 3 She could not herself have been more conscious of that feeling of relief than he was of its coming. He spoke to him in the swift glance she gave towards those distant fog-blurred lights, in the white-drained face of her, in the shrinking backward movement of her body when he spoke again, and something within him voiced the exceeding bitter cry. I am not sure that I even hoped you would take the revelation in any other way than this," he said. A hawk, even a tamed one, must be a thing of terror in the eyes of a dove. Still, I am not sorry that I have made the confession, Miss Lawn. When the worst has been told, a burden rolls away. Yes, she acquiesced faintly, finding her voice, but finding it only to lose it again. But that you—that you— And was faint and very still again. Shall we go on? It isn't more than fifty paces to the road, and you may rely upon finding a taxi-cab there. Would you like me to show you the way? Yes, please. I—oh, don't think me unsympathetic, unkind, severe. It is such a shock. It is all so horrible. I mean, that is—let me get used to it. I shall never tell, of course—no, never. No, please, may we not walk faster. I am very, very late, as it is, and they will be worrying at home." They did walk faster, and in a minute more were at the common's end. Cleak stopped, and again lifted his hat. We will part here, Miss Lawn. He said, I won't force my company on you any further. From here you are quite beyond all danger, and I am sure you would rather I left you to find a taxi for yourself. Good night. He did not even offer to put out his hand. May I say again that I am not sorry, I told you, nor did I ever expect you would take it other than like this. It is only natural. Try to forgive me, or at the least believe that I have not tried to keep your friendship by a lie, or to atone in seeming only. Good night. He gave her no chance to reply, no time to say one single word. Deep wounds require time in which to heal. He knew that he had wounded the white soul of her so that it was sick with uncertainty, faint with dread. And putting on his hat, stepped sharply back, and let the mist take him and hide him from her sight. But though she did not see, he was near her even then. He knew when she walked out into the light-filled street. He knew when she found a taxi cab, and he did not make an effort to go his way until he was sure that she was safely started upon hers. Then he screwed round on his heel, and went back into the mist and loneliness of the heath, and walked, and walked, and walked. Afterward, long afterward, when the night was getting old and the town was going to sleep, he too fared forth in quest of a taxi, and finding one went his way as she had gone hers. In the neighborhood of Bond Street, now a place of darkness and slow-tramping policemen, he dismissed the taxi, and continued the journey along Piccadilly afoot. It was close to one o'clock when he came at length to Clarges Street, and swung into it from the Piccadilly end, and moved on in the direction of the house which sheltered him and his secrets together. But though he walked with apparent indifference, his eye was ever on the look-out for some chance watcher in the windows of the other houses, for Captain Horatio Burbage was supposed in the neighborhood to be a superannuated seamen who maintained a bachelor establishment with the aid of an elderly housekeeper and a deaf and dumb maid of all work. But no one was on the watch to-night. And it was only when he came at last to the pillared portico of his own residence that he found any sign of life from one end of the street to the other. He did find it then, however, for the boy Dollops was sitting huddled up on the top step with the thick shadow of the portico making a safe screen for him. He had made good use of the two-half crowns, for he had not only feasted and was feasting still on a bag of wrinkles and a Savalloy, but was washed and brushed, and had gone to the length of a shoe-shine and a collar. "'Been waiting since eleven o'clock, sir,' he said, getting up and pulling his forelock, as Cleak appeared. He didn't knock an arse for no one, though not me, twigged as it would be used, sir, on account of your saying to-night. I've read something of the ways of Tex. What-oh!' "'You would see my sharp little customer at all events,' said Cleak, with a curious one-sided smile, a smile that was peculiar to him. "'I somehow fancy that I've made a good investment, Dollops. Filled up, eh?' "'No, sir, never filled, born-ungry, I reckon, but filled as much as you could fill me, bless your heart. I aren't never going to forget that, Governor, no fear. An eater and a scrapper, I am, sir, and I'll scrap for you, sir, while there's a blooming breath left in my blessed body. Give me the tit what kind of work I can do for you, Governor, will you? I want to get them two half-crans off my conscience as quick as I can.' Cleak looked at him and smiled again. "'Yes, I'm sure I made a good bargain, Dollops,' he said, coming.' And in this way the attachment which existed between them ever afterward had its beginning. He took the boy in and up to the little room on the second floor which he called his den, and turning on the light, motioned him to a chair, laid aside his hat and gloves, and was just about to pull up a chair for himself, when he caught sight of an unstamped letter lying upon his writing-table. "'Sit down there, and wait a moment until I read this, my lad,' he said, and forthwith tore the letter open. It was from Superintendent Narcombe. He had known that from the first, however. No one but Narcombe ever wrote him letters. This one was exceedingly brief. It simply contained these two lines. "'My dear Cleak, the three jolly fishermen, Richmond, tea time to-morrow. An astonishing affair. Yours, M.N.' "'Dollups, my lad, I think I'm going to make a man of you,' he said, as he tore the letter into a dozen pieces and tossed the fragments into a waste-basket. "'At any rate, I'm going to have a try. Know anything about Richmond?' "'Yes, sir.' "'Good. Well, we'll have a half-hour's talk, and then I'll find a temporary bed for you for the night, and to-morrow we'll take a pull on the river at Richmond and see what we shall see.' The half-hour, however, developed into a full one, for it was after two o'clock when the talk was finished and a bed improvised for the boy. But Cleak, saying good-night to him at last and going to his own bedroom, felt that it was a long, long way from being time-wasted. What Dollups thought is perhaps best told by the fact that he'd burst out crying when Cleak came in in the morning to ask how he had slept? "'Slept, Governor,' he said. "'What a bless your answer! I couldn't have slept better on a bed of roses, nor had I of such comfort. Feel like I needed someone to lend me a biff on the cocoa, sir, to make sure as I aren't a dreamin'—it's so what a co-fancy's effin' to be like, sir.' And afterwards, when the day was older and they had gone to Richmond and Cleak, in his boating flannels, was pulling him up the shining river and talking to him again as he had talked last night, he felt that it was even more like heaven than ever. It was after four, long after, when they finally separated, and Cleak, leaving the boy in charge of the boat, stepped ashore in the neighbourhood of the Inn of the Three Jolly Fishermen, and went to keep his appointment with Narcombe. He found him enjoying tea at a little round table in the niche of a big bay window, in the small private parlour which lay immediately behind the bar-room. "'My dear chap, do forgive me for not waiting,' said the superintendent contritely, as Cleak came in, looking like a college bread-athlete in his boating flannels, and his brim-tilted panamare. "'But the fact is, you are a little later than I anticipated, and I was simply famishing.'" "'Share the blame of my lateness with me, Mr. Narcombe,' said Cleak, as he tossed aside his hat, and threw the fag end of his cigarette through the open window. "'You merely said tea-time, not any particular hour. And I improved the opportunity to take another spin up the river, and to talk like a Dutch uncle to a certain young man who might shall introduce to your notice in due time. It isn't often that duty calls me to a little Eden like this. The air is like balm to-day, and the river—oh, the river is a sheer delight!' Narcombe rang for a fresh pot of tea, and a further supply of buttered toast, and when these were served, Cleak sat down and joined him. "'I dare say,' said the superintendent, opening fire at once, that you wonder what in the world induced me to bring you out here to meet me, my dear fellow, instead of following the usual course and calling it Clarge's Street. Well, the fact is, Cleak, that the gentleman with whom I am now about to put you in touch lives in this vicinity, and is so placed that he cannot get away without running the risk of having the step he is taking discovered." "'Oh, he has closely spied upon, then,' commented Cleak. The trouble arises from someone or something in his own household?' "'No, in his father's. The trouble, so far as I can gather, seems to emanate from his stepmother, a