The stillness, the balm, the soothing influences of the night worked
their own spell; and, after a time, rubbed out the mental wrinkles and
brought a sense of restfulness and peace. It could not well do otherwise
with such a nature as his. The night was all a-musk with mignonette and
roses, the sky all a-glitter with stars. A gunshot distant the river
ran--a silver thing ribboning along between the dark of bending trees;
somewhere in the darkness a nightingale shook out the scale of Nature's
Anthem to the listening Night, and, farther afield, others took up the
chorus of it and sang and sang with the sheer joy of living.
What a world--God, what a world for parricides to exist in, and for the
sons of men to forget the Fifth Commandment!
He walked on faster, and made his way to the arbour where Dollops
waited. The boy rose to meet him.
"Everythink all ready, sir--see!" he said, holding up a kit bag. "Wot's
it now, Gov'nor?--the railway station? Good enough. Shall I nip off
ahead or keep with you till we get there?"
"Suit yourself, my lad."
"Thanky, sir; then I'll walk at your heels, if you don't mind. I'd like
to walk at your heels all the rest of my blessed life. Did I carry it
off all right, Gov'nor? Did I do it jist as you wanted of it done?"
"To a T, my lad," said Cleek, smiling and patting him on the shoulder.
"You'll do, Dollops--you'll do finely. I think I did a good job for the
pair of us, my boy, when I gave you those two half-crowns."
"Advanced, Gov'nor, advanced," corrected Dollops, with a look of sheer
affection. "Let me work 'em off, sir, like you said I might. I don't
want nothin' but wot I earns, Gov'nor; nothin' but wot I've got a right
to have; for when I sees wot wantin' money as don't belong to you leads
to; when I thinks wot that young Bawdrey chap was willin' to do for the
love of havin' it--"
"Don't!" struck in Cleek, a trifle roughly. "Drop the man's name--I
can't trust myself to think of it. That the one world, the one self-same
world, could hold two such widely dissimilar creations of God as that
monster and ... No matter. Thank God, I've been able to do something
to-night for a good woman--I owe so much to another of her kind. No;
don't speak--just walk quietly and"--jerking his thumb in the direction
of the fluting nightingales--"listen to that. God! the man who could
think evil things when a nightingale sings, isn't fit to stand even in
the Devil's presence."
Dollops looked at him--half-puzzled, half-awed. He could not understand
the character of the man: there were so many sides to it; and they came
and went so oddly. One minute, a very brute-beast in his ferocity, the
next, a woman in his tenderness and a poet in his thoughts. But if the
boy was puzzled, he was, at least, discreet. He put nothing into words:
merely walked on in silence, and left the man to his thoughts and the
nightingales to their melody.
And Cleek was unusually thoughtful from that period onward; speaking
hardly a word through all the journey home. For now that the events
which had occupied his mind for the past two or three days were over and
done with, his memory harked back to those things which had to do with
his own affairs, and he caught himself wondering how matters had gone
with Ailsa Lorne; which of the two positions--the English one or the
French--she had finally elected to apply for; and if time had as yet
softened the shock of that disclosure made in the mist and darkness at
Hampstead Heath.
He had, of course, heard nothing of her since that time; and the days he
had spent at Richmond had utterly precluded the possibility of giving
himself that small pleasure--so often indulged in--of adopting a safe
disguise, prowling about the neighbourhood where she lived until she
should come forth upon one errand or another, and then following her,
unsuspected.
That she could have taken the knowledge of what he once had been in no
other way than she had done; that to such a woman, such a man must at
the first blush be an object of abhorrence--a thing to be put out of her
life as completely and as expeditiously as possible--he fully realised;
yet, at bottom, he was conscious of a hope that Time--even so little as
had passed--might lend a softening influence that should lead eventually
to Pity, and from that to a day when the word Forgiveness might be
spoken.
