The suggestion was acted upon immediately--even Mrs. Armroyd joining
in the descent upon the portable lamps and filing out with the rest
into the gloom and loneliness of the grounds; and Miss Renfrew,
finding that she was likely to be left alone in this house of
horrors, rose quickly and hurried out with them.
One step beyond the threshold brought them within sight of the
famous Round House. Bulked against the pale silver of the moonlit
sky, there it stood--a grim, unlovely thing of stone and steel
with a trampled flower bed encircling the base of it, and a man on
guard--Constable Gorham.
"Lummy! I'd clean forgot _him_!" exclaimed Mr. Nippers as he caught
sight of him. "And theer un be keepin' guard, like I told un, out
here in the grounds whiles weem ben talkin' comfortable inside. 'E
do be a chap for doin' as heem tole, that Gorham--indeed, yes!"
Nobody replied to him. All were busily engaged in following the lead
of Scotland Yard, as represented by Cleek and Superintendent Narkom,
and bearing down on that huge stone tube within whose circular walls
a dead man sat alone.
"Dreary post this, Constable," said Cleek, coming abreast of the
silent guard.
"Yes, sir, very. But dooty's dooty--and there you be!" replied
Gorham, touching his helmet with his finger; then, as the light
from the lamps fell full upon Cleek's face and let him see that it
was no face he had ever seen in this district before, his eyes
widened with a puzzled stare which never quite left them even when
the entire group had passed on and turned the curve of the Round
House wall.
And beyond that curve Cleek came to a sudden halt. Here, a
curtainless window cut a square of light in the wall's dark face
and struck a glare on the trunk and the boughs of a lime tree
directly opposite, and under that window a trampled flower bed lay,
with curious marks deep sunk in the soft, moist surface of it.
Cleek took the lamp from Mrs. Armroyd's hand, and, bending, looked
at them closely. Mr. Nippers had not exaggerated when he said
that they were all of twelve inches in length. Nor was he far
out when he declared that they looked like the footprints of some
creature that was part animal and part bird; for there they were,
with three huge clawlike projections in front and a solitary one
behind, and so like to the mark which a gigantic bird could have
made that one might have said such a creature _had_ made them, only
that it was impossible for anything to fly that was possessed of
weight sufficient to drive those huge footprints so deeply into the
earth as they had been driven, by the mere walking of the Thing.
Claws and the marks of scales, Mr. Nippers had asserted; and claws
and the marks of scales the prints in the soft earth showed.
"La! la! the horror of them," exclaimed Mrs. Armroyd, putting up her
little hands and averting her face. "It could kill and kill and
kill--horses, oxen, anything--an abominable creature like that!
What do you figure it to have been, monsieur?--souls of the saints,
_what_?"
"Blest if I know," said Cleek. "Only, of course, it couldn't possibly
be anything human; so we may put the idea of the old chap having
been killed by anything of his kind out of our minds altogether. It
is perfectly clear that the creature, whatever it might be, got
in through the window there (you see it is open) and killed him
before he could call out for help or strike a blow in his own
defence."
"Eh, but window's six foot up, Mr. Headland, sir," put in Nippers
excitedly; "and howm a thing the weight o' that goin' to fly in?"
"Didn't fly in, my friend," replied Cleek with an air of lofty
superiority. "Use your wits, man. It _jumped_ in--from the tree
there. Look here--see!" going to it and tapping certain abrasions
upon the trunk. "Here's where it peeled off the bark in climbing
up. Lord, man! why, it's plain as the nose on your face. Ten to
one we shall find the same sort of footprints when we go into the
laboratory--damp ones, you know, from the moisture of the earth; and
to make sure, in case we do find 'em let's take the length of the
things and see. Got a tape measure with you? No? Oh, well, lend
me your handcuffs, if you've got a pair with you, and we can manage
a measurement with those. Thanks very much. Now, then, let's see.
One, two, three, by Jupiter--three fingers longer than these things,
chain and all. That'll do. Now, then, let's go in and see about the
others. Lead the way, Miss Renfrew, if you will."
She would, and did. Leading the way back to the covered passage,
she opened a door in the side of it--a door designed to let the
inventor out into the grounds without going through the house, if he
so desired--and conducted them to the laboratory, leaving Constable
Gorham to continue his dreary sentry duty outside.