young and very beautiful woman who was born on the island of Java, where the father of our client met and married her some two years ago, wither he had gone to probe into the truth of the amazing statement that a runic stone had been unearthed in that part of the globe.' "'Ah, then you need not tell me the gentleman's name, Mr. Narkham,' interposed Cleak. I remember perfectly well the stir which that ridiculous and unfounded statement created at the time. Despite the fact that scholars of all nations scoffed at the thing, and pointed out that the very term rune is of teutonic origin, one enthusiastic old gentleman, Mr. Michael Baudry, a retired brewer, thirsting for something more enduring than malt to carry his name down the ages, became fired with enthusiasm upon the subject, and set forth for Java hot foot, as one might say. I remember that the papers made great game of him, but I heard, I fancy that, in spite of all, he was a dear, lovable old chap, and not at all like the creature the cartoonist portrayed him. "'What a memory you have, my dear Cleak!' "'Yes, that is the party. And he is a dear, lovable old chap at bottom. Collects old china, old weapons, old armour, curiosities of all sorts. Lots of them bogus, no doubt. Catch the charlatans among the dealers, letting a chance like that slip them. And is never so happy as when showing his collection to his friends, and being mistaken by the ignorant for a man of deep learning." A very human trait, Mr. Narcum. We all are anxious that the world should set the highest possible valuation upon us. It is only when we are underrated that we object. So this dear, deluded old gentleman, having failed to secure a rune in Java, brought back something equally cryptic, a woman. Was the lady of his choice a native, or merely an inhabitant of the island? Merely an inhabitant, my dear fellow. As a matter of fact, she is English. Her father, a doctor, long since deceased, took her out there in her childhood. She was none too well off, I believe, but that did not prevent her having many suitors, among whom was Mr. Baudry's own son. The gentleman who is anxious to have you take up this case. Oh-ho! said Cleek, with a strong rising inflection. So the lady was of the careful and calculating kind. She didn't care for use and all the rest of it, when she could have papar on the money chest without waiting. A common enough for currents. Still, this does not make up an affair, and especially an affair which requires the assistance of a detective, and you spoke of a case. What is the case, Mr. Narkham? I will leave Mr. Philip Baudry himself to tell you that. Said Narkham, as the door opened to admit a young man of about eight and twenty, clothed in tennis flannels, and looking very much perturbed. A handsome, fair-haired, fair-mistaged young fellow, with frank, boyish eyes, and that unmistakable something which stamps the products of the Varsities. Come in, Mr. Baudry. You said we were not to wait tea, and you see that we haven't. Let me have the pleasure of introducing Mr. Hedlund, put in Cleek adroitly, and with a look at Narkham, as much as to say, Don't give me away. I may not care to take the case when I hear it. So what's the use of letting everybody know who I am? Then he switched round in his chair, rose, and held out his hand. Mr. George Hedlund of the Yard, Mr. Baudry, I don't trust Mr. Narkham's proverbially tricky memory for names. He introduced me as Jones once, and I lost the opportunity of handling the case, because the party in question couldn't believe that anybody named Jones would be likely to ferret it out. Funny I did that, commented young Baudry, smiling, and accepting the prophet hand. Rum lot of people you must run across in your line, Mr. Hedlund. Shouldn't take you for a detective myself, shouldn't even in a room full of them. College man, aren't you? Thought so. Oxen or Cantab? Cantab, Emmanuel. Oh, Lord! Never thought I'd ever live to appeal to an Emmanuel man to do anything brilliant. I'm an oxen chap, braze noses, my alma mater. I say, Mr. Narkham, do give me a cup of tea, will you? I had to slip off while the others were at theirs, and I've run all the way. Thanks very much. Don't mind if I sit in that corner and draw the curtain a little, do you?" His frank, boyish face suddenly clouding. I don't want to be seen by anybody passing. It's a horrible thing to feel that you are being spied upon at every turn, Mr. Hedlund, and that want of caution may mean the death of the person you love best in all the world. Oh! It's that kind of case, is it? Queeried clique, making room for him to pass round the table and sit in the corner with his back to the window and the loosened folds of the chintz curtain keeping him in the shadow. Yes, answered young Baudry, with a half-repressed shudder and a deeper clouding of his rather pale face. Sometimes I try to make myself believe that it isn't, that it's all fancy, that she never could be so inhuman, and yet how else is it to be explained? You can't go behind the evidence. You can't make things different simply by saying that you will not believe. He stirred his tea nervously, gulped down a couple of mouthfuls of it, and then set the cup aside. I can't enjoy anything. It takes the savor out of everything when I think of it. He added, with a note of pathos in his voice, My dad, my dear bully old dad, the best and dearest old boy in all the world. I suppose, Mr. Headland, that Mr. Narcombe has told you something about the case? A little, a very little indeed. I know that your father went to Java and married a second wife there, and I know too that you yourself were rather taken with the lady at one time, and that she threw you over as soon as Mr. Baldry Sr. became a possibility. That's a mistake, he replied. She never threw me over, Mr. Headland. She never had the chance. I found her out long before my father became anything like what you might call a rival. I found her out as a mercenary designing woman, and broke from her voluntarily. I only wished that I had known that he had one serious thought regarding her. I could have warned him. I could have spoken then. But I never did find out until it was too late. Trust her for that. She waited until I had gone up-country to look after some fine old porcelains and enamels that the governor had heard about. Then she hurried him off and tricked him into a hasty marriage. Of course, after that I couldn't speak. I wouldn't speak. She was my father's wife, and he was so proud of her. So happy, dear old boy, that I'd have been little better than a brute to say anything against her. What could you have said if you had spoken? Oh, lots of things—the things that made me break away from her in the beginning. She'd had more love affairs than one. Her late father's masquerading as a doctor for another. They had only used that as a cloak. They had run a gambling house on the sly—he is the card-sharper, she is the decoy. They'd drained one poor fellow dry, and she had thrown him over after leading him on to think that she cared for him and was going to marry him. He blew out his brains in front of her, poor wretch. They say she never turned a hair. He wouldn't believe it possible if you saw her. She is so sweet and caressing, and so young and beautiful, you'd almost believe her an angel. But there's Travers in the background—always Travers. Travers? Who is he? Oh, one of her old flames—the only one she ever really cared for, they say. She was supposed to have broken with him out there in Java, because they were too poor to marry. And now he's come over to England, and he's there in the house with the dear old dad and me, and there as thick as thieves together. I've caught them whispering and prowling about together, in the grounds and along the lanes, after she has said good night and gone to her room, and is supposed to be in bed. There's a house full of her old friend's three parts of the time. They come and they go, but Travers never goes. I know why. Traversing suddenly excited, suddenly vehement. Yes, I know why. He's in the game with her. Game? What game, Mr. Baudry? What is it that she is doing? She's killing my old dad," he answered, with a sort of sob in his excited voice. She's murdering him by inches. That's what she's doing. And I want you to help me bring it home to her. No one knows what it is she's using or how she uses it, but you know what demons they are for secret poisons, those Javanese, what means they have of killing people without a trace. And she was out there for years and years. So too was Travers the brute. They know all the secrets of those beastly barbarians, and between them they're doing something to my old dad. How do you know that? I don't know it. That's the worst of it. But I couldn't be sureer of it if they took me into their secrets. But there's the evidence of his condition. There's the fact that it didn't begin until after Travers came. Look here, Mr. Hedlund, you don't know my dad. He's got the queerest notions sometimes. One of his fads is that it's unlucky to make a will. Well, if he dies without one, who will inherit his money, as I am an only child? Undoubtedly you and his widow. Exactly. And