death sentence against, never had sought to punish, never, indeed, had
taken any interest in--for the simple reason that, as Cleek knew, the
man had been in his grave these seven years past! He knew that beyond
all question; for in those dark other times that lay behind him
forever--in his old "Vanishing Cracksman" days, in those repented years
when he and Margot had cast their lot together and he had been the
chosen consort of the queen of the Apaches--in those wild times
Lovetski, down on his luck, bankrupt through dissipation, a thief by
nature, and a lazy vagabond at heart, had joined the Apaches and become
one of them. Not for long, however. Within six months word had come to
him of the death of a relative in his native Russia, and of a little
property that was now his by right of inheritance; and he was for saying
good-bye to his new colleagues and journeying on to Moscow to claim his
little fortune. But the law of the Apaches is the law of the
commonwealth, and Margot and her band had demanded the usual division.
Lovetski had rebelled against it; he had sworn that he would not share;
that what was his should remain his only as long as he lived and--it
did. But five days later his knife-jagged body was fished out of the
Seine and lay in the morgue awaiting identification; Margot went thrice
to see it before it went into the trench with others that were set down
in the records as unknown.
That was seven years ago; and now here was Lord St. Ulmer, or some one
in his room, burning labels that had to do with the days when that dead
man was in honest business, and had lost it simply through dissipation
after the police had discovered that 63 Essex Row was used in part as a
meeting place for several "wanted" aliens, and had raided it and closed
it up.
Lovetski had never belonged to the brotherhood; he had never even known
that they met under that roof until the time of the raid; but he had
been arrested with every other inmate of the house, held as a suspect to
await examination at the hands of a magistrate, and in the meantime his
business had gone to the dogs. After that drink got him, and
acquaintances made in the place of detention became associates and pals.
It was only a step from that to the Apaches, and from the Apaches to the
Seine and the trench; and the little fortune in Russia was never
claimed.
And now this Lord St. Ulmer was burning labels that once had been the
property of that man, was he? And burning them at this particular
period, of all others, when somebody, who evidently had some undesirable
knowledge regarding him, had been mysteriously done to death and the
Yard was out on the trail of the crime!
What did that mean? How did Lord St. Ulmer come into possession of those
labels? And having come into possession of them, why had he suddenly
become anxious to get rid of them?
What few paltry effects Lovetski had possessed when he joined the
Apaches were left in the room he hired from old Marise--Madame Serpice's
mother--at the inn of the "Twisted Arm." The Apaches had gone through
them, and voted them not worth ten sous the lot--and very probably they
were not. Still there might have been letters, and there might have been
some unused labels; fellows of that sort would be apt to keep things of
that kind merely to back up maudlin boasts of former standing. And if
there had been, if this Lord St. Ulmer had come into possession of
things that were left in the secret haunts of the Apaches---- Decidedly
it would be an advantage to get a look at his lordship, and that, too,
as expeditiously as possible.
A footman's waistcoat--merely that. He had one, that he knew; but was it
in the kit bag? He went over and reopened the bag, and examined its
contents. Good old Dollops! What strokes of inspiration the chap
sometimes had! There it was, the regulation thing--the stripes, perhaps,
a trifle broader than those the General's servants wore, but quite near
enough to pass muster with a stranger. Now, then, upon what pretext?
How? When? Hullo! What was that? The dinner gong, by Jupiter!
Certainly! The very thing. "Master wishes to know if there is any
especial dish your lordship fancies, or shall I bring up just what cook
has prepared?" That would do the trick to a turn; and he need be only
four or five minutes late in going down to join his host and the ladies.
He whisked off his coat, waistcoat, and necktie, and made the change in
a twinkling. Another and more subtle "change"--yet made even
quicker--altered his countenance so completely that not one trace of
likeness to Mr. Philip Barch remained. A moment later he had passed
swiftly out of the room and was tapping upon Lord St. Ulmer's door.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A BLUNDER AND A DISCOVERY
Cleek's knuckles had no more than touched the panel before he became
aware of a singular and most significant circumstance. A faint "snick"
sounded upon the other side of the door, a quick, metallic "snick,"
which his trained ears identified at once as the switching off of an
electric light; and quick as he was in opening the door, it was an
utterly black room he looked into. Still, that did not dismay him. He
knew full well that the button controlling the switch must be near the
bed for it to be so quickly reached; and Lord St. Ulmer was most
certainly _in_ bed, as the creaking springs told him, and it was always
within his power to make an awkward slip and, with every appearance of
an accident, to switch the light on again.
