On the morrow, Mrs. Bawdrey made known the rather surprising piece of
news that Mr. Rickaby had written her a note to say that he had received
a communication of such vital importance that he had been obliged to
leave the house that morning before anybody was up, and might not be
able to return to it for several days.
"No very great hardship in that, my dear," commented Mrs. Somerby-Miles,
"for a more stupid and uninteresting person I never encountered. Fancy!
he never even offered to assist the gentlemen to get poor Mr. Bawdrey
upstairs last night. How is the poor old dear this morning, darling?
Better?"
"Yes--much," said Mrs. Bawdrey, in reply. "Doctor Phillipson came to the
house before four o'clock, and brought some wonderful new medicine that
has simply worked wonders. Of course, he will have to stop in bed and be
perfectly quiet for three or four days; but, although the attack was by
far the worst he has ever had, the doctor feels quite confident that he
will pull him safely through."
Now although, in the light of her apparent affection for her aged
husband, she ought, one would have thought, to be exceedingly happy over
this, it was distinctly noticeable that she was nervous and ill at ease,
that there was a hunted look in her eyes, and that, as the day wore on,
these things seemed to be accentuated. More than that, there seemed
added proof of the truth of young Bawdrey's assertion that she and
Captain Travers were in league with each other, for that day they were
constantly together, constantly getting off into out-of-the-way places,
and constantly talking in an undertone of something that seemed to worry
them.
Even when dinner was over, and the whole party adjourned to the
drawing-room for coffee, and the lady ought, in all conscience, to have
given herself wholly up to the entertainment of her guests it was
observable that she devoted most of her time to whispered confidences
with Captain Travers, that they kept going to the window and looking up
at the sky, as if worried and annoyed that the twilight should be so
long in fading and the night in coming on. But worse than this, at ten
o'clock Captain Travers made an excuse of having letters to write, and
left the room, and it was scarcely six minutes later that she followed
suit.
But the Captain had not gone to write letters, as it had happened.
Instead, he had gone straight to the morning-room, an apartment
immediately behind that in which the elder Mr. Bawdrey's collection was
housed, and from which a broad French window opened out upon the
grounds, and it might have caused a scandal had it been known that Mrs.
Bawdrey joined him there one minute after leaving the drawing-room.
"It is the time, Walter, it is the time!" she said, in a breathless sort
of way, as she closed the door and moved across the room to where he
stood, a dimly seen figure in the dim light. "God help and pity me! but
I am so nervous, I hardly know how to contain myself. The note said at
ten to-night in the morning-room, and it is ten now. The hour is here,
Walter, the hour is here!"
"So is the man, Mrs. Bawdrey," answered a low voice from the outer
darkness; then a figure lifted itself above the screening shrubs just
beyond the ledge of the open window, and Cleek stepped into the room.
She gave a little hysterical cry and reached out her hands to him.
"Oh, I am so glad to see you, even though you hint at such awful things,
I am so glad, so glad!" she said. "I almost died when I read your note.
To think that it is murder--murder! And but for you he might be dead
even now. You will like to know that the doctor brought the stuff you
sent by him--brought it at once--and my darling is better--better."
Before Cleek could venture any reply to this, Captain Travers stalked
across the room and gripped his hand.
"And so you are that great man Cleek, are you?" he said. "Bully boy!
Bully boy! And to think that all the time it wasn't some mysterious
natural affliction; to think that it was crime--murder--poison. What
poison, man, what poison--what?"
"Ayupee, or, as it is variously called in the several islands of the
Eastern Archipelago, Pohon-Upas, Antjar, and Ipo," said Cleek, in reply.
"The deadly venom which the Malays use in poisoning the heads of their
arrows."