if I die at pretty nearly the same time, and I'll see to that, never fear. It will be my turn the moment they're sure of him. She will inherit everything. Now, let me tell you what's happening. From being a strong, healthy man my father has, since Travers's arrival, begun to be attacked by a mysterious malady. He has periodical fainting-fits, sometimes convulsions. He'll be feeling better for a day or so, then without a word of warning, whilst you're talking to him, he'll drop like a shocked bird, and go into the most horrible convulsions. The doctors can't stop it. They don't even know what it is. They only know that he's fading away. He's coming from a strong, virile old man, into a thin, nervous, shivering wreck. But I know. I know. They're dosing him somehow with some diabolical Javanese thing, those two. And yesterday, God help me, yesterday I, too, dropped like a shocked bird. I, too, had the convulsions, and the weakness, and the fainting-fit. My time has begun, also. Bless my soul! What a diabolical thing! Put in Narkham agitatedly. No wonder you appealed to me. No wonder, Baudry replied. I felt that it had gone as far as I dared to let it. That it was time to call in the police and to have help, before it was too late. That's the case, Mr. Hedlund. I want you to find some way of getting at the truth, of looking into Traverse's luggage, into my stepmother's effects, and unearthing the horrible stuff with which they are doing this thing. And perhaps, when that is known, some antidote may be found to save the dear old dad and restore him to what he was. Can't you do this? For God's sake, say that you can. At all events I can try, Mr. Baudry," responded Clicke. Oh, thank you, thank you," said Baudry, gratefully. I don't care a hang what it costs, or to your fees, Mr. Hedlund. So long as you run those two to earth, and get hold of the horrible stuff whatever it is that they are using, I'll pay any price in the world, and count it cheap, as compared with the life of my dear old dad. Then can you take hold of the case, now? I'm afraid not. Mysterious things like this require a little thinking over. Suppose we say to-morrow noon, will that do? I suppose it must, although I should have liked to take you back with me. Every moment's precious at a time like this. But if it must be delayed until to-morrow, well it must, I suppose. But I'll take jolly good care that nobody gets a chance to come within touching distance of the paiter, bless him, until you do come, if I have to sit on the mat before his door until morning. Here's the address on this card, Mr. Hedlund. When and how shall I expect to see you again? You'll use an alias, of course. Oh, certainly! Had you any old friend in your college days, whom your father only knew by name, and who is now too far off for the imposture to be discovered? Yes, Jim Rickaby. We were as inseparable as the Siamese twins in our undergrad days. He's in Borneo now. Haven't heard from him in a dog's age. Couldn't be better, said Clicke. Then Jim Rickaby, let it be. You'll get a letter from him first thing in the morning, saying that he's back in England and about to run down and spend the weekend with you. At noon he will arrive, accompanied by his Borneo servant, named, er, Dollops. You can put the blackie up in some court of the house where he can move about at will without disturbing any of your own servants, and can get in and out at all hours. He will be useful, you know, in prowling about the grounds at night, and ascertaining if the lady really does go to bed when she retires to her room. As for Jim Rickaby himself, well, you can pave the way for his operations by informing your father, when you get the letter, that he has gone daft on the subject of old China and Curios and things of that sort, don't you know? "'What a ripping idea,' commented young Baudry. I twig. He'll get chummy with you, of course, and you can lead him on and to draightly pump him regarding her, and where she keeps her keys and things like that. That's the idea, isn't it? Something of that sort. I'll find out all about her, never fear," said Cleek, in reply. Then they shook hands and parted, and it was not until after young Baudry had gone that either he or Narcum recollected that Cleek had overlooked telling the young man that Headland was not his name. "'Ah, well, it doesn't matter. Time enough to tell him that when it comes to making out the check,' said Cleek, as the superintendent remarked upon the circumstance. Then he pushed back his chair and walked over to the window, and stood looking silently out upon the flowing river. Narcum did not disturb his reflections. He knew from past experience, as well as from the manner in which he took his lower lip between his teeth and drummed with his fingertips upon the window-ledge, that some idea relative to the working out of the case had taken shape within his mind. And so, with the utmost discretion, went on with his tea, and refrained from speaking. Suddenly Cleek turned. "'Mr. Narcum, do me a favour, will you? Look me up a copy of Holman's Diseases of the Kidneys when you go back to town. I'll send dollops round to the yard to-night to get it.' "'I do, are,' said Narcum, taking out his pocket-book and making a note of it. But I say, look here, my dear fellow, you can't possibly believe that it's anything of that sort, anything natural, I mean, in the face of what we've heard.' "'No, I don't. I think it's something confoundedly unnatural, and that that poor old chap is being secretly and barbarously murdered. I think that, and I think, too.' His voice trailed off. He stood silent and preoccupied for a moment, and then putting his thoughts into words without addressing them to anybody. "'Iyupi,' he said reflectively, Po-on-yupus, Antia, Galangarut, Ginger and Black Pepper. That's the Javanese method of procedure, I believe?' "'Iyupi, yes, assuredly, Iyupi.' "'What the dickens are you talking about, Cleek? And what does all that gibberish and that word Iyupi mean?' "'Nothing, nothing, at least just yet.' "'I say, put on your hat, and let's go for a pull on the river, Mr. Narcum. I've had enough of mysteries for to-day, and am spoiling for another hour in a boat.' Then he screwed round on his heel, and walked out into the brilliant summer sunshine. End of chapter three. Chapter four of Cleek the Man of the Forty Faces. This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by Ruth Golding. Cleek, the Man of the Forty Faces, by Thomas W. Hanshaw. Chapter four. Promptly at the hour appointed, Mr. Jim Rickaby and his black servant arrived at LeBernon Villa. And certainly the former had no cause to complain of the welcome he received at the hands of his beautiful young hostess. She found her not only an extremely lovely woman to the eye, but one whose gentle caressing ways, whose soft voice and simple girlish charm were altogether fascinating, and judging from outward appearances, from the tender solicitude for her elderly husband's comfort and well-being. From the look in her eyes when she spoke to him, the gentleness of her hand when she touched him, one would have said that she really and truly loved him, and that it needed no lure of gold to draw this particular May to the arms of this one December. He found Captain Travers a laughing, rollicking, fun-loving type of man, at least to all outward appearances, who seemed to delight in sports and games, and to have an almost childish love of card tricks and that species of entertainment which is known as parlor magic. He found the three other members of the Little House Party, to wit Mrs. Summerby Miles, Lieutenant Forchet, and Mr. Robert Murdock, respectively a silly flirtatious little gadfly of a widow, a callow, love-struck, lap-dog young army officer with a budding moustache and a full-blown idea of his own importance, and a doer scotchman of middle age with a passion for chess, a glowering scorn of frivolities, and a deep and abiding conviction that Scotland was the only country in the world for a self-respecting human being to dwelling, and that everything outside of the established church was foredoomed to flames and sulphur, and the perpetual prodding of red-hot pitchforks. And last, but not least by any means, he found Mr. Michael Baudry just what he had been told he would find him, namely a dear, lovable, sunny-tempered old man, who fairly idolized his young wife and absolutely adored his frank-faced, affectionate, big boy of a son, and who ought not, in the common course of things, to have an enemy or an evil-wisher in all the world. The news, which, of course, had preceded Cleeke's arrival, that this Wylam college chum of his sons was as great an enthusiast as he himself on the subject of old China, old Porcelain, Brickabrack and Curios of every sort, filled him with the utmost delight, and he could scarcely refrain from rushing him off at once to view his famous collection. Michael, dear, you mustn't overdo yourself, just because you happen to have been a little stronger these past two days," said his wife, laying a gentle hand on his arm. "'Besides, we must give Mr. Ricker be time to breathe. He has had a long journey, and I am sure