THE RIDDLE OF THE SACRED SON
Had I followed my own inclination in the matter, I think I should have
elected to call this particular adventure "The Riddle of the Amazing
Demi-God," but as it is set down under the above title in the private
note-book of Superintendent Narkom--to which volume I am under
obligation for the details regarding the life and work of this most
marvellous man--it follows that I must adhere closely to the recorded
facts of each of his adventures, even to the most minute particular, if
I am to prove myself worthy of the favour Mr. Narkom has shown me. I may
freely confess, however, that I have not at all times adhered to the
chronological sequence of those adventures, but have picked and chosen
here and there from the record of his amazing career such cases as I
have fancied most likely to appeal to the public at large, without
regard to their natural order of succession or the many others that have
intervened.
As Superintendent Narkom's records cover a number of years and embrace
upward of three hundred adventures, obviously some must, of necessity,
be omitted from these chronicles. Such omission sometimes--as in the
present instance--renders it compulsory to record a few after facts
connected with the adventure last detailed, in order that the reader may
not be confused by the reappearance of certain persons under
circumstances and in places widely separated from those in which they
were left.
More than a year had passed since the affair of "The Red Crawl," when
the events now to be told occurred, and while that year was fruitful of
many stirring things so far as Cleek himself was concerned, but little
record is obtainable of the movements of Margot and the man Merode, the
two foremost figures in the Apache band with whom Cleek came to grips,
for they chose to vanish suddenly from their Parisian haunts immediately
after that tragical night at "The Inn of the Twisted Arm." It is
certain, however, that they proceeded in due time to the East, for they
were seen in both India and Ceylon several months after their
disappearance from Paris. Indeed, they were obliged to fly from the
latter place to escape arrest when the confession of a drunken native
exposed, before its fulfilment, a plan to loot the repository of the
Pearl Fisheries Company at a time when it contained several thousand
pounds' worth of gems. From that point there is no record of their
movements for many, many months.
Of course, after such a terrifying experience in the French capital, and
not knowing when the Apache band might, knowing her part in the affair,
avenge themselves upon her for the failure of the snare of "The Red
Crawl," residence in France became a bugbear to Ailsa Lorne. Despite the
pleadings of Athalie and the baron, whom she had served so well in
giving help to Cleek, she was steadfast in her determination to leave it
and to return to her native land. She therefore packed up her
belongings, journeyed back to London, and set about finding some other
position whereby she could earn her living.
Circumstances had so shaped themselves that Cleek had seen next to
nothing of her since her return to England, much and deeply as he longed
to do so. Beyond one delightful call at the modest little boarding-place
where she was stopping, whilst waiting for an answer to her
advertisement for a post as governess or companion, an answer which
speedily came and was as speedily accepted, he had not met her at all
since their parting in Paris, and, as their friendship was not
sufficiently close to warrant the interchange of letters, she seemed as
far away from him as ever.
Imagine, then, his surprise and delight, on returning to the house in
Clarges Street late one afternoon, in company with the redoubtable
Dollops, to find lying upon his table a note containing these words:
MY DEAR CLEEK:
Kindly refrain from going out this evening. I shall call about
nine o'clock, bringing with me Miss Ailsa Lorne, whom you
doubtless remember, and her present patron, Angela, Countess
Chepstow, the young widow of that ripping old war-horse who,
as you may recall, quelled that dangerous and fanatical rising
of the Cingalese at Trincomalee. These ladies wish to see you
with reference to a most extraordinary case, an inexplicable
mystery, which both they and I believe no man but yourself can
satisfactorily probe.
Yours in haste,
MAVERICK NARKOM.
So, then, he was to see her again, to touch her hand, hear her voice,
look into the eyes that had lighted him back from the path to
destruction! Cleek's heart began to hammer and his pulses to drum.
Needless to say, he took extraordinary care with his toilet that
evening, with the result that when the ladies arrived there was nothing
even vaguely suggestive of the detective about him.
"Oh, Mr. Cleek, do help us!" implored Ailsa, after the first greetings
were over. "Lady Chepstow is almost beside herself with dread and
anxiety over the inexplicable thing, and I have persuaded her that if
anybody on earth can solve the mystery of it, avert the new and
appalling danger of it, it is you! Oh, say that you will take the case,
say that you will solve it, say that you will save little Lord Chepstow
and put an end to this maddening mystery!"
"Little Lord Chepstow?" repeated Cleek, glancing over at the countess,
who stood, a very Niobe in her grief and despair, holding out two
imploring hands in silent supplication. "That is your ladyship's son, is
it not?"
"Yes," she answered, with a sort of wail; "my only son--my only child.
All that I have to love, all that I have to live for in this world."
"And you think the little fellow is in peril?"
"Yes--in deadly peril."
"From what source? From whose hand?"
"I don't know! I don't know!" she answered distractedly. "Sometimes I am
wild enough to suspect even Captain Hawksley, unjust and unkind as it
seems."
"Captain Hawksley? Who is he?"
"My late husband's cousin; heir, after my little son, to the title and
estates. He is very poor, deeply in debt, and the inheritance would put
an end to all his difficulties. But he is fond of my son; they seem
almost to worship each other. I, too, am fond of him. But, for all that,
I have to remember that he and he alone would benefit by Cedric's death,
and--and--wicked as it seems---- Oh, Mr. Cleek, help me! Direct me!
Sometimes I doubt him. Sometimes I doubt everybody. Sometimes I think of
those other days, that other mystery, that land which reeks of them; and
then--and then---- Oh, that horrible Ceylon! I wish I had never set foot
in it in all my life!"
Her agitation and distress were so great as to make her utterances only
half coherent; and Ailsa, realizing that this sort of thing must only
perplex Cleek, and leave him in the dark regarding the matter upon which
they had come to consult him, gently interposed.
"Do try to calm yourself and to tell the story as briefly as possible,
dear Lady Chepstow," she advised. Then, taking the initiative, added
quietly, "it begins, Mr. Cleek, at a period when the little boy, whose
governess I am at present, was but two years old, and at Trincomalee,
where his late father was stationed with his regiment four years ago.
Somebody, for some absurd reason, had set afoot a ridiculous rumour that
the English had received orders from the Throne to stamp out every
religion but their own. It was said if British were not exterminated,
dreadful desecrations would occur, as they were determined----"
"To loot all the temples erected to Buddha, destroy the images, and make
a bonfire of all the sacred relics," finished Cleek himself. "I rarely
forget history, Miss Lorne, especially when it is such recent history as
that memorable Buddhist rising at Trincomalee. It began upon an utterly
unfounded, ridiculous rumour; it terminated, if my memory serves me
correctly, in something akin to the very thing it was supposed to avert.
That is to say, during the outburst of fanaticism, that most sacred of
all relics--the holy tooth of Buddha--disappeared mysteriously from the
temple of Dambool, and in spite of the fact that many lacs of rupees
were offered for its recovery, it has never, I believe, been found, or
even traced, although a huge fortune awaits the restorer, and, with it,
overpowering honours from the native princes. Those must have been
trying times, Lady Chepstow, for the commandant's wife, the mother of
the commandant's only child?"
