"Yes, a very, very clever scheme indeed, Miss Renfrew," agreed
Cleek. "Laid with great cunning and carried out with extreme
carefulness--as witness the man's coming here and getting appointed
constable and biding his time, and the woman serving as cook for six
months to get the entree to the house and to be ready to assist when
the time of action came round. I don't think I had the least inkling
of the truth until I entered this house and saw that woman. She had
done her best to pad herself to an unwieldy size and to blanch
portions of her hair, but she couldn't quite make her face appear
old without betraying the fact that it was painted--and hers is one
of those peculiarly pretty faces that one never forgets when one
has ever seen it. I knew her the instant I entered the house;
and, remembering the Chanticler dress with its fowl's-foot boots, I
guessed at once what those marks would prove to be when I came to
investigate them. She must have stamped on the ground with all
her might, to sink the marks in so deeply--but she meant to make
sure of the claws and the exaggerated scales on the toes leaving
their imprint. I was certain we should find that dress and those
boots among her effects; and--Mr. Narkom did. What I wrote on that
pretended telegram was for him to slip away into the house proper
and search every trunk and cupboard for them. Pardon? No, I don't
think they really had any idea of incriminating Sir Ralph Droger.
That thought came into the fellow's mind when you stepped out and
caught him stealing away after the murder had been committed. No
doubt he, like you, had seen Sir Ralph practising for the sports,
and he simply made capital of it. The main idea was to kill his
father and to destroy the will; and of course, when it became
apparent that the old gentleman had died intestate, even a discarded
son must inherit. Where he made his blunder, however, was in his
haste to practise his ventriloquial accomplishment to prevent your
going into the Round House and discovering that his father was
already dead. He ought to have waited until you had spoken, so
that it would appear natural for the old man to know, without
turning, who it was that had opened the door. That is what put me
on the track of him. Until that moment I hadn't the slightest
suspicion where he was nor under what guise he was hiding. Of
course I had a vague suspicion, even before I came and saw her, that
'the cook' was in it. Her readiness in inventing a fictitious
gypsy with a bear's muzzle, coupled with what Nippers had told me of
the animal marks she had pointed out, looked a bit fishy; but
until I actually met her nothing really tangible began to take
shape in my thoughts. That's all, I think. And now, good-night
and good luck to you, Miss Renfrew. The riddle is solved; and Mr.
Narkom and I must be getting back to the wilderness and to our
ground-floor beds in the hotel of the beautiful stars!"
Here, as if some spirit of nervous unrest had suddenly beset him,
he turned round on his heel, motioned the superintendent to follow,
and brushing by the awed and staring Mr. Ephraim Nippers, whisked
open the door and passed briskly out into the hush and darkness of
the night.
The footpath which led through the grounds to the gate and thence
to the long lonely way back to Dollops and the caravan lay before
him. He swung into it with a curious sort of energy and forged away
from the house at such speed that Narkom's short, fat legs were hard
put to it to catch up with him before he came to the path's end.
"My dear chap, are you going into training for a match with that Sir
Ralph What's-his-name of whom Miss Renfrew spoke?" he wheezed when
he finally overtook him. "You long, lean beggars are the very old
boy for covering the ground. But wait until you get to be _my_ age,
by James!"
"Perhaps I shan't. Perhaps they won't let me!" threw back Cleek,
in a voice curiously blurred, as if he spoke with his teeth hard
shut. "Donkeys do die, you know--that little bit of tommyrot about
the absence of their dead bodies to the contrary."
"Meaning what, old chap?"
"That I've been as big an ass as any of the thistle-eating kind that
ever walked. Gad! such an indiscretion! Such an example of pure
brainlessness! And the worst of it is that it's all due to my own
wretched vanity--my own miserable weakness for the theatrical and the
spectacular! It came to me suddenly--while I was standing there
explaining things to Miss Renfrew--and I could have kicked myself for
my folly."
"Folly? What folly?"
"'What folly?' What? Good heavens, man, use your wits! Isn't it
enough for me to be a blockhead without you entering the lists
along with me?" said Cleek, irritably. "Or, no! Forgive that, dear
friend. My nerves were speaking, not my heart. But in moments like
this--when we had built a safe bridge, and my own stupidity has
hacked it down--Faugh! I tell you I could kick myself. Didn't you
hear? Didn't you see?"
