 7 A very real, a very moving thing, Mr. Narcombe," he replied, the cry of a human heart in deep distress, the agonised appeal of a man so wrought up by the horrors of his position that he forgets to offer a temptation in the way of reward, and speaks of outlandish things as though they must be understood of all, as witness his allusion to something which he calls the red crawl, without attempting to explain the meaningless phrase. Whatever it is, it is so real to him that it seems as if everybody must understand." You think, then, that the thing is genuine? So genuine that I shall answer its call, Mr. Narcombe, and be alone in the dark on the top floor of Number 7, Rue-Trois-en-Dor, to-morrow night, as surely as the clock strikes nine. And that was how the few persons who happened to be in the quiet upper reaches of the Rue-Bien-Faisance, at half-past eight o'clock the next evening, came to see a fat, fussing, red-faced Englishman in a grey frockcoat, white spats, and a shining topper, followed by a liveried servant with a hat-box in one hand and a portmanteau in the other. So conspicuous the pair of them that they couldn't have any desire to conceal themselves, cross over the square before the church of St. Augustine, fare forth into the darker side-passages, and move in the direction of the street of the Golden Fleece. They were, of course, clique and the boy-dollops. Lummy governor, whispered he, as they turned at last into the utter darkness and desertion of the narrow Rue-Trois-en-Dor. If this is what you call gay paris, this precious black slit between two rows of houses, I'll take a slice of the old Kent road with banks, not even so much as a winkle-stall in sight, and me that empty my shirt-bosoms have chafed in my blessed shoulder-blades. You'll see plenty of life before the game's over, I warrant you, dollops. Now then, my lad, here's a safe spot. Sit down on the hat-box and wait. That's number seven, that empty house with the open door just across the way. Keep your eye on it. I don't know how long I'll be, but if anybody comes out before I do, mind you don't let him get away. No fear, said dollops sententiously. I'll be after him as if he was a ham sandwich, though. Look out for my patent tickle-toopsies when you come out, governor. I'll sneak over and put them round the door as soon as you've gone in. For dollops, who was of an inventive turn of mind, had a special man-trap of his own, which consisted of heavy brown paper cut into squares, and thickly smeared over with a viscid, varnish-like substance that would adhere to the feet of anybody in cautiously stepping upon it, and so interfere with flight that it was an absolute necessity to stop and tear the papers away before running with any sort of ease and swiftness was possible. This was the invention to which Clicke had eluded. Dollops, who was rather proud of the achievement, carried with him a full supply of ready-cut papers and a big collapsible tube of the viscid, ropey, varnish-like glue. Meantime Clicke, having left the boy sitting on the hat-box in the darkness, crossed the narrow street to the open doorway of No. 7, and without hesitation stepped in. The place was as black as a pocket, and had that peculiar smell, which belongs to houses that have long stood vacant. The house nevertheless was a respectable one, and like all the others, fronted on another street, this dark toise en door, being merely a back passage used principally by the tradespeople for the delivery of supplies. Feeling his way to the first of the three flights of stairs, which led upward into the stillness and gloom above, Clicke mounted steadily until he found himself at length in a sort of attic, quite windowless, and lit only by a skylight through which shone the ineffectual light of the stars. It was the top at last. Bracing his back against the wall so that nobody could get behind him, and holding himself ready for any emergency, he called out in a clear, calm voice, Clicke. Almost simultaneously there was a sharp metallic snick, an electric bulb hanging from the ceiling flamed out luminously, a cupboard door flashed open, a voice cried out in joyous perfect English, Thank God for a man! and switching round with a cry of amazement, he found himself looking into the face and eyes of a woman, and of all women in the world. Else a lawn! He sucked in his breath and his heart began to hammer. Miss Lawn! he exclaimed, so carried out of himself that he scarcely knew what he did. It was the French position that you chose then. It is you, you, that calls upon me. No, it is not, she made reply, a rush of colour reddening her cheeks, a feeling of embarrassment and of a natural restraint, making her shake visibly. I am merely the envoy of another. I should not know you disguised as you are, but for that. Yes, I chose the French position as you see, Miss Clicke. I am now the companion to Mamselle Attali, daughter of the Baron de Carjouac. Baron de Carjouac? Do you mean the French Minister of the Interior, the President of the Board of National Defenses, Miss Lawn? That enthusiastic old patriot, that rabid old spitfire whose one dream is the resting back of Alsace Lyon, the driving of the hated Germans into the sea? Do you mean that ripping old firebrand? Yes, but you'd not call him that if you were to see him now. If you could see the wreck, the broken and despairing wreck that six weeks of the chateau la rouge, six weeks of that horrible red crawl have made of him. The red crawl? Good heavens! Then that letter, that appeal for help. Came from him, she finished excitedly. It was he who was to have met you here tonight, Mr. Clicke. This house is one he owns. He thought he might with safety risk coming here, but he can't. He can't. He knows now that there is danger for him everywhere, that his every step is tracked, that the snare which is about him has been about him unsuspected for almost a year, that he dare not, absolutely dare not appeal to the French police, and that if it were known he had appealed to you, he would be a dead man inside of twenty-four hours, and not only dead, but disgraced. Oh, Mr. Clicke! She stretched out two shaking hands and laid them on his arm, lifted a white, imploring face to his. Save him! Save that dear broken old man! Think, think! They are our friends, our dear country's friends, these French people. Their welfare is our welfare, ours is theirs. Oh, help him save him, Mr. Clicke, for his own sake, for mine, for France. Save him and win my gratitude for ever. That is a temptation that would carry me to the ends of the earth, Miss Lawn. Tell me what the work is, and I will carry it through. What is this incomprehensible thing of which both you and Baron de Cargerac have spoken, this thing you allude to us, the red crawl? She gave a little shuddering cry, and fell back a step, covering her face with both hands. Oh! she said, with a shiver of repulsion. It is loosely, it is horrible, it is necromancy beyond belief. Why, oh, why were we ever driven to that horrible chateau la rouge? Why could not fate have spared the villa de Cargerac? It could not have happened then. Villa de Cargerac. That was the name of the Baron's residence, I believe. I remember reading in the newspapers some five or six weeks ago that it was destroyed by fire, which originated, nobody knew how, in the apartments of the late Baroness, in the very dead of the night. I thought at the time it read suspiciously like the work of an incendiary, although nobody hinted at such a thing. The chateau la rouge I also have a distinct memory of, as an old historic property in the neighbourhood of Sanclou. Speaking from past experience, I know that, although it is in such a state of decay, and supposed to be uninhabitable, it has, in fact, often been occupied at a period when the police and the public believed it to be quite empty. Gentlemen of the Apache persuasion have frequently made it a place of retreat. There is also an underground passage executed by those same individuals which connects with the Paris sewers. That, too, the police are unaware of. What can the ruined chateau la rouge possibly have to do with the affairs of the Baron de Cargerac, Miss Lorne, that you connect them like this? They have everything to do with them, everything. The chateau is no longer a ruin, however. It was purchased, rebuilt, refitted by the Contest Suzanne de la Tour, Miss the Creek, and she and her brother lived there. So do we, Attali, Baron de Cargerac, and I. So also does the creature, the thing, the abominable horror known as the Red Claw. My dear Miss Lorne, what are you saying? The truth is nothing but the truth, she answered hysterically. Oh, let me begin at the beginning. You'll never understand unless I do. I'll tell you in as few words as possible, as quickly as I can. It all began last winter, when Attali and her father were at Monte Collo. There they met Madame la Conteste de la Tour and her brother, Monsieur Gaston Mouraud. The Baron has position, but he has not wealth, Mr. Creek. Attali is ambitious. She loves luxury, riches, a life of fashion—all the things that boundless money can give. And when Monsieur Mouraud, who is young, handsome, and said to be fabulously wealthy, showed a distinct preference for her over all the other marriageable girls he met, she was flattered out of her silly wits. Before they left Monte Collo for Paris, everybody could see that he had only to ask her hand, to have it bestowed upon him. For although the Baron never has cared for the man, Attali rules him, and her every caprice is humid. But for all he was so ardent to love her, Monsieur Mouraud was slow in coming to the important point. Perhaps his plans were not matured. At any rate, he did not propose to Attali at Monte Collo. And although he and his sister returned to Paris at the same time as the Baron and his daughter, he still deferred the proposal. Has he not made it yet? Yes, Mr. Creek. He made it six weeks ago, to be exact, two nights before the Villa de Carracherac was fired. You think it was fired, then? I do now, although I had no suspicion of it at the time. Attali received her proposal on the Saturday, the Baron gave his consent on the Sunday, and on Monday night the Villa was mysteriously burnt, leaving all three of us without an immediate refuge. In the meantime Madame La Contesse had purchased the ruin of the Chateau L'Auge, and during the period of her brother's deferred proposal was engaged in fitting it up as in a boat for herself and him. On the very day it was finished, Monsieur Mouraud asked for Attali's hand. Uh-huh, said Creek, with a strong rising inflection. I think I begin to smell the toasting of the cheese. Of course, when the Villa was burnt out, Madame La Contesse insisted that, as the fiancée of her brother, Mme Zelda Carracherac must make her home at the Chateau, until the necessary repairs could be completed, and, of course, the Baron had to go with her. Yes, admitted Elsa. The Baron accepted. Attali would not have allowed him to decline had he wished to, so we all three went