He wanted that forgiveness--the soul of the man needed it, as parched
plants need water. He had not climbed up out of himself without some
struggle, some moments when he wavered between what he had become, and
what Nature had written that he was meant to be; for no Soul is purged
all in a moment, no man may conquer himself with just one solitary
fight. He needed her forgiveness, the thought of her, the hope of her,
to rivet his armour for the long, brave fight. He needed her
Friendship--if he might never have her love he needed _that_. And if she
were to pass like this from his life.... If the Light were to go out ...
and all the long, dark way of the Future still to be faced.... Something
within him seemed to writhe. He took his lower lip between his thumb and
forefinger and squeezed it hard.
That he had hoped for some token, some word--forwarded through Mr.
Narkom--he did not quite realise until he got back to Clarges Street and
found that there was none.
Followed a sense of despair, a moment of deep dejection, that passed in
turn and gave place to a feeling of personal injury, of savage
resentment, and of the ferocity which comes when the half-tamed wolf
wakes to the realisation that here is nothing before it evermore, but
the bars of the cage and the goad of the keeper; and that far and away
in the world there are still the free woods, the naked body of Nature,
and the savage company of its kind.
Under the stress of that gust of passion, he sent Dollops flying from
the room. He wrenched open the drawer of his writing-table, and scooped
up in his hands some trifles of faded ribbon and trinkets of
gold--things that he treasured, none knew why or for what--and holding
them thus, looked down on them and laughed, bitterly and savagely, as
though a devil were within him.
"Me! She scorns me!" he said, and laughed again, and flung them all back
and shut the drawer upon them. And presently he knew that he held her
all the higher because she did scorn him; because her life was such that
she _could_ scorn him; and the bitterness dropped out of him, his eyes
softened, and though he still laughed, it was for an utterly different
reason, and in a wholly different way.
Some pots of tulips and mignonette stood on the ledge of his window. He
walked over to see that they were watered before he went to bed. And
between the time when he got down on his knees to fish out his
bath-slippers from beneath the bed-stead and the creak of the springs
when he lay down for the night, he was so long and so still that one
might have believed he was doing something else.
He slept long, and rose in the morning soothed and subdued in
spirit--better and brighter in every way; for now no affair, for The
Yard hampered his movements and claimed his time. He was free; he was
back in the Town--beautiful because it contained her--and he might hark
back to the old trick of watching and following and being close to her
without her knowledge.
It was a vain hope that, however. For, although he dressed and went out
and haunted the neighbourhood of Sir Horace Wyvern's house for hours on
end, he saw nothing of her that day. Nor did he see her the next, nor
the next, nor yet the next again. At first, he began to think that she
must come out and return during the times when he was obliged to go off
guard and get his meal--for he could not bring himself to play the part
of the spy or the common policeman, and filch news from the
servants--but when a week had gone by in this manner, he set all
question upon that point at rest by remaining at his post from sunrise
to ten o'clock at night. She did not appear. He wondered what that
meant--whether it indicated that she had already accepted one of the two
positions, or had gone to stop with her friend on the other side of
Hampstead Heath.
The result of that wondering was that, for the next five days, the
gentleman who was known in Clarges Street as "Captain Horatio Burbage,"
became a regular visitor to the neighbourhood of the house in Bardon
Road. The issue was exactly the same. Miss Lorne did not appear.
He could no longer doubt that she had accepted one or other of the two
positions; but steadfastly refrained from making any personal inquiry.
She would hear of it if anybody called to inquire her whereabouts; and
she would guess who had done it. He would not have her feel that he was
thrusting himself upon her, inquiring about her as one might inquire
about a common servant. If it was her will that he should know, then
that knowledge should come from her, not be picked up as one picks up
clues to missing people of the criminal class.
So then, it was good-bye to Bardon Road, just as it had been good-bye to
Mayfair. He turned his back upon it in the very moment he came to that
conclusion, and had just set his face in the direction of the heath when
he was brought to a standstill by the sound of someone calling out
sharply: "Burbage--I say, Captain Burbage: stop a moment, please." And,
screwing round instantly, he saw a red limousine pelting toward him, and
an excited chauffeur waving a gloved hand.
