It was five and after when the superintendent, pale and shaking
with excitement, came up the long drive from the Hall gates and
found Cleek lounging in the doorway of the house, placidly smoking
a cigarette and twirling a little ball of crumpled newspaper in his
hand.
"Right was I, Mr. Narkom?" he queried smilingly.
"Good God, yes! Right as rain, old chap. Been carrying it for upward
of a twelvemonth, and no doubt waiting for an opportunity to strike."
"Good! And while you have been attending to your little part of the
business I've been looking out for mine, dear friend. Look!" said
Cleek, and opened up the little ball of paper sufficiently to show
what looked like a cut-glass scent bottle belonging to a lady's
dressing-bag close stoppered with a metal plug sealed round with
candle wax. "Woorali, my friend; and enough in it to kill an army.
Come along--we've got to the bottom of the thing, let us go up and
'report.' The gentlemen will be getting anxious."
They were; for on reaching the armoury they found young Drake and
Lord Fallowfield showing strong traces of the mental strain under
which they were labouring and talking agitatedly with Lady Marjorie
Wynde, who had, in the interim, come up and joined them, and was
herself apparently in need of something to sustain and to strengthen
her; for Ojeebi was standing by with an extended salver, from which
she had just lifted to her lips a glass of port.
"Good God! I never was so glad to see anybody in my life, gentlemen,"
broke out young Drake as they appeared. "It's beyond the hour you
asked for--ages beyond--and my nerves are almost pricking their way
through my skin. Mr. Cleek--Mr. Narkom--speak up, for heaven's
sake. Have you succeeded in finding out anything?"
"We've done better than that, Mr. Drake," replied Cleek, "for we
have succeeded in finding out everything. Look sharp there, Mr.
Narkom, and shut that door. Lady Marjorie looks as if she were going
to faint, and we don't want a whole houseful of servants piling in
here. That's it. Back against the door, please; her ladyship seems on
the point of crumpling up."
"No, no, I'm not; indeed, I'm not!" protested Lady Marjorie with
a forced smile and a feeble effort to hold her galloping nerves in
check. "I am excited and very much upset, of course, but I am really
much stronger than you would think. Still, if you would rather I
should leave the room, Mr. Cleek----"
"Oh, by no means, your ladyship. I know how anxious you are to learn
the result of my investigations. And, by that token, somebody else
is anxious, too--the doctor. Call him in, will you, Mr. Drake? He is
still with the others in the Stone Drum, I assume."
He was; and he came out of it with them at young Drake's call, and
joined the party in the armoury.
"Doctor," said Cleek, looking up as he came in, "we've got to the
puzzle's unpicking, and I thought you'd be interested to hear the
result. I was right about the substance employed, for I've found
the stuff and I've nailed the guilty party. It was woorali, and
the reason why there was no trace of a weapon was because the
blessed thing melted. It was an icicle, my friend, an icicle with
its point steeped in woorali, and if you want to know how it did
its work--why, it was shot in there from the cross-bow hanging
on the wall immediately behind me, and the person who shot it in
was so short that a chair was necessary to get up to the bowman's
slit when----No, you don't, my beauty! There's a gentleman with a
noose waiting to pay his respects to all such beasts as you!"
Speaking, he sprang with a sharp, flashing movement that was like
to nothing so much as the leap of a pouncing cat, and immediately
there was a yap and a screech, a yell and a struggle, a click of
clamping handcuffs, and a scuffle of writhing limbs, and a moment
later they that were watching saw him rise with a laugh, and stand,
with his hands on his hips, looking down at Ojeebi lying crumpled
up in a heap, with gyves on his wrists and panic in his eyes, at
the foot of the guarded door.
"Well, my pleasant-faced, agreeable little demon, it'll be many a
long day before the spirits of your ancestors welcome you back to
Nippon!" Cleek said as the panic-stricken Jap, realizing what was
before him, began to shriek and shriek until his brain and nerves
sank into a collapse and he fainted where he lay. "I've got you and
I've got the woorali. I went through your trunk and found it--as I
knew I should from the moment I clapped eyes upon you. If the laws
of the country are so lax that they make it possible for you to do
what you have done, they also are stringent enough to make you pay
the price of it with your yellow little neck!"