there, and have been residing there ever since. On the night after our arrival, an alarming, a horrifying thing occurred. It was while we were at dinner that the conversation turned upon the supernatural, upon houses and places that were reputed to be haunted, and then Madame La Contesse made a remarkable statement. She laughingly asserted that she had just learned that, in purchasing the Chateau L'Auge, she had also become the possessor of a sort of family ghost. She said that she had only just heard from an outside source that there was a horrible legend connected with the place. In short, that for centuries it had been reputed to be under a sort of spell of evil, and to be cursed by a dreadful visitant, known as the Red Crawl. A hideous and loathsome creature, neither spider nor octopus, but horribly resembling both, which was supposed to appear at intervals in the middle of the night, and, like the fabled giants of fairy tales, carry off lovely maidens and devour them. Who is responsible for that ridiculous assertion, I wonder? I think I may say that I know as much about the Chateau L'Auge and its history as any body mislawn, but I never heard of this supposed legend before in all my life. So the Baron too declared, laughing as derisively as any of us over the story, although it is well known that he has a natural antipathy to all-crawling things, an abhorrence inherited from his mother, and has been known to run like a frightened child from the appearance of a mere garden spider. A ho! said Cleak again. I see, I see. The toasted cheese smells stronger, and there's a distinct suggestion of the Rhine about it this time. There's something decidedly German about that fabulous monster, and that haunted Chateau mislawn. There are clever and careful schemers, those German Johnnies. Of course this amazing Red Crawl was proved to have an absolute foundation in fact, and equally of course it appeared to the behound a casual hack. Yes, that very night. After we had all gone to bed, the house was roused by his screams. Everybody rushed to his chamber, only to find him lying on the floor in a state of collapse. The thing had been in his room, he said. He had seen it. It had even touched him. A horrible hideous red reptile, with squirming tentacles, a huge glowing body, and eyes like flame. It had crept upon him out of the darkness he knew not from where. It had seized him, resisted all his wild efforts to tear loose from it, and when he finally sank, overcome and fainting upon the floor, his last conscious recollection was of the loathsome thing settling down upon his breast, and running its squirming feelers up and down his body. Of course, of course, that was part of the game. It was after something, something of the utmost importance to German interests. That's why the Chateau La Rouge was refitted, why the villa de Kajorac was burnt down, and why this Monsieur Gaston Maraud became engaged to Manzelle Atelier. Oh, how could you know that, Mr. Gleek? Nobody ever suspected. The Baron never confessed to any living soul until he did so to me to-day, and then only because he had to tell somebody in order that the appointment with you might be kept. How then could you guess? By putting two and two together, Miss Lawn, and discovering that they do not make five, the inference is very clear. Baron de Kajorac is president of the Board of National Defenses. Germany, in spite of its public assurances to the contrary, is known by those who are on the inside to harbour a very determined intention of making a secret attack, an unworned invasion upon England. France is the key to the situation. If without the warning that must come through the delay of picking a quarrel and entering into an open war with the Republic, the German army can swoop down in the night, cross the frontier, and gain immediate possession of the ports of France. In five hours' time it can be across the English Channel and its hordes pouring down upon a sleeping people. To carry out this programme, the first step would, of course, beat a secure knowledge of the number, location, manner of the secret defences of France, the plans of fortification, the maps of the danger zone, the documentary evidence of her strongest and weakest points, and who so likely to be the guardian of these as the Baron de Kajorac. That is how I know that the Red Crawl was after something of vital importance to German interests, Miss Lorne. That he got it, I know from the fact that the Baron, while hinting at disgrace and speaking of peril to his own life, dared not confide in the French authorities and ask the assistance of the French police. Moreover, if the Red Crawl had failed to secure anything, the Baron, with his congenital loathing of all crawling things, would have left the Chateau La Rouge immediately. Oh! to think that you guessed it so easily, and it was all such a puzzle to me. I could not think, Mr. Creek, why he did remain, why he would not be persuaded to go, although every night was adding to the horror of the thing, and it seemed clear to me that he was going mad. Of course, madame La Contessa and her brother tried to reason him out of what he declared, tried to make him believe that it was all fancy, that he did not really see the fearful thing. It was equally in vain that I myself tried to persuade him to leave the place before his reason became unsettled. Last night she paused, shuddered, put both hands over her face, and drew in a deep breath. Last night I too saw the Red Crawl, Mr. Creek. I too. You, Miss Lawn? Yes. I made up my mind that I would, that if it existed, I would have absolute proof of it. The Contessa and her brother had scoffed so frequently, had promised the Baron so often that they would set a servant on guard in the corridor to watch, and then had said so often to poor, foolish, easily persuaded utterly that it was useless doing anything so silly, as it was absolutely certain that her father only imagined the thing, that I determined to take the step myself, unknown to any of them. After everybody had gone to bed, I threw on a loose dark gun, crept into the corridor, and hid in a niche from which I could see the door of the Baron's room. I waited until after midnight, long after, and then, and then— Calm yourself, Miss Lawn, then the thing appeared, I suppose. Yes, but not before something equally terrible had happened. I saw the door of the Contessa's room open. I saw the Contessa herself come out, accompanied by the man who, up till then, I had believed, like everybody else, was her brother. And who is not her brother after all? No, he is not. There is a closer time. I saw her kiss him. I saw her go with him to an angle of the corridor, lift a rug, and raise a trap in the floor. Hello, hello, ejaculated clique. Then she too knows of the passage which leads to the sewers. Clearly, then, this Count Estela Tour is not what she seems, when she knows secrets that are known only to the followers of—well, never mind. Go on, Miss Lawn, go on. You saw her lift that trap, and what then? Then there came up out of it. Oh, the most loathsome-looking creature I ever saw! A huge, crawling red shape that was like a blood-red spider, with the eyes, the hooked beak, and the writhing tentacles of an octopus. It made no sound, but it seemed to know her, to understand her, for when she waved her hand toward the open door of her own room, it crawled away, and obeying that gesture dragged its huge bulk over the threshold, and passed from sight. Then the man she called her brother kissed her again, and as he descended into the darkness below the trap, I heard her say quite distinctly, tell Marys that I will come as soon as I can, but not to delay the revel. If I am compelled to forego it to-night, there shall be a wilder one to-morrow, when Kledosh arrives. Kledosh! by Jupiter! Cleek almost jumped as he spoke. Now I know the lay. No, don't ask me anything yet. Go on with the story, please. What then, Miss Lawn? What then? Then the man below said something which I could not hear, something to which he answered in these words. No, no, there is no danger. I will guard it safely, and it shall go into no hands but Kledosh's. He and Count von Hetzler will be there about midnight to-morrow to complete the deal and pay over the money. Kledosh will want the fragment, of course, to show to the Count as a proof that it is the right one, as an earnest of what the remainder is worth. And you must bring me that remainder without fail, Gaston, you hear me, without fail. I shall be there at the rendezvous awaiting you, and the thing must be in our hands when von Hetzler comes. The thing must be finished to-morrow night, even if you and Serpis have to throw all caution to the winds and throttle the old fool. Then, as if answering a further question, she laughingly added, Oh, get that fear out of your head! I'm not a bat to be caught napping. I'll give it to no one but Kledosh, and not even to him, until he gives the secret sign. And then, Mr. Kleeke, as she closed the trap, I heard the man call back to her good night, and give her a name I had not heard before. We had always supposed that she had been christened, Suzanne. But as that man left, he called her, I know before you tell me. Margot, interjected Kleeke, I guessed the identity of this Count Testolatur from the moment you spoke of Kledosh and that secret trap. Her knowledge of those two betrayed her to me. Kledosh is a renegade Alsatian, a spy in the pay of the German government, and an old obituary of the Inn of the Twisted Arm, where the Queen of the Apaches and her pals hold their frequent revels. I can guess the remainder of your story now. You carried this news to the Baron de Kajorac, and he, breaking down, confessed to you that he had lost something. Yes, yes, a dreadful something, Mr. Kleeke. The horrible thing that has been making life an agony to him ever since. On the night when that abominable red crawl first ever came him, there was upon his person a most important document, a rough draft of the maps of fortification and the plan of the secret defences of France, the identical document from which was afterwards transcribed the parchment now deposited in the secret archives of the Republic. When Baron de Kajorac recovered his senses after his horrifying experience, that document was gone. Part of it, Mr. Kleeke, thank God only a part. If it had been the parchment itself, no such merciful thing could possibly have happened. But the paper was old, much folding and handling had worn the creases through, and when in his haste the secret robber grabbed it. Whilst that loathsome creature held the old man down, it parted directly down the middle, and he got to only a vertical section of each of its many pages. Victoria, and the fool has said in his heart there is no God, quoted Kleeke. So then the hylings of the enemy have only got half what they are after, and as no single sentence can be complete upon a paper torn like that, nothing can be made of it until the other half is secured, and our German friends are still upper