At any time the interior of that huge, stone-walled, steel-lined
tube must have been unlovely and depressing to all but the man who
laboured in it. But to-night, with that man sitting dead in it,
with his face to the open window, a lamp beside him, and stiff hands
resting on the pages of a book that lay open on the desk's flat top,
it was doubly so; for, added to its other unpleasant qualities,
there was now a disagreeable odour and a curious, eye-smarting,
throat-roughening heaviness in the atmosphere which was like to
nothing so much as the fumes thrown off by burnt chemicals.
Cleek gave one or two sniffs at the air as he entered, glanced at Mr.
Narkom, then walked straightway to the desk and looked into the dead
man's face. Under the marks of the scratches and cuts upon it--marks
which would seem to carry out the idea of an animal's attack--the
features were distorted and discoloured, and the hair of beard and
moustache was curiously crinkled and discoloured.
Cleek stopped dead short as he saw that face, and his swaggering,
flippant, cocksure air of a minute before dropped from him like a
discarded mantle.
"Hullo! this doesn't look quite so promising for the animal theory
as it did!" he flung out sharply. "This man has been shot--shot
with a shell filled with his own soundless and annihilating devil's
invention, lithamite--and bomb throwing is _not_ a trick of beasts of
a lower order than the animal tribe! Look here, Mr. Narkom--see! The
lock of the desk has been broken. Shut the door there, Nippers.
Let nobody leave the room. There has been murder and robbery here;
and the thing that climbed that tree was not an animal nor yet a
bird. It was a cut-throat and a thief!"
Naturally enough, this statement produced something in the nature
of a panic; Miss Renfrew, indeed, appearing to be on the verge of
fainting, and it is not at all unlikely that she would have slipped
to the floor but for the close proximity of Mrs. Armroyd.
"That's right, madame. Get a chair; put her into it. She will need
all her strength presently, I promise you. Wait a bit! Better have a
doctor, I fancy, and an inquiry into the whereabouts of Mr. Charles
Drummond. Mr. Narkom, cut out, will you, and wire this message to
that young man's employer."
Pens and papers were on the dead man's desk. Cleek bent over,
scratched off some hurried lines, and passed them to the
superintendent.
"Sharp's the word, please; we've got ugly business on hand and we
must know about that Drummond chap without delay. Miss Renfrew has
not been telling the truth to-night! Look at this man. _Rigor mortis_
pronounced. Feel him--muscles like iron, flesh like ice! _She_ says
that he spoke to her at a quarter to eight o'clock. _I_ tell you
that at a quarter to eight this man had been dead upward of an hour!"
"Good God!" exclaimed Mr. Narkom; but his cry was cut into by a
wilder one from Miss Renfrew.
"Oh, no! Oh, no!" she protested, starting up from her seat, only to
drop back into it, strengthless, shaking, ghastly pale. "It could not
be--it could not. I have told the truth--nothing but the truth. He
did speak to me at a quarter to eight--he did, he did! Constable
Gorham was there--he heard him; he will tell you the same."
"Yes, yes, I know you said so, but--will he? He looks a sturdy,
straightgoing, honest sort of chap who couldn't be coaxed or bribed
into backing up a lie; so send him in as you go out, Mr. Narkom;
we'll see what he has to say."
What he had to say when he came in a few moments later was what
Miss Renfrew had declared--an exact corroboration of her statement.
He _had_ seen a man whom he fancied was Sir Ralph Droger run out
of the grounds, and he had suggested to Miss Renfrew that they had
better look into the Round House and see if all was right with
Mr. Nosworth. They had looked in as she had said; and Mr. Nosworth
had called out and asked her what the devil she was coming in and
disturbing him for, and it was a quarter to eight o'clock exactly.
"Sure about that, are you?" questioned Cleek.
"Yes, sir, sure as that I'm telling you so this minute."
"How do you fix the exact time?"
"As we came out of the covered passage Miss Renfrew looked at her
wrist-watch and says, impatient like, 'There, I've lost another two
minutes and am that much later for nothing. See! It's a quarter to
eight. Good night.' Then she cut off over the grounds and leaves me."
