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THE RIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
[Illustration: HE TOOK UP THE DECANTERS ONE BY ONE AND SAMPLED THEIR
CONTENTS IN TURN]
THE INTERNATIONAL
ADVENTURE LIBRARY
[Illustration]
THREE OWLS EDITION
* * * * *
THE RIDDLE OF
THE NIGHT
BY
THOMAS W. HANSHEW
Author of
"Cleek, the Man of the Forty Faces,"
"Cleek of Scotland Yard,"
Etc.
* * * * *
W. R. CALDWELL & CO.
NEW YORK
_Copyright, 1915, by_
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A Mysterious Affair 3
II. How the Chase Ended 14
III. The Shadow That Lay Behind 23
IV. Clews and Suspicions 36
V. The Riddle of the Night 47
VI. A Little Discrepancy 58
VII. "Coming Events Cast Their Shadows Before" 72
VIII. Ailsa Lorne 77
IX. Blind Groping 88
X. Another Strand in the Web 101
XI. The Cloudburst 109
XII. The Thunderbolt 120
XIII. A Question of Veracity 127
XIV. A Change in the Program 139
XV. A Clew from the Air 149
XVI. A Bold Stroke 159
XVII. A Blunder and a Discovery 171
XVIII. Springing a Surprise 182
XIX. Picking up Threads 188
XX. "How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth" 199
XXI. When Two and Two Make Four 204
XXII. When Four and Four Make Eight 215
XXIII. The Lady at the Gate 226
XXIV. The Mousetrap 237
XXV. The Fly in the Ointment 248
XXVI. The Open Window 260
XXVII. The View Halloo 268
XXVIII. Loisette is Vindicated 279
XXIX. "Quick! Fire!" 287
XXX. Nearing the Truth! 296
XXXI. How the Truth Was Told 304
CHARACTERS
HAMILTON CLEEK, The Man of the Forty Faces and once known to
the Police as "The Vanishing Cracksman," now the great
Detective in his various disguises as Monsieur Georges de
Lesparre, Philip Barch, George Headland.
SUPERINTENDENT NARKOM, of Scotland Yard.
LENNARD, his chauffeur.
HAMMOND } Detective Sergeants.
PETRIE }
MELLISH, Police Officer.
DOLLOPS, Cleek's trusted assistant.
LORD ST. ULMER, the father of
LADY KATHERINE FORDHAM, who is in love with
GEOFFREY CLAVERING, the only son and heir of
SIR PHILIP CLAVERING, of Clavering Close, and
LADY CLAVERING, his second wife.
COUNT FRANZ DE LOUVISAN, found mysteriously murdered after
having forced Lady Katherine to become engaged to him.
AILSA LORNE, Lady Katherine's friend and companion.
GENERAL and
MRS. RAYNOR, Lady Katherine's relatives.
HARRY RAYNOR, their son.
CHAPTER ONE
A MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR
It was half-past eleven on the night of Wednesday, April 14th, when the
well-known red limousine of Mr. Maverick Narkom, superintendent of
Scotland Yard, came abruptly to the head of Mulberry Lane, which, as you
may possibly know, is a narrow road skirting one of the loneliest and
wildest portions of Wimbledon Common.
Lennard, the chauffeur, put on the brake with such suddenness that the
car seemed actually to rise from the earth, performed a sort of buzzing
and snorting semicircle, and all but collided with the rear wall of
Wuthering Grange before coming to a halt in the narrow road space which
lay between that wall and the tree-fringed edge of the great Common.
Under ordinary circumstances one might as soon have expected to run foul
of a specimen of the great auk rearing a family in St. Paul's
churchyard, as to find Mr. Narkom's limousine in the neighbourhood of
Mulberry Lane at any hour of the day or the night throughout the whole
cycle of the year.
For a reason which will be made clear in the course of events, however,
the superintendent had been persuaded to go considerably out of his way
before returning to town after mingling duty with pleasure in taking
part in the festivities attendant upon the coming of age of his friend
Sir Philip Clavering's son and heir, and, incidentally, in seeing, too,
that Petrie and Hammond, two of his sergeants, kept a watchful eye upon
the famous Clavering service of gold plate which had been brought out of
the bank vault for the occasion.
All three were sitting serenely back among the cushions of the limousine
at the period when Lennard brought it to this abrupt and startling halt,
the result of which was to fairly jerk them out of their seats and send
them sprawling over one another in a struggling heap.
There was a moment of something like absolute confusion, for mist and
darkness enveloped both the road and the Common, and none of the three
could see anything from the windows of the car which might decide
whether they had collided with some obstruction or were hovering upon
the brink of some dangerous and unexpected pitfall.
Nor were their fears lessened by perceiving--through the glass
screen--that Lennard had started up from his seat, and, with a hastily
produced electric torch in one upraised hand, was leaning forward and
wildly endeavouring to discern something through the all-enfolding mist.
Mr. Narkom hastily unlatched the door and leaned out.
"What is it? What's gone wrong?" he inquired in the sharp staccato of
excitement. "Anything amiss?"
"Lord, yessir! I heard a shot and a cry. A pistol shot ... and a police
whistle ... and a cry of murder, sir. Up the lane ahead of us!" began
Lennard, in a quaking voice; then he uttered a cry of fright, for, of a
sudden, the darkness was riven by the screaming note of a police
whistle--of two police whistles in fact: shrilling appeal and answer far
up the lonely lane.
Hard on this came a man's voice shouting: "Head him off there, whoever
you are! Don't let him get by you. Look sharp! He's making for the
railway arch!"