gum-tree. I know now why the Baron stayed on at the Chateau La Rouge, and why the red crawl is preparing to pay him another visit to-night. He hoped for a chat to find a clue to the whereabouts of the fragment he had lost. And that thing is after the fragment he still retains. Well, it will be a long, long day before either of those two fragments fall into German hands. Oh, Mr. Kleeke, you think you can get the stone and paper back? Do you believe you can outwit those dreadful people and save the bow on the cartel hat's honour and his life? Miss Lorne, he took her hand in his and lifted it to his lips. Miss Lorne, I thank you for giving me the chance. If you will do what I ask you, be where I ask you in two hours' time, so surely as we two stand here this minute, I will put back the German calendar by ten years at least. They drink to the day, those German Johnny's. But by tomorrow morning the English hand you are holding will have given them reason to groan over the night. It was half past eleven o'clock. Madame la Contesse, answering a reputed call to the bedside of a dying friend, had departed early, and was not to be expected back, she said, until to-morrow noon. The servants, given permission by the gentleman known in the house as Monsieur Gasteau Meraud, and who had graciously provided a huge cherubin for the purpose, had gone in a body to affair over in the neighbourhood of Sevres. And darkness and stillness filled the long-broad corridor of the Chateau la Rouge. Of a sudden, however, a mere thread of sound wavered through the silence, and from the direction of Miss Lorne's room a figure in black, with feet muffled in thick woolen stockings, padded to an angle of the passage, lifted a trap carefully hidden beneath a huge tiger-skin rug, and almost immediately Creeke's head rose up out of the gap. Thank God you managed to do it! I was horribly afraid you would not, said Elsa in a palpitating whisper. You need not have been, he answered. I know a dozen places beside the inn of the twisted arm from which one can get into the sewers. I've screwed a bolt and socket on the inner side of this trap in case of an emergency, and I've carried a few things into the passage for afterwards. I suppose that fellow Meraud, as he calls himself, is in his room waiting. Yes, and although he pretends to be alone tonight, he—he has other men with him, hideous, rothianly-looking creatures whom I saw him admit after the servants had gone. The Countess has left the house, and gone I don't know where. I do, then, make certain she's at the twisted arm, waiting first for the coming of Claude Dosh, and second for the arrival of this precious Meraud, with the remaining half of the document. I've sent dollops there to carry out his part of the programme, and when once I get the password Margot requires before she will hand over the paper, the game will be in my hands entirely. They are desperate to-night, Miss Lawn, and will stop at nothing, not even murder. There, the rugs replaced, quick, lead me to the Baron's room, there's not a minute to waste. She took his hand and led him tiptoe through the darkness, and in another moment he was in the baron de Cachorac's presence. Oh, monsieur, God, for ever bless you! exclaimed the broken old man, throwing himself on his knees before clique. Out with the light, out with the light! exclaimed he, ducking down suddenly. Were you mad to keep it burning till I came with that? pointing to a huge bay window opening upon a balcony, uncurtained, and the grounds no doubt alive with spies. Miss Lawn sprang to the table where the Baron's reading lamp stood, jerked the cord of the extinguisher, and darkness enveloped the room. Darkness tempered only by the faint gleams of the moon streaming over the balcony, and through the panes of the uncurtained window. Clique on his knees beside the kneeling Baron whipped a tiny electric torch from his pocket, and shielding its flair with his scooped hands, flashed it upon the old man's face. Simple as rolling off a log, exactly like your pictures, he commented. I'll do you as easily as I do, Cladosch, and I could do him in the dark from memory. Quick! snicking off the light of the electric torch and rising to his feet. Into your dressing-room, Baron, I want that suit of clothes. I want that ribbon, that cross, and I want them at once. You're a bit thicker set than me, but I've got my Cladosch rig on underneath this, and it will fill out your coat admirably, and make us as alike as two peas. Give me five minutes, Miss Lawn, and I promise you a surprise. He flashed out of sight with the Baron as he ceased speaking, and Ailsa, creeping to the window and peering cautiously out, was startled presently by a voice at her elbow, saying in a tone of extreme agitation. Oh, ma'am, ze la fir, even ye da fir, that this anglais monsieur attempts too much, and that the papier is gone for ever. Oh, no, Baron, no! she soothed as she laid a solicitous hand upon his arm. Do believe in him, do have faith in him, if only you knew. Thanks! I reckon I shall pass Master into posed Creeke's voice, and it was only then she realized. You'll find the Baron in the other room, Miss Lawn, looking a little grotesque in that grey suit of mine. In with you, quickly, go with him through the other door, and get below before these fellows begin to stir. Get out of the house as quietly and as expeditiously as you can. With God's help I'll meet you at the Hotel du Louvre in the morning, and put the missing fragment in the Baron's hands. And may God give you that help! she answered fervently as she moved towards the dressing-room door. What a man! what a man! Then in a twinkling she was gone, and Creeke stood alone in the silent room, giving her and the Baron time to get clear of the other one. He went in on tiptoe, locked the door through which they had passed, put the key in his pocket, and returned. Going to the door which led from the main room into the corridor, he took the key from the lock of that, too, replacing it upon the outer side, and leaving the door itself slightly ajar. Now, then, for you, Mr. The Red Crawl, he said, as he walked to the Baron's table, and sinking down into a deep chair beside it, leaned back with his eyes closed as if in sleep, and the faint light of the moon half revealing his face. I want that password, and I'll get it if I have to choke it out of your devil's throat. And she said that she would be grateful to me all the rest of her life. Only grateful, I wonder, is nothing else possible. What a good, good thing a real woman is! How long was it that he had been reclining there waiting before his strained ears caught the sound of something like the rustling of silk shivering through the stillness, and he knew that at last it was coming? It might have been ten minutes, it might have been twenty, he had no means of determining when he caught that first movement. And peering through the slit of a partly opened eye, saw the appalling thing drag its huge bulk along the balcony, and with squirming tentacles writhing, slide over the low sill of the window, and settle down in a glowing red heap upon the floor. And fake though he knew it to be, he could not repress a swift rush and prickle of goose flesh at sight of it. For a few seconds it lay dormant, then one red feeler shot out, then another and another, and it began to edge its way across the carpet to the chair. Cleak lay still and waited, his heavy breathing sounding regularly, his head thrown back, his limp hands lying loosely, palms upward beside him, and nearer and nearer crept the loathsome red glowing thing. It crawled to his feet, and still he was quiet. It slid first one tentacle, and then another over his knees and up toward his breast, and still he made no movement. Then as it rose higher, rose until its hideous beaked countenance was close to his own, his hands flashed upward and clamped together like a vice, clamped on a palpitating human throat. And in the twinkling of an eye the tentacles were wrapped about him, and he and the red crawl were rolling over and over on the floor and battling together. Sir peace you low bread hound, I know you! he whispered as they struggled. You can't utter a cry, you shan't utter a cry to bring help. I'll throttle you, you beastly renegade, that's willing to sell his own country. Throttle you, do you hear, before you shall bring any of your mates to their rescue. Oh, you've not got a weak old man to fight with this time. Do you know me? It's the cracksman, the cracksman who went over to the police. If you doubt it, now that we're in the moonlight, look up and see my face. Oh, how you recognise me, I see. Well, you will die looking at me, you dog, if you deny me what I'm after. I'll loosen my grip enough for you to whisper and no more. Now, what's the password that Kledosh must give to Margotonite at the Twisted Arm? Tell me what it is. If you want your life, tell me what it is. I'll see you dead first. Came in a whisper from beneath the hideous mask. Then, as Creeks fingers clamped tight again, and the battle began, a new, one long, thin arm shot out from amongst the writhing tentacles, one clutching hand grit the leg of the table, and with a wrench and a twist brought it crashing to the ground with a sound that a deaf man might have heard. And in an instant there was pandemonium. A door flung open, and clashing heavily against the wall sent an echo reeling along the corridor. Then came a clatter of rushing feet, a voice cried out excitedly, Come on, come on, he's had to kill the old fool to get it! And Creeks had just time to tear loose from the shape with which he was battling, and dodge out of the way when the man marred lurched into the room with half a dozen apaches tumbling in at his heels. Serpis! he cried rushing forward as he saw the gasping red shape upon the floor. Serpis, Maudiot, what is it? The cragsman! he gulped. Clic! the cragsman who went against us! catch him! stop him! The cragsman! howled out, maraud, twisting round in the darkness and reaching blindly for the half of his dirk. And almost before the last word was uttered, a fist like a sledgehammer shot out caught him full in the face, and he went down with a whole smithy of sparks flashing and hissing before his eyes. There! answered Clic as he boned him over. Gentlemen of the sewers, my compliments, you'll make no shortcut to the twisted arm tonight. Then, like something shot from a catapult, he sprang to the door, whisked through it, banged it behind him, turned the key, and went racing down the corridor like a hare. It must be sheer luck now! he panted as he reached the angle, and kicking aside the rug pulled up the trap. They'll have that door down in a brace of shakes, and be after me like a pack of ravening wolves. The race is to the swift this time, gentlemen, and you'll have to take a long way round if you mean to head me off. Then he passed down into the darkness, closed the trap door after him, shot into its socket, the boat he had screwed there, flashed up the light of his electric torch, and, without