"What! that awful stuff!" said Mrs. Bawdrey, with a little shuddering
cry. "And someone in this house--" Her voice broke. She plucked at
Cleek's sleeve and looked up at him in an agony of entreaty. "Who?" she
implored. "Who in this house could? You said you would tell
to-night--you said you would. Oh, who could have the heart? Ah! Who? It
is true, if you have not heard it, that once upon a time there was bad
blood between Mr. Murdock and him--that Mr. Murdock is a family
connection; but even he, oh, even he--Tell me--tell me, Mr. Cleek!"
"Mrs. Bawdrey, I can't just yet," he made reply. "In my heart I am as
certain of it as though the criminal had confessed; but I am waiting for
a sign, and, until that comes, absolute proof is not possible. That it
will come, and may, indeed, come at any moment now that it is quite
dark, I am very certain. When it does--"
He stopped and threw up a warning hand. As he spoke a queer thudding
sound struck one dull note through the stillness of the house. He stood,
bent forward, listening, absolutely breathless; then, on the other side
of the wall, there rippled and rolled a something that was like the
sound of a struggle between two voiceless animals, and--the sign that he
awaited had come!
"Follow me--quickly, as noiselessly as you can. Let no one hear, let no
one see!" he said in a breath of excitement. Then he sprang cat-like to
the door, whirled it open, scudded round the angle of the passage to the
entrance of the room where the fraudulent collection was kept, and went
in with the silent fleetness of a panther. And a moment later, when
Captain Travers and Mrs. Bawdrey swung in through the door and joined
him, they came upon a horrifying sight.
For there, leaning against the open door of the case where the skeleton
of the nine-fingered man hung, was Dollops, bleeding and faint, and with
a score of tooth-marks on his neck and throat, and on the floor at his
feet Cleek was kneeling on the writhing figure of a man, who bit and
tore and snarled like a cornered wolf and fought with teeth and feet and
hands alike in the wild effort to get free from the grip of destiny. A
locked handcuff clamped one wrist, and from it swung, at the end of the
connecting chain, its unlocked mate; the marks of Dollops' fists were on
his lips and cheeks, and at the foot of the case, where the hanging
skeleton doddered and shook to the vibration of the floor, lay a
shattered phial of deep-blue glass.
"Got you, you hound!" said Cleek, through his teeth as he wrenched the
man's two wrists together and snapped the other handcuff into place.
"You beast of ingratitude--you Judas! Kissing and betraying like any
other Iscariot! And a dear old man like that! Look here, Mrs. Bawdrey;
look here Captain Travers; what do you think of a little rat like this?"
They came forward at his word, and, looking down, saw that the figure he
was bending over was the figure of Philip Bawdrey.
"Oh!" gulped Mrs. Bawdrey, and then shut her two hands over her eyes and
fell away weak and shivering. "Oh, Mr. Cleek, it can't be--it can't! To
do a thing like that?"
"Oh, he'd have done worse, the little reptile, if he hadn't been pulled
up short," said Cleek in reply. "He'd have hanged you for it, if it had
gone the way he planned. You look in your boxes; you, too, Captain
Travers. I'll wager each of you finds a phial of Ayupee hidden among
them somewhere. Came in to put more of the cursed stuff on the ninth
finger of the skeleton, so that it would be ready for the next time,
didn't he, Dollops?"
"Yes, Gov'nor. I waited for him behind the case just as you told me to,
sir, and when he ups and slips the finger of the skilligan into the neck
of the bottle, I nips out and whacks the bracelet on him. But he was too
quick for me, sir, so I only got one on; and then, the hound, he turns
on me like a blessed hyena, sir, and begins a-chawin' of me windpipe. I
say, Gov'nor, take off his silver wristlets, will you, sir, and lemme
have jist ten minutes with him on my own? Five for me, sir, and five for
his poor old dad!"
"Not I," said Cleek. "I wouldn't let you soil those honest hands of
yours on his vile little body, Dollops. Thought you had a noodle to deal
with, didn't you, Mr. Philip Bawdrey? Thought you could lead me by the
nose, and push me into finding those phials just where you wanted them
found, didn't you? Well, you've got a few more thoughts coming. Look
here, Captain Travers: what do you think of this fellow's little game?