"All right, mate. I'm here!" another male voice flung back. "He won't
get past me, the blighter!"
Instantly there struck out the swift-measured sound of heavily shod feet
racing at top speed up the mist-shrouded lane, and rapidly increasing
the distance between the unseen runner and the standing limousine.
No need to tell either Narkom or his men that the man whose steps they
heard was a constable, for there is a distinctive note, to ears that are
trained, rung out by the heavy, cumbersome boots which folly accords to
the British policeman.
Catching the ring of that telltale note now, Narkom shouted out at the
top of his voice: "All right, Constable! Stick to him! Help coming!"
Then with a word of command to Lennard he pulled in his head, slammed
the door, and the chauffeur, dropping back to his seat, threw open the
clutch and sent the limousine bounding up the lane at a fifty-mile clip.
To-night, with the trees shadowing it and the mist crowding in, shoulder
high, from the adjacent Common, the lane was a mere dark funnel; but to
Lennard, whose boyhood had been passed within hailing distance of the
place, it possessed no mysteries that the night or the vapour could
hide.
He knew that it ran on for some seven or eight hundred feet, with the
high brick wall which marked the rear boundary of Wuthering Grange on
one side of it and straggling trees and matted gorse bushes shutting it
in on the other, until it dipped down a steadily increasing incline, and
ran straightway through an old brick-walled, brick-roofed arch of a
long-abandoned Wimbledon Loop line.
Some two hundred feet upon the other side of this it divided into a sort
of "Y," one branch swerving to the left forming a right of way across
the meadows to the public highway, whilst the other struck out over the
Common to the right, crossed Beverly Brook, and merged at length into
the road which leads to Coombe Wood, and thence, through picturesque
ways, to Kingston and the river.
The limousine took those seven or eight hundred feet between the head of
the lane and the old railway arch at such a stupendous pace that it
seemed to have no more than started before the distance was eaten up
and it came to halt again; but this time, in such a din and babel of
struggling and shouting that Lennard seemed to have reached the very
gateway of Sheol.
Narkom and his men were out of the vehicle almost as the brake fell into
place, and clicking their electric pocket torches into sudden flame,
rushed headlong into the black opening of the arch, into which they had
taken but half a dozen steps, when they came upon a startling sight.
Snarling and yapping like a couple of fighting dogs and crying out in
concert: "Got you, you blighter! Got you fast!" were two men, locked
tight in each other's arms, reeling and swaying--one wearing the
official badge of an appointed Common keeper, the other in the helmet
and tunic of an ordinary constable.
"Lend a hand, gov'ner, for Gawd's sake!" rapped out the former. "Name's
Mawson, sir--keeper on the Common-- Number four, sir. Got the
blackguard! Murder, sir--got him red handed!"
"Good Lord!" little more than gulped the man he held.
The two pairs of gripping hands dropped, the struggling figures fell
apart, and the two men who but an instant before had been locked in an
angry embrace stood staring at each other in open-mouthed amazement.
"What kind of a game is this?" demanded Narkom, as with his allies he
crowded forward. "You two people are paid to keep the peace, not to
break it, dash you!"
"My word!" exclaimed the Common keeper, finding his voice suddenly. "A
copper, is it?--a copper! when I thought.... Gawd's truth, Constable,
wot have you done with him? He run in here with me on his blessed heels.
You didn't let him get past you, did you?"
"No fear!" snapped out the constable indignantly. "I stood here
waiting--waiting and shouting to you--until you ran smack into my
blessed arms; and if anybody but you come in _your_ side of the arch, he
never come out o' mine, I'll take my solemn oath!"
"Then where's he gone? Wot's become of him?" shouted the Common keeper
excitedly. "I tell you I was on the very heels of him from the moment I
first whistled and called out to you to head him off. I could a-most
have touched him when he dashed in here; and--and his footsteps never
stopped soundin' for one second the whole blessed time. Murder is wot
he's done--murder!--and I've been on his heels from the very moment he
fired the shot."
Narkom and his allies lost not an instant in revealing their identity
and displaying their insignia of office to the two men.
"Murder is it, Keeper?" exclaimed the superintendent, remembering all at
once what Lennard had said about hearing the cry and the shot. "When and
how? Lead me to the body."
"Lor' bless you, sir, I aren't 'ad no time nor chanct to look after any
body," replied the keeper. "All's I can tell you is that I was out there
in my shelter on the Common when I heard the first cry--like as some one
was callin' for help whiles some one else had 'em by the windpipe, sir;
so I dashes out and cuts through the mist and gorse as fast as my
blessed legs could carry me. Jist as I gets to the edge of the lane,
sir, 'Bang!' goes a revolver shot jist 'arf a dozen feet in front of me,
and a man, wot I couldn't see 'ide nor 'air of on account of the mist,
nicks out o' somewheres, and cuts off down the lane like a blessed race
'orse. I outs with me whistle and blows it as 'ard as I could, and cuts
off after him. He never stopped runnin' for a blessed instant. He never
doubled on me, never turned to the right nor to the left, gov'ner, but
jist dashes into this arch--straight in front of me, sir, and me running
on almost within reachin' distance, until I runs smack into the arms of
this constable here, and grabs _him_, thinkin' I'd got my man for sure.
Wherever he's got to since, I tell you he come in here, sir--smack
_in_!--and me after him; and if he didn't get past the constable----"
"He didn't-- I've told you so once, and I'll stick to it!" interrupted
the constable himself, with some show of heat. "What do you take me
for--an old woman? Look here, Mr. Narkom, sir, my name's Mellish. It's
true I've only been on the force a little over a week, sir, but my
sergeant will tell you I've got my wits about me and aren't in the least
likely to let a man slip past me in the manner that this chap thinks.