he will want to rest. You can take him in to see that wonderful collection after dinner, dear." Huh! full of fakes, as I supposed, and she knows it, was Cleeke's mental comment upon this. And he was not surprised when, finding herself alone with him a few minutes later, she said in her pretty pleading way. "'Mr. Ricker be, if you are an expert, don't under-sieve him. I could not let you go to see the collection without first telling you. It is full of bogus things, full of frauds and shams that unscrupulous zealers have pond off on him. But don't let him know. He takes such pride in them, and—and he's breaking down. God pity me, his health is breaking down every day, Mr. Ricker be, and I want to spare him every pang, if I can. Even so little a pang as the discovery that the things he prizes are not real." "'Set your mind at rest, Mrs. Baudry,' promised Cleeke. He will not find it out from me. He is just the kind of man to break his heart, to crumple up like a burnt glove, and come to the end of all things even life, if he were to discover that any of his treasures—anything that he loved and trusted in—is a sham and a fraud." His eyes looked straight into hers as he spoke. His hand rested lightly on her sleeve. She sucked in her breath suddenly. A brief pallor chased the roses from her cheeks. A brief confusion sat momentarily upon her. She appeared to hesitate, then looked away, and laughed uneasily. "'I don't think I quite grasp what you mean, Mr. Ricker be,' she said. "'Don't you?' he made answer. "'Then I will tell you some time—tomorrow, perhaps. But if I were you, Mrs. Baudry—well, no matter. This I promise you, that dear old man shall have no ideal shattered by me." And living up to that promise, he enthused over everything the old man had in his collection when, after dinner that night, they went in company with Philip to view it. But bogus things were on every hand—spurious porcelains, fraudulent armour, fake china were everywhere. The loaded cabinets and the glazed cases were one long procession of faked Dresden and bogus faience, of Egyptian enamels that had been manufactured in Birmingham, and of sixth-century treasures whose makers were still plying their trade and bassining upon the ignorance of such collectors as he. "'Now, here's a thing I'm particularly proud of,' said the gulled old man, reaching into one of the cases and holding out for Cleeke's admiration an irregular disk of dull, hammered gold that had an iridescent beetle embedded in the flat face of it. "'This garab, Mr. Ricker be, has helped to make history, as one might say. It was once the property of Cleopatra. I was obliged to make two trips to Egypt before I could persuade the owner to part with it. I am always conscious of a certain sense of awe, Mr. Ricker be, when I touch this wonderful thing. "'To think, sir, to think that this boreble once rested on the bosom of that marvellous woman, that Mark Antony must have seen it, may have touched it, that Ptolemy Olytis knew all about it, and that it is older than the Christian religion itself.' He held it out upon the flat of his palm, the better for Cleeke to see and to admire it, and signed to his son to hand the visitor a magnifying glass. "'Wonderful, most wonderful!' observed Cleeke, bending over the spurious gem, and focusing the glass upon it, not, however, for the purpose of studying the fraud, but to examine something just noticed, something round and red and angry-looking which marked the palm itself at the base of the middle finger. "'No wonder you are proud of such a prize. I think I should go off my head with rapture, if I owned an antique like that. But, pardon me, have you met with an accident, Mr. Borgie? That's an ugly place you have on your palm.' "'That? Oh, that's nothing,' he answered gaily. "'It is a great deal at times, but otherwise it isn't troublesome. I can't think how in the world I got it to tell the truth. It came out as a sort of red blister in the beginning, and since it broke it has been spreading a great deal. But really it doesn't amount to anything at all.' "'Oh, that's just like you, Dad,' put in Philip, always making light of the wretched thing. I notice one thing, however, Rickaby. It seems to grow worse instead of better, and Dad knows as well as I do when it began. It came out suddenly about a fortnight ago, after he had been holding some green-wasted for my step-mother to wind into balls. Just look at it, will you, old chap?' "'Nonsense, nonsense,' chimed in the old man, laughingly. "'Don't mind this, silly boy, Mr. Rickaby. We will have it that that green-wasted is to blame, just because he happened to spy the thing the morning after.' "'Let's have a look at it,' said Clicke, moving nearer the light. Then after a close examination.' "'I don't think it amounts to anything after all,' he added, as he laid aside the glass. I shouldn't worry myself about it if I were you, Phil. It's just an ordinary blister, nothing more. Let's go on with the collection, Mr. Baudry. I'm deeply interested in it, I assure you. Never saw such a marvellous lot. Got any more amazing things, gems, I mean, like that wonderful scarab?' "'I say,' holding suddenly before a long narrow case with a glass front, which stood on end in a far corner, and being lined with black velvet brought into ghastly prominence the suspended shape of a human skeleton contained within.' "'I say, what the dickens is this? Looks like a Dr. Spessiman bagad.' "'You haven't let anybody—I mean, you haven't been buying any prehistoric bones, have you, Mr. Baudry?' "'Oh, that!' laughed the old man, turning round and seeing to what he was alluding. "'Oh, that's a curiosity of quite a different sort, Mr. Rikabee. You are right in saying it looks like a Dr. Spessiman. It is, or rather it was. Mrs. Baudry's father was a doctor, and it once belonged to him. Properly it ought to have no place in a collection of this sort, but, well, it's such an amazing thing I couldn't quite refuse it a place, sir. It's a freak of nature, the skeleton of a nine-fingered man. Of a what? A nine-fingered man. Well, I can't say that I see anything remarkable in that. I've got nine fingers myself, nine and one over when it comes to that. No, you haven't, you duffer. Put in young Baudry with a laugh. You've got eight fingers, eight fingers and two thumbs. This bony Johnny has nine fingers and two thumbs. That's what makes him a freak. I say, Dad, open the beggar's box and let Rikabee see." His father obeyed the request. Lifting the tiny brass latch which alone secured it, he swung open the glazed door of the case, and, reaching in, drew forward the flexible left arm of the skeleton. There you are! he said, supporting the bony hand upon his palm, so that all its fingers were spread out, and Kreek might get a clear view of the monstrosity. What a child he must have been to the glove-trade, mustn't he? Laughing gaily. Fancy the confusion and dismay, Mr. Rikabee, if a fellow like this walked into a Bond Street shop in a hurry, and asked for a pair of gloves. Kreek bent over and examined the thing with interest. At first glance the hand was no different from any other skeleton hand. One might see any day in any place where they sold anatomical specimens for the use of members of the medical profession. But as Mr. Baudry, holding it on the palm of his right hand, flattened it out with the fingers of his left, the abnormality at once became apparent. Springing from the base of the fourth finger, a perfectly developed fist appeared, curling inward toward what had once been the palm of the hand, as though in life it had been the owner's habit of screening it from observation by holding it in that position. It was, however, perfectly flexible, and Mr. Baudry had no difficulty in making it lie out flat after the manner of its mates. The sight was not inspiring, the freaks of mother nature rarely are. No one but a doctor would have cared to accept the thing as a gift, and no one but a man as mad on the subject of curiosities and with as little sense of discrimination as Mr. Baudry would have dreamt for a moment of adding it to a collection. It's rather uncanny, said Kleeke, who had no palette for the abnormal in nature. For myself I may frankly admit that I don't like things of that sort about me. You are very much like my wife in that, responded the old man. She was of the opinion that the skeleton ought to have been destroyed, or else handed over to some anatomical museum. But, well, it is a curiosity, you know, Mr. Rickaby. Besides, as I have said, it was once the property of her late father, a most learned man, sir, most learned, and as it was of sufficient interest for him to retain it. Oh, well, we collectors are faddists, you know, so I easily persuaded Mrs. Baudry to allow me to bring it over to England with me when we took our leave of Java. And now that you have seen it, suppose we have a look at more artistic things. I have some very fine specimens of neolithic implements and weapons, which I am most anxious to show you. Just step this way, please. He let the skeleton's hand slip from his own, swing back into the case, and forthwith closed the glass door upon it. Then, leading