But for the present--as he had thoughtfully stepped in and closed the
door behind him that he might not stand there in the full glow of the
lights in the outer passage, seen, but himself unseeing--for the present
he was in blackness as dark as ink and as thick as tar, as far as the
eye was concerned; and through that blackness the sharp staccato of an
excited man's voice was flinging a challenge at him.
"Who are you? What do you want? What the devil do you mean by coming in
here, unasked?" that voice rapped out with an unmistakable note of alarm
in it.
"Master sent me up, your lordship," replied Cleek in the bland, deeply
deferential tones of the well-trained manservant. "He is anxious to know
if your lordship would prefer some especial dish prepared for your
lordship's dinner, or if----"
He got no further than that, for the rasping, excited voice broke
sharply in, and the violent jangling of the bed springs told that the
speaker had as sharply turned over in bed.
"Your master sent you up about my dinner?" the voice trumpeted out in a
sort of panic. "Sent you about my _dinner_--and by that door?"
Then came yet another sound--the jingle of a spoon or a fork against a
plate or a cup--and hard after it a noise of rustling paper, and Cleek
had just time to realize that he had blundered, that there must be
another staircase and another door by which the servants came and went,
and that, in all probability, judging from that telltale clink of metal
and china, his lordship's dinner had already _been_ served, when he made
another and a yet more embarrassing discovery: his lordship was not
alone in the room. Some one was there with him, some one who simply gave
an amazed exclamation without putting it into words, then moved swiftly,
snicked on the light, and scattered all the darkness with one dazzling
electric glare.
In that sudden outburst of light Cleek saw a bed and a man on it, a man
who had turned over, so that his face was to the opposite wall, while an
open newspaper--one of many--almost covered his head. Beside that bed
there was a table and a salver loaded with many dishes, and beyond that
an open door, and beyond that again a gaping passage and the head of a
staircase that led up from below.
And between the table and the door he saw something more startling and
dismaying than all the rest.
With his hand on the switch that controlled the electric light, his head
bent forward, and his small, ferret eyes brightly gleaming, Mr. Harry
Raynor stood looking him in the face.
"Hullo! I say, who the devil are you?" snarled that startled and amazed
young man. "What's your game? What are you up to? You're no servant in
this house, dash you! You can't fool _me_ on that point, b'gad! What are
you doing here? What are you up to? What's your little dodge, eh?"
For the present Cleek's "little dodge" was to get out of that room as
expeditiously as possible. For here was an emergency which could not be
adequately met by mental finesse; a situation which could result only in
exposure and the complete undoing of all his plans if he made any
attempt to bolster up his claim to being one of the servants in this
house, or stopped to be "interviewed" by young Raynor; and being never
slow to make up his mind or to act, he did both now with amazing
celerity.
Without one word of reply to young Raynor's challenge, indeed without
one second's hesitation, he backed out of the door by which he had just
entered, shut it sharply after him, snicked out the electric light in
the passage, and dodged back into his own room with the fleet
soundlessness of a hunted hare, shutting and bolting himself in with no
more noise than a cat would have made in getting over a garden wall.
In a twinkling, young Raynor, although taken somewhat aback by this
unexpected action, was out after him, being obliged, of course, to stop
for a second and turn on the extinguished light before he could see in
which direction this pseudoservant had gone, much less follow him; but
by the time he had done this Cleek was safely out of sight, and was
engaged in tearing off his evening clothes and bundling them back into
the kit bag as fast as his hands could fly.
The turning on of the light had resulted in the discovery that the
passage was empty, and in a moment there was an uproar. For no sooner
had Raynor voiced one astonished "Good Lord! why, the fellow's
gone--gone as clean as a whistle, blow him!" than Lord St. Ulmer began
to rattle out an absolute fusillade of excited cries and frightened
queries and suggestions, all snarled up in one hopeless tangle of
jumbled words, and to tug with all his force at the bell rope hanging
beside his bed.