the password, turned toward the sewers, and ran, and ran, and ran. It lacked but a minute of the stroke of twelve, and the revels at the twisted arm, wild at all times, but wild at a night than ever, were at their noisiest and most exciting pitch. And why not? It was not often that Margo could spend a whole night with her rap-scallion crew, and she had been here since early evening, was to remain here until the dawn broke gray over the house-tops, and the murmurs of the work-a-day world awoke anew in the streets of the populous city. It was not often that each man and each abandoned woman present knew to a certainty that he or she would go home through the mists of the gray morning with a fistful of gold that had been won without labour or the taking of any personal risk. And tonight the half of four hundred thousand francs was to be divided among them. No wonder they had made a carnival of it, and tricked themselves out in gala attire. No wonder they had brought a paced tiara and crowned Margo. Margo, who was in flaming red tonight, and looked at devil's daughter indeed with her fire-like sequins and her red ankles twinkling, as she threw herself into the thick of the dance, and kicked and whirled and flung her bare arms about to the lilt of the music and the fluting of her own happy laughter. Per bagos, devils in hell tonight! Grinned old Marie's the innkeeper from her place behind the bar where the lid of the sewer-trap opened. She has not been like it since the cracksman broke with her trunet. But that was before your time, I feel. Mother of the heavens, but there was a man for you. There was a king that was worthy of such a queen. Name of disaster that she could not hold him, that the curse of virtue sucked such a splendid tree, and that she could take up with another after him. Why not? cried Twanette, as she tossed down the last half of her absence, and twitched her flower-crowned head. A kingdom must have a king, my mare, and you, but he is Anthems, is Monsieur Gaston-Meraud. And if he carries out his part of the work tonight, he will be worthy of the homage of all. If he carries it out, if, exclaimed Marie's, with a lurch of the shoulders and a flirt of her pudgy hand, soul of me, that's where the difference lies. Had it been the cracksman, there would have been no if. It was done as surely as he attempted it. Name of misfortune. I had gone into a nunnery had I lost such a man. But she, the voice of Margot, shrilled out and cut into her words. Absent, Marie's, absent for them all, and set the score down to me, she cried. Drink up, my bonny boys, drink up my loyal maids, drink, drink till your skins will hold no more. No one pays the night but me. They broke into a cheer and, bearing down in a body upon Marie's, threw her into a fever of haste to serve them. Tomargo, they shouted, catching up the glasses and lifting them high. She swept them a merry bow, threw them a laughing salute, and drank the toast with them. Monsieur, my love, mesdames, mes mames ailes, ma réadmiration, she cried with a ripple of joy mad laughter, to the success of the appaches, to the glory of four hundred thousand francs, and to the quick arrival of Serpis and Gaston. Then her upward glance catching sight of the musicians sipping their absence in the little gallery above, she flung her empty glass against the wall behind them, and shook with laughter as they started in alarm, and spilled the green poison when they dodged aside. Another dance, you dodlers, she cried. Does Marie's pay you to sit there like mourners? Strike up, you mummies, or you pay yourselves for what you drink tonight. Soul of desire! as the musicians grabbed up their instruments, and a leaping, lilting, quick-beating air went rollicking out over the hubbob. Aquadrille, you angels of inspiration! Partners, gentlemen, partners, ladies, Aquadrille, Aquadrille! They set up a many-throated cheer, and flocked out with her upon the floor. And in one instant feet were flying, skirts were whirling, laughter and jest mingling with waving arms and kicking toes, and the whole place was in one mad riot of delirious joy. And in the midst of this, there rolled up suddenly a voice crying as from the bowels of the earth. The cry of the Apache to his kind. Mother of the light, it is one of us, and it comes from the sure passage, from the sure. Shrilled out, Marie's, as the dancers halted, and Margot ran with fleet steps towards the bar. Listen, listen, they come to you, Margot, serpice and gaston, the work is done. And before even Claude d'Orchard von Hetzler had arrived, she replied excitedly, give them light, give them welcome, be quick. Marie's ducked down, loosened the fastenings of the trap-door, flung it back, and, leaning over the gap with a light in her hand, called down into the darkness. The caller obeyed instantly. A hand reached up and gripped the edge of the flooring, and out of the darkness into the light emerged the figure of a man in a leather cap and the blue blouse of a mechanic, a pale fox-faced fox-eyed fellow with lank-fair hair, a brush of ragged yellow beard, and with the look and air of the sneak and spy indelibly branded upon him. It was clique. Claude d'Orchard exclaimed Marie's, falling back in surprise. Claude d'Orchard echoed Margot. Yes, why not? he answered. His tongue-sick bird with the accent of Alsace, his shifting eyes flashing toward the huge window behind the bar, where in the moonlight the narrow passage leading down to the door of the twisted arm gaped evily between double rows of scowling, thief-sheltering houses. Name of the fiend is this a welcome you give the brain of fortune, Margot. But from the sewer, she repeated, It is incomprehensible, cher ami. You were to pilot Von Etzler over from the café du pain to the square beyond Bair, pointing to the window. To leave him waiting a moment while you came on to see if it was safe for him to enter. And now you come from the sewer, from the opposite direction entirely. Mother of misfortunes, you had done the same yourself, you lontier, you clopin, you cadrous, any of you had you been in my boots. He made Alsace a stoller leaf from your own book earlier in the evening, carried a fellow with jewels on him in the Rio Noir near the marketplace, and nearly got into the stone bottle for doing it. It was a decoy set there by the police for some of you fellows, and there was a sergeant de ville after me like a whirlwind. I was not full enough to turn a chase in this direction, also I doubled and twisted until it was safe to dive into the tavern of Fouchard, and lay in hiding there. Fouchard let his son carry a message to the count for me, and will guide him to the square. When it grew nearer the time to come, Fouchard let me down into the sewer passage from there. Get on with your dance. Silence is always suspicious. And I've signed, Marys. I've cast on a serpice arrived yet with the rest of the document, Margo Larraine. Not yet, she answered, but one may expect them at any minute. Where is the fragment we already possess? Here, tapping her bodice and laughing, tenderly shielded, mon ami, and why not? Who would not mother a thing that is to bring one for a hundred thousand francs? Let me see it. It must be shown to the count, remember. He will take no risks. Come not one step beyond the square until he is certain that it is the paper his government requires. Let me have it. Let me take it to him quick. She waved aside airily the hand he stretched toward her, and danced into the thick of the resumed quadril. Ah, no, no, no. She laughed as he came after her. The conditions were of your own making, Charmy. We break no rules even among ourselves. Sol of a fool. But if the count comes to the square, he is due there now, Mignon, and I am not there to show him the thing. Margo, for the love of God, let me have the paper. Let me have the sign, the password. Clique snapped at a desperate chance, because there was nothing else to do, because he knew that at any moment now the end might come. I in a purse well not open-slitted, he hazarded desperately, choosing on the off chance of its correctness the password of the Apache. It is not the right one. It is by no means the right one. She made reply, backing away from him suddenly, her absence brightened eyes deriding him, her absence sharpened laughter mocking him. Your thoughts are in the bois, Charmy. What is the password of the Brotherhood to the cause of Germany, stupid? It is not right. No, no, it is not right. The cause of Germany, at the words the truth rushed like a flash of inspiration across Clique's mind. The cause of Germany, what a dote he was not to have thought of that before. There was but one phrase ever used for that among the Kaiser's people, and that phrase Ha, to the day! he said, with a burst of sudden laughter. And even before she replied to him, he knew that he had guessed a right. She said, with a little hiccup, for the absence of which she had imbibed so freely tonight was beginning to take hold of her. Her pretty conspirator, to forget how to open the door, he himself locked. It is well I know thee. It is well it was the word of Lezapage in the beginning, or I had been suspicious, silly. Wait but a moment, putting her hand to her breast, and beginning to unfasten her bodies. Wait but a moment, monsieur, twitching fingers, and the thing shall be in your hand. The strain, the relief, were all too great for even such nerves as Clique's, and if he had not laughed aloud, he knew that he must have cheered. Oh, oh, oh, you grain, because one's fingers blunder with eagerness. He cupped Margot, thinking his laughter was for the trouble she had in getting the fastenings of her body sundown. Best, monsieur, may not a lady well be modestly careful when, nem of the devil, what's that? It was the note of a whistle, shrilling down the narrow passage without. The passage where dollops in Apache garb had been set on watch, and hearing it, Clique clamped his jaws together and breathed hard. A single whistle, short and sharp, such as this one was, was the signal agreed upon that the real Claudosh was coming, and that he and Count von Hetzler had already appeared in the square beyond. Solovus, Loss, will not that are you, Lorraine? He said excitedly in reply to Margot's startled question. It is the signal Fouchard's son was to give when Ian von Hetzler arrived at the place where I am to meet them. Give me the paper, quick, quick. Tell the fastenings that they will not come undone else. One cannot keep a von Hetzler waiting like a lackey for a scrap of ribbon and a bit of lace. Pardieu, they have kept better men and he waiting many an hour before this, she made reply. But you shall have this thing in a twinkly knot there, but one more knot, and then it is in your hands. And had the fates not decreed otherwise, so indeed it would have been. But then, just then, when another second would have brought the paper into view, another moment seen it shut tight in the grip of his itching fingers, disaster came and blotted out his hopes. Without hint or warning, without sign or sound to lessen the shock of it, the trap-door behind the bar flew up and backward, with a crash that sent Maryse and her assistants darting away from it in shrieking alarm. A babel of excited voices sounded, a scurry of rushing feet scuffled and flashed along the shaking floor, and Mord and his followers tumbled helter-skelter into the room. Cleak, counting on the boat which kept them from entering the passage from the corridor of the Chateau-la Rouge, forcing them to take a long roundabout journey to the twisted arm, had not counted on their shortening that journey by entering the passage from Fouchard's tavern, doing, in fact, the very thing which he had declared to Margot he himself had done, and lo! here they were howling and crowding about him, dirks in their hands and devils in their eyes and hearts, and the paper not his yet. A clamour rose as they poured in, the dancers ceased to dance, the music ceased to play, and Margot, shutting a tight clutch on the loosened part of her half-unfastened bodice, swung away from Cleak's side and flew in a panic to Maraud. —Qu'est-ce non?