_Nothing_ went past me--nothing the size of a cat, let alone a man,
sir--and if the party in question really _did_ come in here----"
"I'll soon settle that question!" rapped in Narkom sharply.
He flung a hurried command to Lennard, waved Petrie and Hammond aside,
and an instant later the limousine moved swiftly up out of the mist
until its bulk filled the entrance of the arch and its blazing acetylene
lamps were sweeping it with light from end to end. Smooth as a rifle
bore, its damp walls and curving roof shone out in the sudden glare--not
a brick displaced, not a crevice big enough to shelter a rat much less a
human being--and of the man the Common keeper had been chasing, not a
sign nor a trace anywhere!
"Whatever the fellow did or wherever he went, he can't have gone far, so
look sharp, my lads!" commanded Narkom. "If we're quick we're sure to
nab him. Come along, Constable, come along, Keeper. Lennard, you stop
where you are and guard the exit from the arch, so if he doubles on us
he can't get by _you_!"
"Right you are, sir!" responded Lennard, as the superintendent and the
four men made a dash toward that end of the arch through which the
keeper was so positive the fugitive had come.
"I say, Mr. Narkom!" he added, raising his voice and shouting after
them. "Eyes sharp to the left, all of you, when you get outside this
arch. Know the neighbourhood like a book, sir. Lane forks out into a 'Y'
after you get about fifty yards on. Branches off on the left where
there's an old house called Gleer Cottage, sir, that hasn't been
tenanted for years and years. Walled garden--tool house--stable. Great
place for man to hide, sir!"
"Good boy! Thanks!" flung back Narkom. "Come on, my lads! Lively!"
Then they swung out of the arch with a rush, and the last that Lennard
saw of them before the shrouding mist took them and blotted them from
his view, they were pelting up the lane at top speed and making headlong
for the branching "Y" to which he had directed them, their footsteps
sounding on the moist surface of the road and their electric torches
emitting every now and again a spark like a glowworm flashing.
Five minutes passed--the click of their flying steps had dropped off
into silence; the flash of their torches had vanished in the distance
and the mist; even the blurred sound of their excited voices was
stilled; and neither ear nor eye could now detect anything but the soft
drip of the moisture from the roof of the arch and the white oblivion of
the close-pressing, ever-thickening mist.
Still he sat there, waiting--alert, watchful, keen--looking straight
before him and keeping a close watch on the unobstructed end of the
miniature tunnel whose entire length was still flooded with the glare
from the motor's lamps. If a mouse had crawled down its damp walls he
must have seen it; if even so much as a shadow had come up out of that
wilderness of mist and crept into the place, he must have detected, it.
But there was nothing; neither man nor beast, neither shade nor shadow;
only the loneliness and the mist and the soft "plick-plick!" of the
dropping moisture.
The five minutes became eight, ten, a dozen, without the slightest
change in anything. Then, all of a sudden, Lennard's tense nerves gave a
sort of jump and a swift prickle flashed up his spine and through his
hair. A sound had come--a rustle--a step--a movement. Not from the
direction in which he was looking, however, but from the lane beyond the
arch and _behind_ the limousine.
He jumped to his feet and rising on tiptoe on his driver's seat flashed
the light of his electric torch back over the top of the vehicle; what
he saw took all the breath out of him and set his heart and pulses
hammering furiously.
Against that thick blanket of mist the penetrating power of the torch's
gleam was so effectually blunted that it could do nothing more than
throw a pale, weak circle of light a few feet into the depths of a
crowding vapour, leaving all beyond and upon either side doubly dark in
contrast.
Yet as the light streamed out and flung that circle into the impinging
mist, there moved across it the figure of a woman, young and fair, with
a scarf of lace thrown over her head, from beneath which fell a glory
of unbound hair, thick and lustrous, over shoulders that were wrapped in
ermine--ermine in mid-April!
A woman! Here! At this hour! In this time of violence and evil doing!
The thing was so uncanny, so unnatural, so startlingly unexpected, that
Lennard's head swam.
She was gone so soon--just glimmering across the circle of light and
then vanishing into the mist as suddenly as she had appeared--that for a
moment or two he lost his nerve and his wits, and ducked down under the
screen of the motor's top, remembering all the tales he had ever heard
of ghosts and apparitions, and, in a moment of folly, half believing he
had looked upon one. But of a sudden his better sense asserted itself,
and realizing that for a woman--_any_ woman, no matter how dressed, no
matter how young and fair and good to look upon--to be moving stealthily
about this place, at this hour, when there was talk of murder, was at
least suspicious, he laid hands upon the wheel, and being unable to turn
the vehicle in the arch and go after _her_, put on full power and went
after Narkom and his men. A swift whizz carried him through the arch and
up the lane, and, once in the open, he laid hand upon the bulb of the
motor horn and sent blast after blast hooting through the stillness,
shouting at the top of his voice as he scorched over the ground:
"Mr. Narkom! Mr. Narkom! This way, sir, this way! This way!"
CHAPTER TWO
HOW THE CHASE ENDED
Meanwhile Mr. Narkom and his zealous assistants had rushed wildly on,
coming forth at last from the old railway arch into the narrow lane
without so much as catching a glimpse or finding the slightest trace of
either victim or murderer.