"Head him off! Have him stopped! Find out who he is and what he's up
to!" he shrilled out in an excited treble, which was audible to Cleek,
even through the thickness of the dividing wall. "Send for your father.
Call up the servants. I want to know who that man is and what he was
doing here."
If that were possible, he had certainly gone the surest and the shortest
way about accomplishing what he desired, for the wild pulling of the
bell rope had brought the servants flocking up by one staircase and the
General and a couple of footmen dashing up by another; and for the next
twenty seconds, what with young Raynor trying to give his version of the
affair and his lordship excitedly flinging out his, there was confusion
and hubbub enough in all conscience. Nobody had any light to shed on the
mysterious occurrence, however; nobody had seen any man coming down any
staircase, and nobody had the very slightest idea who that particular
one could be, whence or why he had come, nor whither and how he could
have gone.
It was in the midst of this confusion that suddenly the door of the room
immediately adjoining his lordship's bedchamber was drawn sharply
inward, and then as sharply reclosed until it left but a half foot or so
between itself and the casing, and through that half foot of space the
head of Mr. Philip Barch was thrust; not, however, before the General
and his son and the two footmen had had a chance to see that the owner
of that head was arrayed simply in his underclothing, and to understand
why he had partly reclosed the door when he found people in the
immediate neighbourhood of it.
Apparently Mr. Barch was in a state of violent excitement and did not at
once notice the presence of the General or his son.
"I say, dash it all! what's up? What are you bounders kicking up all
this noise about? And why on earth hasn't one of you answered my ring?"
he blurted out, addressing the nearer of the two footmen. "I've pulled
that dashed bell rope until I'm tired. I say, nip downstairs, one of
you, and tell that valet chap to bring back my clothes, and not to
bother about brushing them until after I go to bed. Mr. Harry promised
to lend me a suit of evenin' togs, but went off without doing so, blow
him! And I haven't a blessed livin' stitch to put on!"
"Good Lud, Barch! I do beg a thousand pardons, old chap!" exclaimed the
General's hopeful. "Sorry I forgot about the evenin' togs, dear boy.
What a beast of a hole you'd have been in if I hadn't come back. Eh,
what?"
"Well, if it could be any worse than the one I've been in for the past
five minutes it would be a marvel, dear boy," responded Cleek, with
lamblike innocence. "Always was a thoughtless beggar, don't you know.
Took off my blessed clothes, and let your valet toddle off with 'em to
brush 'em, as he suggested, before I once thought about the evenin' ones
you'd promised to lend me."
"Harry's valet?" It was the General who spoke. "Do I understand you to
say, Mr. Barch, that you gave your clothes to somebody whom you took for
my son's valet? In the name of reason, where did you get that impression
of the man? I ask, because Harry has no special valet. Hawkins,
here"--indicating the second footman--"valets both my son and myself;
but having only me to look after this evening, as we did not expect
Harry to return in time for dinner, he has been in attendance upon me up
to the present moment, so it most certainly could not have been he."
"Oh, no; chap wasn't a bit like him, General. Wasn't like the other
footman, either. Tallish chap, fair-haired, little turned-up 'ginger'
moustache. Was dressed in evening clothes and wore a black-and-yellow
striped waistcoat."
"That's the man! That's the man!" trumpeted forth Harry Raynor and Lord
St. Ulmer in concert, the latter's excited voice ringing out from the
room into which, unfortunately, Cleek could not, of course, see. "That's
the identical fellow, pater; Barch has described him to a hair," went on
young Raynor, addressing his father. "Sneak thief--that was his little
game, St. Ulmer. Nicked my friend Barch's clothes and would have nicked
yours, too, if he hadn't come a cropper. Got down the staircase there,
and dodged into one of the empty rooms, I'll lay my life, pater, and as
soon as you came up and left the coast clear, slipped out of the house
and got away."