"Horrible! horrible!" she answered, with a shudder, forgetting for an
instant the dangers of the present in the recollection of the tragical
past. "For a period our lives were not safe: murder hid behind every
bush, skulked in the shadow of every rock and tree, and we knew not at
what minute the little garrison might be rushed under cover of the
darkness and every soul slaughtered before the relief force could come
to our assistance. I died a hundred deaths a day in my anxiety for
husband and child. And once the very zealousness of our comrades almost
brought about the horror I feared. Oh!"--with a shudder of horrified
recollections she covered her eyes, as if to shut out the memory of
it--"Oh! that night--that horrible night! Unknown to any of us, my baby,
rising from the bed where I had left him sleeping, whilst I went outside
to stand by Lord Chepstow, wandered beyond the line of defence, and,
before anybody realized it, was out in the open, alone and unprotected.
"Ferralt, the cook, saw him first; saw, too, the crouching figure of a
native, armed with a gun, in the shadow of the undergrowth. Without
hesitation the brave fellow rushed out, fell upon the native before he
could dart away, wrenched the gun from him, and brained him with the
butt. A cry of the utmost horror rang out upon the air, and, uttering
it, another native bounded out from a hiding-place close to where the
first had been killed, and flew zig-zagging across the open where Cedric
was. Evidently he had no intention of molesting the little fellow, for
he fled straight on past him, still shrieking after the accident
occurred; but to Ferralt it seemed as if his intention were to murder
the boy, and, clapping the gun to his shoulder, in a panic of
excitement, he fired. If it had been one of the soldiers, who understood
marksmanship and was not likely to be in a nervous quake over the
circumstances, the thing could not have happened, although the fugitive
was careering along in a direct line with my precious little one. But,
with Ferralt---- Oh, Mr. Cleek, can you imagine my horror when I saw the
flash of that shot, heard a shrill cry of pain, and saw my child drop to
the ground?"
"Good heaven!" exclaimed Cleek, agitated in spite of himself. "Then the
blunderer shot the child instead of the native?"
"Yes; and was so horrified by the mishap that, without waiting to learn
the result, he rushed blindly to the brink of a deep ravine, and threw
himself headlong to death. But the injury to Cedric was only a trifling
one, after all. The bullet seemed merely to have grazed him in passing,
and, beyond a ragged gash in the fleshy part of the thigh, he was not
harmed at all. This I myself dressed and bandaged, and in a couple of
weeks it was quite healed. But it taught me a lesson, that night of
horror, and I never let my baby out of my sight for one instant from
that time until the rising was entirely quelled.
"As suddenly as it had started, the trouble subsided. Native priests
came under a flag of truce to Lord Chepstow, and confessed their error,
acknowledged that they had never any right to suspect the British of any
design upon their gods, for the loot of the temple had actually taken
place in the midst of the rising, and they knew that it could not have
come from the hands of the soldiers, for they had had them under
surveillance all the time, and not one person of the race had ventured
within a mile of the temple.
"Yet the tooth of Buddha had been taken, the sacred tooth which is more
holy to Buddhists than the statue of Gautama Buddha itself. Their
remorse was very real, and after that, to the day of his death from
fever, eighteen months afterward, they could never show enough honour to
Lord Chepstow. And even then their favour continued. They transferred to
the little son the homage they had done the father, but in a far, far
greater degree. If he had been a king's son they could have shown him no
greater honour. Native princes showered him with rich gifts; if he
walked out, his path was strewn with flowers by bowing maidens; if he
went into the market-place, the people prostrated themselves before him.
"When I questioned Buddhist women of this amazing homage to Cedric,
they gave me a full explanation. My son was sacred, they said. Buddha
had withdrawn his favour from his people because of the evil they had
done in suspecting the father and of the innocent life--Ferralt's--which
had been sacrificed, and they had been commanded of the priests to do
homage to the child and thereby appease the offended god, who,
doubtless, had himself spirited away the holy tooth, and would not
restore it until full recompense was made to the sacred son of the
sacred dead.
"When it became known that I had decided to return to England with my
boy, native princes offered me fabulous sums to remain, and when they
found that I could not be tempted to stay, the populace turned out in
every town and village through which we passed on our way to the ship,
and bowing multitudes followed us to the very last. Nor did it cease
with that, for in all the years that have followed, even here in London,
the homage and worship have continued. My son can go nowhere but that he
is followed by Cingalese; can see no man or woman of the race but he or
she prostrates herself before him and murmurs, 'Holy, most holy!' And
daily, almost hourly, rich gifts are showered upon him from unknown
hands, and he is watched over and guarded constantly. I tell you all
this, Mr. Cleek, that you may the better understand how appalling is the
horror which now assails us, how frightful is the knowledge that some
one now seeks his life, and is using every means to take it."
"In other words, my dear Cleek," put in Narkom, as Lady Chepstow,
overcome with emotion, broke down suddenly, "there appears to be a
sudden and inexplicable change of front on the part of these fanatics,
and they now seem as anxious to bring evil to the little lad as they
formerly were to protect and cherish him. At any rate, some one of their
order has, upon three separate occasions within the last month,
endeavoured to kidnap him, and, in one instance, even attempted to
murder him."
"Is that a fact?" queried Cleek sharply, glancing over at Miss Lorne.
"You are certain it is not a fancy, but an absolute fact?"
"Yes; oh, yes!" she made answer agitatedly. "Twice when I have gone into
the Park with him, attempts have been made to separate us, to get him
away from me; and once they did get him away, so swiftly, so adroitly,
that he had vanished before I could turn round. But, although a bag had
been thrown over his head to stifle his cries, he managed to make a very
little one. I plunged screaming into the undergrowth from which that cry
had come, and was just in time to save him. He was lying on the ground
all bundled up in the bag, and his assailant, who must have heard me
coming, had gone as if by magic. He, however, was able to tell me that
the man was a Cingalese, and that he had 'tried to cut him with a
knife.'"
"Cut him with a knife?" repeated Cleek in a reflective tone, and blew
out a long, low whistle.
"Oh, but that is not the worst, Mr. Cleek," went on Ailsa. "Three days
ago a woman, very beautiful and distinguished-looking, called to see
Lady Chepstow regarding the reference of a former servant, one Jane
Catherboys, who used to be her ladyship's maid. After the caller left, a
box of sugared violets was found lying temptingly open on a table in the
main hall. Little Cedric is passionately fond of sugared violets, and,
had he happened to pass that way before the box was discovered, he
surely would have yielded to the temptation and eaten some. In removing
the box the parlour maid accidentally upset it, and before she could
gather all the violets up her ladyship's little pomeranian dog snapped
up one and ate it. It was dead in six minutes' time! The sweets were
simply loaded with prussic acid. When we came to inquire into the
matter in the hope of tracing the mysterious caller, we found that Jane
Catherboys was no longer in need of a position; that she had been
married for eight months; that she knew nothing whatever of the woman,
and had sent no one to inquire into her references."
"All of which shows, my dear Cleek," put in Narkom significantly, "that,
whatever hand is directing these attempts, it belongs to one who knows
more than a mere outsider possibly could. In short, to one who is aware
of the little boy's excessive fondness for sugared violets, and is aware
that Lady Chepstow once did have a maid named Jane Catherboys."
"If," said Cleek, "you mean to suggest by that that this points
suspiciously in Captain Hawksley's direction, Mr. Narkom, permit me to
say that it does not necessarily follow. The clever people of the
under-world do nothing by halves nor without careful inquiry beforehand;
that is what makes the difference between the common pickpocket and the
brilliant swindler." He turned to Ailsa. "Is that all, Miss Lorne, or am
I right in supposing that there is even worse to come?"
