That night Cleek met Lady Wilding for the first time. He found her what
he afterwards termed "a splendid animal," beautiful, statuesque, more of
Juno than of Venus, and freely endowed with the languorous temperament
and the splendid earthy loveliness which grows nowhere but under
tropical skies and in the shadow of palm groves and the flame of cactus
flowers. She showed him but scant courtesy, however, for she was but a
poor hostess, and after dinner carried her cousin away to the
billiard-room, and left her husband to entertain the Rev. Ambrose and
the detective as best he could. Cleek needed but little entertaining,
however, for in spite of his serenity he was full of the case on hand,
and kept wandering in and out of the house and upstairs and down until
eleven o'clock came and bed claimed him with the rest.
His last wakeful recollection was of the clock in the lower corridor
striking the first quarter after eleven; then sleep claimed him, and he
knew no more until all the stillness was suddenly shattered by a
loud-voiced gong hammering out an alarm and the sound of people tumbling
out of bed and scurrying about in a panic of fright. He jumped out of
bed, pulled on his clothing, and rushed out into the hall, only to find
it alive with people, and at their head Sir Henry, with a dressing-gown
thrown on over his pyjamas and a bedroom candle in his shaking hand.
"The stable!" he cried out excitedly. "Come on, come on, for God's sake!
Someone has touched the door of the steel room; and yet the place was
left empty--empty!"
But it was no longer empty, as they found out when they reached it, for
the doors had been flung open, the men who had been left on guard
outside the stables were now inside it, the electric lights were in full
blaze, the shotgun still hanging where Sharpless had left it, the
impromptu bed was tumbled and tossed in a man's death agony, and at the
foot of the steel door Logan lay, curled up in a heap and stone dead!
"He would get in, Sir Henry, he'd have shot one or the other of us if we
hadn't let him," said one of the outer guards as Sir Henry and Cleek
appeared. "He would lie before the door and watch, sir--he simply would;
and God have mercy on him, poor chap; he was faithful to the last!"
"And the last might not have come for years, the fool, if he had only
obeyed," said Cleek; then lapsed into silence and stood staring at a
dust of white flour on the red-tiled floor and at a thin wavering line
that broke the even surface of it.
It was perhaps two minutes later when the entire household--mistress,
guests, and servants alike--came trooping across the open space between
the hall and the stables in a state of semi-deshabille, but in that
brief space of time friendly hands had reverently lifted the body of the
dead man from its place before the steel door, and Sir Henry was
nervously fitting the key to the lock in a frantic effort to get in and
see if Black Riot was safe.
"Dios! what is it? What has happened?" cried Lady Wilding as she came
hurrying in, followed closely by Sharpless and the Rev. Ambrose Smeer.
Then, catching sight of Logan's body, she gave a little scream and
covered her eyes. "The trainer, Andrew, the trainer now!" she went on
half hysterically. "Another death--another! Surely they have got the
wretch at last?"
"The mare! The mare, Henry! Is she safe?" exclaimed Sharpless excitedly
as he whirled away from his cousin's side and bore down upon the
baronet. "Give me the key--you're too nervous." And, taking it from him,
unlocked the steel room and passed swiftly into it.
In another instant Black Riot was led out--uninjured, untouched, in the
very pink of condition--and, in spite of the tragedy and the dead man's
presence, one or two of the guards were so carried away that they
essayed a cheer.
"Stop that! Stop it instantly!" rapped out Sir Henry, facing round upon
them. "What's a horse--even the best--beside the loss of an honest life
like that?" and flung out a shaking hand in the direction of dead Logan.
"It will be the story of last night over again, of course? You heard his
scream, heard his fall, but he was dead when you got to him--dead--and
you found no one here?"
"Not a soul, Sir Henry. The doors were all locked; no grille is missing
from any window; no one is in the loft; no one in any of the stalls; no
one in any crook or corner of the place."
