It was a full half hour later, and Sir Mawson and Lady Leake and Mr.
Maverick Narkom were in the throes of the most maddening suspense,
when the door of the music room flashed open and flashed shut again,
and Cleek stood before them once more--quite alone still, but with
that curious crooked smile which to Narkom stood for so much, looping
up the corner of his mouth and mutely foreshadowing the riddle's
spectacular end.
"Cleek, dear chap!" The superintendent's voice was sharp and thin
with excitement. "You've found out something, then?"
"I hope, Mr. Narkom, I have found out everything," he replied with
a marked emphasis on the word hope. "But as we are told when in doubt
or in difficulty to 'look above' for a way out, permit me to follow
that advice before proceeding any further with the subject."
Here he stepped to the centre of the room, twitched back his head,
and, with chin upslanted and eyes directed toward the ceiling, moved
slowly round in a narrow circle for a moment or two.
But of a sudden he came to a sharp standstill, rapped out a short,
queer little laugh, and, altering these mysterious tactics, looked
down and across the room at Sir Mawson Leake.
"I think the Ranee did not look to the security of those slim gold
links a day too soon, Sir Mawson," he said. "It is too much to ask
a man to risk his whole fortune on the tenacity of a bit of age-worn
wire as you have done, and if I were in your shoes I'd tell the
old girl's _major domo_ when he comes for the necklace, to get it
repaired somewhere else--and be dashed to him."
"Good! Wouldn't I, in a twinkling, if I could only lay hands on the
wretched thing again. But I haven't it, as you know."
"Quite true. But you are going to have it--presently. I know where
it is!"
"Mr. Cleek!"
"Gently, gently, my friends. Don't go quite off your heads with
excitement. I repeat, I know where it is. I have found it and----Mr.
Narkom! Look sharp! A chair for Lady Leake--she's tottering. Steady,
steady, your ladyship; it will only complicate matters to lose a
grip on yourself now; and you have kept up so brave a front all
through, it would be a pity to break down at the end."
"I am not breaking down. I am quite all right. Please go on, Mr.
Cleek--please do. I can stand anything better than this. Are you
sure you have found it? Are you _sure?_"
"Absolutely. I have had a nice little talk with old Jennifer, and
a very satisfactory visit to Master Bevis Leake's interesting
'pirates' cave' and----Gently, gently, Sir Mawson; gently, all
of you. Don't jump to conclusions too quickly. No, your ladyship, I
did not find the necklace in that cave, and for the simple reason
that it is not and never has been there--in short, neither your son
Bevis nor the servant, Jennifer, has the least idea in the world
_where_ it is. I have, however, and if in return for handing it over
to him, Sir Mawson will give me his promise to take that boy, Henry,
back and give him another chance, he shall have it in his hands ten
seconds afterward."
"I promise! I promise! I promise!" broke in Sir Mawson, almost
shouting in his excitement. "I give you my word, Mr. Cleek, I give
you my solemn oath."
"Right you are," said Cleek in reply. Then he twitched forward a
chair, stepped on the seat of it, reached up into the midst of the
chandelier's glittering cut-glass lustres, snapped something out from
their sparkling festoons, and added serenely, "Favour for favour:
there you are, then!" as he dropped the Ladder of Light into Sir
Mawson's hands.
And all in a moment, what with Lady Leake laughing and crying at one
and the same time, her liege lord acting pretty much as if he had
suddenly gone off his head, and Mr. Maverick Narkom chiming in and
asserting several times over that he'd be jiggered, there was the
dickens and all to pay in the way of excitement.
"Up in the chandelier!" exclaimed Lady Leake when matters had settled
down a bit. "Up there, where it might have remained unnoticed for
months, so like is it to the strings of lustres. But how? But when?
Oh, Mr. Cleek, who in the world put it there? And why?"
"Jennifer," he made answer. "No, not for any evil purpose, your
ladyship. He doesn't know even yet that it was there, or that he
ever in all his life held a thing so valuable in his hands. All that
he does know in connection with it is that while he was cleaning
those lustres out there in the hallway yesterday afternoon between
four and five o'clock your son Bevis, out on one of his 'treasure
raids,' paid him a visit, and that long after, when the old fellow
came to replace the lustres on the chandelier, he discovered that
one string was missing.
"'I knowed the precious little rascal had took it, sir, of course,'
was the way he put it in explaining the matter to me; 'and I felt
sure I'd be certain to find it in his pirates' cave. But Lord bless
you, it turned out as he hadn't took it there at all, as I found
out a goodish bit afterward, when her ladyship comes down to the
landing at the top of the first flight of stairs, calls me up to
give me the lint for Miss Eastman, and then gives a jump and a cry,
like she'd just recollected something, and runs back upstairs as
fast as she could fly. For when I looks down, there was the missing
string of lustres lying on the landing right where her ladyship had
been standing, and where he, little rascal, had went and hid it
from me. So I picks it up and puts it back in its place on the
chandelier just as soon as I'd taken the lint to Miss Eastman like
her ladyship told me.'