"Oh, much worse, Mr. Cleek! The knowledge that these would-be murderers,
whoever they are, whatever may be their mysterious motive, have grown
desperate enough to invade the house itself has driven Lady Chepstow
well-nigh frantic. Of course, orders were immediately given to the
servants that no stranger, no matter how well dressed, how well seeming,
nor what the plea, was, from that moment, to be allowed past the
threshold. We felt secure in that, knowing that no servant of the
household would betray his trust, and that all would be on the constant
watch for any further attempt. The unknown enemy must have found out
about these precautions, for no stranger came again to the door. But
last night a thing we had never counted upon happened. In the dead of
the night the unknown broke into the house, into the very nursery
itself, and but that Lady Chepstow, impelled she does not know by what,
rose and carried the sleeping child into her own bed, he would assuredly
have been murdered. The nurse, awakened by a horrible suffocating
sensation, opened her eyes to find a man bending over her with a
chloroform-soaked cloth, which he was about to lay over her face. She
shrieked and fainted, but not before she saw the man spring to the
little bed on the other side of her own, hack furiously at it with a
long, murderous knife, then dart to the window and vanish. In the
darkness he had not, of course, been able to see that the child's bed
was empty, for its position kept it in deep shadow, and hearing the
household stir at the sound of the nurse's shriek, he struck out blindly
and flew to save himself from detection. The nurse states that he was
undoubtedly a foreigner--a dark-skinned Asiatic--and her description of
him tallies with that Cedric gave of the man who attempted to kill him
that day in the Park. There, Mr. Cleek," she concluded, "that's the
whole story. Can't you do something to help us; something to lift this
constant state of dread and to remove this terrible danger from little
Lord Chepstow's life?"
"I'll try, Miss Lorne; but it is a most extraordinary case. Where is the
boy now?"
"At home, closely guarded. We appealed to Mr. Narkom, and he generously
appointed two detective officers to sit with him and keep constant watch
over him whilst we are away."
"And in the meantime," added Mr. Narkom, "I've issued orders for a
general rounding-up of all the Cingalese who can be traced or are known
to be in town. Petrie and Hammond have that part of the job in hand, and
if they hit upon any Asiatic who answers to the description of this
murderous rascal----"
"I don't believe they will," interposed Cleek; "or, if they do, I don't
for a moment believe he will turn out to be the guilty party. In other
words, I have an idea that the fellow will prove to be a European."
"But, my dear fellow, both the boy and the nurse saw the man, and, as
you have heard, they both agree that he was dark-skinned and quite
Oriental in appearance."
"One of the easiest possible disguises, Mr. Narkom. A wig, a stick of
grease-paint, a threepenny twist of crepe hair, and there you are! No, I
do not believe that the man is a Cingalese at all; and, far from his
having any connection with what you were pleased to term just now a
change of front on the part of the Buddhists who have so long held the
little chap as something sacred, I don't believe that they know anything
about him. I base that upon the fact that the child is still treated
with homage whenever he goes out, according to what Miss Lorne says, and
that, with the single exception of that one woman who tried to poison
him, nobody but one man--this particular one man--has ever made any
attempt to harm the boy. Fanatics, like those Cingalese, cleave to an
idea to the end, Mr. Narkom; they don't cast it aside and go off at
another tangent. You have heard what Lady Chepstow says the native women
told her: the boy was sacred; their priests had commanded them to
appease Buddha by doing homage to him until the tooth was found, and the
tooth has not been found up to the present day! That means that nothing
on earth could change their attitude toward him, that not one of the
Buddhist sect would harm a solitary hair of his head for a king's
ransom; so you may eliminate the Cingalese from the case entirely so far
as the attempts upon the child's life are concerned. Whoever is making
the attempts is doing so without their knowledge and for a purely
personal reason."
"Then, in that case, this Captain Hawksley----"
"I'll have a look at that gentleman before I tumble into bed to-night,
and you shall have my views upon that point to-morrow morning, Mr.
Narkom. Frankly, things point rather suspiciously in the captain's
direction, since he is apparently the only person likely to be benefited
by the boy's death, and if a motive cannot be traced to some other
person----" He stopped abruptly and held up his hand. Outside in the dim
halls of the house a sudden noise had sprung into being, the noise of
some one running upstairs in great haste, and, stepping quickly to the
door, Cleek drew it sharply open. As he did so, Dollops came puffing up
out of the lower gloom, a sheep's trotter in one hand and a letter in
the other.
"Law, guv'ner!" groaned he, from midway on the staircase, "I don't
believe as I'm ever goin' to be let get a square tuck-in this side of
the buryin' ground! Jist finished wot was left of that there steak and
kidney puddin', sir, and started on my seckint trotter, when I sees a
pair o' legs nip parst the area railin's to the front door, and then nip
off again like greased lightnin', and when I ups and does a flyin' leap
up the kitchen stairs, there was this here envellup in the letter-box
and them there blessed legs nowheres in sight. I say, sir," agitatedly,
"look wot's wrote on the envellup, will yer? And us always keepin' of it
so dark."
Cleek plucked the letter from his extended hand, glanced at it, and
puckered up his lips; then, with a gesture, he sent Dollops back below
stairs, and, returning to the room, closed the door behind him.
"The enemy evidently knows all Lady Chepstow's movements, Mr. Narkom,"
he said. "I expect she and Miss Lorne have been under surveillance all
day and have been followed here. Look at that!" He flung the letter down
on a table as he spoke, and Narkom, glancing at it, saw printed in rude,
illiterate letters upon the envelope the one word "Cleek." The identity
of "Captain Burbage" was known to some one, and the secret of the house
in Clarges Street was a secret no longer!
"Purposely disguised, you see. No one, not even a little child, would
make such a botch of copying the alphabet as that," Cleek said, as he
took the letter up and opened it. The sheet it contained was lettered in
the same uncouth manner and bore these words:
"Cleek, take a fool's advice and don't accept the Chepstow case. Be
warned. If you interfere, somebody you care about will pay the price.
You'll find it more satisfactory to buy a wedding bouquet than a funeral
wreath!"
"Oh!" shuddered the two ladies in one breath. "How horrible! How
cowardly!" And then, feeling that her last hope had gone, Lady Chepstow
broke into a fit of violent weeping and laid her head on Ailsa's
shoulder.
"Oh, my baby! My darling baby boy!" she sobbed. "And now they are
threatening somebody that you, too, love. Of course, Mr. Cleek, I can't
expect you to risk the sacrifice of your own dear ones for the sake of
me and mine, and so--and so---- Oh, take me away, Miss Lorne! Let me go
back to my baby and have him while I may."
"Good-night, Mr. Cleek," said Ailsa, stretching out a shaking hand to
him. "Thank you so much for what you would have done but for this. And
you were our last hope, too!"
"Why give it up then, Miss Lorne?" he said, holding her hand and looking
into her eyes. "Why not go on letting me be your last hope--your only
hope?"
"Yes, but they--they spoke of a funeral wreath."
"And they also spoke of a wedding bouquet! I am going to take the case,
Miss Lorne--take it, and solve it, as I'm a living man. Thank you!" as
her brimming eyes uplifted in deep thankfulness and her shaking hand
returned the pressure of his. "Now, just give me five minutes' time in
the next room--it's my laboratory, Lady Chepstow--and I'll tell you
whether I shall begin with Captain Hawksley or eliminate him from the
case entirely. You might go in ahead, Mr. Narkom, and get the acid bath
and the powder ready for me. We'll see what the finger-prints of our
gentle correspondent have to tell, and, if they are not in the records
of Scotland Yard or down in my own private little book, we'll get a
sample of Captain Hawksley's in the morning."