But that they had not all been deceived by an hallucination of the
night, received proof from the triumphant discovery of Sergeant Petrie,
who, with the aid of his torch and the bull's-eye lantern of Constable
Mellish, had found the unmistakable traces of hurried footsteps on the
soft, yielding earth.
"Lummy, sir! the place is alive with 'em," ejaculated Mellish. "This is
the way he went, sir, down this 'ere lane, and makin' for the right of
way across the fields, like wot that shuvver of yours said, sir."
Narkom, Hammond, and Petrie were at his side before he had finished
speaking. It was true, other footprints were there, all the lonely
tree-girt road was full of them, going down the centre in one long,
unbroken line. They stopped but a moment to make sure of this, then rose
and dashed on in the direction which they led.
Straight on, down the middle of the thoroughfare, without break or
interruption, the foot-made trail drew them; under dripping
overshadowing trees; by natural hedges and unnatural mounds where weeds
and briars scrambled over piles of debris, and the light of their
torches showed Narkom and his men the dim irregular outlines of a
crumbling wall, green with moss and lichen and higher in parts than a
man's head.
On and still on, the deeply dug footprints lessening not a whit in their
clearness, until, all of a moment, they swerved slightly to the left and
then abruptly stopped--stopped dead short, and after that were seen no
more!
"Here's where he went!" called out Hammond, pointing to the left as
Narkom and the others, in a sort of panic, went running round and
endeavouring to pick up the lost trail. "Look, sir--grass here and the
wall beyond. Hopped over on to the grass, that's what he did, then
scaled the wall and 'went to earth' like an idiot in that old house
Lennard told us of. Come along--quick!
"Fair copped him, sir, as sure as eggs," he added excitedly, plunging in
through the mist and the shadow of the trees until he came to the wall
in question. "Break in the wall here, coping gone, dry dust of newly
crumbled mortar on the grass. Got over here, Mr. Narkom--yes, and cut
himself doing it. Hand, most likely; for there are bits of mortar with
broken glass stuck in 'em lying about and a drop of fresh blood on the
top of the wall!"
A single look was enough, when Mr. Narkom came hurrying to his side, to
verify all that had been said; and with an excited, "This way, all of
you. Look sharp!" the superintendent sprang up, gripped the broken top
of the wall, scrambled over it and dropped down into the darkness and
mist upon the other side. The others followed his lead, and the next
moment all were in the dark, walled-in enclosure in the middle of which
the long-abandoned house known as Gleer Cottage stood. They could see
nothing of it from where they were, for the mist and the crowded screen
of long-neglected fruit trees shut it in as with a curtain.
"Better let me go ahead and light the way, gents," said Constable
Mellish in an excited whisper, as he again unshuttered his bull's-eye
and directed its gleam upon the matted and tangled verdure. "Stout boots
and thick trousers is what's wanted to tramp a path through these
briars; them evening clothes of yours 'ud be torn to ribbons and your
ankles cut to the bone before you'd gone a dozen yards. Lummy! there's
another of his footprints--on the edge of that flower bed there! see!
Come on, come on--quick!"
Too excited and too much occupied with the work in hand to care who took
the lead so that they got through the place and ran their quarry to
earth, Narkom and the rest suffered the suburban constable to beat a way
for them through the brambly wilderness, while with bodies bent, nerves
tense as wire, treading on tiptoe along the trail that was being so
cautiously blazed for them, they pressed on after him.
Suddenly, without hint or warning, a faint metallic "click" sounded,
the light they were following went suddenly out, and before Narkom,
realizing that Mellish had sprung the shutter over the flame of his
lamp, could voice a whispered inquiry, the constable's body lurched back
against his own and a shaking hand descended upon his shoulder.
"Don't move, don't speak, sir!" said Mellish's voice close to his ear.
"We've got him right enough. He's in the house itself, and with a light!
There's a board or something put up against the window to shield it, but
you can see the light through the chinks--coming and going, sir, like as
he was carrying it about."
Startling as the statement was, when Narkom and the rest came on tiptoe
to the end of the trampled path and peeped around the last screening
bush into the open beyond, they found it to be the case.
Blurred, shadowy, mist wrapped--like the ghost of a house set in a
ghostly garden--there stood the long-abandoned building, its blank upper
windows lost in the wrapping fog; its dreary face toward the distant
road; its bleak, unlovely side fronting the point from which Narkom and
his men now viewed it; and from one of the two side windows thin
wavering lines of constantly shifting light issued from beneath the
shadow of a veranda.
"Candlelight, sir, and a draught somewhere, nobody moving about,"
whispered Hammond. "Window or a door open--that's what makes the light
rise and fall. What an ass! Barricaded the window and never thought to
stop up the chinks. Lord, for a fellow clever enough to get away from
the constable and the keeper in the manner he did, you'd never look for
an idiot's trick like this."
Narkom might have reminded him that it was an old, old failing on the
part of the criminal class, this overlooking some trifling little point
after a deed of almost diabolical cunning; but at present he was too
much excited to think of anything but getting into that lighted room and
nabbing his man before he slipped the leash again and escaped him.
Ducking down he led a swift but soundless flight across the open space
until he and his allies were close up under the shadow of the building
itself, where he made the rather surprising discovery that the rear door
was unlocked. Through this they made their way down a passage, at the
end of which was evidently the room they sought, for a tiny thread of
light lay between the door and the bare boards of the passage. Here they
halted a moment, their nerves strung to breaking point and their hearts
hammering thickly as they now heard a faint rustling movement and a
noise of tearing paper sounding from behind it.
