"Cinnamon! what a corroboration--what a horrible corroboration!
Cleek, you knock the last prop from under me; you make certain a
thing that I thought was only a woman's wild imaginings," said
Narkom, getting up suddenly, all a-tremble with excitement. "Good
heavens! to have Miss Valmond's story corroborated in this dreadful
way."
"Miss Valmond? Who's she? Any relation to that Miss Rose Valmond
whose name one sees in the papers so frequently in connection with
gifts to Catholic Orphanages and Foundling Homes?"
"The same lady," replied Narkom. "Her charities are numberless,
her life a psalm. I think she has done more good in her simple,
undemonstrative way than half the guilds and missions in London.
She has an independent fortune, and lives, in company with an
invalid and almost imbecile mother, and a brother who is, I am told,
studying for the priesthood, in a beautiful home surrounded by
splendid grounds, the walls of which separate her garden from that
of Lemmingham House."
"Ah, I see. Then she is a neighbour of Barrington-Edwards?"
"Yes. From the back windows of her residence one can look into
the grounds of his. That is how--Cleek!" Mr. Narkom's voice shook
with agitation--"You will remember I said, a little time back, that
I would have something startling to tell you in connection with
Barrington-Edwards--something that was not connected with that old
army scandal? If it had not been for the high character of my
informant; if it had been any other woman in all England I should
have thought she was suffering from nerves--fancying things as the
result of an overwrought mind sent into a state of hysteria through
all those abominable crimes in the neighbourhood; but when it was
she, when it was Miss Valmond----"
"Oho!" said Cleek, screwing round suddenly. "Then Miss Valmond told
you something with regard to Barrington-Edwards?"
"Yes--a horrible something. She came to me this morning looking
as I hope I shall never see a good woman look again--as if she had
been tortured to the last limit of human endurance. She had been
fighting a silent battle for weeks and weeks she said, but her
conscience would not let her keep the appalling secret any longer,
neither would her duty to Heaven. Wakened in the dead of night by
a sense of oppression, she had gone to her window to open it for
air, and, looking down by chance into the garden of Lemmingham
House, she had seen a man come rushing out of the rear door of
Barrington-Edwards' place in his pajamas, closely followed by
another, whom she believed to be Barrington-Edwards himself, and
she had seen that man unlock the door in the side wall and push the
poor wretch out into the road where he was afterward found by
the constable."
"By Jupiter!"
"Ah, you may be moved when you connect that circumstance with what
you have yourself unearthed. But there is worse to come. Unable
to overcome a frightful fascination which drew her night after
night to that window, she saw that same thing happen again to the
fourth, and finally, the fifth man--the web-footed one--and that
last time she saw the face of the pursuer quite plainly. It _was_
Barrington-Edwards!"
"Sure of that, was she?"
"Absolutely. It was the positive certainty it was he that drove her
at last to speak!"
Cleek made no reply, no comment; merely screwed round on his heel and
took to pacing the floor again. After a minute however:
"Mr. Narkom," he said halting abruptly. "I suppose all my old duds
are still in the locker of the limousine, aren't they? Good! I
thought so. Give Lennard the signal, will you? I must risk the old
car in an emergency like this. Take me first to the cable office,
please; then to the mortuary, and afterward to Miss Valmond's home.
I hate to torture her further, poor girl, but I must get all the
facts of this, first hand."
He did. The limousine was summoned at once, and inside of an hour it
set him down (looking the very picture of a solicitor's clerk) at
the cable office, then picked up and set him down at the Hampstead
mortuary, this time, making so good a counterpart of Petrie that
even Hammond, who was on guard beside the dead man, said "Hullo,
Pete, that you? Thought you was off duty to-day," as he came in with
the superintendent.