Then, excusing himself to the ladies, he passed into the inner room in
company with Narkom, and carried the letter with him. When he returned
it was still in his hand, but there were grayish smudges all over it.
"There's not a finger-print in the lot that is worth anything as a means
of identification, Miss Lorne," he said. "But you and Lady Chepstow may
accept my assurance that Captain Hawksley is not the man. The writer of
this letter belongs to the criminal classes; he is on his guard against
the danger of finger-prints, and he wore rubber gloves when he penned
this message. When I find him, rest assured I shall find a man who has
had dealings with the police before and whose finger-prints are on their
records. I don't know what his game is nor what he's after yet, but I
will inside of a week. I've an idea; but it's so wild a thing I'm almost
afraid to trust myself to believe it possible until I stumble over
something that points the same way. Now, go home with Lady Chepstow, and
begin the work of helping me."
"Helping you? Oh, Mr. Cleek, can we? Is there anything we can do to
help?"
"Yes. When you leave the house, act as though you are in the utmost
state of dejection, and keep that up indefinitely. Make it appear, for I
am certain you will be followed and spied upon, as if I had declined the
case. But don't have any fear about the boy. The two constables will
sleep in the room with him to-night and every night until the thing is
cleared up and the danger past. To-morrow about dusk, however, you,
personally, take him for a walk near the Park, and if, among the other
Cingalese you may meet, you should see one dressed as an Englishman, and
wearing a scarlet flower in his buttonhole, take no notice of how often
you see him nor of what he may do."
"It will be you, Mr. Cleek?"
"Yes. Now go, please; and don't forget to act as if you and her ladyship
were utterly broken-hearted. Also"--his voice dropped lower, his hand
met her hand, and in the darkness of the hall a little silver-plated
revolver was slipped into her palm--"also, take this. Keep it always
with you, never be without it night or day, and if any living creature
offers you violence, shoot him down as you would a mad dog. Good-night,
and--remember!"
And long after she and Lady Chepstow had gone down and passed out into
the night he stood there, looking the situation straight in the face and
thinking his own troubled thoughts.
"A wedding bouquet! A threat against her, and the mention of a wedding
bouquet!" he said, as he went back into the room and sat down to figure
the puzzle out. "Only one creature in the world knows of my feelings in
that direction, and only one creature in the world would be capable of
that threat--Margot! But what interest could she or any of her tribe
have in the death of Lady Chepstow's little son? Her game is always
money. If she were after a ransom she would try to abduct the child, not
to kill him, and if----" A sudden thought came and wrenched away his
voice. He sat a moment twisting his fingers one through the other and
frowning at the floor; then, of a sudden, he gave a cry and jumped to
his feet. "Five lacs of rupees--a fortune! By George, I've got it!" he
fairly shouted. "The wild guess was a correct one, I'll stake my life
upon it. Now, then, to put it to the test."
II
The summer twilight was deepening into the summer dusk when Ailsa,
acting upon Cleek's advice, set forth with little Lord Chepstow the
following evening, and turned her steps in the direction of the Park.
Although, on her way there, she observed more than once that a
swarthy-skinned man in European dress, who wore a scarlet flower in his
coat, and was so perfect a type of the Asiatic that he would have passed
muster for one even among a gathering of Cingalese, kept appearing and
disappearing at irregular intervals, it spoke well for the powers of
imitation and self-effacement possessed by Dollops that she never once
thought of associating that young man with the dawdling messenger boy
who strolled leisurely along with a package under his arm and patronized
every bun-shop, winkle stall, and pork-pie purveyor on the line of
march.
For upward of an hour this sort of thing went on without any
interruption and Ailsa strolled along leisurely, with the boy's hand in
hers, his innocent prattle running on ceaselessly; then, of a sudden,
whilst they were moving along close to the Park railings and in the
shadow of the overhanging trees, the figure of an undersized man in
semi-European costume, but wearing on his head the twisted turban of a
Cingalese, issued from one of the gates and well-nigh collided with
them.
He drew back, murmuring an apology in pidgin-English, then, seeing the
child, he salaamed profoundly and murmured in a voice of deep reverence,
"Holy, most holy!" and prostrated himself, with his forehead touching
the ground, until Ailsa and the child had passed on. But barely had
they taken five steps before Cleek appeared upon the scene, and did
exactly the same thing as the Cingalese.
"All right. You may go home now. I've got my man," he whispered, as
Ailsa and the boy passed by. "Look for me at Chepstow House some time
to-night." Then rose, as she walked on, and went after the man who first
had prostrated himself before the child.
He had risen and gone on his way, but not before witnessing Cleek's
obeisance, and flashing upon him a sharp, searching look. Cleek
quickened his steps and shortened the distance between them. Now or
never was the time to put to the test that wild thought which last night
had hammered on his brain, for it was certain that this man was in very
truth a genuine Cingalese, and, as such, must know! He stretched forth
his hand and touched the man, who drew back sharply, half indignantly,
but changed his attitude entirely when Cleek, who knew Hindustani more
than well, spoke to him in the native tongue.
"Unto thee, oh, brother!" Cleek said. "Thou, too, art of us, for thou,
too, dost acknowledge the sacred shrine. These eyes have beheld thee."
All his hopes rested on the slim pillar of that one word, "shrine," and
his heart almost ceased to beat as he watched to see how it was
received. It broke, however, into a very tumult of disturbance in the
next instant, for the man positively beamed as he gave reply.
"Sacred be the shrine!" he answered in Hindustani. "Clearly thou art of
us--not of those others."
"Others? What others? I am but newly come to this country."
"Walk with me, then, to my abode, sup with me, eat of my salt, and I
will tell thee then, oh, brother. But I forget: thou hast no knowledge
of me. Listen, then. I am Arjeeb Noosrut, father of the High Priest
Seydama, and it is among the people of my house that the gun is yet
preserved. Nor has the blood of Seydama been ever washed from the wood
of it! Come."
All in a moment a light seemed to break over Cleek's brain. The missing
link had been supplied--the one thing that could make possible the wild
thought which had come to him last night had been given into his hands.
Here at last was the key to the amazing mystery! He turned without a
word and went with Arjeeb Noosrut.
"What an ass!" he said to himself in the soundless words of thought.
"What an ass never to have suspected it when it is all so clear!"
Meantime Ailsa and the boy, dismissed from any further need of service,
walked on through the deepening dusk and turned their faces homeward.
But they had not gone twenty yards from the spot where Cleek had seen
them last when the little boy set up a joyful cry and pointed excitedly
to a claret-coloured limousine which at that moment swung in from the
middle of the roadway and slowed down as it neared the kerb.
"Oh, look, Miss Lorne; here's mummie's motor-car; and I do believe
that's Bimbi peeping out of it!" exclaimed the child--"Bimbi" being his
pet name for Captain Hawksley--then broke, in wild excitement, from
Ailsa's detaining hand and fled to a tall, military-looking man with a
fair beard and moustache who had just that moment alighted from the
vehicle. "It is Bimbi--it is!--it is!" he shouted as he ran. "Oh, Bimbi,
I _am_ glad!"