He knew that red limousine, and he knew that chauffeur. Both belonged to
Mr. Maverick Narkom.
He stood waiting until the motor was abreast of him--had, in fact, come
to a standstill--then spoke in a guarded tone:
"What is it, Lennard?" he asked. "The Yard?"
"Yessir. Young Dollops told us where to look for you. Hop in quickly,
sir. Superintendent inside."
Cleek opened the door of the vehicle at once, stepped in, shut it after
him, and sat down beside Mr. Narkom with the utmost composure.
"My dear fellow, I _have_ had a chase!" said the superintendent, with a
long deep breath of relief, as the limousine swung out into the roadway,
and pelted off westward at a pace that brushed the very fringes of the
speed limit. "I made certain I should find you at home. Fairly floored
when I discovered that you weren't. If it hadn't been for that boy,
Dollops--bright young button, that Dollops, Cleek; exceedingly bright,
b'gad."
"Yes," agreed Cleek, quietly. "Bright, faithful, and--inventive."
"Really? What has the young beggar invented, then?"
"An original appliance which may possibly be of a good deal of service
one of these days. But, never mind that at present. It is fair to
suppose, from your rushing out here in quest of me, that you've got
something on hand, isn't it?"
"Yes--rather! An amazing 'something,' old chap. It's a letter. Arrived
at headquarters about an hour and a half ago. Not an affair for The Yard
this time, Cleek, but a thing you must take up on your own, if you take
it up at all; and I tell you frankly, I don't like it."
"Why?"
"For one thing, it's from Paris; and--well, you know what dangers Paris
would have for _you_. There's that she-devil you broke with--that woman
Margot. You know what she swore, what she wrote when you sent her that
letter telling her that you were done with her and her lot, and warning
her never to set foot on English soil again? If you were to run foul of
her--if she were ever to get any hint of your real identity--"
"She can't. She knows no more of my real history than you do; no more
than I actually know of hers. Our knowledge of each other began when we
started to 'pal' together--it ended when we split, eighteen months ago.
But about that letter? What is it? Why do you say that you don't like
it?"
"Well, to begin with, I'm afraid it is some trap of hers to decoy you
over there--get you into some unknown place--"
"There are no 'unknown places' in Paris so far as I am concerned. I know
every hole and corner of it, from the sewers on. I know it as well as I
know London, as well as I know Berlin--New
York--Vienna--Edinburgh--Rome. You couldn't lose me or trap me in any
one of them. Is that the letter in your hand? Good--then read it,
please."
"To the Superintendent of Police, Scotland Yard," read Narkom, obeying
the request.
"'DISTINGUISHED MONSIEUR:
"'Of your grace and pity, I implore you to listen to the prayer of an
unhappy man whose honour, whose reason, whose very life are in deadly
peril, not alone of "The Red Crawl," but of things he may not even name,
dare not commit to writing, lest this letter should go astray. It shall
happen, monsieur, that the whole world shall hear with amazement of that
most marvellous "Cleek"--that great reader of riddles and unmasker of
evil-doers who, in the past year, has made the police department of
England the envy of all nations; and it shall happen also that I who
dare not appeal to the police of France appeal to the mercy, the
humanity, of this great man, as it is my only hope. Monsieur, you have
his ear, you have his confidence, you have the means at your command.
Ah! ask him, pray him, implore him for the love of God, and the sake of
a fellow-man, to come alone to the top floor of the house number 7 of
the Rue Toison d'Or, Paris, at nine hours of the night of Friday, the
26th inst., to enter into the darkness and say but the one word "Cleek"
as a signal it is he, and I may come forward and throw myself upon his
mercy. Oh, save me, Monsieur Cleek--save me! save me!'
"There, that's the lot, and there's no signature," said Narkom, laying
down the letter. "What do you make of it, Cleek?"