—she cried, knowing from his wild look and the string of oaths and curses his followers were blurting out that something had gone amiss. —Qu'est-ce mon coeur, name of disaster, what is wrong? —Everything is wrong!—he flung back excitedly. That devil, that renegade, that fury, Cleak, the cracksman is here. He came to the rescue, came out of the very skies, and all but killed their peace. —Cleak!—fifty shrill voices joined Margot's in that screaming cry. Fifty more dirks flashed into view. —Cleak in France? Where is he? Which way did he go? Where's the knock? Where? Where? —Here, if anywhere. —Here? —Yes, unless you've been fooled and let him get away. He knows about the paper and his after in Margot. And if anyone has come up from the sewers within the past twenty minutes, they knew. They grasped the situation instantly, and a roar of excited voices yelled out, —Cleodosh! Cleodosh! Cleodosh! As snarling and howling like a pack of wolves, they bore down with a rush on the blue-blowsed figure that was creeping towards the door. But as they sprang, it sprang also. It was neck or nothing now. Cleak realized it, and throwing himself headlong over the bar, clutched frantically at the lever which he knew controlled the flow of gas, jammed it down with all his strength, shut off the light, and grabbing up a chair sent it crashing through the window. The crowd surged on towards the wrecked bar with a yell, surged from all directions, and then abruptly stopped and huddled together in one. For the sudden flashing down of the darkness within had made more prominent the moonlighted passage without, and there scuttling away in alarm from this sudden uproar and the outward flying of that hurled chair, a figure which but a moment before had come skulking to the window could now be seen. —There he goes! There! There! —Shreeled out a chorus of excited voices as the yellow-bearded blue-blowsed figure came into view. —After him! Catch him! Knife him! In an instant they were at the door tumbling out into the darkness, pouring up the passage in hot pursuit, and it was at that moment the balance changed again. Those who were in the front rank of the pursuers were in time to see a lithe, thin figure, dressed as one of their own kind, spring up in the path of that other figure, jump on it, grip it, clap a huge square of sticky brown paper over the howling mouth of it, and bear it struggling and kicking to the ground. —In another second they, too, were upon it, swarming over it like rats, and digging and hacking at it with their dirks, and so they were still hacking at it, although it had long since ceased to move or to make any sound, when maraud came up and called them to a halt. —Tag it inside! Let Marco have a thrust at it! It is her right! It is her right! Pull off the dog's disguise and bring me the plucky one that captured him. He shall have absent enough to swim in the little king. Off with it all on share! First the plaster, that's right, now the wig and beard, and after that, what's that you say? The beard is real? The hair is real? They will not come off? Nemant, the devil, what are you saying? —The truth, mon roi, the truth, mother of disaster! It is not a craxman, it is a real clodosh we have killed. For one moment a sort of panic held them, swayed them, befogged the brains of them. Then, of a sudden, maraud howled out, get back, get back the fellows in their still, and led a blind race down the passage to the bar where they had seen clique last. It was still in darkness, but an eager hand gripping the lever turned on the gas again and matches everywhere were lifted to the jets. And when the light flamed out and the room was again ablaze, they knew that they might as well hope to call back yesterday as dream of finding clique again. For there, on the floor, her limp hands turned palms upward, a chloroformed cloth folded over her mouth and nose lay in a deep stupor the figure of Margot, her bodies torn wide open, and the paper for ever gone. It was five minutes later when the Count von Hetzler, crouching back in the shadow of the square and waiting for the return of clodosh, heard a dull, whirring sound that was unmistakably the purr of her motor, throb through the stillness, and, leaning forward, saw an automobile whirle up out of the darkness, cut across the square, and dash off westward like a flash. Yet, in the brief instant, it took to go past the place where he waited, there was time for him to catch the sharp clique of a lowered window, see the clear outlines of a man's face looking out, and to hear a voice from within the vehicle speak. Her count, it said in clear, incisive tones, a positively infallible recipe for the invasion of England. Wait until the channel freezes and then skate over. Good night. Ha, ha, one for his knob, that Governor, my hat yet! said Dollops, with a shrill laugh, as he stuck a red head and a face all shiny with cocoa butter and half-removed grease-paint out of the window. And despite the fact that the swift pace of the automobile had already carried it far past the place where the count had been in hiding, made a fan of his five fingers and his snub nose. How mother-over did you see him, sir? Bunk back in his hole like somebody had given him the oak, and cleared the blessed stage before the eggs began to fly. I don't think them Germans will be sitting on the steps of St. Paul's this year, sir, not them. Cleak laughed, and ordering the boy to shut down the window and get on with the work of changing his clothes set about doing the same thing himself. I suppose you know, you clever little monkey, that I should have been floating down the same with a slit throat and enough lead in me to sink a barrel by this time, if it hadn't been for you. He said, as he pushed the outward semblance of cladosh into the kit-bag and began to get into ordinary civilian stress as expeditiously as possible. If you had slipped up, if you had been one half-minute late, or if that fellow had had the chance to make one cry before you covered his mouth, please, sir, don't! interposed dollops with a sort of shiver. If anything had happened to you, Governor! Then stopped short, and made a sound as if he was swallowing something, and then grew very, very still. Cleak looked at him out of the corner of his eye, moved in spite of himself, hesitated a moment, and then obeying an impulse leaned over and gently tapped him on the shoulder. Dollops, shake hands, he said. Sir, shake hands. God, Governor, you don't never mean that, sir. Shake hands, said Cleak, for the third time. Do you know, you little monkey, that you are the only soul in all God's world that could ever muster up a tear for me? Thank you, my lad, you're a brick. Then gripped the grimy hand that was reached out with a sort of oar, wrung it heartily, patted the astonished boy on the shoulder, and fell to whistling merrily as he went on with his dressing. Sir, you do lick me, you fair do! said Dollops, laughing unsteadily, and drawing his sleeve across his eyes. After what you've been and went through are sitting there and whistling as merrily as can be, like as if life was all beer and skittles, and you hadn't a care in the world. I haven't for that minute, my lad, said Cleak, with a laugh of utter happiness. Beer and skittles? Lord, it's all roses, my boy, roses! I've had the good luck to accomplish a thing that's going to give me, well, at least one moment in paradise, and when a man has a prospect like that in view. His voice trailed off, he laughed again, then fell to whistling once more, noisily, joyously, as if some schoolboy sort of madness was in his blood tonight, and was still whistling when the automobile pulled up sharply in front of the Hotel du Louvre. CHAPTER 10 By this time he had concluded the alteration in his toilet, which was necessary to assure his entrance into the hotel without occasioning comment, and as dollops had followed suit they readily passed muster when they alighted for an ordinary English gentleman accompanied by an ordinary English man's servant. What was the charge at the garage? inquired Cleak of dollops, just previously to alighting. I don't know what it runs to in this year rum lingo of Franks and Sosa, said dollops, but the garage gent he said it would amount to £2.10 in English money, though I'll have to leave you to work it out for yourself. The shover, he said something about poor boars, which I've heard is what you have to give them as a tip to themselves, Governor, so I promised him half a crown to stop at the other end of that passage leading up from the twisted arm till he was wanted to. Made it a good tip, because I wanted him to be there, sure, it would have been a case a nab for us if he hadn't. Wasn't too much, was it, sir? No, said Cleak, and let him see that it wasn't, by giving the shover a poor boar of ten Franks, and sending him back to the garage with the impression that he had had dealings with a millionaire. Ten minutes later the hotel register bore the record of the arrival of Mr. Philip Barge and Servant. And one attendant was engaged in showing the servant into a neat little bedroom, which was to be his resting-place until morning, while another was ushering the master into the suite engaged by the Baron de Kajorak. Three persons were there, the Baron, his daughter, and his daughter's companion, but Cleak saw but one. And that's the only one who made no movement, uttered no sound, when he came into the room. Curiously pale and curiously quiet she stood with one arm resting on the mantelpiece and the other hanging by her side, looking at him. Looking for him, in fact, but not saying one word, not making one sound, that she left wholly to the Baron and his daughter. They too maintained, although with an effort, an appearance of composure, so long as the hotel servant was present, but in the moment that all closed and the man was gone an overpowering excitement seized and mastered them. Monsieur for the love of God, don't tell