"Ceddie, dear, you mustn't be so boisterous!" chided Ailsa, coming up
with him at the kerb. "How fond he is of you to be sure, Captain
Hawksley. You've come for us, I suppose? Ceddie recognized the car at
once."
"Yes; jump in," he answered. "Lady Chepstow sent me after you. She's
nervous, poor soul, every moment the boy's away from her. Jump in, old
chap! Better take the back seat, Miss Lorne; it's more comfortable.
Quite settled, both of you? That's good. All right, chauffeur--Home!"
Then he jumped in after them, closed the door, dropped into a seat, and
the motor, making a wide curve out into the road, pelted away into the
fast-gathering darkness.
"Bimbi says maybe he's going to be my daddy one day--didn't you, Bimbi?"
said his little lordship, climbing up on to "Bimbi's" knee and snuggling
close to him.
"I say, you know, you mustn't tell secrets, old chap!" was the laughing
response. "Miss Lorne will hand you over to Nursie with orders to put
you to bed if you do, I know. Won't you, Miss Lorne?"
"He ought to be in bed, anyhow," responded Ailsa gaily; and then, this
giving the conversation a merry turn, they talked and laughed and kept
up such a chatter that three-quarters of an hour went like magic and
nobody seemed aware of it. But suddenly Ailsa thought, and then put her
thoughts into words.
"What a long time we are in getting home," she said, and bent forward so
that the light from the window might fall upon the dial of her wrist
watch, then gave a little startled cry and half rose from her seat. For
the darkness was now tempered by moonlight and she could see that they
were no longer in the populous districts of the town, but were speeding
along past woodlands and open fields in the very depths of the country.
"Good gracious! Johnston must have lost his senses!" she exclaimed
agitatedly. "Look where we are, Captain Hawksley!--out in the country
with only a farmhouse or two in sight. Johnston! Johnston!" She bent
forward and rapped wildly on the glass panel. "Johnston, stop!--turn
round!--are you out of your head? Captain Hawksley, stop him--stop him,
for pity's sake!"
"Sit down, Miss Lorne." He made reply in a low, level voice, a voice in
which there was something that made her pluck the child to her and hold
him tight to her breast. "You are not going home to-night. You are going
for a ride with me; and if---- Oh, that's your little game, is it?"
lurching forward as she made a frantic clutch at the handle of the door.
"Sit down, do you hear me?--or it will be worse for you! There!"--the
cold bore of a revolver barrel touched her temple and wrung a quaking
gasp of terror from her--"Do you feel that? Now you sit down and be
quiet! If you make a single move, utter a single cry, I'll blow your
brains out before you've half finished it! Look here, do you know who
you're dealing with now? See!"
His hand reached up and twitched away the fair beard and moustache; he
bent forward so that the moonlight through the glass could fall on his
face. It had changed as his voice had now changed, and she saw that she
was looking at the man who in those other days of stress and trial had
posed as "Gaston Merode," brother to the fictitious "Countess de la
Tour."
"You!" she said in a bleak voice of desolation and fright. "Dear heaven,
that horrible Margot's confederate, the King of the Apaches!"
"Yes!" he rapped out. "You and that fellow Cleek came between us in one
promising game, but I'm hanged if you shall do it in this one! I want
this boy, and--I've got him. Now, you call off Cleek and tell him to
drop this case, to make no effort to follow us or to come between us and
the kid, or I'll slit your throat after I've done with his little
lordship here. Lanisterre!"--to the chauffeur--"Lanisterre, do you
hear?"
"_Oui, monsieur._"
"Give her her head and get to the mill as fast as you can. Margot will
be with us in another two hours' time."
III
Through the ever-deepening dusk Cleek and Arjeeb Noosrut moved onward
together; and onward behind them moved, too, the same dilatory messenger
boy who had loitered about in the neighbourhood of the Park, squandering
his halfpence now as then, leaving a small trail of winkle shells and
trotter bones to mark the record of his passage, and never seeming to
lose one iota of his appetite, eat as much and as often as he would.
The walk led down into the depths of Soho, that refuge of the foreign
element in London; but long before they halted at the narrow doorway of
a narrow house in a narrow side street that seemed to have gone to sleep
in an atmosphere of gloom and smells Cleek had adroitly "pumped" Arjeeb
Noosrut dry, and the riddle of the sacred son was a riddle to him no
longer. He was now only anxious to part from the man and return with the
news to Lady Chepstow, and was casting round in his mind for some excuse
to avoid going indoors with him to waste precious time in breaking bread
and eating salt. Suddenly there lurched out of an adjoining doorway an
ungainly figure in turban and sandals and the full flower of that
grotesque regalia which passes muster at cheap theatres and masquerade
balls for the costume of a Cingalese. The fellow had bent forward out of
the deeper darkness of the house-passage into the murk and gloom of the
ill-lit street, and was straining his eyes as if in search for some one
long expected.
"Dog of an infidel!" exclaimed Arjeeb Noosrut, speaking in Hundustani
and spitting on the pavement as he caught sight of the man. "See,
well-beloved, he is of those 'others' of which I spoke when I first met
thee. There are many of them, but true believers none. They dwell in a
room huddled up as unclean things in the house there; they drink and
make merry far into the night, and a woman veiled and in European garb
comes to them and drinks with them. Sometimes a man of her kind is with
her, and they speak a tongue that is not the tongue of our people; yet
have I seen them go forth into the city and do homage as we to the
sacred son."
Cleek sucked in his breath and, twitching round, stared at the dim
figure leaning forward in the dim light.
"By George!" he said to himself; "if I know anything, I ought to know
the slouch and the low-sunk head of the Apache! And a woman comes! And a
man comes! And there are five lacs of rupees! I wonder! I wonder! But
no--she wouldn't come here, to a place like this, if she had ventured
back into England and had called some of the band over to help. She'd go
to the old spot where she and I used to lie low and laugh whilst the
police were hunting for me. She'd go there, I'm sure, to the old Burnt
Acre Mill, where, if you were 'stalked,' you could open the sluice gates
and let the Thames and the mill stream rush in and meet, and make a hell
of whirling waters that would drown a fish. She would go there if it
were she. And yet--it is an Apache: I swear it is an Apache!"
He turned and looked back at Arjeeb Noosrut, then raised his hand and
brushed it down the back of his head, which was always the sign "Wait!"
to Dollops, and then spoke as calmly as he could.
"Brother, I will go in and break bread and eat salt with thee," he said.
"But I may do no more, for to-night I am in haste."
"Come, then," the man answered; and taking him by the hand, led him in
and up to a room at the back of the second storey, where, hot as the
night was, the windows were closed and a woman, squatted before a
lighted brasier, was dripping the contents of an oil cruse over the
roasting carcase of a young kid.
"It is to shut out the sounds of the vile infidel orgies from the house
adjoining," explained Arjeeb Noosrut, as Cleek walked to the tightly
closed window and leant his forehead against it. "Yet, if the heat
oppresses thee----"
"It does," interposed Cleek, and leant far out into the darkness as
though sucking in the air when the sash was raised and the thing which
had been only a dim babel of wordless sounds a moment before became now
the riotous laughter and the ribald comments of men upon the verses of a
comic song which one of their number was joyously singing.
"French!" said Cleek under his breath, as he caught the notes of the
singer and the words of his audience, "French--I knew it!"