the way to the cabinet containing the specimens referred to, he unlocked it and invited Cleeke's opinion of the flint arrowheads, stone hatchets, and granite utensils within. For a minute they lingered thus, the old man talking, laughing, exulting in his possessions. The detective examining and pretending to be deeply impressed. Then, of a sudden, without hint or warning to lessen the shock of it, the uplifted lid of the cabinet fell with a crash from the hand that upheld it, shivering the glass into fifty pieces, and Cleeke, screwing round on his heel with a jump of all his nerves, was in time to see the figure of his host crumple up, collapse, drop, like a thing shot dead, and live foaming and rising on the polished floor. Dad! Oh, Heavens! Dad! The cry was young bordries. He seemed fairly to throw himself across the intervening space, and to reach his father in the instant he fell. No, you know! No, you know! He went on wildly, as Cleeke dropped down beside him and began to loosen the old man's collar. It's like this always, not a hint, not a sign, but just this utter collapse. My God! What are they doing it with? How are they managing it, those two? They're coming, Headland. Listen, don't you hear them? The crash of the broken glass and the jar of the old man's fall had swept through all the house, and a moment later, headed by Mrs. Baudry herself, all the members of the little house-party came piling excitedly into the room. The fright and suffering of the young wife seemed very real, as she threw herself down beside her husband, and caught him to her with a little shuddering cry. Then her voice, uplifting in a panic, shrilled out a wild appeal for doctor, servants, help of any kind, and almost as she spoke, Travers was beside her. Travers and Forshey and Robert Murdock, yes, and silly little Mrs. Somerby-Miles, too, forgetting in the face of such a time as this to be anything but helpful and womanly, and all of these gave such assistance as was in their power. Help me get him up to his own room, somebody, and send a servant post-haste for the doctor," said Captain Travers, taking the lead after the fashion of a man who is used to command. Calm yourself as much as possible, Mrs. Baudry. Here, Murdock, lend a hand and help him. Amen. There is near help, but heaven's in sicker case as this. Doubly responded Murdock, as he came forward and solemnly stooped to obey. The pure old laddie, the Lairdgiverth and the Laird take a thawar, and the wheel-a-mone is as naithing. Oh, stoe you're croaking, you blundering old fool, snapped Travers, as Mrs. Baudry gave a heart-rung cry and hid her face in her hands. You and your eternal doldrums. Here, Baudry, lend a hand, old chap. We can get him upstairs without the assistance of this human trombone, I know. But this human trombone was not minded that they should, and so it fell out that when Lieutenant Fourchet led Mrs. Summer B. Miles from the room, and young Baudry and Captain Travers carried the stricken man up the stairs to his own bed-chamber, his wife flying in advance to see that everything was prepared for him. Cleak, standing all alone beside the shattered cabinet, could hear Mr. Robert Murdoch's dismal croakings rumbling steadily out as he mounted the staircase with the others. For a moment after the closing door of a room overhead had shut them from his ears, he stood there with puckered brows and pursed-up lips, drumming with his fingertips a faint tattoo upon the framework of the shattered lid. Then he walked over to the skeleton case and silently regarded the gruesome thing within. Nine fingers, he muttered sententiously, and the ninth curves inward to the palm. He stepped round and viewed the case from all points, both sides, the front, and even the narrow space made at the back by the angle of the corner where it stood. And after this he walked to the other end of the room, took the key from the lock, slipped it in his pocket, and went out, closing the door behind him, that none might remember it had not been locked when the master of the place was carried above. It was perhaps twenty minutes later that young Baudry came down and found him all alone in the smoking-room, bending over the table whereon the butler had set the salver containing the whiskey decanter, the soda siphon, and the glasses that were always laid out there, that the gentleman might help themselves to the regulation night-cap before going to bed. I've slipped away to have a word in private with you, Headland. He said in an agitated voice as he came in. Oh, what consumid actors they are, those two! You'd think her heart was breaking, wouldn't you? You'd think, hello, I say, what on earth are you doing? For as he came nearer he could see that Cleak had removed the glass stopper of the decanter, and was tapping with his fingertips a little funnel of white paper, the narrow end of which he had thrust into the neck of the bottle. Just adding a harmless little sleeping-draft to the nightly beverage, said Cleak in reply, as he screwed up the paper funnel and put it in his pocket. A good sound's sleep is an excellent thing, my dear fellow, and I mean to make sure that the gentleman of this house-party have it. One gentleman in particular, Captain Travers. Yes, but I say, what about me, old chap? I don't want to be drugged, and you know I have to show them the courtesy of taking a nightcap with them. Precisely. That's where you can help me out. If any of them remark anything about the whisky having a peculiar taste, you must stoutly assert that you don't notice, and as they've seen you drinking from the same decanter, why there you are. Don't worry over it. It's a very, very harmless draft. You won't even have a headache from it. Listen here, Baudry. Somebody is poisoning your father. I know it. I told you so from the beginning, Headland. He answered, with a sort of wail. But what's that got to do with drugging the whisky? Everything. I'm going to find out tonight whether Captain Travers is that somebody or not. Don't get excited. Yes, that's my game. I want to get into his rooms whilst he is sleeping, and be free to search his effects. I want to get into every man's room here, and wherever I find poison, well, you understand? Yes, he replied, brightening as he grasped the import of the matter. What a ripping idea. And so simple. I think so. Once let me find the poison, and I'll know my man. Now, one other thing. The housekeeper must have a master key that opens all the bedrooms in the place. Get it for me. It will be easier and swifter than picking the locks. Right, you are, old chap. I'll slip up to Mrs. Jarrett's room and fetch it to you at once. No. Tuck it under the mat, just outside my door. As it won't do for me to be drugged, as well as the rest of you, I shan't put in an appearance when the rest come down. Say, I've got a headache, and have gone to bed. As for my own nightcap? Well, I can send dollops down to get the butler to pour me one out of another decanter, so that will be all right. Now, toddle off and get the key. There's a good chap. And I say, Baudry, as I shan't see you again until morning. Good night. Good night, old chap! he answered in his impulsive, boyish way. You are a friend, Headland, and you'll save my dad, God bless you. A true, true friend, that's what you are. Thank God I ran across you. Cleak smiled and nodded to him as he passed out and hurried away. Then, hearing the other gentleman coming down the stairs, he too made haste to get out of the room, and to creep up to his own, after they had assembled, and the cigar cabinet and the whiskey were being passed round, and the doctor was busy above with the man who was somebody's victim. The big old grandfather clock at the top of the stairs pointed ten minutes past two, and the house was hushed of every sound, save that which is the evidence of deep sleep, when the door of Cleak's room swung quietly open, and Cleak himself, in dressing gown and wadded bedroom slippers, stepped out into the dark hall, and, leaving dollops on guard, passed like a shadow over the thick, unsounding carpet. The rooms of all the male occupants of the house, including that of Philip Baudry himself, opened upon this. He went to each in turn, unlocked it, stepped in, closed it after him, and lit the bedroom candle. The sleeping draught had accomplished all that was required of it, and in each and every room he entered, Captain Travers's, Lieutenant Forchet's, Mr. Robert Murdoch's, there lay the occupant thereof stretched out at full length, in the grip of that deep and heavy sleep which comes of drugs. Cleak made the round of the rooms as quietly as any shadow, even stopping as he passed young Baudry's on his way back to his own to peep in there. Yes, he too had got his share of the effective draught, for there he lay, snarled up in the bed-clothes, with his arms over his head, and his knees drawn up until they were on a level with his waist, and his handsome boyish face a little paler than usual. Cleak didn't go into the room, simply looked at him from the threshold, then shut the door, and went back to dollops. "'Orcering, Governor!' questioned that young man in an eager