In the game of life chance is an important factor; and chance, as much
as anything else, favoured Cleek in this particular instance, for it was
his especial aim to lull Lord St. Ulmer's suspicions of the mysterious
"man" and to quiet any fear he might possess of that man's possible
connection with the police. It need scarcely be recorded, therefore,
that he hastened to second Harry Raynor's suggestion relative to the
intruder being nothing more nor less than a sneak thief, who had taken
precisely the mode mentioned of making his escape, and backed it up with
a panicky sort of appeal to the General to "have the house searched and
all the empty rooms below stairs looked into on the off-chance that the
fellow hadn't really got away as yet."
The suggestion was acted upon forthwith. Every vacant room was searched,
and it was in this matter that chance favoured Cleek so signally, for it
was found that a window in one of the lower rooms had been left wide
open, and as that window communicated with a veranda, from which a short
flight of steps led down to the garden at a point where the walk was
asphalted and could not be expected to retain a footprint, there would
seem to be no question of where and how the man had made his escape.
Dinner, owing to this interruption, together with the unexpected return
of Mr. Harry and the awkward position in which Philip Barch had been
placed, was put back for half an hour; and Cleek, left to himself,
proceeded to dress himself in the clothes with which young Raynor had
supplied him. But for all his cleverness in turning suspicion into
another channel, he was not best pleased with the result of the
adventure, for he was faced with the fact that he had failed to
accomplish what he had set out to do, and that his efforts concerning
Lord St. Ulmer had been absolutely barren of results. He had _not_
succeeded in seeing his lordship's face, he had _not_ succeeded in
discovering how this man, of all men, should have come into possession
of the Jetanola labels, or, indeed, _anything_ that had belonged to
Ferdinand Lovetski. Ferdinand Lovetski had been done to death in Paris
only seven years ago, and his lordship had been--or was said to have
been--more than twice that number of years in Argentina.
Then there was another point: What had called Harry Raynor away so
unexpectedly, and what had so unexpectedly called him back? What was he
doing in Lord St. Ulmer's room this evening? Was his being there merely
a commonplace thing, or was there something between them? More than
that, what was the connection between young Raynor and Margot? How came
she to be writing letters to him, sending her photograph to him? And
what was the explanation of the scrap of pink gauze that was hidden with
the other things in the filled tobacco jar? The scrap of gauze which had
been caught by the nail head in the passage at Gleer Cottage was pink,
the same shade of pink he believed as Raynor's fragment, and neither was
anything like Ailsa Lorne's frock. True, there was no stitchery of
rose-coloured silk upon that fragment Raynor had kept hidden in the
tobacco jar, but that didn't prove that there was none upon the frock
from which it came. It might have been torn from a part that was devoid
of stitchery; and, again, it might not be part of the frock at all. It
might be part of a gauze scarf that was worn with the dress. Women do
wear things like that with evening gowns.
Hum-m-m! Now if the dress which Margot wore was found in time to have
rose-coloured stitchery, and the pattern of that stitchery matched the
pattern on the piece found in Gleer Cottage---- Yes, but what would take
Margot to Gleer Cottage? Certainly it would be to meet a man; but what
man? De Louvisan? But if he had been an Apache and a traitor, he would
have been on his guard, and would make no appointment with her or with
any of her followers.
Then what other man? Lord St. Ulmer, who, on the evidence of his muddy
boots, had been out _somewhere_ last night, or the fellow--whoever he
might prove to be--who had killed the Common keeper and had hidden the
clothing in the General's famous ruin? For, according to that
unfortunate Common keeper, there had been two persons implicated in the
attack upon him. What two? Margot would not fit in with any theory that
implicated Sir Philip Clavering--it would be preposterous to suggest
such a thing--nor did it really seem feasible to connect her with St.
Ulmer either but for the fact of those labels and his own knowledge
that Lovetski had once been a member of the Apaches.
Perplexed with these thoughts, Cleek was almost startled at the sound of
the second dinner gong, and he walked swiftly to the glass to note the
effect of his borrowed plumes. They were certainly not a good fit, and
he passed his hand over the wrinkled breast; then--his fingers stopped
suddenly at the touch of something hard in the pocket. Slowly, his lips
drawn to a soundless whistle, he pulled out a round metal object and
looked at it with startled eyes, his thoughts in a sudden conflicting
whirl.