Then he drew in his head, and having broken of the bread and eaten of
the salt which, at a word from Arjeeb Noosrut, the woman brought on a
wicker tray and laid before them, he moved hastily to the door.
"Brother and son of the faithful, peace be with thee, I must go," he
said. "But I come again; and it is written that thou shalt be honoured
above all men when I return to thee, and that the true believers--the
true sons of Holy Buddha--shall have cause to set thy name at the head
of the records of those who are most blest of him!"
Then he salaamed and passed out. Closing the door behind him, he ran
like a hare down the narrow stairs. At the door Dollops rose up like the
imp in a pantomime and jumped toward him.
"Law, guv'ner, I'm nigh starved a-waitin' for yer!" he said in a
whisper. "Wot's the lay now? A double quick change? I've got the stuff
here, look!"--holding up the package he was carrying--"or a chance for
me to do some fly catchin' with me bloomin' tickle tootsies?"
The man in the Cingalese costume had vanished from the doorway of the
adjoining house, and, catching the boy by the arm, Cleek hurried him to
it and drew him into the dark passage.
"I'm going to the back; I'm going to climb up to the windows of the
second storey and see who's there and what's going on," he whispered.
"Lie low and watch. I think it's Margot's gang."
"Oh, colour me blue! Them beauties? And in London? I'd give a tanner for
a strong cup o' tea!"
"Shh-h! Be quiet--speak low. Don't be seen, but keep a close watch; and
if anybody comes downstairs----"
"He's mine!" interjected Dollops, stripping up his sleeves. "Glue to the
eyebrows and warranted to stick! Nip away, guv'ner, and leave it to the
tickle tootsies and me!" Then, as Cleek moved swiftly and silently down
the passage and slipped out into the sort of yard at the back of the
house, he pulled out his roll of brown paper squares and his tube of
adhesive, and crawling upstairs on his hands and knees, began operations
at the top step. But he had barely got the first "plaster" fairly made
and ready to apply when there came a rush of footsteps behind him and he
was obliged to duck down and flatten himself against the floor of the
landing to escape being run down by a man who dashed in through the
lower door, flew at top speed up the stairs and, with a sort of blended
cheer and yell, whirled open a door on the landing above and vanished.
In a twinkling other cheers rang out, there was the sound of hastily
moving feet and the uproar of general excitement.
"Oh, well, if you won't stop to be waited on, gents, help yourselves!"
said Dollops with a chuckle. Then he began backing hastily down the
stairs, squirting the contents of the tube all over the steps, and
concluded the operation by scattering all the loose sheets of paper on
the floor at the foot of them before slipping out into the street and
composedly waiting.
Meantime Cleek, sneaking out through the rear door, found himself in a
small, brick-paved yard hemmed in by a high wall thickly fringed on the
top with a hedge of broken bottles. At one time in its history the house
had been occupied by a catgut maker, and the rickety shed in which he
had carried on his calling still clung, sagging and broken-roofed, to
the building itself, its rotten slates all but vanished, and its
interior piled high with mildewed bedding, mouldy old carpet, broken
furniture, and refuse of every sort.
A foot or two above the roof-level of this glowed--two luminous
rectangles in the blackness of darkness--the windows of the back room on
the second storey; and out of these came floating still the song, the
laughter, and the jabbered French he had heard in the house next door.
It did not take him long to make up his mind. Gripping the swaying
supports of the sagging shed, he went up it with the agility of a
monkey, crawled to the nearer of the two windows, and, cautiously
raising himself, peeped in. What he saw made him suck in his breath
sharply and sent his heart hammering hard and fast.
A dozen men were in the room, men whose faces, despite an inartistic
attempt to appear Oriental, he recognized at a glance and knew better
than he knew his own. About them lay discarded portions of Cingalese
attire, thrown off because of the heat, and waiting to be resumed at any
moment. The air was thick with tobacco smoke and rank with spirituous
odours. Sprawled figures were everywhere, and on a sort of couch against
the opposite wall, a cigarette between her fingers, a glass of absinthe
at her elbow, her laughter and badinage ringing out as loudly as any,
lay the lissom figure of Margot!
But even as Cleek looked in upon it the picture changed. Swift, sharp,
and sudden came the rattle of flying feet on the outer stairs. Margot
flung aside her cigarette and jumped up, the song and the laughter came
to an abrupt end, the door flew open, and with a shout and a cheer a man
bounced into the room.
"Serpice! Ah, _le bon Dieu!_ it is Serpice at last!" cried out Margot in
joyous excitement as she and the others crowded round him. "Soul of a
sluggard, don't waste time in laughing and capering like this! Speak up,
speak up, you hear? Are we to fly at once to the mill and join him? Has
he succeeded? Is it done?"
"Yes, yes, yes!" shouted back Serpice, throwing up his cap and capering.
"It is done! It is done! Under the very nose of the Cracksman, too!
Merode's got them both! The little lordship and the Mademoiselle Lorne,
too! They took the bait like gudgeons; they stepped into the automobile
without a fear, and--whizz! it was off to the mill like that! La, la,
la! We win, we win, we win!"
The shock of the thing was too much for Cleek. Carried out of himself by
the knowledge that the woman he loved was now in peril of her life,
discretion forsook him, blind rage mastered him, and he did one of the
few foolish things of his life.
"You lie, you brute, you lie!" he shouted, jumping up into full view.
"God help the man who lays a hand on her! Let him keep his life from me
if he can!"
"The Cracksman!" yelled out Serpice. "The Cracksman! The Cracksman!"
echoed Margot and the rest. Then a pistol barked and spat, the light was
swept out, a bullet sang past Cleek's ear, and he realized how foolish
he had been. For part of the crowd came surging to the window, part went
in one blind rush for the door to head him off and hem him in, and,
through the din and hubbub rang viciously the voice of Margot shrilling
out: "Kill him! Kill him!" as though nothing but the sight of his blood
would glut her malice.
It was neck or nothing now, and the race was to the swift. He dropped
through a gap in the ragged roof, sheer down, like a shot, into the
rubble and refuse below; he lurched through the shed to the door, and
through that to the black passage leading to the street--the clatter on
the higher staircase giving warning of the crowd coming after him--and
flew like a hare hard pressed toward the outer door, and then, just
then, when every little moment counted, there was a scrambling sound, a
chorus of oaths, a slipping, a sliding, a bang on one step and a bump on
another; and, as he darted by and sprang out into the street the hall
was filled with a writhing, scuffling, swearing mass of glue-covered men
struggling in a whirling waste of loose brown paper.
"This way! come quickly, for your life!" he shouted to Dollops as he
came plunging out into the street. "They've got them, got the little
boy! Got Miss Lorne--in spite of me. Come on! come on! come on!" He flew
like an arrow from crossing to crossing and street to street with
Dollops, like a shadow, at his heels.
A sudden swerve to the right brought them into a lighted and populous
thoroughfare. Italian restaurants, German delicatessen shops, eating
places of a dozen other nationalities lined the pavement on both sides
of the street, and in front of one of these a high-power motor stood,
protected by the watchful eye of an accommodating policeman while the
chauffeur sampled Chianti in a wine-shop close by. With a rush and a
leap Cleek was upon it, and with another rush and a leap the constable
was upon him, only to be greeted with the swift flicking open of a coat
and the gleam of badge that every man in the force knew.
"Cleek?"