me you have failed, implored the Baron, and died a hundred deaths of torture and suspense since your card was carried up. But if I am to hear bad news, oh my country! Don't cross bridges, Baron, until you come to them, said Cleak, composedly. I gave Miss Lorne my promise that I would not leave France until I had done what she asked me to do. And I am returning to England tomorrow by the noon boat. I have had an exciting evening, but it has had its compensation. Here is something for you. I had a bit of a fight for it, Baron. Look out that it doesn't get into the wrong hands again. He had taken a small packet of torn papers from his pocket while he was speaking. Now he put it into the Baron's hand, not wholly without a certain sense of gratification, however, in the excitement and delight which the act called forth. For no man is utterly devoid of personal vanity, personal pride in his achievements, and this man was no less human than his kind. He let the tumult of excitement and joy wear itself out. He suffered the Baron's embraces, even the two rapturous kisses the man planted upon first one and then the other of his cheeks. He endured Mamzell Attali's exuberant hand-clapping and handshaking, and the cyclonic and wholly gallic manner in which she deported herself, when comparison with the fragments which the Baron had still retained proved beyond all question that these were indeed the missing portions of the all-important document. And not until these things were over did he so much as look at Ailsa Lorne again. She had taken no part in the general excitement, moved not one foot from where she had been standing from the first. Even when Attali danced over and hugged her and showed the important fragments, even when she reproved her with a wondering, ah, you strange anglais, you stone cold anglais! Is it possible that you can have blood in your veins and yet take wondrous things like this so calmly? Even then she merely smiled and remained standing just as she still was. Her pallor, not one whit, lessened, her reserve but the merest shadow less apparent than it had been before. Clique chose that moment to walk over to her, to lift his eyes to hers, and to stand looking at her, questioningly. For now that he was close to her, he could see that she was trembling nervously, that her calmness was merely an outward thing, and that under it nerves writhed, and a frightened heart was beating thick and fast. Was even the fancied moment in paradise to be denied him then. That such a woman could not, all in a moment, could not, by just one act of heroism on his part, be won over, and lured into complete forgetfulness of such a past as his, he realised to the fullest extent. Always he had been conscious of that. But even so are well. The meanest may hope, the lowest may at least look up, and even saints and angels were not above saying well done to a soul that had struggled, to a sinner that had done his best. I managed it, you see, Miss Lawn. He said, in a slightly lowered voice, while the baron busied himself in looking for his check-book, and utterly bustled about in quest of ink and a pen. It wasn't an easy night's work, and I'm a bit fagged out, so as I leave in the morning it will be good-bye, as well as good-night. She moved for the first time. The hand that laid upon the shelf of the mantelpiece shook, and closed quickly. She lifted up her head, and looked at him. Her eyes were misty and faint clouds of colour were coming and going over her face. What is it? he asked. Surely, Miss Lawn, you are not afraid of me. No, she said, averting her face again. Not of you, but of myself. That is, I— Trying to laugh, but making a parody of it. I was always, more or less, of a coward, Mr. Cleak, but— She faced round again sharply, and held out her hand to him. Will you let me thank you? Will you let me say that I must be merely a little child in intellect, since it is only now that I have begun to understand how natural it is that a pound of gold should inevitably outweigh an ounce of dirt? And will you please understand that I am trying to thank you, trying to let you know that I am very, very sorry if I ever hurt your feelings? I don't think I meant to. I couldn't see then so clearly as I do now. Please forgive me. He took the hand she held out to him, and so had his moment in paradise after all. Hurt me as often as you like, if it will always end like this." He said, with a queer little laugh, that seemed to come from the very depths of his chest. As for that other time, how could I have expected that you would take it in any other way, being what you are, and I what I had been? I am glad, I told you. You could never have respected me for an instant, if you had found it out in any other way, and I want your respect. I want it very, very earnestly, Miss Lawn. If you can ever give it to me, I'll do my best to be worthy of it. She had withdrawn her hand from his, and was drumming with her fingertips upon the mantle-shelf. A little pucker was between her eyebrows. She was biting her underlip, perplexedly, and appeared to be hesitating. But, of a sudden, she twit round her head sharply, and a sweep of red went up over her face. Shall I show you how much I do respect you then? she said. One may ask of a friend, things one would not dream of asking of a mere acquaintance, and so, Mr. Cleak, this night of horror has been too much for me. I know now that I can no longer remain in this position in this dreadful city. I have already resigned my post, and will return to England, and, if I am not too late for it, make an effort to secure the post of Governor's to Lady Chepster's little son. I shall start in the morning. Will you play the part of friend and guide, and see me safely across the channel? Do you mean that? he asked, his face alight, his eyes shining. You will let me have the privilege, the honour. What a queen you are! You give largesse with both hands when a simple coin would have been enough. Shall I secure your tickets? When will you have your luggage ready? Is there anything you will need before you leave? She smiled at his enthusiasm, coloured anew, and again held out her hand. We will talk of all that in the morning, she said. There will be plenty of time. Mamselda Kajorak has promised to look after my effects, and to see that they are shipped on to me in due course. But now it really must be good night. I shall see you again at breakfast. At breakfast! repeated clique with a happy laugh. I wonder if you understand that I shall be kicking my heels on my bedside until it is ready, that I shan't sleep a wink all night. And as events proved, he came respectively close to living up to that exuberant assertion, merely napping now and again to wake up suddenly and moon for an hour or so, and between periodical inspections of his watch to wonder if God ever made a night so long and slow-dragging as this one. It had its recompense, however, for all or nearly all the next day was passed in company with her, and more than that he would not have asked of heaven. Long before she rose he had made all arrangements for the journey to Calais, and she was not a little gratified. Yes, and touched, if the truth must be told, on arriving at the train, to find that he had made no effort to secure accommodations which would compel her to endure his companionship alone from the gare du nord to the steamer, but had considerably reserved seats in a compartment containing other travellers, and had done everything in his power to relieve her of any possible embarrassment, and to ensure her all possible comforts. Even magazines and pictorial papers were not omitted, but were there for her in plenty, lest she might prefer an excuse for not indulging much in conversation. And there was also a huge bunch of La France roses, bought at the temporary flower market beside the Madeleine at daybreak that morning. They are beautiful, aren't they? he said, as he laid them in her lap. Well, it surprised you to learn that flowers are a passion with me, and that I am a living refutation of the fallacy that there can be nothing very wrong about a man who can cultivate a garden. She looked up at him and smiled. I think nothing about you will surprise me. You are so many decided, and—if you will pardon me saying it, so different from what one imagines men of—of your calling to be—she said, and laughed a little, colouring divinely until her face was like the roses themselves. You treat me as if I were a queen, and I am not used to court manners. Where, if you please, did you acquire yours? In the vast kingdom of the world, he made answer with just a momentary change of countenance, a mere suspicion of embarrassment, laughed off before she could be quite sure that it had had any real existence. Please remember that to appear to be what one is not, and to ape manners foreign to one's real self, is part of what you have so nicely, so euphemistically, termed my calling. I am an actor on the world stage, Miss Lawn. I should be but a very poor one if I could not accommodate myself to many roles. If you play them all so well as you do that at the Proche-Valier, it is no wonder your success," she replied gaily, slipping thus into easy conversation with him. And so it fell out that the magazines and the illustrated papers were not so much of a boon as both had fancied they might be when Clicke brought them to her. For they had not even been opened when the train ran up to the quayside at Calais, and brought them almost abreast of the channel's steamer. End of Chapter 10 Chapter 11 of Clicke, The Man of the Forty Faces. This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by Ruth Golding. Clicke, The Man of the Forty Faces by Thomas W. Hanshugh. Chapter 11 It was not until they were aboard the boat and the shores of France were slipping off into the distance that Miss Lawn saw anything at all of dollops. As he had travelled down from Paris to Calais in a separate compartment there had been no opportunity to do so. He had, too, held himself respectfully aloof, even after they had boarded the steamer, and but that once, when a lurch of the vessel had unexpectedly disturbed Clicke's equilibrium and knocked his hat off, she might not have seen him even then. But the manner in which he pounced upon that hat, the tender care with which he brushed it, and the affectionate interest in both voice and eyes when he handed it back and inquired eagerly,—'Didn't hurt yourself, Governor, did ye, sir?' compelled her to take notice of him, and in doing so to understand the position in which they stood to each other. "'You were travelling with a servant?' she inquired. "'More than a servant, a devoted henchman, Miss Lawn. They say you can't purchase fidelity for all the money in the world, but I secured the finest brand of it in the universe by the simple outplay of two half-crowns. It is the boy of that night on Hampstead Heath, the boy who stood at the turning point. The devil didn't get him, you see. He kept his promise and has been walking the straight road ever since. She turned