"In the name of heaven, Mr. Cleek," spoke up young Drake, breaking
silence suddenly, "what can the boy have done? You speak as if it
were he that murdered my father; but, man, why should he? What had
he to gain? What motive could a harmless little chap like this have
for killing the man he served?"
"The strongest in the world, my friend--the greed of gain!" said
Cleek. "What he could not do in your father's land it is possible
for him to do in this one, which foolishly allows its subjects to
insure even the life of its ruler without his will, knowledge, or
consent. For nearly a twelvemonth this little brute has been carrying
a heavy insurance upon the life of Jefferson P. Drake; but, thank
God, he'll never live to collect it. What's that, Doctor? How did
I find that out? By the simplest means possible, my dear sir.
"For a reason which concerns nobody but myself, I dropped in at
the Guildford office of the Royal British Life Assurance Society
in the latter part of last May, and upon that occasion I marked
the singular circumstance that a Japanese was then paying the
premium of an already existing policy. Why I speak of it as a
singular circumstance, and why I let myself be impressed by it, lie
in the fact that, as the Japanese regard their dead ancestors
with absolute veneration and the privilege of being united with
them a boon which makes death glorious, life assurance is not
popular with them, since it seems to be insulting their ancestors
and makes joining them tainted with the odour of baser things.
Consequently, I felt pretty certain that it was some other life
than his own he was there to pay the regularly recurring premium
upon. The chances are, Doctor, that in the ordinary run of things I
should never have thought of that man or that circumstance again.
But it so happens that I have a very good memory for faces and
events, so when I came down here to investigate this case, and in
the late Mr. Drake's valet saw that Japanese man again--voila! I
should have been an idiot not to put two and two together.
"The remainder, a telegram inquiring if an insurance upon the life
of Jefferson P. Drake, the famous inventor, had been effected by
anybody but the man himself, settled the thing beyond question. As
for the rest, it is easy enough to explain. Your remark that the
little puddle found upon the floor of the Stone Drum appeared to you
to bear a distinct resemblance to the water resulting from melted
snow, added to what I already knew regarding the refrigerating
plant installed here, put me on the track of the ice; and as the
small spot on the temple was of so minute a character, I knew that
the weapon must have been pointed. A pointed weapon of ice leaves but
one conclusion possible, Doctor. I have since learned from the man
in charge of the refrigerating plant that this yellow blob of
iniquity here was much taken by the icicles which the process of
refrigeration caused to accumulate in the place and upon the
machine itself during rotation, and that last night shortly
after twelve o'clock he came down and broke off and carried away
three of them. How I came to know what motive power he employed
to launch the poisoned shaft can be explained in a word. Most of the
weapons--indeed, all but one--hanging on the wall of this armoury
are lightly coated with dust, showing that it must be a week or
more since any housemaid's work was attended to in this particular
quarter. One of them is not dusty. Furthermore, when I took it
down for the purpose of examining it I discovered that, although
smeared with ink or paint to make it look as old as the others, the
bowstring was of fresh catgut, and there was a suspicious dampness
about the 'catch,' which suggested either wet hands or the partial
melting, under the heat of living flesh, of the 'shaft,' which had
been an icicle. That's all, Doctor; that's all, Mr. Drake; that's
quite all, Lord Fallowfield. A good, true-hearted young chap
will get both the girl he wants and the inheritance which should be
his by right; a good, true friend will get back the ancestral home
he lost through misfortune and has regained through chance, and a
patient and faithful lady will, in all probability, get the man
she loves without now having to wait until he comes into a dead
man's shoes. Lady Marjorie, my compliments. Doctor, my best
respects, and gentlemen all--good afternoon."
And here with that weakness for the theatrical which was his
besetting sin, he bowed to them with his hat laid over his heart, and
walked out of the room.