"Yes! In the name of the Yard; in the name of the king! get out of the
way! In with you, Dollops! We'll get the brutes yet!"
Then he bent over, threw in the clutch, and discarding all speed laws,
sent the car humming and tearing away.
"Hold tight!" he said through his teeth. "Whatever comes, we've got to
get to Burnt Acre Mill inside of an hour. If you know any prayers,
Dollops, say them."
"The Lord fetch us home in time for supper!" gulped the boy obediently.
"S'help me, guv'ner, the wind's goin' through my teeth like I was a
mouth organ, and I'm hollow enough for a flute!"
IV
It is strange how, in moments of stress and trial, even in times of
tragedy, the most commonplace thoughts will intrude themselves and the
mind separate itself from the immediate events. As Merode put the cold
muzzle of the revolver to Ailsa's temple and she ought, one would have
supposed, to have been deaf and blind to all things but the horror of
her position, one of these strange mental lapses occurred, and her mind,
travelling back over the years to her early schooldays, dwelt on a
punishment task set her by her preceptress--the task of copying three
hundred times the phrase "Discretion is the better part of valour."
As the recollection of that time rose before her mental vision, the
value of the phase itself forced its worth upon her and, huddling back
in the corner of the limousine, she clutched the frightened child to her
and gave implicit obedience to Merode's command to make no effort to
attract attention either by word or deed. And he, fancying that he had
thoroughly cowed her, withdrew the touch of the weapon from her temple,
but held it ready for possible use in the grip of his thin, strong hand.
For a time the limousine kept straight on in its headlong course, then,
of a sudden, it swerved to the left. The gleam of a river--all silver
with moonlight--struck up through a line of trees on one side of the
car, the blank, unbroken dreariness of a stretch of waste land spread
out upon the other, and presently, by the slowing down of the motor,
Ailsa guessed that they were nearing their destination. They reached it
a few moments later, and a peep from the window, as the vehicle stopped,
showed her the outlines of a ruined watermill, ghostly, crumbling,
owl-haunted, looming black against the silver sky.
A crumbled wheel hung, rotten and moss-grown, over a dry water-course,
where straggling willows stretched out from the bank and trailed their
long, feathery ends a yard or so above the level of the weeds and
grasses that carpeted the sandy bed of it, and along its edge--once
built as a protection for the heedless or unwary, but now a ruin and a
wreck--a moss-grown wall with a narrow, gateless archway made an
irregular shadow on the moon-drenched earth. She saw that archway and
that dry water-course, and a new, strong hope arose within her.
Discretion had played its part; now it was time for Valour to take the
stage.
"Come, get out--this is the end," said Merode, as he unlatched the door
of the limousine and alighted. "You may yell here until your throat
splits, for all the good it will do you. Lanisterre, show us a light;
the path to the door is uncertain, and the floor of the mill is unsafe.
This way, if you please, Miss Lorne. Let me have the boy, I'll look
after him!"
"No, no!--not yet! Please, not yet!" said Ailsa, with a little catch in
her voice as she plucked him to her and smothered his frightened cries
against her breast. "Let me have him whilst I may; let me hold him to
the last, Monsieur Merode. His mother trusts me. She will want to know
that I--I stood by him until I could stand no longer. Please!--we are so
helpless--I am so fond of him, and--he is such a very little boy.
Listen! You want me to write to Mr. Cleek; you want me to ask something
of him. I won't do it for myself, not if you kill me for refusing. I'll
never do it for myself; but--but I will do it if you won't separate us
until he has had time to say his prayers."
"Oh, all right, then," he agreed. "If it's any consolation doing a
fool's trick like that, why do it! Now come along, and let's get inside
the mill without any more nonsense. Lanisterre, bring that lantern here
so that mademoiselle can see the path to the door. This way, if you
please, Miss Lorne."
"Thank you," she said as she alighted and moved slowly in the direction
of the door, soothing the child as they crept along almost within touch
of the crumbling wall. "Ceddie, darling, don't cry. You are a brave
little hero, I know, and heroes are never afraid to die." From the tail
of her eye she watched Merode. He seemed to realize from these words to
the child that she was reconciled to the inevitable, and with an air of
satisfaction he put the pistol back into his pocket and walked beside
her. She kept straight on with her soothing words; and, in the half
shadow, neither Merode nor Lanisterre could see that one hand was lost
in the folds of her skirt.
"Ceddie, darling, let Miss Lorne be able to tell mummie that her little
man was a hero; that he died, as heroes always die, without a fear or a
weakening to the very last. I'll stand by you, precious; I'll hold your
hand; and, when the time comes----"
It came then! The gateless archway was reached at last, and the thing
she had been planning all along now became possible. With one sudden
push she sent the boy reeling down the incline into the dry
water-course, flashed round sharply, and before Merode really knew how
the thing had happened, she was standing with her back to the arch and a
revolver in her levelled hand.
"Throw up your arms--throw them up at once, or, as God hears me, I'll
shoot!" she cried. "Run, Ceddie, run, baby! He shan't follow you. I'll
kill him if he tries!"
"You idiot!" began Merode, and made a lurch toward her. But the pistol
barked and something white-hot zig-zagged along his arm and bit like a
flame into his shoulder.
"Up with your hands--up with them!" she said in a voice that shook with
excitement as he howled out and made a reeling backward step. "Next time
it will be the head I aim at, not the arm!" Then, lifting up her voice
in one loud shriek that made the echoes bound, she called with all her
strength: "Help, somebody--for God's sake help! Scream, Ceddie--scream!
Help! Help!"
And lo! as she called, as if a miracle had been wrought, out of the
darkness an answering voice called back to her, and the wild, swift
notes of a motor horn bleated along the lonely road.
"I'm coming--I--Cleek!" that voice rang out. "Hold your own--hold it to
the last, Miss Lorne, and God help the man who lays a finger on you!"
"Mr. Cleek! Mr. Cleek, oh, thank God!" she flung back with all the
rapture a human voice could contain. "Come on, come on! I've got
him--got that man Merode, and the boy is safe, the boy is safe! Come on!
come on! come on!"
"We're a-comin', miss, you gamble on that and the lightnin's a fool to
us!" shouted Dollops in reply. "Let her have it, guv'ner! Bust the
bloomin' tank. Give her her head; give her her feet; give her her
blessed merry-thought if she wants it! Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!"
And then, just then, when she most needed her strength and her courage,
Ailsa's evaporated. The reaction came, and, with the despairing cries of
Merode and Lanisterre ringing in her ears, she sank back, weak, white,
almost fainting and, leaning against the side of the archway, began to
laugh and to sob hysterically. Merode seized that one moment and sprang
to the breach.
Realizing that the game was all but up, that there was nothing for him
now but to save his own skin if he could, he called out to Lanisterre to
rip out the sparking plug of the motor and follow him, then plunged into
the mill, swung over the lever which controlled the sluice gates, and,
darting out by the back way, fled across the waste.
But behind him he left a scene of indescribable horror, and the shrill
screaming of a little child told him when that horror began. For as the
sluice gates opened a sullen roar sounded; on one side the diverted
millstream, and on the other the river, rose as two solid walls of
water, rushed forward and--met. In the twinkling of an eye the old
water-course was one wild, leaping, roaring, gyrating whirlpool of
up-flung froth and twisting waves that bore in their eddying clutch the
battling figure of a drowning child.