round and looked at him, realizing more of the man's character in that moment than a hundred deeds of bravery a thousand acts of gentle courtesy could ever have made her understand. "'And you took him in?' she said slowly. "'You gave him a chance. You helped him to redeem himself. How good of you!' "'How good for me, you mean?' he laughed. It was bred on the waters with a vengeance, Miss Lawn. I should have lost my life last night but for that boy.' And told her briefly and airily how the thing had come to pass. "'Don't think it vindictive of me, but I am sorry, I am very, very sorry. You were not able to hand that dreadful woman Margo over to the authorities, Mr. Cleak,' she said, with an expression of great seriousness. "'She is not likely to forget or to forgive what you have done, and some day perhaps—' "'Oh, do be on your guard. It was really foolhardy to have attempted the thing alone. Surely you might have appealed for assistance to the Paris police, and not only have minimized your personal risk, but made sure of the woman's arrest.' "'Not without allowing the authorities to learn exactly what the baron de Katerac was so anxious to keep them from learning, Miss Lawn. They must have found out what I was after, what really had been lost. If I had applied to them for assistance. I had either to do the thing alone, or drop the case entirely. And drop it, I would not, after you had asked me to accept it. And—pardon? No, Miss Lawn, I do not know who the woman Margo really is. Even that name may be fictitious, as was the one of Conteste de la Tour. I only know of her that she is one of the great figures of the underworld, that money is her game, money alone, money first, last, and all the time. That her personal history is as much of a mystery to her closest associates as was—well, no matter. People of that ilk are not fit subjects to discuss with you. All that I know of the woman is that she has travelled pretty well over the world, that some six or eight months ago she was in Salon with a—er—a certain member of her crew, and came within an ace of falling foul of the law. She had put up a plan to loot the depository of the Pearlfitteries Company at a period when there were thousands of pounds worth of gems awaiting transport. With her usual luck she slipped out of the net, and left the country before she could be arrested, but she will have found something there that will repay her for the visit in one way or another. Luck of that kind seems to follow her always. And a long time afterward he had reason to remember what he said. For the present, however, he had banished from his mind all things but the happiness which was his today, and gave himself up to that happiness with his whole heart. Not once did he again intrude anything that had to do with himself, his exploits or his future upon Ailes's attention, until all the voyage across the Channel and all the journey from Dover up to London had come to an end. And even then, eager though he was to know how matters might shape themselves for her future, he was tactful, considerate, careful not to force her into any embarrassing position, or to claim from her more than the mirrored acquaintance might. You are going to your friend at Hampstead, I suppose, he said, as he handed her into a taxi-cab at Charing Cross. I shall like to know if you succeed in getting a position with Lady Chepster, and if you send no word to Mr. Narcombe, I shall take silence as an assent, and know that you have. And afterward, when the days grew in number, and late April merged into early May, and no word came, he knew that she had succeeded, and was comforted, thinking of her safely housed, and perhaps in a position more congenial than the last. At any rate she was in England, she was again in the same land with him, and that of itself was comfort. But other comforts were not wanting. The full glory of tulip time was here. The yard had no immediate occasion for his services, and time was his to dawdle in the public parks, among the children, the birds, and the flowers. "'And Lord, how ye do love them all, bless his art!' commented Dollop's in confidence to himself, as he bustled about, putting the den in order, watering the plants, and touching lovingly the things that belonged to the master he adored, his daily task when Cleek was in the park, and had no need for his services. It was a pleasure to the boy that service. His whole heart was in it. He resented anything that interfered with it even for an instant, and as at this particular time he was in the very midst of preparing a small surprise against his master's return, he was by no means pleased when a sharp, whirring sound of a telephone bell shrilled out from the adjoining room and called him from his labour of love. "'Oh, blow that thing! A body don't have a minute to call his own since it's been put in,' he blurted out disgustedly, and answered the call. "'Hello! Yes, this is Captain Burbage's. What?' "'No, he aren't in. Don't know when he will be. Don't know where he is, but if there's any message, I say, who wants him?' "'What? Oh, so help me. You is it, Mr. Narcombe? Yes, it's me, sir, Dollops. What? No, sir, went out two hours ago, gone to Kensington Palace Gardens. Tulips is in full bloom, and you couldn't hold him indoors with a chain at Tulip Time, bless his art. "'Yes, sir. Top out, white's bats, same as the Captain always were, sir.'" Narcombe at the other end of the line called back, "'If I miss him, if he comes in without seeing me, tell him to wait. I'll be round before three. Goodbye.'" Then hung up the receiver, and turned to the gentleman who stood by the window on the other side of the private office, agitatedly twirling the end of his thick grey-threaded moustache with one hand, while with the other he drummed a nervous tattoo upon the broad-oaken sill. "'Not at home, sir Henry, but fortunately I know where to find him with but little loss of time,' he said, and pressed twice upon an electric button beside his desk. My motor will be at the door in a couple of minutes, and with ordinary luck we ought to be able to pick him up inside of the next half-hour. Sir Henry, Sir Henry wilding baronette, to give him his full name and title, a handsome, well-set-up man of about forty years of age, well groomed, and with the upright bearing which comes of military chaining, twisted round on his heel at this, and gave the superintendent an almost grateful look. "'I hope so. God knows I hope so, Mr. Narcombe,' he said agitatedly. "'Time is the one important thing at present. The suspense and uncertainty are getting on my nerves so horribly that the very minutes seem endless. Remember, there are only three days before the race, and if those rascals, whoever they are, get at Black Riot before then, God help me, that's all. And if this man clique can't probe the diabolical mystery, they will get at her too, and put Logan where they put Oliver the Brutes.' "'You may trust clique to see that they don't, Sir Henry. It is just the kind of case he will glory in, and if Black Riot is all that you believe her, you'll carry off the derby in spite of these enterprising gentry, who—hello, here's the motor. Clap on your hats, Sir Henry, and come along. Mind a step. Kensington Palace Gardens, Leonard, and as fast as you can streak it." End of Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Of Creek The Man of the Forty Faces This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Ruth Golding Creek The Man of the Forty Faces by Thomas W. Hanshaw Chapter 12 The chauffeur proved that he could streak it as close to the margin of the speed limit as the Lord dared wink at, even in the case of the well-known red limousine, and in a little over ten minutes pulled up before the park gates. Narcum jumped out, beckoned Sir Henry to follow him, and together they hurried into the grounds in quest of Creek. Where the famous tulip beds made splotches of brilliant colour against the clear emerald of the closely clipped grass, they came upon him—a solitary figure in the garb of the elderly seaman, Captain Burbage of Clarges Street. Seated on one of the garden benches, his hands folded over the knob of his thick walking-stick, and his chin resting upon them, staring fixedly at the gorgeous flowers, and apparently deaf and blind to all else. He was not, however, for as the superintendent approached, he, without altering his gaze or his attitude in the slightest particle, said with the utmost calmness, Superb, are they not, my friend? What a pity they should be sentless! It is as though heaven had created a butterfly, and deprived it of the secret of flight. Walk on, please, without addressing me. I am quite friendly with that policeman, Yonder, and I do not wish him to suspect that the elderly gentleman he is so kind to is in any way connected with the yard. Examine the tulips, that's right. You came in your limousine, of course? Where is it? Just outside the gates, at the end of the path, on the right, replied Narcombe, halting with Sir Henry, and appearing to be wholly absorbed in pointing out the different varieties of tulips. Good! replied Clique, apparently taking not the slightest notice. I'll toddle on presently. And when you return from inspecting the flowers, you'll find me inside the motor awaiting you. Do old chap, and please hurry! Time is everything in this case. Let me introduce you to your client. Keep looking at the flowers, please, Sir Henry. I have the honour to make you acquainted with Sir Henry Wilding, Clique. He needs you, my dear fellow. Delighted, in both instances. My compliments, Sir Henry. By any chance that Sir Henry Wilding, whose mare Black Riot, is the favourite for next Wednesday's derby? Yes, that very man, Mr. Clique. And if— Don't get excited, and don't turn, please. Our friend the policeman is looking this way. What's the case? One of knobbling? Somebody trying to get at the mare? Yes, a desperate somebody, who doesn't stop even at murder. A very devil incarnate, who seems to possess the power of invisibility, and who strikes in the dark. Save me, Mr. Clique. All I've got in the world is at stake. And if anything happens to Black Riot, I'm a ruined man. Yah! yawned the elderly sea-captain, rising and stretching. I do believe, constable, I've been asleep. Warm weather this for May. A glorious week for Epsom. Shant see you tomorrow, I'm afraid. Perhaps shant see you until Thursday. Here, take that, my lad, and I'll par for Crownsworth on Black Riot for the derby. She'll win it, sure. Thank ye, sir. Good luck to you, sir. Same to you, my lad. Good day. Then the old gentleman in the top hat and white spat moved slowly away. Passed down the tree-shaded walk, passed the romping children, passed the Princess Louise's statue of Queen Victoria, and, after a moment, vanished. Ten minutes later, when Narcombe and Sir Henry returned to the waiting motor, they found him seated within it, awaiting them, as he had promised. Giving Leonard orders to drive about slowly in the least-frequented quarters while they talked, the superintendent