For a moment these things alone were audible; then Narkom's hand shot
upward as a silent signal; there was a concerted movement, a crash that
carried a broken door inward and sent echoes bellowing and bounding from
landing to landing and wall to wall, a gush of light, a scramble of
crowding figures, a chorus of excited voices, and--the men of Scotland
Yard were in the room.
But no cornered criminal rose to do battle with them, and no startled
outcry greeted their coming--nothing but the squeal and scamper of
frightened rats bolting to safety behind the wainscot; a mere ripple of
sound, and after it a silence which even the intruders had not breath
enough to break with any spoken word.
With peeling walls and mouldering floor the long, low-ceiled room gaped
out before them, littered with fallen plaster and thick with dust and
cobwebs. On the floor, in the blank space between the two boarded-up
windows, a pair of lighted candles guttered and flared, while behind
them, with arms outstretched, sleeves spiked to the wall--a human
crucifix, with lolling head and bended knees--a dead man hung, and the
light shining upon his distorted face revealed the hideous fact that he
had been strangled to death.
However many his years, they could not have totalled more than five and
thirty at most, and ghastly as he was now, in life he must have been
strikingly handsome: fair of hair and moustache, lean of loin and broad
of shoulder, and with that subtle _something_ about him which mutely
stands sponsor for the thing called birth.
He was clad in a long gray topcoat of fine texture and fashionable
cut--a coat unbuttoned and flung open by the same furious hand which had
rent and torn at the suit of evening clothes he wore beneath.
The waistcoat was wrenched apart and a snapped watch chain dangled from
it, and on the broad expanse of shirt bosom thus exposed there was
rudely smeared in thick black letters--as if a finger had been dipped
for the purpose in blacking or axle grease--a string of mystifying
numerals running thus:
[Illustration: 2 X 4 X 1 X 2]
For a moment the men who had stumbled upon this appalling sight stood
staring at it in horrified silence; then Constable Mellish backed
shudderingly away and voiced the first spoken word.
"The Lord deliver us!" he said in a quaking whisper. "_Not_ the murderer
himself, but the party as he murdered! A gent--a swell--strangled in a
place like this! Gawd help us! what was a man like that a-doing of here?
And besides, the shot was fired out there--on the Common--as you know
yourselves. You heard it, didn't you?"
Nobody answered him. For Narkom and his men this horrifying discovery
possessed more startling, more mystifying, more appalling surprises than
that which lay in the mere finding of the victim of a tragedy where they
had been confident of running to earth the assassin alone. For in that
ghastly dead thing spiked to the crumbling wall they saw again a man who
less than four hours ago had stood before them in the full flower of
health and strength and life.
"Good God!" gasped Hammond, laying a shaking hand upon Narkom's arm.
"You see who it is, don't you, sir? It's the Austrian gent who was at
Clavering Close to-night-- Count Whats-his-name!"
"De Louvisan--Count Franz de Louvisan," supplied Narkom agitatedly. "The
last man in the world who _should_ have shown himself in the home of the
man whose sweetheart he was taking away, despite the lady's own desires
and entreaties! And to come to such an end--to-night--in such a place as
this--after such an interview with the two people whose lives he was
wrecking.... Good God!"
A thought almost too horrible to put into words lay behind that last
excited exclamation, for his eyes had fallen on a thin catgut halter--a
violoncello string--thus snatched from its innocent purpose, and through
his mind had floated the strains of the music with which Lady Katharine
Fordham had amused the company but a short time before. He turned
abruptly to his men and had just opened his mouth to issue a command
when the darkness and silence without were riven suddenly by the hooting
of a motor horn and the voice of Lennard shouting.
"Stop!" commanded Narkom, as the men made an excited step toward the
door. "Search this house--guard it--don't let any one enter or leave it
until I come back. If any living man comes near it, arrest him, no
matter who or what he is. But don't leave the place unguarded for a
single instant--remember that. There's only one man in the world for
this affair. Stop where you are until I return with him."
Then he flung himself out of the room, out of the house, and ran as fast
as he could fly in the direction of the tooting horn. At the point where
the branching arm of the "Y" joined the main portion of Mulberry Lane,
he caught sight of two huge, glaring motor lamps coming toward him
through the mist and darkness. In a twinkling the limousine had halted
in front of him, and Lennard was telling excitedly of that startling
experience back there by the old railway arch.
"A woman, sir--a young and beautiful woman! And she must have had
something to do with this night's business, gov'ner, or why should she
be wandering about this place at such a time? Hop in quick, sir, and
I'll run you back to the spot where I saw her."
At any other time, under any other circumstances, Narkom might, probably
would, have complied with that request; but now---- A woman indeed! No
woman's hand could have nailed that grim figure to the wall of Gleer
Cottage, at least not alone, not without assistance. This he realized;
and brushing the suggestion aside, jumped into the limousine and slammed
the door upon himself.
"Drive to Clarges Street! I must see Cleek! Full speed now! Don't let
the devil himself stop you!" he cried; and in a moment they were
bounding away townward at a fifty-mile clip that ate up the distance
like a cat lapping cream.
CHAPTER THREE
THE SHADOW THAT LAY BEHIND
It had but just gone midnight when the car slowed down before the house
in Clarges Street. Here in company with his faithful henchman, Dollops,
and attended upon by an elderly housekeeper and a deaf-and-dumb maid of
all work, there dwelt--under the name and guise of "Captain Horatio
Burbage," a superannuated seaman--that strange and original genius who
chose to call himself "Hamilton Cleek," but who was known to the police
of two continents by the sobriquet of "The Man of the Forty Faces."