"I saw that for some special reason you were suddenly obsessed with
a desire to get out of the house in the midst of your talking with
Miss Renfrew, if that's what you refer to--is it?"
"Not altogether. It's part of it, however. But not the worst part,
unfortunately. It was at that moment then the recollection of my
indiscretion came to me and I realized what a dolt I had been--how
completely I had destroyed our splendid security, wrecked what
little still remains of this glorious holiday--when I couldn't let
'George Headland' have the centre of the stage, but needs must come
in like the hero of a melodrama and announce myself as Cleek. To
Nosworth and his wife! To Nippers! To all that gaping crowd! You
remember that incident, surely?"
"Yes. Of course I do. But what of it?"
"What of it? Man alive, with a chap like that Nippers, how long do
you suppose it will remain a secret that Cleek is in Yorkshire?
In the West Riding of it? In this particular locality? Travelling
about with Mr. Maverick Narkom in a caravan--a _caravan_ that can't
cover five miles of country in the time a train or a motor car is
able to get over fifty!"
"Good lud! I never thought of that. But wait a bit. There's a way to
overcome that difficulty, of course. Stop here a minute or two and
I'll run back and pledge that Nippers fool to keep his mouth shut
about it. He'll give me his promise, _I_ know."
"To be sure he will. But how long do you suppose he will keep it?
How long do you suppose that an empty-headed, gabbling old fool
like that fellow will refrain from increasing his own importance
in the neighbourhood by swaggering about and boasting of his
intimacy with the powers at Scotland Yard and--the rest of it? And
even if he shouldn't, what about the others? The gathering of
rustics that heard what he heard? The gamekeepers from the Droger
estate? The Nosworths, as well as they? Can their mouths, too, be
shut? They will not love me for this night's business, be sure.
Then, too, they have lived in Paris. The woman is French by birth.
Of Montmartre--of the Apache class, the Apache kind--and she
will know of the 'Cracksman,' be assured. So will her husband.
And they won't take their medicine lying down, believe me. An
accused man has the right to communicate with counsel, remember;
and a wire up to London will cost less than a shilling. So, as
between Margot's crew and our friend Count Waldemar--_la, la!_
There you are."
Mr. Narkom screwed up his face and said something under his breath.
He could not but follow this line of reasoning when the thing was
put before him so plainly.
"And we had been so free from all worry over the beggars up to this!"
he said, savagely. "But to get a hint--to pick up the scent--out
here--in a wild bit of country like this! Cinnamon, it makes me
sweat! What do you propose to do?"
"The only thing that's left us to do," gave back Cleek. "Get out of
it as quickly as possible and draw a red herring over the scent. In
other words, put back to Dollops, abandon the caravan, make our way
to some place where it is possible to telephone for the chap we hired
it from to send out and get it; then, to make tracks for home."
"Yes, but why bother about telephoning, old chap? Why can't we drop
in ourselves and tell the man when we get back to Sheffield on our
way to London?"
"Because we are not going back to Sheffield, my friend--not going
in for anything so silly as twice travelling over the same ground,
if it's all the same to you," replied Cleek, as he swung off from the
highway on to the dark, still moor and struck out for the place
where they had left Dollops and the caravan. "At best, we can't
be more than thirty miles from the boundary line of Cumberland. A
night's walking will cover that. There we can rest a while--at some
little out-of-the-way hostelry--then take a train over the Scottish
border and make for Dumfries. From that point on, the game is easy.
There are six trains a day leaving for St. Pancras and eight for
Euston. We can choose which we like, and a seven hours' ride will
land us in London without having once 'doubled on our tracks' or
crossed the route by which we came out of it."
"By James! what a ripping idea," said Mr. Narkom approvingly. "Come
along then, old chap--let's get back to the boy and be about it as
soon as possible." Then he threw open his coat and waistcoat to get
the full benefit of the air before facing the ordeal, and, falling
into step with Cleek, struck out over the moor at so brisk a dog
trot that his short, fat legs seemed fairly to twinkle.