Book: Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces

T >> Thomas W. Hanshew >> Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces




In another instant Black Riot was led out--uninjured, untouched, in the
very pink of condition--and, in spite of the tragedy and the dead man's
presence, one or two of the guards were so carried away that they
essayed a cheer.

"Stop that! Stop it instantly!" rapped out Sir Henry, facing round upon
them. "What's a horse--even the best--beside the loss of an honest life
like that?" and flung out a shaking hand in the direction of dead Logan.
"It will be the story of last night over again, of course? You heard
his scream, heard his fall, but he was dead when you got to
him--dead--and you found no one here?"

"Not a soul, Sir Henry. The doors were all locked; no grille is missing
from any window; no one is in the loft; no one in any of the stalls; no
one in any crook or corner of the place."

"Send for the constable--the justice of the peace--anybody!" chimed in
the Rev. Ambrose Smeer at this. "Henry, will you never be warned, never
take these awful lessons to heart? This sinful practice of racing horses
for money--"

"Oh, hush, hush! Don't preach me a sermon now, uncle," interposed Sir
Henry. "My heart's torn, my mind crazed by this abominable thing. Poor
old Logan! Poor, faithful old chap! Oh!" He whirled and looked over at
Cleek, who still stood inactive, staring at the flour-dusted floor. "And
they said that no mystery was too great for you to get to the bottom of
it, no riddle too complex for you to find the answer! Can't you do
something? Can't you suggest something? Can't you see any glimmer of
light at all?"

Cleek looked up, and that curious smile which Narkom knew so well--and
would have known had he been there was the "danger signal"--looped up
one corner of his mouth.

"I fancy it is _all_ 'light,' Sir Henry," he said. "I may be wrong, but
I fancy it is merely a question of comparative height. Do I puzzle you
by that? Well, let me explain. Lady Wilding there is one height, Mr.
Sharpless is another, and I am a third; and if they two were to place
themselves side by side and, say, about four inches apart, and I were to
stand immediately behind them, the difference would be most apparent.
There you are. Do you grasp it?"

"Not in the least."

"Bothered if I do either," supplemented Sharpless. "It all sounds like
tommy rot to me."

"Does it?" said Cleek. "Then let me explain it by illustration"--and he
walked quietly towards them. "Lady Wilding, will you oblige me by
standing here? Thank you very much. Now, if you please, Mr. Sharpless,
will you stand beside her ladyship while I take up my place here
immediately behind you both? That's it exactly. A little nearer,
please--just a little, so that your left elbow touches her ladyship's
right. Now then"--his two hands moved briskly, there was a click-click,
and after it: "There you are--that explains it, my good Mr. and Mrs.
Filippo Bucarelli; that explains it completely!"

And as he stepped aside on saying this, those who were watching, those
who heard Lady Wilding's scream and Mr. Sharpless's snarling oath and
saw them vainly try to spring apart and dart away, saw also that a steel
handcuff was on the woman's right wrist, its mate on the man's left one,
and that they were firmly chained together.

"In the name of Heaven, man," began Sir Henry, appalled by this, and
growing red and white by rapid turns.

"I fancy that Heaven has very little to do with this precious pair, Sir
Henry," interposed Cleek. "You want the two people who are accountable
for these diabolical crimes, and--there they stand."

"What! Do you mean to tell me that Sharpless, that my wife--"

"Don't give the lady a title to which she has not and never had any
legal right, Sir Henry. If it had ever occurred to you to emulate my
example to-night and search the lady's effects, you would have found
that she was christened Enriqua Dolores Torjado, and that she was
married to Senor Filippo Bucarelli here, at Valparaiso, in Chili, three
years ago, and that her marriage to you was merely a clever little
scheme to get hold of a pot of money and share it with her rascally
husband."

"It's a lie!" snarled out the male prisoner. "It's an infernal
policeman's lie! You never found any such thing!"

"Pardon me, but I did," replied Cleek serenely. "And what's more, I
found the little phial of coriander and oil of sassafras in your room,
senor, and--I shall finish off the Mynga Worm in another ten minutes!"

Bucarelli and his wife gave a mingled cry, and, chained together though
they were, made a wild bolt for the door; only, however, to be met on
the threshold by the local constable, to whom Cleek had dispatched a
note some hours previously.

