I really am. Mr. Narkom will stand sponsor for that."

"But, good lud, man! Oh, look here, you know, this is all tommyrot!
What under God's heaven has brought a chap like you down to this sort
of thing?"

"Opinions differ upon that score, Major," said Cleek quietly. "So far
from being 'brought down,' it is my good friend, Mr. Narkom here,
who has brought me _up_ to it--and made me his debtor for life."

"Debtor nothing! Don't talk rubbish. As if it were possible for a
gentleman not to recognize a gentleman!"

"It would not be so easy, I fear, if he were a g

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