Last night, when he had found the golden capsule with the name of
Katharine upon it, and had given Mr. Narkom a brief history of the
famous _Huile Violette_ and the methods of the _grande dames_ of old, he
had declared that he knew of but one woman who ever had worn one of
those antique scent bracelets, and knew of _her_ wearing it simply
because he himself had stolen it from a famous collection and given it
to her. To-night that identical bracelet, with the scent globe and the
stopper cut from an emerald, was in his hand again! Margot's bracelet in
the pocket of Harry Raynor's coat! And only a moment or two ago he had
asked himself, "Which man?"
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SPRINGING A SURPRISE
The circumstance was something of a shock to him. Up to this moment he
had looked upon young Raynor as being merely a selfish, irresponsible
wastrel, not as something vicious, something that had the courage or
even the power to bite or to sting. Now, however---- He turned the
bracelet over in his hand and examined it closely, to be certain before
he finally decided that it really was Margot's.
The act served merely to deepen suspicion into certainty. By a dozen
things he knew it for what he hoped it might not be. It was Margot's
bracelet, beyond all possible question it was! So, then, he had been a
fool for his pains, had he--a fool taken in and gulled by appearances,
eh? And the creature he had fancied a mere worm was, after all, a
serpent and--dangerous!
Margot's bracelet in the pocket of Harry Raynor's evening coat was
something rather more significant than Margot's picture and Margot's
letters in Harry Raynor's tobacco jar, for an evening coat consorted
well with an evening frock, and some woman who was not Ailsa Lorne, nor
yet Lady Katharine Fordham, had worn an evening frock at Gleer Cottage
last night.
Where was Harry Raynor last night? That, too, would want looking into in
the light of present events. And possessing two evening suits, which had
that interesting young gentleman worn yesterday? This one, which he had
lent to Cleek, or the one he would himself wear at dinner to-night? A
great deal would depend upon that point--as great a deal as sometimes
sends men to the gallows. For whensoever he had last worn this suit,
this bracelet was put in the pocket of it. Upon that point there could
be no shadow of doubt; for although he had forgotten all about the
thing--as evidenced by his leaving it in the pocket when sending the
clothes to Cleek--he could not possibly have put this coat on again
without noticing how abominably the thing sat upon the wearer, and
discovering the cause of it.
And if he had worn this particular suit last night, and Margot could be
proved to have visited Gleer Cottage at, or about, the time of the
murder----Cleek shut off that train of thought, and puckered up his lips
until they were white and full of creases, and sighed inwardly, thinking
of the loving mother and of the added cross for the shoulders of the
bitterly disappointed father, a man and a hero, a soldier and a
gentleman, cursed with such offspring as this!
"And the little beast would sacrifice the pair of them for the price of
a night's orgy, and turn suspicion even against his mother to save his
own skin if he were in danger," was his unspoken summing up of Harry
Raynor's character. "Gad, how little there is in heredity, after all,
when we so often see eagles breeding jackdaws and lions bringing forth
mice!"
The dinner gong sounded again; and it was only then that he realized how
long a time he had spent mooning over a stolen bracelet and a gnat that
seemed suddenly to have grown into a bird of prey.
He turned round on his heel and switched off the light. "A bombshell for
_you_, my laddie!" he said in the soundless words of thought, as he put
the bracelet into the tail pocket of his coat and nodded as if young
Raynor were there in person to be addressed; then he walked out and shut
the door behind him, and went down to the business of dining.
He found the General and his son and Mrs. Raynor and Ailsa awaiting him
in the drawing-room, and was not--considering what he now knew--at all
surprised to learn that Lady Katharine had developed a bad headache,
gone to bed, and wished no dinner at all.
"I can't think what's come over her," said Ailsa when she made this
announcement.
"Oh, can't you?" said young Raynor with a cackling laugh. "Lord! women
don't look far beneath the surface of things, do they, Barch? Who
wouldn't go to bed with a headache after a visit from a goat like Geoff
Clavering?"
"Harry, dearest, do think what you are saying, and before whom,
darling!" bleated apologetically his adoring mother. "You mustn't mind
him, Mr. Barch; he _is so_ full of spirit, the dear boy."