It is a recognized fact in police circles that crime has a curious
propensity for indulging in periodical outbursts of great energy,
great fecundity, and then lapsing into a more or less sporadic
condition for a time--like a gorged tiger that drowses, and stirs
only to lick its chops after a hideous feast. So that following the
lines of these fixed principles the recent spell of criminal activity
was succeeded by a sort of lull, and the next two weeks were idle
ones for Cleek.
Idle but idyllic--from his point of view; for he was back in the
little house in the pleasant country lands now, with his walled
garden, his ferns and his flowers, and the full glory of tulip-time
was here.
And soon another "glory" would be here as well.
In twelve more days _she_ would be back in England. In twelve more
days he and Dollops would move out, and Ailsa Lorne would move in,
and this little Eden in the green and fragrant meadowlands would have
another tenant from that time forth.
But hers would not be a lonely tenancy, however; for "Captain
Horatio Burdage" had recently written to Mrs. Condiment that, as the
Sleeping Mermaid seemed likely to prove an unprofitable investment
after all and to bring her little reward for her labours, he purposed
relinquishing it and recalling "Old Joseph" to him; and with that
end in view had already secured for the good lady a position as
companion-housekeeper to one Miss Ailsa Lorne, who, in the early
part of June, would call upon her at her present quarters and
personally conduct her and the deaf-and-dumb maid-of-all-work to
their future ones.
Here, then, in this bower of bloom, would this dear girl of his
heart await the coming of that glorious day when the last act of
restitution had been made, the last Vanishing Cracksman debt wiped
off the slate, and he could go to her--clean-handed at last--to
ask the fulfilment of her promise.
Remembering that, it was a sheer delight to be free from all Yard
calls for a time that he might give his whole attention to the work
of getting the place ready for her; and day after day he was busy in
the high-walled old-world garden--digging, planting, pruning--that
when she came it might be brimming over with flowers.
But although he devoted himself mind and body to this task and
lived each day within the limits of that confining wall, he had
not wholly lost touch with the world at large, for each morning
the telephone--installed against the time of Ailsa's tenancy--put
him into communication with Mr. Narkom at the Yard, and each night
a newspaper carried in to him by Dollops kept him abreast of the
topics of the times.
It was over that telephone he received the first assurance that his
haste in getting out of Yorkshire had not been an unnecessary
precaution, his suspicions regarding the probable action of the
Nosworths not ill grounded, for Mr. Narkom was able to inform
him that carefully made inquiries had elicited the intelligence
that, within two days after the Round House affair, men who were
undoubtedly foreigners were making diligent inquiries throughout
the West Riding regarding the whereabouts of two men and a boy
who had been travelling about in a two-horsed caravan.
"That sudden bolt of ours was a jolly good move, old chap," said
the superintendent, when he made this announcement. "It did the
beggars absolutely. Shouldn't be a bit surprised if they'd chucked
the business as a bad job and gone back to the Continent disgusted.
At any rate, none of my plain-clothes men has seen hide nor hair of
one of the lot since, either in town or out. Waldemar, too, seems
to have hooked it and can't be traced; so I reckon we've seen the
last of him."
But Cleek was not so sure of that. He had his own ideas as to what
this disappearance of the Apaches meant, and did not allow himself
to be lulled into any sense of security by it. There were more ways
than one in which to catch a weasel, he recollected, and determined
not to relax his precautions in the smallest iota when next the
Yard's call for his services should come.
That it would come soon he felt convinced as the days advanced that
rounded out the end of his second week of freedom from it; and what
form it would take when it did come was a matter upon which he could
almost have staked his life, so sure he felt of it.
For a time of great national excitement, great national indignation,
had arrived, and the press had made him acquainted with all the
circumstances connected therewith. As why not, when the whole country
was up in arms over it and every newspaper in the land headlined it
in double caps and poured forth the story in full detail?
It had its genesis in something which had happened at Gosport in the
preceding week, and happened in this startling manner:
In the waterway between Barrow Island and the extreme end of the
Royal Clarence Victualling Yard there had been found floating the
body of a man of about five-and-thirty years of age, fully and
fashionably clothed and having all those outward signs which betoken
a person of some standing.
It was evident at once that death must have been the result of
accident, and that the victim had been unable to swim, for the hands
were encased in kid gloves, the coat was tightly buttoned, and a
pair of field-glasses in a leather case still hung from the long
shoulder-strap which supported the weight of them. The victim's
inability to swim was established by the fact that he had made
no effort to rid himself of these hampering conditions, and was
clinging tightly to a foot-long bit of driftwood, which he must
have clutched at as it floated by.
It was surmised, therefore, that the man must have fallen into the
water in the dark--either from the foreshore or from some vessel
or small boat in which he was journeying at the time--and had been
carried away by the swift current and drowned without being missed,
the condition of the body clearly establishing the fact that it had
been in the water for something more than a fortnight when found.
Later it was identified by one of the deck hands of the pleasure
steamer which cruises round the Isle of Wight daily as being that
of a man he had seen aboard that vessel on one of its night trips to
Alum Bay between two and three weeks previously; and still later it
was discovered that a boatman in that locality had been hired to take
a gentleman from the Needles to a yacht "lying out to sea" that
selfsame night, and that the gentleman in question never turned up.