In the merest fraction of a minute Narkom was out of the limousine, had
crossed the narrow pavement, mounted the three shallow steps, and was
standing in the shadow of a pillared porch, punching a signal on the
button of an electric bell. In all he could not have been kept waiting
more than a minute, but it seemed forty times that length when he at
last heard a bolt slip, and saw, in the gap of the open door, the figure
of a slim, red-headed youth arrayed in a bed quilt, a suit of pink
flannelette pajamas, and a pair of white canvas tennis shoes.
"Come in, sir, come in quick!" this young man whispered, in the
broadest of Cockney accents, as he opened the door just wide enough for
Narkom to sidle into the semi-dark passage.
"Where's your master, Dollops?" put in the superintendent. "Speak up! Is
he in? I've got to see him at once!"
The voice which answered came, not from Dollops, but from the dark top
of the dim staircase.
"Come up, Mr. Narkom," it said. "I thought that young beggar had gone to
bed ages ago and was just coming down myself to let you in. Come along
up. You know the way."
Narkom acted upon the invitation so promptly that he was up the stairs
and in the cozy, curtained, and lamp-lit room which Cleek called his den
almost as quickly as his host himself. In fact, Cleek had scarcely time
to sweep into the drawer of his writing table a little pile of something
which looked like a collection of odds and ends of jewellery, bits of
faded ribbon, and time-stained letters, and turn the key upon them,
before the police official was at the door.
"Hullo!" said Cleek in a tone of surprise and deep interest as the
superintendent came fairly lurching into the room. "What's in the wind,
Mr. Narkom? You look fairly bowled. Whisky and soda there--at your
elbow--help yourself. I presume it is a case--nothing else would bring
you here at this time and in such a state. What kind is it? And for
whom? Some friend of yours or for the Yard?"
"For both, I'm afraid," replied Narkom, pouring out a stiff peg of
whisky and nervously gulping it down between words. "God knows I hope it
may be only for the Yard, but considering what I know----Get your hat
and coat. Come with me at once, Cleek. It's a murder--a mystery after
your own heart. Lennard's below with the limousine. Come quickly, do,
there's a dear chap. I'll tell you all about it on the way. The thing's
only just been done--within the hour--out Wimbledon way."
"I might have guessed that, Mr. Narkom, considering that you were to
mingle duty with pleasure and spend the evening at Wimbledon with your
old friend, Sir Philip Clavering," replied Cleek, rising at once.
"Certainly I will go with you. Did you ever know the time when I
wouldn't do all that I could to help the best friend I ever
had--yourself? And if it is, as you hint, likely to be in the interest
of the friend of _my_ friend----"
"I'm not so sure of that, Cleek. God knows I hope it's a mistaken idea
of mine; but when you have heard, when you have seen, how abominably
things point to that dear boy of Clavering's and to the girl that dead
fellow was conspiring with her father to take away from him----"
"Oho!" interjected Cleek, with a strong rising inflection. "So there is
that element in the case, eh?--love and a woman in distress! Give me a
minute to throw a few things together and I am with you, my friend."
"Thanks, old chap, I knew I could rely upon you! But don't stop to
bother about a disguise, Cleek, it's too dark for anybody to see that it
isn't 'the Captain' that's going out; and besides, there's everything of
that sort in the limousine, you know. The street is as dark as a pocket,
and there's nobody likely to be on the watch at this hour."
The curious one-sided smile so characteristic of the man looped up the
corner of Cleek's mouth; his features seemed to writhe, a strange,
indefinable change to come over them as he put into operation his
peculiar birth gift; and an instant later, but that he had not stirred
one step and his clothing was still the same, one might have thought
that a totally different man was in the room.
"Will it matter _who_ watches?" he said, with just a suspicion of vanity
over the achievement. "It will be--let us see--yes, a French gentleman
whom we shall call 'Monsieur Georges de Lesparre' to-night, Mr. Narkom.
A French gentleman with a penchant for investigating criminal affairs,
and who comes to you with the strong recommendation of the Parisian
police department. Now cut down to the limousine and wait for me, I'll
join you presently. And, Mr. Narkom?"
"Yes, old chap?"
"As you go out, give Dollops directions where and how to get to the
scene of the tragedy, and tell him to follow us in a taxi as
expeditiously as possible."
"Oh, Molly 'Awkins! There ain't no rest for the wicked and no feedin'
for the 'ungry this side of Kensal Green--and precious little on the
other!" sighed Dollops when he received this message. "Not four weeks it
ain't since I was drug off in the middle of my lunch to go Cingalee
huntin' in Soho for them bounders wot was after Lady Chepstow's 'Sacred
Son,' and now here I am pulled out of my blessed pajamas in the middle
of the night to go 'Tickle Tootsying' in the bally fog at Wimbledon!
Well, all right, sir. Where the gov'ner goes, I goes, bless his 'eart;
so you can look for me as soon as I can get out of these Eytalian
pants."
Narkom made no comment; merely went down and out to the waiting
limousine and took his seat in it, full of a racking, nervous impatience
that was like a consuming fire; and there Cleek found him, ten minutes
later, when he jumped in with his kit bag and gave the signal which set
Lennard to speeding the car back on its way to the scene of the
mysterious tragedy.
"Pull down the blinds and turn up the light, Mr. Narkom, so I can make a
few necessary changes on the way," he said, opening the locker and
groping round in the depths of it as the limousine scudded around the
corner and tore off up Picadilly. "You can give me the particulars of
the case while I'm making up. Come on--let's have them. How did the
affair begin, and where?"