"Send for the constable--the justice of the peace--anybody!" chimed in
the Rev. Ambrose Smeer at this. "Henry, will you never be warned, never
take these awful lessons to heart? This sinful practice of racing horses
for money--"
"Oh, hush, hush! Don't preach me a sermon now, uncle," interposed Sir
Henry. "My heart's torn, my mind crazed by this abominable thing. Poor
old Logan! Poor, faithful old chap! Oh!" He whirled and looked over at
Cleek, who still stood inactive, staring at the flour-dusted floor. "And
they said that no mystery was too great for you to get to the bottom of
it, no riddle too complex for you to find the answer! Can't you do
something? Can't you suggest something? Can't you see any glimmer of
light at all?"
Cleek looked up, and that curious smile which Narkom knew so well--and
would have known had he been there was the "danger signal"--looped up
one corner of his mouth.
"I fancy it is _all_ 'light,' Sir Henry," he said. "I may be wrong, but
I fancy it is merely a question of comparative height. Do I puzzle you
by that? Well, let me explain. Lady Wilding there is one height, Mr.
Sharpless is another, and I am a third; and if they two were to place
themselves side by side and, say, about four inches apart, and I were to
stand immediately behind them, the difference would be most apparent.
There you are. Do you grasp it?"
"Not in the least."
"Bothered if I do either," supplemented Sharpless. "It all sounds like
tommy rot to me."
"Does it?" said Cleek. "Then let me explain it by illustration"--and he
walked quietly towards them. "Lady Wilding, will you oblige me by
standing here? Thank you very much. Now, if you please, Mr. Sharpless,
will you stand beside her ladyship while I take up my place here
immediately behind you both? That's it exactly. A little nearer,
please--just a little, so that your left elbow touches her ladyship's
right. Now then"--his two hands moved briskly, there was a click-click,
and after it: "There you are--that explains it, my good Mr. and Mrs.
Filippo Bucarelli; that explains it completely!"
And as he stepped aside on saying this, those who were watching, those
who heard Lady Wilding's scream and Mr. Sharpless's snarling oath and
saw them vainly try to spring apart and dart away, saw also that a steel
handcuff was on the woman's right wrist, its mate on the man's left one,
and that they were firmly chained together.
"In the name of Heaven, man," began Sir Henry, appalled by this, and
growing red and white by rapid turns.
"I fancy that Heaven has very little to do with this precious pair, Sir
Henry," interposed Cleek. "You want the two people who are accountable
for these diabolical crimes, and--there they stand."
"What! Do you mean to tell me that Sharpless, that my wife--"
"Don't give the lady a title to which she has not and never had any
legal right, Sir Henry. If it had ever occurred to you to emulate my
example to-night and search the lady's effects, you would have found
that she was christened Enriqua Dolores Torjado, and that she was
married to Señor Filippo Bucarelli here, at Valparaiso, in Chili, three
years ago, and that her marriage to you was merely a clever little
scheme to get hold of a pot of money and share it with her rascally
husband."
"It's a lie!" snarled out the male prisoner. "It's an infernal
policeman's lie! You never found any such thing!"
"Pardon me, but I did," replied Cleek serenely. "And what's more, I
found the little phial of coriander and oil of sassafras in your room,
señor, and--I shall finish off the Mynga Worm in another ten minutes!"
Bucarelli and his wife gave a mingled cry, and, chained together though
they were, made a wild bolt for the door; only, however, to be met on
the threshold by the local constable, to whom Cleek had dispatched a
note some hours previously.
"Thank you, Mr. Philpotts; you are very prompt," he said. "There are
your prisoners nicely trussed and waiting for you. Take them away--we
are quite done with them here. Sir Henry"--he turned to the baronet--"if
Black Riot is fitted to win the Derby she will win it, and you need have
no more fear for her safety. No one has ever for one moment tried to get
at her. You yourself were the one that precious pair were after, and the
bait was your life assurance. By killing off the watchers over Black
Riot one by one they knew that there would come a time when, being able
to get no one else to take the risk of guarding the horse and sleeping
on that bed before the steel-room door, you would do it yourself; and
when that time came they would have had you."