whisper. "'Yes, quite,' his master replied, as he turned to a writing table, whereon there lay a sealed note, and pulling out the chair, sat down before it, and took up a pen. "'Wait a bit, and then you can go to bed. I'll give you still another note to deliver. "'While I'm writing it, you may lay out my clothes.' "'Sleeping officer?' "'Yes. You will stop here, however. Now then, hold your tongue, I'm busy.' Then he pulled a sheet of paper to him, and wrote rapidly, "'Dear Mr. Baudry, I've got my man, and am off to consult with Mr. Narcombe, and to have what I've found analysed. I don't know when I shall be back, probably not until the day after tomorrow. You are right, it is murder, and Java is at the bottom of it. Dollops will hand you this, say nothing, just wait till I get back.' "'This,' he slipped, unsigned in his haste into an envelope, handed it to Dollops, and then fairly jumped into his clothes. Ten minutes later he was out of the house, and the end of the riddle was in sight. End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 5 On the morrow Mrs. Baudry made known the rather surprising piece of news that Mr. Rickerby had written her a note, to say that he had received a communication of such vital importance, that he had been obliged to leave the house that morning before anybody was up, and might not be able to return to it for several days. "'No very great hardship in that, my dear,' commented Mrs. Summerby-Miles, for a more stupid and uninteresting person I never encountered. Fancy! He never even offered to assist the gentleman to get poor Mr. Baudry upstairs last night. How is the poor old dare this morning, darling? Better?' "'Yes, much,' said Mrs. Baudry in reply. Dr. Philipson came to the house before four o'clock, and brought some wonderful new medicine that has simply worked wonders. Of course, he will have to stop in bed and be perfectly quiet for three or four days. But, although the attack was by far the worst he has ever had, the doctor feels quite confident that he will pull him safely through. Now, although, in the light of her apparent affection for her aged husband, she ought one would have thought to be exceedingly happy over this, it was distinctly noticeable that she was nervous and ill at ease, that there was a hunted look in her eyes, and that, as the day wore on, these things seemed to be accentuated. More than that, there seemed added proof of the truth of young Baudry's assertion that she and Captain Travers were in league with each other. For that day they were constantly together, constantly getting off into out-of-the-way places, and constantly talking in an undertone of something that seemed to worry them. Even when dinner was over and the whole party adjourned to the drawing-room for coffee, and the Lady awed in all conscience to have given herself wholly up to the entertainment of her guests, it was observable that she devoted most of her time to whispered confidences with Captain Travers, that they kept going to the window and looking up at the sky, as if worried and annoyed that the twilight should be so long in fading and the night in coming on. But worse than this, at ten o'clock Captain Travers made an excuse of having letters to write, and left the room, and it was scarcely six minutes later that she followed suit. But the Captain had not gone to write letters as it had happened. Instead he had gone straight to the morning-room, an apartment immediately behind that in which the elder Mr. Baudry's collection was housed, and from which a broad French window opened out upon the grounds. And it might have caused a scandal had it been known that Mrs. Baudry joined him there one minute after leaving the drawing-room. "'It is the time, Walter, it is the time,' she said, in a breathless sort of way, as she closed the door and moved across the room to where he stood, a dimly-seen figure in the dim light. "'God help and pity me, but I am so nervous. I hardly know how to contain myself.' The note said at ten to-night in the morning-room, and it is ten now. The hour is here, Walter. The hour is here.' "'So is the man, Mrs. Baudry,' answered a low voice from the outer darkness. Then a figure lifted itself above the screening shrubs, just beyond the ledge of the open window, and clique stepped into the room. She gave a little hysterical cry and reached out her hands to him. "'Oh, I am so glad to see you, even though you hint at such awful things. I am so glad—so glad,' she said. "'I almost died when I read your note. To think that it is murder—murder! And but for you he might be dead even now. You were like to know that the doctor brought the stuff you sent by him, brought it at once, and my darling is better—better.'" Before clique could venture any reply to this, Captain Travers stalked across the room and gripped his hand. "'And so you are that great man clique, are you?' he said, bully boy, bully boy, and to think that all the time it wasn't some mysterious natural affliction—to think that it was crime, murder, poison. What poison, man? What poison? What?' "'I appear, or as it is variously called in the several islands of the eastern archipelago, Paonupus, Antia, and Epo,' said clique in reply. The deadly venom which the malaise use in poisoning the heads of their arrows. "'What? That awful stuff?' said Mrs. Baudry, with a little shuddering cry. "'And someone in this house?' her voice broke. She plucked at clique's sleeve, and looked up at him in an agony of entreaty. "'Who?' she implored. "'Who in this house could? You said you would tell to-night. You said you would. Oh, who could have the heart? Huh? Who? It is true, if you have not heard it, that once upon a time there was bad blood between Mr. Murdoch and him, that Mr. Murdoch is a family connection. But even he—oh, even he! Tell me! Tell me, Mr. Clique!' "'Mrs. Baudry, I can't just yet,' he made reply. "'In my heart I am as certain of it as though the criminal had confessed, but I am waiting for a sign, and until that comes absolute proof is not possible. That it will come, and may indeed come at any moment now that it is quite dark, I am very certain, when it does.' He stopped and threw up a warning hand. As he spoke a queer thudding sound struck one dull note through the stillness of the house. He stood, bent forward, listening, absolutely breathless. Then on the other side of the wall there rippled and rolled a something that was like the sound of a struggle between two voiceless animals, and the sign that he had awaited had come. "'Follow me quickly, as noiselessly as you can. Let no one hear, let no one see,' he said in a breath of excitement. Then he sprang cat-like to the door, quelled it open, scudded round the angle of the passage to the entrance of the room where the fraudulent collection was kept, and went in with the silent fleetness of a panther. And a moment later, when Captain Travers and Mrs. Baudry swung in through the door and joined him, they came upon a horrifying sight. For there, leaning against the open door of the case where the skeleton of the nine-fingered man hung, was dollops, bleeding and faint, and with a score of tooth marks on his neck and throat. And on the floor at his feet Cleek was kneeling on the rising figure of a man who bit and tore and snarled like a cornered wolf, and fought with teeth and feet and hands alike in the wild effort to get free from the grip of destiny. A locked handcuff clamped one wrist, and from it swung at the end of the connecting chain its unlocked mate. The marks of dollops fists were on his lips and cheeks, and at the foot of the case where the hanging skeleton dodded and shook to the vibration of the floor lay a shattered file of deep blue glass. Got you, you hound, said Cleek through his teeth as he wrenched the man's two wrists together and snapped the other handcuff in place. You beast of ingratitude, you Judas! Kissing and betraying like any other is scarriot, and a dear old man like that. Look here, Mrs. Baudry. Look here, Captain Travers, what do you think of a little rat like this? They came forward at his word, and, looking down, saw that the figure he was bending over was the figure of Philip Baudry. Guilt, Mrs. Baudry, and then shut her two hands over her eyes and fell away, weak and shivering. Oh, Mr. Cleeksby, it can't do a thing like that. Oh, he'd have done worse the little reptile if he hadn't been pulled up short, said Cleek in reply. He'd have hanged you for it if it had gone the way he planned. You look in your boxes. You too, Captain Travers. I'll wager each of you finds a file of IOP hidden among them somewhere. Came in to put more of the cursed stuff on the ninth finger of the skeleton, so that it would be ready for the next time, didn't he, dollops? Yes, Governor. I waited for him behind the case, just as you told me to, sir. And when he ups and slips the finger of the skilligan into the neck of the bottle, I nips out and wax the bracelet on him. But he was too quick for me, sir, so I only got one on. And then, he turns on me like a blessed hyena, sir, and begins a join of me windpipe. I say, Governor, take off his silver wristlets, will you, sir? And let me have just 10 minutes