"In that, Lady Leake, lies the whole story of how it came to be
where you saw me find it. Jennifer is still under the impression
that what he picked up on that landing was nothing more than the
string of twelve cut-glass lustres joined together by links of brass
wire which is at this moment hanging among the 'treasures' in your
little son's pirates' cave."
"On the landing? Lying on the landing, do you say, Mr. Cleek?"
exclaimed her ladyship. "But heavens above, how could the necklace
ever have got there? Nobody could by any possibility have entered the
boudoir after I left it to run down to the landing with the lint.
You saw for yourself how utterly impossible such a thing as that
would be."
"To be sure," he admitted. "It was the absolute certainty that
nobody in the world could have actually forced the key to the
solution upon me. Since it was possible for only one solitary person
to have entered and left that room since Sir Mawson placed the
necklace in your charge, clearly then that person was the one who
carried it out. Therefore, there was but one conclusion, namely, that
when your ladyship left that room the Ladder of Light left it
with you: on your person, and----Gently, gently, Lady Leake; don't
get excited, I beg. I shall be able in a moment to convince you
that my reasoning upon that point was quite sound, and to back it
up with actual proof.
"If you will examine the necklace, Sir Mawson, you will see that
it has not come through this adventure uninjured; in short, that
one of the two sections of its clasp is missing, and the link that
once secured that section to the string of diamonds has parted in
the middle. Perhaps a good deal which may have seemed to you sheer
madness up to this point will be clearly explained when I tell you
that when I lifted Lady Leake's negligee from that chair a while
ago I found this thing clinging to the lace of the right sleeve."
"Good heavens above! Look, Ada, look! The missing section of the
clasp."
"Exactly," concurred Cleek. "And when you think of where I found it I
fancy it will not be very difficult to reason out how the necklace
came to be where Jennifer picked it up. On your own evidence,
Lady Leake, you hastily laid it down on your dressing-table, when
the sight of the lint bandage recalled to your mind your promise to
Miss Eastman, and from that moment it was never seen again. The
natural inference then is so clear I think there can hardly be a
doubt that when you reached over to pick up that bandage the lace
of your sleeve caught on the clasp, became entangled, and that when
you left the room you carried the Ladder of Light with you. The
great weight of the necklace swinging free as you ran down the
staircase would naturally tell upon that weak link, and no doubt
when you leaned over the banister at the landing to call Jennifer,
that was, so to speak, the last straw. The weak link snapped, the
necklace dropped away, and the thick carpet entirely muffled the
sound of its fall. As for the rest----"
The loud jangling of the door bell cut in upon his words. He pulled
out his watch and looked at it.
"That will be the Ranee's _major domo_, I fancy, Sir Mawson," he
observed, "and with your kind permission Mr. Narkom and I will be
going. We have, as I have already told you, a little matter of
importance still to attend to in the interest of the Yard, and
although I haven't the slightest idea we shall be able to carry it
to a satisfactory conclusion for a very long time--if ever--we had
better be about it. Pardon? Reward, your ladyship? Oh, but I've had
that: Sir Mawson has given me his promise to let that bonny boy have
another chance. That was all I asked, remember. There's good stuff
in him, but he stands at the crossroads, and face to face with one
of life's great crises. Now is the time when he needs a friend.
Now is the time for his father to _be_ a father; and opportunity
counts for so much in the devil's gamble for souls. Get to him,
daddy--get to him and stand by him--and you'll have given me the
finest reward in the world."
And here, making his adieus to Lady Leake, whose wet eyes followed
him with something of reverence in them, and shaking heartily the
hand Sir Mawson held out, he linked arms with Narkom, and together
they passed out, leaving a great peace and a great joy behind them.
"Gad, what an amazing beggar you are!" declared the superintendent,
breaking silence suddenly as soon as they were at a safe distance
from the house. "You'll end your days in the workhouse, you know,
if you continue this sort of tactics. Fancy chucking up a reward
for the sake of a chap you never saw before, and who treated you
like a mere nobody. Why, man alive, you could have had almost any
reward--a thousand pounds if you'd asked it--for finding a priceless
thing like that."
"I fancy I've helped to find something that is more priceless still,
my friend, and it's cheap at the price."
"But a thousand pounds, Cleek! a thousand pounds! God's truth, man,
think what you could do with all that money--think what you could
buy!"
"To be sure; but think what you _can't_! Not one day of lost
innocence, not one hour of spoilt youth! It isn't because they have a
natural tendency toward evil that _all_ men go wrong. It is not
what they possess but what they lack that's at the bottom of the
downfall of four fifths of them. Given such ingredients as a young
chap suffering under a sense of personal injury, a feeling that
the world's against him, that he has neither a home nor a friend to
stand by him in his hour of need, and the devil will whip up the
mixture and manufacture a criminal in less than no time. It is
easier to save him while he's worth the saving than it is to pull
him up after he has gone down the line, Mr. Narkom, and if by
refusing to accept so many pounds, shillings, and pence, a man can do
the devil out of a favourable opportunity----Oh, well, let it go at
that. Come on, please. We are still as far as ever from the 'game' we
set out to bag, my friend; and as this district seems to be as
unpromising in that respect as all the others--where next?"