Narkom detailed the occurrences of the night with the utmost clearness,
from the moment when the shot and the cry attracted Lennard's attention
to that when the ghastly discovery was made in the semi-ruined cottage.
"Oho!" said Cleek, with one of his curious smiles. "So our friend the
mysterious assassin disappeared in the middle of a sort of tunnel did
he--and with a man at either end? Hum-m-m! I see, I see!"
"Do you? Well, I'm blest if I do, then. There wasn't a place as big as
your hand to hide anything in, much less shelter a man; and the fellow
who could do a diabolical thing like that----"
"That is a question which simply remains to be seen," interposed Cleek.
"The thing is not so supernatural as it appears at first blush. Once--in
the days that lie behind me, when I was the hunted and not the
hunter--in that old 'Vanishing Cracksman' time of mine, I myself did
that 'amazing disappearance' twice. Once in an alley in New York when
there was a night watchman and a patrolman to be eluded; and once in
Paris when, with Margot's lot, I was being hunted into a trap which
would have been the end of one of the biggest coups of my career had I
been nabbed that night."
"Margot?" repeated Narkom. "Yes, I remember the Queen of the
Apaches--the woman with whom you used to consort. Said she'd get even
with you when you turned down the old life and took sides with the law
instead of against it, I recollect. And you tell me that in those old
days you practised a trick such as this fellow did to-night?"
"Yes. Beat him at it--if you will pardon the conceit--for I vanished in
the middle of a narrow passage with a sergeant de ville chasing me at
one end and a concierge accompanied by a cabman and a commissionaire
racing in at the other, I always fancied that that trick was original
with me. I know of no one but Margot and her crew who were aware of the
exploit, and if any man has borrowed a leaf from the book of those old
times---- Oh, well, it will be the end of all your fears regarding any
friend of ours, Mr. Narkom, for the fellow will stand convicted as a
member of the criminal classes and, possibly, of Margot's crew. We shall
know the truth of that when we get to the scene of this mysterious
vanishment, my friend."
"Yes, but how was it done, Cleek? Where did he go? How did he elude the
chasing keeper and the waiting constable? A man can't vanish into thin
air, and I tell you there wasn't a place of any sort for him to hide in.
Yet you speak of the trick as if it were easy."
"It _is_ easy, provided he had the same cause and adopted the same means
as I did, my friend. Wait until we come to investigate that railway arch
and you will see. Now tell me something, Mr. Narkom: How came you to be
in the neighbourhood of Mulberry Lane at all to-night? It is nowhere
near Clavering Close; and it was decidedly out of your way if, as you
tell me, you were on the way back to town. It is peculiar that you
should have chosen to go out of your way like that."
"I didn't choose to do it. As a matter of fact I was executing a
commission for Lady Clavering. It appears that a jewel had been found by
the maid-in-attendance lying upon the floor of the ladies' room, and as
Lady Clavering recollected seeing that jewel upon Miss Ailsa Lorne's
person to-night, she asked me to stop at Wuthering Grange and return it
to her."
"Ailsa Lorne!" A light flashed into Cleek's face as he repeated the
name, and rising into his eyes, made them positively radiant. "Ailsa
Lorne, Mr. Narkom? You surely do not mean to tell me that Ailsa Lorne is
in Wimbledon?"
"Yes, certainly I do. My dear fellow, how the name seems to interest
you. But I remember: you know the lady, of course."
Know her? Know the woman whose eyes had lit the way back from those old
days of crime to the higher and the better things, the woman who had
been his redemption in this world, and would, perhaps, be his salvation
in the one to come? Cleek's very soul sang hymns of glory at the bare
thought of her.
"I did not know Miss Lorne would be in Wimbledon," he said quietly, "or
anywhere in the neighbourhood of London. I thought she had accepted a
temporary position down in Suffolk as the companion of an old school
friend, Lady Katharine Fordham."
"So she did," replied Narkom. "And it is as that unhappy young lady's
companion that she was at Clavering Close to-night. Lady Katharine, as
you doubtless know, is Lord St. Ulmer's only child."
"Lord St. Ulmer?" repeated Cleek, gathering up his brows thoughtfully.
"Hum-m-m! Ah-h-h! I seem to remember something about a Lord St. Ulmer.
Let me see! Lost his wife when his daughter was a mere baby, didn't he,
and took the loss so much to heart that he went out to Argentina and
left the girl to the care of an aunt? Yes, I recall it now. Story was in
all the papers some months ago. Got hold of a silver mine out there;
made a pot of money, and came home after something like fifteen years of
absence; bought in the old family place, Ulmer Court, down in Suffolk,
after it had been in the hands of strangers for a generation or two, and
took his daughter down there to live. That's the man, isn't it?"
"Yes, that's the man. He's worth something like half a million sterling
to-day--lucky beggar."
"Then why do you allude to his daughter and heiress as an 'unhappy young
lady'? Surely with unlimited wealth at her command----"
"Which I dare say she would gladly give up to get back other things that
she has lost," interposed Mr. Narkom. "Her hopes of becoming young Geoff
Clavering's wife for one!"
"Young Geoff Clavering? The chap whose coming of age was celebrated
to-day?"