What followed gave these two circumstances an appalling significance.
For when the body was carried to the mortuary, and its clothing
searched for possible clues to identification, there was found upon
it a sealed packet addressed simply "A. Steinmueller, Koenigstrasse
8," and inside that packet there were two unmounted photographs of
the exterior of Blockhouse Fort and the Southsea Fort, a more or less
accurate ground-plan drawing of the interior of the Portsmouth
Dockyard, together with certain secret information relative to
supplies and to the proposed armament of cruisers now undergoing
alteration and reequipment.
The wrath and amazement engendered by that discovery, however, were
as nothing compared with the one which so swiftly followed.
Brought up before the Admiral Superintendent and the Board, John
Beachman, the dock master--who alone knew these things outside of the
Admiralty--was obliged to admit that one person, and one only--his
eldest son--was in a position to obtain admission to the safe in
which he kept his private papers, and that son was engaged to a young
lady whom he had met during a holiday tour on the Continent.
"English or foreign?" he was asked; to which he replied that she
was English--or, at least, English by birth, although her late
father was a German. He had become naturalized before his death,
and was wholly in sympathy with the country of his adoption. He
did not die in it, however. Circumstances had caused him to visit
the United States, and he had been killed in one of the horrible
railway disasters for which that country was famous. It was because
the daughter was thus left orphaned, and was so soon to become
the wife of their son, that he and Mrs. Beachman had taken her
into their home in advance of the marriage. They did not think
it right that she should be left to live alone and unprotected,
considering what she was so soon to become to them; so they had
taken her into the home, and their son had arranged to sleep at an
hotel in Portsmouth pending the date of the wedding. The lady's
name was Hilmann--Miss Greta Hilmann. She was of extremely good
family, and quite well-to-do in her own right. She had never been
to Germany since the date of the engagement. She had relatives
there, however; one in particular--a Baron von Ziegelmundt and
his son Axel. The son had visited England twice--once many months
back, and the last time some seven or eight weeks ago. They liked
him very much--the bridegroom-elect especially so. They had become
very great friends indeed. No, Axel von Ziegelmundt was no longer in
England. He had left it something like a month ago. He was on a
pleasure trip round the world, he had heard, but had no idea where
he had gone when he left Portsmouth.
Two hours after this statement was made, if the populace could have
got hold of young Harry Beachman it would have torn him to pieces;
for it was then discovered that the drowned man was no less a person
than this Herr Axel von Ziegelmundt, and that they had not only
spent the greater part of that particular day shut up in the former's
room in the Portsmouth hotel, but had been together up to the very
moment when the excursion steamer had started on its moonlight trip
to Alum Bay and to the bringing about of that providential accident
which had prevented the State affairs of an unsuspecting nation
from being betrayed to a secret foe.
What followed was, in the face of this, of course, but natural. John
Beachman was suspended immediately, and his son's arrest ordered.
It served no purpose that he denied indignantly the charge of
being a traitor, and swore by every sacred thing that the hours
spent in his room at the hotel were passed in endeavouring to
master the intricacies of the difficult German card game, Skaat,
and that never in all their acquaintance had one word touching
upon the country or the country's affairs passed between Axel von
Ziegelmundt and himself, so help him God! It was in vain, also, that
Greta Hilmann--shouting hysterically her belief in him and begging
wildly that if he must be put into prison she might be taken with him
"and murdered when you murder him if he is to be court-martialled
and shot, you wretched blunderers!"--it was in vain that Greta
Hilmann clung to him and fought with all her woman's strength to
keep the guard from laying hands upon him or to tear her from his
side; the outraged country demanded him, and took him in spite of
all. Nor did it turn the current of sympathy in his direction that,
crazed when they tore him from her, this frantic creature had gone
from swoon to swoon until her senses left her entirely, and the end
was--tragedy.
The full details were never forthcoming. The bare facts were that
she was carried back to Beachman's house in a state of hysteria
bordering close upon insanity, and that when, under orders from the
Admiralty, that house and all its contents were impounded pending
the fullest inquiry into the dock master's books and accounts,
the Admiral Superintendent and the appointed auditor entered into
possession, her condition was found to be so serious that it was
decided not to insist upon her removal for a day or two at least.
A nurse was procured from the naval hospital and put in charge of
her; but at some period during the fourth night of that nurse's
attendance--and when she, worn out by constant watching, slept in
her chair--the half-delirious patient arose, and, leaving a note
to say that life had lost all its brightness for her, and if they
cared to find her they might look for her in the sea, vanished
entirely. She could scarcely have hit upon a worse thing for the
evil repute of her lover's name or her own. For those who had never
known her personally were quick to assert that this was proof
enough of how the thing had been managed. In short, that she,
too, was a spy, and that she had adopted this subterfuge to get
back to Germany before the scent grew hot and the law could lay a
hand upon her. Those who had known her took a more merciful view so
far as she was concerned, but one which made things look all the
blacker for her lover. What could her desperation and her utter
giving up all hope even before the man was put on trial mean if
it was not that she knew he was guilty, knew he would never get off
with his life, and that her suicide was a tacit admission of this?