Even before he came in sight of it the roaring waters and the fearful
splash of their impact told Cleek what had been done. He could hear
Ailsa's screams; he could hear the boy's feeble cries, and a moment
later, when the whizzing motor panted up through the moonlight and sped
by the broken wall, there was Ailsa, fairly palsied with fright,
clinging weakly to the crumbling arch and uttering little sobbing,
wordless, incoherent moans of fright as she stared down into the hell of
waters; and below, in the foam, a little yellow head was spinning round
and round and round, in dizzying circles of torn and leaping waves.
"Heavens, guv'ner!" began Dollops in a voice of appalling despair; but
before he could get beyond that, Cleek's coat was off, Cleek's body had
described a sort of semi-circle, and the child was no longer alone in
the whirlpool!
Battling, struggling, fairly leaping, as a fish leaps in a torrent, one
moment half out of the water, the next wholly submerged, Cleek struck
from eddy to eddy, from circle to circle, until that little yellow head
was within reach, then put forth his hand and gripped it, pulled it to
him, and in another moment he was whirling round and round the
whirlpool's course with the child clutched to him and its wet, white
face gleaming wax-like over the angle of his shoulder.
They had not made the half of the first circle thus before Dollops had
leaped to the bending willows, had scrambled up the rough trunk of the
nearest of them, and, pushing his weight out upon a strong and supple
bough, bent it downward until the half of its strongest withes were deep
in the whirling waters.
"Grab 'em, guv'ner--grab 'em when you come by!" he sang out over the
roar of the waters. "They'll hold you, sir--hold a dozen like you; and
if---- Well played! Got 'em the first grab! Hang on! Get a tight grip!
Now, then, sir, hand over hand till you're at the bank! Good biz! Good
biz! Blest if you won't be goin' in for the circus trade next! Steady
does it, sir--steady, steady! Goal, by Jupiter! Now, then, hand me up
the nipper--I should say the young gent--and in two minutes'
time----Right! Got him! 'Ere you are, Miss Lorne--lay hold of his little
lordship, will you? I've got me blessed hands full a-keepin' to me perch
whilst the guv'ner's a-wobbling of the branch like this. Good biz! Now,
then, sir, another 'arf a yard. That's the call! Hands on this bough and
foot on the bank there. One, two, three--knew you'd do it! Safe as
house, Gawd bless yer bully heart!"
And then Cleek, wet, white, panting, dragged himself out of the clutch
of the whirlpool and lay breathing heavily on the ground.
"By gums, guv'ner," Dollops added as he looked down on the whirling
waters, "what an egg-beater it would make, wouldn't it, sir? Ain't got
such a thing as a biscuit about yer, have you? Me spine's a-rasping
holes in me necktie, and I'm so flat you could slip me into a pillar box
and they'd take me home for a penny stamp."
But Cleek made no reply. Wet and spent after his fierce struggle with
the whirling fury he had just escaped, he lay looking up into Ailsa's
eyes as she came to him with the sobbing child close pressed to her
bosom and all heaven in her beaming face.
"It is not the 'funeral wreath' after all, you see, Miss Lorne," he
said. "It came near to being it; but--it is not, it is not. I wonder,
oh, I wonder!"
Then he laughed the foolish, vacuous laugh of a man whose thoughts are
too happy for the banality of words.
* * * * *
It was midnight and after. In the close-curtained library of Chepstow
House, Cleek, with little Lord Chepstow sleeping in his arms, sat in
solemn conclave with Lady Chepstow, Captain Hawksley, and Maverick
Narkom. While they talked, Ailsa, like a restless spirit, wandered to
and fro, now lifting the curtains to peep out into the darkness, now
listening as if her whole life's hope lay in the coming of some expected
sound. And in her veins there burned a fever of suspense.
"So you failed to get the rascals, did you, Mr. Narkom?" Cleek was
saying. "I feared as much; but I couldn't get word to you sooner. We
blew out a fuse, Dollops and I, in that mad race to the mill, and of
course we had to come home at a snail's pace afterward. I'm sorry we
didn't get Margot, sorrier still that that hound Merode got away. They
are bound to make more trouble before the race is run. Not for her
ladyship, however, and not for this dear little chap. Their troubles are
at an end, and the sacred son will be a sacred son no longer."
"Oh, Mr. Cleek, do tell me what you mean," implored Lady Chepstow. "Do
tell me how----"
"Doctor Fordyce at last!" struck in Ailsa excitedly, as the door-bell
and the knocker clashed and the butler's swift footsteps went along the
hall. "Now we shall know, Mr. Cleek, now we shall know for certain!"
"And so shall all the world," he replied as the door opened and the
doctor was ushered into the room. "I don't think you were ever so
welcome anywhere or at any time before, doctor," he added with a smile.
"Come and look at this little chap. Bonny little specimen of a
Britisher, isn't he?"
"Yes; but, my dear sir, I--I was under the impression that I was called
to a scene of excitement; and you seem as peaceful as Eden here. The
constable who came for me said it was something to do with Scotland
Yard!"
"So it is, doctor. I had Mr. Narkom send for you to perform a very
trifling but most important operation upon this little boy here."
"Upon Cedric!" exclaimed Lady Chepstow, rising in a panic of alarm. "An
operation to be performed upon my baby boy? Oh, Mr. Cleek, in the name
of Heaven----"
"No, your ladyship, in the name of Buddha. Don't be alarmed. It is only
to be a trifling cut, a mere re-opening of that little wound in the
thigh which you dressed and healed so successfully at Trincomalee. You
made a mistake, all of you, that night when the boy was shot. The native
poor Ferralt saw skulking along with the gun was not a mere tribesman
and had not the very faintest thought of discharging that weapon at your
little son, or, indeed, at anybody else in the world. He was the High
Priest, Seydama, guardian of the holy tooth, the one living being who
dared by right to touch it or to lay hands upon the shrine that
contained it. Fearful, when the false rumour of that intended loot was
circulated, that infidel eyes should look upon it, infidel hands profane
the sacred relic, he determined to remove it from Dambool to the
rock-hewn temple of Galwihara and to enshrine it there. For the purpose
of giving no clue to his movements, he chose to abandon his priestly
robes, to disguise himself as a common tribesman, and, the better to
defeat the designs of those who might seek to tear it from him and hold
it for ransom, he hid the holy tooth in the barrel of a gun. That gun
was in his hands when Ferralt leaped out and brained him!"
"Dear heaven!" cried Lady Chepstow with a sudden burst of realization.
"Then that holy relic, that fetish, the sacred tooth of Buddha----"
"Is embedded in the fleshy part of the thigh of your little son!" he
finished. "Enclosed, doubtless, in a sac or cyst which protective Mother
Nature has wrapped round it, the tooth is there; and, for five whole
years, he has been the living shrine that held it!"
And so, in truth, it proved to be. Ten minutes later the trifling
operation was over, and the long-lost relic lay in the palm of the
doctor's hand.
"Take it, Captain Hawksley," said Cleek, lifting it and carrying it over
to him. "There is a man in Soho, one Arjeeb Noosrut, who will know it
when he sees it; and there is a vast reward. Five lacs of rupees will
pay off no end of debts, and a man with that balance at his banker's
can't be accused of being a fortune-hunter when he asks in marriage the
hand of the woman he loves. Mr. Narkom, is your motor ready? I'm a bit
fagged out, and Dollops, I know, is all but starving. Ladies and
gentlemen, my best respects. The riddle is solved. Good-night!"