Tried to take me in about you and Mrs. Bawdrey being lovers, and trying
to do away with him and his father to get the old man's money."
"Why, the contemptible little hound! Bless my soul, man, I'm engaged to
Mrs. Bawdrey's cousin. And as for his stepmother--why, she threw the
little worm over as soon as he began making love to her, and tried to
make her take up with him by telling her how much he'd be worth when his
father died."
"I guessed as much. I didn't fancy him from the first moment; and he was
so blessed eager to have me begin by suspecting you two, that I smelt a
rat at once. Oh, but he's been crafty enough in other things. Putting
that devilish stuff on the ninth finger of the skeleton, and never
losing an opportunity to get his poor old father to handle it and show
it to people. It's a strong, irritant poison--sap of the upas-tree is
the base of it--producing first an irritation of the skin, then a
blister, and, when that broke, communicating the poison directly to the
blood every time the skeleton hand touched it. A weak solution at first,
so that the decline would be natural, the growth of the malady gradual.
But if I'd found that phial in your room last night, as he hoped and
believed I had done--well, look for yourself. The finger of the skeleton
is thick with the beastly, gummy stuff to-night. Double strength, of
course. The next time his father touched it he'd have died before
morning. And the old chap fairly worshipping him. I suspected him, and
suspected what the stuff that was being used really was from the
beginning. Last night I drugged him, and then--I knew."
"Knew, Mr. Cleek? Why, how could you?"
"The most virulent poisons have their remedial uses, Captain," he made
reply. "You can kill a man with strychnine; you can put him in his grave
with arsenic; you can also use both these powerful agents to cure and to
save, in their proper proportions and in the proper way. The same rule
applies to Ayupee. Properly diluted and properly used, it is one of the
most powerful agents for the relief, and, in some cases, the cure, of
Bright's disease of the kidneys. But the Government guards this unholy
drug most carefully. You can't get a drop of it in Java for love or
money, unless on the order of a recognized physician; and you can't
bring it into the ports of England unless backed by that physician's
sworn statement and the official stamp of the Javanese authorities. A
man undeniably afflicted with Bright's disease could get these
things--no other could. Well, I wanted to know who had succeeded in
getting Ayupee into this country and into this house. Last night I
drugged every man in it, and--I found out."
"But how?"
"By finding the one who could not sleep stretched out at full length.
One of the strongest symptoms of Bright's disease is a tendency to draw
the knees up close to the body in sleep, Captain, and to twist the arms
above the head. Of all the men under this roof, this man here was the
only one who slept like that last night!" He paused and looked down at
the scowling, sullen creature on the floor. "You wretched little cur!"
he said, with a gesture of unspeakable contempt. "And all for the sake
of an old man's money! If I did my duty, I'd gaol you. But if I did, it
would be punishing the innocent for the crimes of the guilty. It would
kill that dear old man to learn this; and so he's not going to learn it,
and the law's not going to get its own." He twitched out his hand, and
something tinkled on the floor. "Get up!" he said sharply. "There's the
key of the handcuffs; take it and set yourself free. Do you know what's
going to happen to you? To-morrow morning Dr. Phillipson is going to
examine you, and to report that you'll be a dead man in a year's time if
you stop another week in this country. You are going out of it, and you
are going to stop out of it. Do you understand? _Stop_ out of it to the
end of your days. For if ever you put foot in it again I'll handle you
as a terrier handles a rat! Dollops!"
"Yes, Gov'nor?"
"My things packed and ready?"
"Yes, sir. And all waitin' in the arbour, sir, as you told me to have
'em."
"Good lad! Get them, and we'll catch the first train back. Mrs. Bawdrey,
my best respects. Captain, all good luck to you," said Cleek--and swung
out into the darkness and the moist, warm fragrance of the night; his
mental poise a bit unsteady, his nerves raw. It was not in him to have
stopped longer, to have remained under the same roof with a monster like
young Bawdrey and keep his temper in check.