"But how? By what means?"
"By one of the most diabolical imaginable. Among the reptiles of
Patagonia, Sir Henry, there is one--a species of black adder, known in
the country as the Mynga Worm--whose bite is more deadly than that of
the rattler or the copperhead, and as rapid in its action as prussic
acid itself. It has, too, a great velocity of movement and a peculiar
power of springing and hurling itself upon its prey. The Patagonians are
a barbarous people in the main and, like all barbarous people, are
vengeful, cunning, and subtle. A favourite revenge of theirs upon
unsuspecting enemies is to get within touch of them and secretly to
smear a mixture of coriander and oil of sassafras upon some part of
their bodies, and then either to lure or drive them into the forest; for
by a peculiar arrangement of Mother Nature this mixture has a
fascination, a maddening effect upon the Mynga Worm--just as a red rag
has on a bull--and, enraged by the scent, it finds the spot smeared with
it and delivers its deadly bite."
"Good heaven! How horrible! And you mean to tell me--"
"That they employed one of these deadly reptiles in this case? Yes, Sir
Henry. I suspected it the very moment I smelt the odour of the coriander
and sassafras; but I suspected that an animal or a reptile of some kind
was at the bottom of the mystery at a prior period. That is why I wanted
the flour. Look! Do you see where I sifted it over this spot near the
Patagonian plant? And do you see those serpentine tracks through the
middle of it? The Mynga Worm is there--in that box, at the roots of that
plant. Now see!"
He caught up a horse blanket, spread it on the floor, lifted the box and
plant, set them down in the middle of it, and with a quick gathering up
of the ends of the blanket converted it into a bag and tied it round
with a hitching strap.
"Get spades, forks, anything, and dig a hole outside in the paddock," he
went on. "A deep hole--a yard deep at the least--then get some straw,
some paraffin, turpentine--anything that will burn furiously and
quickly--and we will soon finish the little beast."
The servants flew to obey, and when the hole was dug he carried the bag
out and lowered it carefully into it, covered it with straw, drenched
this with a gallon or more of lamp oil, and rapidly applied a match to
it and sprang back.
A moment later those who were watching saw a small black snake make an
ineffectual effort to leap out of the blazing mass, fall back into the
flames and disappear for ever.
"The method of procedure?" said Cleek, answering the baronet's query as
the latter was pouring out what he called "a nerve settler," prior to
following the Rev. Ambrose's example and going to bed. "Very cunning,
and yet very, very simple, Sir Henry. Bucarelli made a practice, as I
saw this evening, of helping the chosen watcher to make his bed on the
floor in front of the door to the steel room, but during the time he was
removing the blankets from the cupboard his plan was to smear them with
the coriander and sassafras and so arrange the top blanket that when the
watcher lay down the stuff touched his neck or throat and made that the
point of attack for the snake, whose fangs make a small round spot not
bigger than a knitting needle, which is easily passed over by those not
used to looking for such a thing. There was such a spot on Tolliver's
throat; such another at the base of Murple's skull, and there is a third
in poor Logan's left temple. No, thank you--no more to-night, Sir Henry.
Alcohol and I are never more than speaking acquaintances at the best of
times. But if you really wish to do me a kindness--"
"I don't think there is room to doubt that, Mr. Cleek. If I am certain
of anything in this world I am certain of Black Riot's success on
Wednesday; and that success I feel I shall owe to you. Money can't
offset some debts, you know; and if there is anything in the world I can
do, you have only to let me know."
"Thank you," said Cleek. "Then invite me to spend to-morrow here, and
give me the freedom of those superb gardens. My senses are drunk already
with the scent of your hyacinths; and if I might have a day among them,
I should be as near happy as makes no difference."
He had his day--breaking it only to 'phone up to Clarges Street and
quiet any possible fears upon Dollops's part--and if ever man was
satisfied, that man was he.