got in with Sir Henry, and opened fire on the case without further delay. My dear Clique, he said, as you appear to know all about Sir Henry and his famous mare, there's no need to go into that part of the subject. So I may as well begin by telling you at once that Sir Henry has come up to town for the express purpose of getting you to go down to his place in Suffolk tonight in company with him, as his only hope of outwitting a diabolical agency, which has set out to get at the horse and put it out of commission before Derby Day, and in the most mysterious, the most inscrutable man I ever heard of, my dear chap. Already one groom who sat up to watch with her has been killed, another hopelessly paralysed, and tonight, Logan, the mare's trainer, is to sit up with her in the effort to balk the almost superhuman rascal who is at the bottom of it all. Conceive, if you can, my dear fellow, a power so crafty, so diabolical, that it gets into a locked and guarded stable. Gets in, my dear Clique, despite four men constantly pacing back and forth before each and every window and door that leads into the place, and with a groom on guard inside, and then gets out again in the same mysterious manner without having been seen or heard by a living soul. In addition to all the windows being small and covered with a grill of iron, a fact which would make it impossible for anyone to get in or out once the doors were closed and guarded, Sir Henry himself will tell you that the stable has been ransacked from top to bottom, every hole and every corner probed into and not a living creature of any sort discovered. Yet only last night the groom Toliver was set upon inside the place and killed outright in his efforts to protect the horse. Killed, Clique, with four men patrolling outside, and willing to swear, each and every one of them, that nothing and no one, either man, woman, child or beast, passed them going in or getting out from sunset until dawn. Hmm! said Clique, sucking in his lower lip. Mysterious to say the least. Was there no struggle? Did the men on guard hear no cry? In the case of the first-groom, Murphel, the one that was paralysed, no, said Sir Henry as the question was addressed to him. But in the case of Toliver, yes, the men heard him cry out, heard him call out help, but by the time they could get the door open it was all over. He was lying doubled up before the entrance to Black Riot's stall with his face to the floor, as dead as Julius Caesar, poor fellow, and not a sign of anybody anywhere. And the horse did anybody get at that? No, for the best of reasons. As soon as these attacks began, Mr. Clique, I sent up to London. A gang of twenty-four men came down with steel plates, steel joists, steel posts, and in seven hours' time Black Riot's box was converted into a sort of safe to which I alone hold the key, the instant it is locked up for the night. A steel grill about half a foot deep, and so tightly meshed that nothing bigger than a mouse could pass through, runs all round the enclosure, close to the top of the walls, and this supplies ventilation. When the door is closed at night it automatically connects itself with an electric gong in my own bedroom, so that the slightest attempt to open it or even to touch it would hammer out an alarm close to my head. Has it ever done so? Yes, last night, when Tolliver was killed. How killed, Sir Henry, stabbed or shot? Neither. He appeared to have been strangled, poor fellow, and to have died in most awful agony. Strangled? But, my dear sir, that would hardly have been possible in so short a time. You say your men heard him call out for help, granted that it took them a full minute, and it probably did not take them half one, to open the doors and come to his assistance, he could not be stoned dead in so short a time. And he was stoned dead when they got in, I believe you said. Yes, God knows what killed him. The coroner will find that out, no doubt, but there was no bloodshed and no mark upon him that I could see. Was there any mark on the door of the steel store? Yes, a long scratch, somewhat semicircular and sweeping downwards at the lower extremity. It began close to the lock and ended about a foot and a half lower. Undoubtedly, you see, Kleeke, put in knuckum. Someone tried to force an entrance to the steel room and get at the mare, but the prompt arrival of the men on guard outside this table prevented his doing so. Kleeke made no response. Just at that moment the limousine was gliding past a building whose courtyard was one blaze of parrot tulips, and his eye caught by the flaming colours he was staring at them, and reflectively rubbing his thumb and forefinger up and down his chin. After a moment, however. Tell me something, Sir Henry," he said abruptly. Is anybody interested in your not putting black riot into the field on Derby Day? Anybody with whom you have a personal acquaintance, I mean, for, of course, I know there are other owners who would be glad enough to see him scratched. But is there anybody who would have a particular interest in your failure? Yes, one. Major Lamson Bowles, owner of Minot. Minot's second favourite, as perhaps you know. It would delight Lamson Bowles to see me go under, and as I am so certain of black riot that I have mortgaged every stick and stone I have in the world to back her, I should go under, if anything happened to the mare. That would suit Lamson Bowles down to the ground. Bad blood between you, then? Yes, very. The fellows are brute, and I thrashed him once as he deserved the bounder. It may interest you to know that my only sister was his first wife. He led her a dog's life, poor girl, and death was a merciful release to her. Twelve months ago he married a rich American woman, widow of a man who made millions in hides and leather. That's when Lamson Bowles took up racing and how he got the money to keep a stud. Had the beastly bad taste, too, to come down to Suffolk, within a gunshot of Wilding Hall, take Elmsley Manor, the biggest and grandest place in the neighbourhood, and cut a dash under my very nose, as it were. Uh, ho! said Cleak. Then the Major is a neighbour, as well as a rival for the Derby plate. I see, I see. No, you don't altogether, said Sir Henry quickly. Lamson Bowles is a brute and a bounder in many ways. But, well, I don't believe he is low down enough to do this sort of thing, and with murder attached to it, too. Although he did try to bribe poor Tolliver to leave me, offered my trainer double wages, too, to chuck me and take up his horses. Oh, he did that, did he? Sure of it, Sir Henry. Absolutely. Saw the letter he wrote to Logan. Hmm. Feel that you can rely on Logan, do you? To the last gasp, he's as true to me as my own shadow. If you want proof of it, Mr. Cleak, he's going to sit in the stable and keep guard himself to-night, in the face of what happened to Mirpull and Tolliver. Mirpull is the groom who was paralysed, is he not? said Cleak, after a moment. Singular thing, that. What paralysed him, do you think? Heaven knows. He might just as well have been killed as poor Tolliver was, for he'll never be any use again, the doctors say. Some injury to the spinal column and, with it, a curious affection of the throat and tongue. He can neither swallow nor speak. Nourishment has to be administered by tube, and the tongue is horribly swollen. I'm, of the opinion, Cleak, put in Narkham, that strangulation is mainly part of the procedure of the rascal who makes these diabolical nocturnal visits. In other words, that he is armed with some quick acting infernal poison, which he forces into the mouths of his victims. That paralysis of the muscles of the throat is one of the symptoms of prosic acid poisoning, you must remember. I do remember, Mr. Narkham, replied Cleak enigmatically. My memory is much stimulated by these details, I assure you. I gather from them that whatever is administered, Merple did not get quite so much of it as Tolliver, or he too would be dead. Sir Henry, he turned again to the baronet. Do you trust everybody else connected with your establishment as much as you trust Logan? Yes. There's not a servant connected with the Hall that hasn't been in my service for years, and all are loyal to me. May I ask who else is in the house, besides the servants? My wife Lady Wilding, for one. Her cousin, Mr. Sharpless, who is on a visit to us, for another. And for a third, my uncle, the Reverend Ambrose Smear, the famous revivalist. Mr. Smear does not approve of the racetrack, of course. No, he does not. He is absurdly narrow on some subjects, and sport of all sorts is one of them. But beyond that he is a dear, lovable old fellow of whom I am amazingly fond. Hmm. And Lady Wilding and Mr. Sharpless, do they too disapprove of racing? Quite to the contrary. Both are enthusiastic upon the subject, and both have the utmost faith in Black Riot's certainty of winning. Lady Wilding is something more than attached to the mare. And as for Mr. Sharpless, he is so upset over these rascally attempts that every morning when the steel room is opened and the animal taken out, although nothing ever happens in the daylight, he won't let her get out of his sight for a single instant until she is groomed and locked up for the night. He is so incensed, so worked up over this diabolical business, that I verily believe if he caught any stranger coming near the mare he'd shoot him in his tracks. Hmm, said Cleak abstractedly, and then sat silent for a long time, staring at his spats, and moving one thumb slowly round the breadth of the other, his fingers interlaced, and his lower lip pushed upwards over the one above. There, that's the case, Cleak, said Narcombe after a time. Do you make anything out of it? Yes, he replied. I make a good deal out of it, Mr. Narcombe. But, like the language of the man who stepped on the banana skin, it isn't fit for publication. One question more, Sir Henry. Heaven forbid it, of course, but if anything should happen to Logan tonight, whom would you put on guard over the horse to-morrow? Do you think I could persuade anybody if a third man perished? said the Baronet, answering one question with another. I don't believe there's a groom in England who'd take the risk for love or money. There would be nothing for it but to do the watching myself. What's that? Do it? Certainly I do it. Everybody that knows me knows that. Ah, I see, said Cleak, and lapsed into silence again. But you'll come, won't you? exclaimed Sir Henry agitatedly. It won't happen if you take up the case. Mr. Narcombe tells me he is sure of that. Come with me, Mr. Cleak. My motor is waiting at the garage. Come back with me, for God's sake, for humanity's sake, and get to the bottom of the thing. Yes, said Cleak in reply. Give Leonard the address of the garage, please, and Mr. Narcombe. Yes, old chap. Pull up at the first grocer's shop, you see, will you? And buy me a couple of pounds of the best white flour that's milled. And if you can't manage to get me either a sieve or a flour-dredger, a tin pepper-pot will do. End of Chapter 12