"Jim Peabody fast enough, Mr. Narkom," commented Cleek, when they
were left together beside the dead man. "Changed, of course, in
all the years, but still poor old Jim. Good-hearted, honest, but
illiterate. Could barely more than write his name, and even that
without a capital, poor chap. Let me look at the hand. A violet
smudge on the top of the thumb as well as those marks on the palm, I
see. Hum-m-m! Any letters or writing of any sort in the pockets
when found? None, eh? That old bone-handled pocket knife there
his? Yes, I'd like to look at it. Open it, please. Thanks. I thought
so, I thought so. Those the socks he had on? Poor wretch! Down to
that at last, eh?--down to that! Let me have one of them for a
day or so, will you? and--yes--the photographs of the other four,
please. Thanks very much. No, that's all. Now then, to call on
Miss Valmond, if you don't mind. Right you are. Let her go, Lennard.
Down with the blinds and open with the locker again, Mr. Narkom,
and we'll 'dig' Mr. George Headland out of his two-months' old
grave." And at exactly ten minutes after eight o'clock, Mr. George
Headland _was_ 'dug up' and was standing with Mr. Narkom in Rose
Valmond's house listening to Rose Valmond's story from her own lips,
and saying to himself, the while, that here surely was that often
talked-of, seldom-seen creature, a woman with an angel's face.
How it distressed her, to tell again this story which might take away
a human life, was manifest from the trembling of her sweet voice, the
painful twitching of her tender mouth, and the tears that rose so
readily to her soft eyes.
"Oh, Mr. Headland, I can hardly reconcile myself to having done
it even yet," she said pathetically. "I do not know this Mr.
Barrington-Edwards but by sight, and it seems such a horrible
thing to rise up against a stranger like that. But I couldn't keep it
any longer; I felt that to do so would be equivalent to sharing his
guilt, and the thought that if I kept silent I might possibly be
paving the way to the sacrifice of other innocent lives almost drove
me out of my mind."
"I can quite understand your feelings, Miss Valmond," said Cleek,
touched to the very heart by the deep distress of her. "But may I say
I think you have done right? I never yet knew Heaven to be anything
but tender to those who do their duty, and you certainly have done
yours--to yourself, to your fellow creatures, and to God!"
Before she could make any response to this, footsteps sounded from
the outer passage, and a deep, rich, masculine voice said, "Rose,
Rose dear, I am ready now," and almost in the same moment a tall,
well-set-up man in priestly clothing crossed the threshold and
entered the room. He stopped short as he saw the others and made a
hasty apology.
"Oh, pardon me," he said. "I did not know that you had visitors,
dear, otherwise----Eh, what? Mr. Narkom, is it not?"
"Yes, Mr. Valmond," replied the superintendent, holding out a
welcoming hand. "It is I, and this is my friend and assistant, Mr.
George Headland. We have just been talking with your sister over
her trying experience."
"Terrible--terrible is the proper word, Mr. Narkom. Like you, I
never heard of it until to-day. It shocked me to the very soul,
you may believe. Delighted to meet you, Mr. Headland. A new disciple,
eh, Mr. Narkom? Another follower in the footsteps of the great
Cleek? By the way, I see you have lost touch with that amazing man. I
saw your advertisement in the paper the other day. Any clue to his
whereabouts as yet?"
"Not the slightest!"
"Ah, that's too bad. From what I have heard of him he would have
made short work of this present case had he been available. But
pray pardon me if I rush off, my time is very limited. Rose, dear, I
am going to visit Father Burns this evening and shall stop at the
orphanage on the way, so if you have the customary parcel for the
children----"
"It is upstairs, in my oratory, dear," she interposed. "Come with
me--if the gentlemen will excuse us for a moment--and I will get it
for you."
"May we not all go up, Miss Valmond?" interposed Cleek. "I should
like, if you do not mind, to get a view of the garden of Lemmingham
House from the window where you were standing that night, and to
have you explain the positions of the two men if you will."
"Yes, certainly--come, by all means," she replied, and led the way
forthwith. They had scarcely gone halfway down the passage to the
staircase, however, when they came abreast of the open doorway of
a room, dimly lit by a shaded lamp, wherein an elderly woman sat
huddled up in a deep chair, with her shaking head bowed over hands
that moved restlessly and aimlessly--after the uneasy manner of
an idiot's--and the shape of whose face could be but faintly seen
through the veil of white hair that fell loosely over it.
Cleek had barely time to recall Narkom's statement regarding the
semi-imbecile mother, when Miss Valmond gave a little cry of wonder
and ran into the room.