"Yes, the son and heir of my friend, Sir Philip Clavering, as fine a boy
as ever stood in shoe leather. He and Lady Katharine have almost grown
up together, as her uncle and aunt, General and Mrs. Raynor, are close
neighbours at Wuthering Grange. They were engaged at seventeen, a
regular idyllic love match, old chap. Sir Philip and Lady Clavering were
immensely fond of her and heartily approved the match. So apparently did
her father, to whom she wrote, although she had not seen him since she
was a baby. Even when he returned to England with a fortune big enough
to warrant his daughter wedding a duke, he still appeared to approve of
the engagement, and suggested that the wedding should be celebrated on
the young man's twenty-first birthday."
"Which, as to-day is that day, and you still speak of her as Lady
Katharine Fordham, I presume did not take place?"
"No, it did not. Some three months ago, a certain Count de Louvisan, an
Austrian, appeared on the scene, claiming acquaintance with St. Ulmer;
and it seems that after a subsequent interview, Lord St. Ulmer informed
his daughter that her engagement with Geoff Clavering must come to an
end, and that it was her father's intention that she should become the
wife of Count de Louvisan."
"Oho!" said Cleek, in two different tones. "All of which goes to suggest
that the count had some hold over the old gentleman and was using it to
feather his own nest. Of course the girl couldn't be compelled to marry
the man against her will, so if she consented to the breaking of the
engagement----Did she?"
"Yes."
"Then something must have been told her--something which was either a
lie or an appalling truth--to make her take a step like that, for a
woman does not break with the man she loves unless something more than
life is at stake. And it is this Count de Louvisan, you tell me, that
has been murdered? Hum-m-m!"
"Yes, the worst of it is," said Mr. Narkom gloomily, "there was a scene
between him and young Clavering but a couple of hours before the murder
was discovered."
"What's that?" rapped out Cleek. "A 'scene'! A quarrel do you mean? How
and where? Or perhaps you don't know?"
"As it happens, I do," said Narkom, "for I happened to be at Clavering
Close when it took place. You see, Lord St. Ulmer is laid up with a
sprained ankle at Wuthering Grange, where he has been staying with his
sister and brother-in-law, the Raynors. Lady Katharine seized the
opportunity to say farewell to Geoff, and came over at about eight
o'clock; and I hope, Cleek, I may never in my life again see anything so
heartbreaking as was made those last few minutes of parting."
"Few? Why few, pray?"
"Because they had not been together half an hour when the Count de
Louvisan came over, posthaste, after his fiancee. Lady Katharine's
absence had been discovered from the Grange, and naturally he was the
one who would come after her. You can guess what followed, Cleek. Young
Clavering fairly flew at the fellow, and would have thrashed him but
that his father and I got hold of him, and Hammond and Petrie hustled
the count out of the room. But even so, nobody could prevent that wild,
impetuous, excited boy from challenging the man, then and there. To that
the count merely threw back a laugh and said, as Petrie and Hammond
hustled him out of the room: 'Monsieur, one does not fight a fallen
foe--one merely pities him!' And it took all his father's strength and
mine to hold the boy in check. 'Pity yourself if ever I meet you!' he
shouted. 'There'll be one blackguard the less in the world if ever I
come within reach of you again, damn you! I had nine years of hope until
you came, and I'll put a mark on you for every one of them that you've
spoilt!"
"'A mark'!" repeated Cleek, with some slight show of agitation. "A mark
for every year? It is true that the barking dog is the last to bite
but---- What were those figures that you tell me were smeared on the
dead man's shirt bosom--2-4-1-2, were they not? And that sum equals
nine!"
"Yes," said Narkom, with a sort of groan. "Just nine, Cleek, just
exactly nine. That's what cut the heart out of me when I saw that dead
man spiked to the cottage wall, bearing the very mark he had sworn that
he should bear."
"I see," murmured Cleek thoughtfully. "Of course, the wisest of men are
sometimes mistaken, but somehow I took those numerals to stand for a
sign of a secret society; but, as you say, the numbers do indeed total
nine--the years of young Clavering's threat, but----"
His voice trailed off; he sat for a moment deep in thought.
"Then there is the 'spike,' that is an old Apache punishment. They
spiked Lanisterre to the wall when he went over to the police. Which is
it? The Apaches or this foolish, hot-headed boy lover?"
Narkom wisely refrained from comment. He knew the ways and methods of
his famous ally only too well, and he sat silent therefore till Lennard
pulled up the limousine sharply in front of Gleer Cottage.
"Here we are at the cottage--unless you would like to see the arch
first?"
"Oh, no," Cleek smiled softly. "That part of the mystery, my friend, is
quite simple. Lead the way, please."
They alighted without further remark, and Narkom was followed by as
complete a specimen of a French dandy as could be found in Paris, from
the gardens of the Tuileries to the benches of the Luxembourg.
CHAPTER FOUR
CLEWS AND SUSPICIONS
A minute more and Cleek was in the house--in the presence of Hammond and
Petrie--and Narkom had introduced him as "Monsieur Georges de Lesparre,
a distinguished French criminologist who had come over to England this
morning upon a matter connected with the French Police Department and
who, in the absence of Mr. Cleek, had consented to take up this peculiar
case."
"My hat! Wouldn't that drive you to drink!" commented Petrie in a
disgusted aside as he eyed this suave and sallow gentleman with open
disapproval. "What will we be importing from the continent next,
Hammond? As if there aren't detectives in England good enough to do the
Yard's work without setting them to twiddling their blessed thumbs
whilst a blooming Froggie runs the show and--beg pardon! what's that?
Yes, Mr. Narkom. Searched the house from top to bottom, sir. Nobody in
it, and nobody been here either, sir, not a soul since you left."
"You are quite sure, monsieur?" This from Cleek. "About the 'nobody in
the house,' I mean, of course. You are quite sure?"