with him on my own. Five for me, sir, and five for his poor old dad. Not I, said Cleek. I wouldn't let you soil those honest hands of yours on his vile little body, dollops. Thought you had a noodle to deal with, didn't you, Mr. Philip Baudry? Thought you could lead me by the nose and push me into finding those files just where you wanted them found, didn't you? Well, you've got a few more thoughts coming. Look here, Captain Trevers. What do you think of this fellow's little game? Tried to take me in about you and Mrs. Baudry being lovers, and trying to do away with him and his father to get the old man's money. Ah, the contemptible little hound, lest my soul man I'm engaged to Mrs. Baudry's cousin. And as for his stepmother, why, she threw the little worm over as soon as he began making love to her, and tried to make her take up with him by telling her how much he'd be worth when his father died. I guessed as much. I didn't fancy him from the first moment, and he was so blessed eager to have me begin by suspecting you two that I smelt a rat at once. Ah, but he's been crafty enough in other things, putting that devilish stuff on the ninth finger of the skeleton, and never losing an opportunity to get his poor old father to handle it and show it to people. It's a strong irritant poison, sap of the Eupus tree is the base of it, producing first an irritation of the skin, then a blister, and when that broke, communicating the poison directly to the blood every time the skeleton hand touched it. A weak solution at first, so that the decline would be natural, the growth of the malady gradual. But if I had found that file in your room last night, as he hoped and believed I had done, well, look for yourself. The finger of the skeleton is thick with the beastly gummy stuff tonight. Double strength, of course. The next time his father touched it he'd have died before morning, and the old chap fairly worshiping him. I suspected him, and suspected what the stuff that was being used really was from the beginning. Last night I drugged him, and then I knew. Knew, Mr. Kleeke. Why, how could you? The most virulent poisons have their remedial uses, Captain. He made reply. You can kill a man with strychnine. You can put him in his grave with arsenic. You can also use both these powerful agents to cure and to save in their proper proportions and in the proper way. The same rule applies to Iopee. Properly diluted and properly used, it is one of the most powerful agents for the relief, and in some cases the cure, of Bright's disease of the kidneys. But the government guards this unholy drug most carefully. You can't get a drop of it in Java for love or money, and less on the order of a recognised physician. And you can't bring it into the ports of England, and less backed by that physician's sworn statement and the official stamp of the Javanese authorities. A man undeniably afflicted with Bright's disease could get these things. No other could. Well, I wanted to know who had succeeded in getting Iopee into this country and into this house. Last night I drugged every man in it, and I found out. But how? By finding the one who could not sleep stretched out at full length. One of the strongest symptoms of Bright's disease is a tendency to draw the knees up close to the body and sleep, Captain, and to twist the arms above the head. Of all the men under this roof, this man here was the only one who slept like that last night. He paused and looked down at the scowling, sullen creature on the floor. You wretched little cur! he said, with a gesture of unspeakable contempt. And all for the sake of an old man's money. If I did my duty, I'd jail you. But if I did, it would be punishing the innocent for the crimes of the guilty. It would kill that dear old man to learn this, and so he's not going to learn it, and the law's not going to get its own. He twitched out his hand and something tinkled on the floor. Get up! he said sharply. There's the key of the handcuffs. Take it, and set yourself free. Do you know what's going to happen to you? Tomorrow morning Dr. Philipson is going to examine you, and to report that you'll be a dead man in a year's time if you stop another week in this country. You are going out of it, and you are going to stop out of it. Do you understand? Stop out of it to the end of your days. For if ever you put your foot in it again, I'll handle you as a terrier, handles a rat. Dollops? Yes, Gardener? My things packed and ready? Yes, sir, and waiting in the arbiter as you told me to have them. Good lad, get them, and we'll catch the first train back. Mrs. Baudry, my best respects. Captain? All good luck to you, said Cleak, and swung out into the darkness and the moist warm fragrance of the night. His mental poise a bit unsteady, his nerves raw. It was not in him to have stopped longer, to have remained under the same roof, with a monster like young Baudry, and keep his temper in check. 6 The stillness, the balm, the soothing influences of the night worked their own spell, and after a time rubbed out the mental wrinkles, and brought a sense of restfulness and peace. It could not well do otherwise with such a nature as his. The night was all a musk with minionette and roses, the sky all a glitter with stars. A gunshot distant the river ran, a silver thing ribboning along between the dark of bending trees. Somewhere in the darkness a nightingale shook out the scale of nature's anthem to the listening night, and farther afield others took up the chorus of it, and sang and sang with the sheer joy of living. 7 What a world! God, what a world for parasites to exist in, and for the sons of men to forget the fifth commandment! He walked on faster, and made his way to the arbor where dollops waited. The boy rose to meet him. 8 Everything already, sir, see? He said, holding up a kit bag. What's it now, Governor, the railway station? Good enough. Shall I nip off ahead, or keep with you till we get there? Suit yourself, my lad. Thank you, sir. Then I'll walk at your eels, if you don't mind. I'd like to walk at your eels all the rest of my blessed life. Did I carry it off all right, Governor? Did I do it just as you wanted of it done? Do a tea, my lad," said Creeke, smiling and patting him on the shoulder. You'll do, dollops. You'll do finally. I think I did a good job for the pair of us, my boy, when I gave you those two half-crowns. Advanced, Governor, advanced! corrected, dollops, with a look of sheer affection. Let me work them off, sir, like you said I might. I don't want nothing but what I earned, Governor. Nothing but what I've got a right to have. For when I seize what wanting money as don't belong to you leads to, when I think what that young boardrey chap was willing to do for the love of having it, don't," struck in Creeke, a trifle roughly. Drop the man's name. I can't trust myself to think of it. That, though one world, the one self-same world, could hold two such widely dissimilar creations of God as that monster and— no matter. Thank God I've been able to do something tonight for a good woman. I owe so much to another of her kind. No, don't speak. Just walk quietly and jerking his thumb in the direction of the fluting nightingales. Listen to that. God! The man who could think evil things when a nightingale sings isn't fit to stand even in the devil's presence. Dollops looked at him, half puzzled, half awed. He could not understand the character of the man. There were so many sides to it, and they came and went so oddly. One minute a very brute beast in his ferocity. The next a woman in his tenderness and a poet in his thoughts. But if the boy was puzzled, he was at least discreet. He put nothing into words, merely walked on in silence, and left the man to his thoughts and the nightingales to their melody. And Creeke was unusually thoughtful from that period onward, speaking hardly a word through all the journey home. For now that the events which had occupied his mind for the past two or three days were over and done with, his memory harked back to those things which had to do with his own affairs, and he caught himself wondering how matters had gone with Ailsa Lorne. Which of the two positions, the English one or the French, she had finally elected to apply for, and if time had as yet softened the shock of that disclosure made in the mist and darkness at Hampstead Heath. He had, of course, heard nothing of her since that time, and the days he had spent at Richmond had utterly precluded the possibility of giving himself that small pleasure, so often indulged in, of adopting a safe disguise prowling about the neighbourhood where she lived, until she should come forth upon one errant or another, and then following her, unsuspected. That she could have taken the knowledge of what he once had been in no other way than she had done. That to such a woman such a man must, at the first blush, be an object of abhorrence, a thing to be put out of her life as completely and as expeditiously as possible, he fully realised. Yet, at bottom, he was conscious of a hope that time, even so little as had passed, might lend a softening influence that should lead eventually to pity, and