At ten to the tick on the following night, he had said, and at ten
to the tick he was there--the old red limousine whirling him up to
the door in company with Mr. Narkom, there to be admitted by Miss
Valmond's brother.
"My dear Mr. Headland, I have been on thorns ever since I heard,"
said he. "I hope and pray it is right, this assistance we are giving.
But tell me, please--have you succeeded in your plans? Are you sure
they will not fail?"
"To both questions, yes, Mr. Valmond. We'll have our man to-night.
Now, if you please, where is your sister?"
"Upstairs--in her own room--with my mother. We tried to get the mater
to bed, but she is very fractious to-night and will not let Rose
out of her sight for a single instant. But she will not hamper your
plans, I'm sure. Come quickly, please--this way." Here he led them
on and up until they stood in Miss Valmond's bedroom and in Miss
Valmond's presence again. She was there by the window, her imbecile
mother sitting at her feet with her face in her daughter's lap, that
daughter's solicitous hand gently stroking her tumbled hair, and
no light but that of the moon through the broad window illuminating
the hushed and stately room.
"I keep my word, you see, Miss Valmond," said Cleek, as he entered.
"And in five minutes' time if you watch from that window you all
shall see a thing that will amaze you."
"You have run the wretched man down, then, Mr. Headland?"
"Yes--to the last ditch, to the wall itself," he answered, making
room for her brother to get by him and make a place for himself at
the window. "Oh, it's a pretty little game he's been playing, that
gentleman, and it dates back twenty years ago when he was kicked out
of his regiment in Ceylon."
"In Ceylon! I--er--God bless my soul, was he ever in Ceylon, Mr.
Headland?"
"Yes, Mr. Valmond, he was. It was at a time when there was what
you might call a sapphire fever raging there, and precious stones
were being unearthed in every unheard-of quarter. He got the fever
with the rest, but he hadn't much money, so when he fell in with
a lot of fellows who had heard of a Cingalese, one Bareva Singh,
who had a reef to sell in the Saffragam district, they made a pool
between them and bought the blessed thing, calling it after the man
they had purchased it from, the Bareva Reef, setting out like a
party of donkeys to mine it for themselves, and expecting to pull
out sapphires by the bucketful."
"Dear me, dear me, how very extraordinary! Of course they didn't?
Or--did they?"
"No, they didn't. A month's work convinced them that the ground
was as empty of treasure as an eggshell, so they abandoned it,
separated, and went their several ways. A few months ago, however,
it was discovered that if they had had the implements to mine
deeper, their dream would have been realized, for the reef was a
perfect bed of sapphires--and eight men held an equal share in it.
The scheme, then, was to get rid of these men, secretly, one by one;
for one--perhaps two men--to get the deeds held by the others; to
pretend that they had been purchased from the original owners,
and to prevent by murder those original owners from----"
[Illustration: "Got you, Miss Rosie Edgburn! Got you, Senor Juan
Alvarez," rapped Cleek.... "Stop him, nab him, Mr. Narkom!"]
He stopped suddenly and switched round. Miss Valmond had risen and
so had her mother. He was on the pair of them like a leaping cat;
there was a sharp click-click, a snarl, and a scream, and one end of
a handcuff was on the wrist of each.
"Got you, Miss Rosie Edgburn! Got you, Senor Juan Alvarez!" he rapped
out sharply; then in a louder tone, as the Reverend Horace made a
bolt for the door: "Stop him, nab him, Mr. Narkom! Quick! Played sir,
played. Come in, Petrie; come in, Hammond. Gentlemen, here they are,
all three of them: Lieutenant Eric Edgburn, his daughter Rose,
and Senor Juan Alvarez, the three brute beasts who sent five men
to their death for the sake of a lode of sapphires and the devil's
lust for gain!"
"It's a lie!" flung out the girl who had been known as Rose Valmond.
"Oh, no, it's not, you vixen! You loathsome creature that prostituted
holy things and made a shield of religion to carry on a vampire's
deeds. Look here, you beast of blasphemy: I know the secret of this,"
he said, and walked over and laid his hand on the crucifix at
the head of the bed. "Petrie! round into the oratory with you.
There's a nob at the side of the prayer desk--press it when I shout.
Oh, no, Miss Edgburn; no, I shan't dance circles nor put my fingers
into my nose, nor bite the dust and die. Look how I dare it all. Now
Petrie, _now_!"
And lo! as he spoke, out of the nostrils of the figure on the cross
there rushed downward two streams of white vapour which beat upon
the pillows and upon him, smothering both in white dust.
"Face powder, Miss Edgburn, only face powder from your own little
case over there," he said. "I removed the devil's dust last night
when I was in this room alone."
She made him no reply--only, like a cornered wretch, screamed out
and fainted.
"Mr. Narkom, you have seen the method of administering the thing
which caused the death of those five men; it is now only fair that
you should know what that thing was," he said, turning to the
superintendent. "It is known by two names--Devil's Dust and Dust of
Death, and both suit it well. It is the fine, feathery powder
that grows on the young shoots of the bamboo tree--a favourite
method of secret killing with the natives of the Malay Peninsula
and those of Madagascar, the Philippines and Ceylon. When blown
into the nostrils of a living creature it produces first an awful
agony of suffocation, a feeling as though the brain is coming down
and exuding from the nostrils, then delirium, during which the
victim invariably falls on his face and bites the earth; then comes
death. Death without a trace, my friend, for the hellish dust all
but evaporates, and the slight sediment that remains is carried out
of the system by the spasm of enteric it produces. That is the
riddle's solution. As for the rest, those men were lured here by
letters--from Alvarez--telling them of the reef's great fortune, of
the necessity for coming at once and bringing their deeds with
them, and impressing upon them the possibility of being defrauded
if they breathed one word to a mortal soul about their leaving or
why. They came, they were invited to spend the night and to sleep
upon that accursed bed, and--the devil's dust did the rest. I traced
that out through poor Jim Peabody's sock. It was one of the blue
yarn kind that are given to the inmates of workhouses. I traced him
through that; and the others through the photographs. Each had been
known to have received a letter from London, and each had in turn
vanished without a word. Poor chaps! Poor unhappy chaps! Let us
hope, dear friend, that they have found 'the Place of Sapphires'
after all."