"La! la!" exclaimed Mrs. Armroyd approvingly. "There's the brave
heart, to come to mademoiselle's rescue so gallantly. But, yes, I
make you the cake of plums for that, _mon cher_. Monsieur of the
yard of Scotland, he can no more torture the poor stricken child
after that--not he."
But Cleek appeared to be less easy to convince than she had hoped,
for he pursued the subject still; questioning Gorham to needless
length it seemed; trying his best to trip him up, to shake his
statement, but always failing; and, indeed, going over the same
ground to such length that one might have thought he was endeavouring
to gain time. If he was, he certainly succeeded; for it was quite
fifteen minutes later when Mr. Narkom returned to the Round House,
and he was at it still. Indeed, he did not conclude to give it up
as a bad job until the superintendent came.
"Get it off all right, did you, Mr. Narkom?" he asked, glancing round
as he heard him enter.
"Quite all right, old chap. Right as rain--in every particular."
"Thanks very much. I'm having rather a difficult task of it, for our
friend the constable here corroborates Miss Renfrew's statement to
the hair; and yet I am absolutely positive that there is a mistake."
"There is no mistake--no, not one! The wicked one to say it still!"
"Oh, that's all very well, madame, but I know what I know; and when
you tell me that a dead man can ask questions--Pah! The fact of the
matter is the constable merely fancies he heard Mr. Nosworth speak.
That's where the mistake comes in. Now, look here! I once knew of
an exactly similar case and I'll tell you just how it happened. Let
us suppose"--strolling leisurely forward--"let us suppose that
this space here is the covered passage, and you, madame--step here
a moment, please. Thanks very much--and you are Miss Renfrew, and
Gorham here is himself, and standing beside her as he did then."
"Wasn't beside her, sir--at least not just exactly. A bit behind
her--like this."
"Oh, very well, then, that will do. Now, then. Here's the passage and
here are you, and I'll just show you how a mistake could occur, and
how it did occur, under precisely similar circumstances. Once upon
a time when I was in Paris----"
"In Paris, monsieur?"
"Yes, madame--this little thing I'm going to tell you about happened
there. You may or may not have heard that a certain Frenchy
dramatist wrote a play called _Chanticler_--or maybe you never heard
of it? Didn't, eh? Well, it's a play where all the characters are
barnyard creatures--dogs, poultry, birds and the like--and the odd
fancy of men and women dressing up like fowls took such a hold on
the public that before long there were Chanticler dances and
Chanticler parties in all the houses, and Chanticler 'turns' on
at all the music halls, until wherever one went for an evening's
amusement one was pretty sure to see somebody or another dressed
up like a cock or a hen, and running the thing to death. But
that's another story, and we'll pass over it. Now, it just so
happened that one night--when the craze for the thing was dying out
and barnyard dresses could be bought for a song--I strolled into
a little fourth-rate cafe at Montmarte and there saw the only
Chanticler dancer that I ever thought was worth a sou. She was a
pretty, dainty little thing--light as a feather and graceful as a
fairy. Alone, I think she might have made her mark; but she was
one of what in music-halldom they call 'a team.' Her partner was a
man--bad dancer, an indifferent singer, but a really passable
ventriloquist."
"A ventriloquist, monsieur--er--er!"
"Cleek, madame--name's Cleek, if you don't mind."
"Cleek! Oh, Lummy!" blurted out Mr. Nippers. But neither "madame"
nor Constable Gorham said anything. They merely swung round and made
a sudden bolt; and Cleek, making a bolt, too, pounced down on them
like a leaping cat, and the sharp click-click of the handcuffs he
had borrowed from Mr. Nippers told just when he linked their two
wrists together.
"Game's up, Madame Fifine, otherwise Madame Nosworth, the worthless
wife of a worthless husband!" he rapped out sharply. "Game's up, Mr.
Henry Nosworth, bandit, pickpocket, and murderer! There's a hot
corner in hell waiting for the brute-beast that could kill his own
father, and would, for the simple sake of money. Get at him, quick,
Mr. Narkom. He's got one free hand! Nip the paper out of his pocket
before the brute destroys it! Played, sir, played! Buck up, Miss
Renfrew, buck up, little girl--you'll get your 'Boy' and you'll get
Mr. Septimus Nosworth's promised fortune after all! 'God's in his
heaven, and all's right with the world.'"