"Why, mother!" she said in her gentle way, "whatever are you doing
down here, dearest? I thought you were still asleep in the oratory.
When did you come down?"
The imbecile merely mumbled and muttered, and shook her nodding head,
neither answering nor taking any notice whatsoever.
"It is one of her bad nights," explained Miss Valmond, as she came
out and rejoined them. "We can do nothing with her when she is
like this. Horace, you will have to come home earlier than usual
to-night and help me to get her to bed." Then she went on, leading
the way upstairs, until they came at length to a sort of sanctuary
where Madonna faces looked down from sombre niches, and wax lights
burnt with a scented flame on a draped and cushioned prie dieu.
Here Miss Valmond, who was in the lead, went in, and, taking a
paper-wrapped parcel from beside the little altar, came back and put
it in her brother's hand and sent him on his way.
"Was it from there you saw the occurrence, Miss Valmond?" asked
Cleek, looking past her into "the dim religious light" of the
sanctuary.
"Oh, no," she made reply. "From the window of my bedroom, just on
the other side of the wall. In here, look, see!" And she opened a
door to the right and led them in, touching a key that flashed an
electric lamp into radiance and illuminated the entire room.
It was a large room furnished in dull oak and dark green after the
stately, sombre style of a Gothic chapel, and at one end there
was a curtained recess leading to a large bow window. At the other
there was a sort of altar banked high with white flowers, and at
the side there was a huge canopied bed over the head of which hung
an immense crucifix fastened to the wall that backed upon the
oratory. It was a majestic thing, that crucifix, richly carved
and exquisitely designed. Cleek went nearer and looked at it, his
artistic eye captured by the beauty of it; and Miss Valmond, noting
his interest, smiled.
"My brother brought me that from Rome," she said. "Is it not divine,
Mr. Headland?"
"Yes," he said. "But you must be more careful of it, I fear, Miss
Valmond. Is it not chipping? Look! Isn't this a piece of it?" He
bent and picked a tiny curled sliver of wood from the narrow space
between the two down-filled pillows of the bed, holding it out to
her upon his palm. But, of a sudden, he smiled, lifted the sliver
to his nose, smelt it, and cast it away. "The laugh is on me, I
fear--it's only a cedar paring from a lead pencil. And now, please,
I'd like to investigate the window."
She led him to it at once, explaining where she stood on the eventful
night; where she had seen the two figures pass, and where was the
wall door through which the dying man had been thrust.
"I wish I might see that door clearer," said Cleek; for night had
fallen and the moon was not yet up. "Don't happen to have such a
thing as a telescope or an opera glass, do you, Miss Valmond?"
"My brother has a pair of field glasses downstairs in his room. Shall
I run and fetch them for you?"
"I'd be very grateful if you would," said Cleek; and a moment after
she had gone. "Run down and get my sketching materials out of the
locker, will you, Mr. Narkom?" he added. "I want to make a diagram
of that house and garden." Then he sat down on the window-seat and
for five whole minutes was alone.
The field glasses and the sketching materials were brought, the
garden door examined and the diagram made, Miss Valmond and Narkom
standing by and watching eagerly the whole proceeding.
"That's all!" said Cleek, after a time, brushing the charcoal dust
from his fingers, and snapping the elastic band over the sketch
book. "I know my man at last, Mr. Narkom. Give me until ten o'clock
to-morrow night, and then, if Miss Valmond will let us in here again,
I'll capture Barrington-Edwards red-handed."
"You are sure of him, then?"
"As sure as I am that I'm alive. I'll lay a trap that will catch him.
I promise you that. So if Miss Valmond will let us in here again----"
"Yes, Mr. Headland, I will."
"Good! Then let us say at ten o'clock to-morrow night--here in
this room; you, I, your brother, Mr. Narkom--all concerned!" said
Cleek. "At ten to the tick, remember. Now come along, Mr. Narkom,
and let me be about weaving the snare that shall pull this Mr.
Barrington-Edwards to the scaffold." Speaking, he bowed to Miss
Valmond, and taking Mr. Narkom's arm, passed out and went down the
stairs to prepare for the last great act of tragedy.