from that to a day when the word forgiveness might be spoken. He wanted that forgiveness. The soul of the man needed it, as parched plants need water. He had not climbed up out of himself without some struggle, some moments when he wavered between what he had become and what nature had written that he was meant to be. For no soul is purged all in a moment. No man may conquer himself with just one solitary fight. He needed her forgiveness, the thought of her, the hope of her, to rivet his armour for the long brave fight. He needed her friendship, if he might never have her love he needed that. And if she were to pass like this from his life, if the light were to go out, and all the long, dark way of the future still to be faced, something within him seemed to writhe. He took his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger and squeezed it hard. That he had hoped for some token, some word forwarded through Mr. Narcombe, he did not quite realise until he got back to Clarget Street, and found that there was none. Followed a sense of despair, a moment of deep dejection that passed in turn and gave place to a feeling of personal injury, of savage resentment, and of the ferocity which comes when the half-tamed wolf wakes to the realisation that there is nothing before it ever more, but the bars of the cage and the goat of the keeper, and that far and away in the world there are still the free woods, the naked body of nature, and the savage company of its kind. Under the stress of that gust of passion he sent dollops flying from the room. He wrenched open the drawer of his writing-table and scooped up in his hands some trifles of faded ribbon and trinkets of gold, things that he treasured none knew why or for what, and holding them thus looked down on them and laughed bitterly and savagely as though a devil were within him. Me, she scorns me, he said, and laughed again, and flung them all back, and shut the drawer upon them. And presently he knew that he held her all the higher because she did scorn him, because her life was such that she could scorn him. And the bitterness dropped out of him, his eyes softened, and though he still laughed, it was for an utterly different reason, and in a wholly different way. Some pots of tulips and minionettes stood on the ledge of his window. He walked over to see that they were watered before he went to bed, and between the time when he got down on his knees to fish out his bath slippers from beneath the bedstead, and the creak of the springs when he lay down for the night, he was so long and so still that one might have believed he was doing something else. He slept long, and rose in the morning soothed and subdued in spirit, better and brighter in every way. For now no affair for the yard hampered his movements and claimed his time. He was free, he was back in the town, beautiful because it contained her, and he might hark back to the old trick of watching and following, and being close to her without her knowledge. It was a vain hope that, however, for although he dressed and went out and haunted the neighbourhood of Sir Horace Wyvern's house for hours on end, he saw nothing of her that day. Nor did he see her the next, nor the next, nor yet the next again. At first he began to think that she must come out and return during the times when he was obliged to go off-guard and get his meal, for he could not bring himself to play the part of the spy or the common policeman, and filth news from the servants. But when a week had gone by in this manner, he set all question upon that point at rest by remaining at his post from sunrise to ten o'clock at night. She did not appear. He wondered what that meant, whether it indicated that she had already accepted one of the two positions or had gone to stop with her friend on the other side of Hampstead Heath. The result of that wandering was that for the next five days the gentleman who was known in Clarges Street as Captain Horatio Burbage became a regular visitor to the neighbourhood of the house in Barden Road. The issue was exactly the same. Miss Lawn did not appear. He could no longer doubt that she had accepted one or other of the two positions, but steadfastly refrained from making any personal inquiry. She would hear of it if anybody called to inquire her whereabouts, and she would guess who had done it. He would not have her feel that he was thrusting himself upon her, inquiring about her, as one might inquire about a common servant. If it was her will that he should know, then that knowledge should come from her, not be picked up as one picks up clues to missing people of the criminal class. So then it was good-bye to Barden Road, just as it had been good-bye to Mayfair. He turned his back upon it in the very moment he came to that conclusion, and had just set his face in the direction of the Heath when he was brought to a standstill by the sound of someone calling out sharply, Burbage, I say, Captain Burbage, stop a moment, please! And screwing round instantly he saw a red limousine pelting toward him, and an excited chauffeur waving a gloved hand. He knew that red limousine, and he knew that chauffeur both belonged to Mr. Maverick Narkham. He stood waiting until the motor was abreast of him, had in fact come to a standstill, then spoke in a guarded tone. What is it, Leonard? he asked. The Yard? Yes, sir, young Dollop told us where to look for you. Hop in quickly, sir, superintendent inside. Cleek opened the door of the vehicle at once, stepped in, shut it after him, and sat down beside Mr. Narkham with the utmost composure. My dear fellow, I have had a chase! said the superintendent with a long, deep breath of relief, as the limousine swung out into the roadway, and pelted off westward at a pace that brushed the very fringes of the speed limit. I made certain I should find you at home, fairly flawed when I discovered that you weren't. If it hadn't been for that boy Dollop's bright young button at Dollop's clique, exceedingly bright begad. Yes, agreed Cleek quietly, bright, faithful, and inventive. Really? What has the young beggar invented, then? An original appliance which may possibly be of a good deal of service one of these days, but never mind that at present. It is fair to suppose from your rushing out here in quest of me that you've got something on hand, isn't it? Yes, rather, an amazing something, old chap. It's a letter. Arrived at headquarters about an hour and a half ago. Not an affair for the yard, this time, Cleek, but a thing you must take up on your own, if you take it up at all. And I tell you frankly, I don't like it. Why? For one thing, it's from Paris, and well, you know what dangerous Paris would have for you. There's that she-devil you broke with, that woman Margot. You know what she swore, what she wrote when you sent her that letter, telling her that you were done with her and her lot, and warning her never to set foot on English soil again, if you were to run foul of her, if she were ever to get any hint of your real identity. She can't. She knows no more of my real history than you do. No more than I actually know of hers. Our knowledge of each other began when we started to howl together. It ended when we split eighteen months ago. But about that letter, what is it? Why do you say that you don't like it? Well, to begin with, I'm afraid it is some trap of hers to decoy you over there and get you into some unknown place. There are no unknown places in Paris so far as I'm concerned. I know every hole and corner of it from the sewers on. I know it as well as I know London, as well as I know Berlin, New York, Vienna, Edinburgh, Rome. You couldn't lose me or trap me in any one of them. Is that the letter in your hand? Good, then read it, please. To the superintendent of police, Scotland Yard, Red Narkham obeying the request. Distinguished Monsieur, of your grace and pity, I implore you to listen to the prayer of an unhappy man, whose honour, whose reason, whose very life are in deadly peril, not alone of the red crawl, but of things he may not even name, dare not commit to writing, lest this letter should go astray. It shall happen, Monsieur, that the whole world shall hear with amazement of that most marvellous clique, that great reader of riddles and unmasker of evildoers, who in the past year has made the police department of England the envy of all nations. And it shall happen also that I, who dare not appeal to the police of France, appeal to the mercy, the humanity of this great man, as it is my only hope. Monsieur, you have his ear, you have his confidence, you have the means at your command. Ah, ask him, pray him, implore him, for the love of God, and for the sake of a fellow man, to come alone to the top floor of the house number seven of the rue Trois-en-Dore Paris at nine hours of the night of Friday the 26th inst, to enter into the darkness and say but the one word, clique, as a signal it is he, and I may come forward and throw myself upon his mercy. Oh, save me, Monsieur, clique, save me, save me. There, that's the lot, and there's no signature, said Narcum, laying down the letter. What do you make of it, clique? End of Chapter Six