"Thank you, Mr. Philpotts; you are very prompt," he said. "There are
your prisoners nicely trussed and waiting for you. Take them away--we
are quite done with them here. Sir Henry"--he turned to the baronet--"if
Black Riot is fitted to win the Derby she will win it, and you need have
no more fear for her safety. No one has ever for one moment tried to get
at her. You yourself were the one that precious pair were after, and the
bait was your life assurance. By killing off the watchers over Black
Riot one by one they knew that there would come a time when, being able
to get no one else to take the risk of guarding the horse and sleeping
on that bed before the steel-room door, you would do it yourself; and
when that time came they would have had you."

"But how? By what means?"

"By one of the most diabolical imaginable. Among the reptiles of
Patagonia, Sir Henry, there is one--a species of black adder, known in
the country as the Mynga Worm--whose bite is more deadly than that of
the rattler or the copperhead, and as rapid in its action as prussic
acid itself. It has, too, a great velocity of movement and a peculiar
power of springing and hurling itself upon its prey. The Patagonians are
a barbarous people in the main and, like all barbarous people, are
vengeful, cunning, and subtle. A favourite revenge of theirs upon
unsuspecting enemies is to get within touch of them and secretly to
smear a mixture of coriander and oil of sassafras upon some part of
their bodies, and then either to lure or drive them into the forest; for
by a peculiar arrangement of Mother Nature this mixture has a
fascination, a maddening effect upon the Mynga Worm--just as a red rag
has on a bull--and, enraged by the scent, it finds the spot smeared with
it and delivers its deadly bite."

"Good heaven! How horrible! And you mean to tell me--"

"That they employed one of these deadly reptiles in this case? Yes, Sir
Henry. I suspected it the very moment I smelt the odour of the coriander
and sassafras; but I suspected that an animal or a reptile of some kind
was at the bottom of the mystery at a prior period. That is why I wanted
the flour. Look! Do you see where I sifted it over this spot near the
Patagonian plant? And do you see those serpentine tracks through the
middle of it? The Mynga Worm is there--in that box, at the roots of
that plant. Now see!"

He caught up a horse blanket, spread it on the floor, lifted the box and
plant, set them down in the middle of it, and with a quick gathering up
of the ends of the blanket converted it into a bag and tied it round
with a hitching strap.

"Get spades, forks, anything, and dig a hole outside in the paddock," he
went on. "A deep hole--a yard deep at the least--then get some straw,
some paraffin, turpentine--anything that will burn furiously and
quickly--and we will soon finish the little beast."

The servants flew to obey, and when the hole was dug he carried the bag
out and lowered it carefully into it, covered it with straw, drenched
this with a gallon or more of lamp oil, and rapidly applied a match to
it and sprang back.

A moment later those who were watching saw a small black snake make an
ineffectual effort to leap out of the blazing mass, fall back into the
flames and disappear for ever.

"The method of procedure?" said Cleek, answering the baronet's query as
the latter was pouring out what he called "a nerve settler," prior to
following the Rev. Ambrose's example and going to bed. "Very cunning,
and yet very, very simple, Sir Henry. Bucarelli made a practice, as I
saw this evening, of helping the chosen watcher to make his bed on the
floor in front of the door to the steel room, but during the time he was
removing the blankets from the cupboard his plan was to smear them with
the coriander and sassafras and so arrange the top blanket that when the
watcher lay down the stuff touched his neck or throat and made that the
point of attack for the snake, whose fangs make a small round spot not
bigger than a knitting needle, which is easily passed over by those not
used to looking for such a thing. There was such a spot on Tolliver's
throat; such another at the base of Murple's skull, and there is a third
in poor Logan's left temple. No, thank you--no more to-night, Sir Henry.
Alcohol and I are never more than speaking acquaintances at the best of
times. But if you really wish to do me a kindness--"

"I don't think there is room to doubt that, Mr. Cleek. If I am certain
of anything in this world I am certain of Black Riot's success on
Wednesday; and that success I feel I shall owe to you. Money can't
offset some debts, you know; and if there is anything in the world I can
do, you have only to let me know."

"Thank you," said Cleek. "Then invite me to spend to-morrow here, and
give me the freedom of those superb gardens. My senses are drunk already
with the scent of your hyacinths; and if I might have a day among them,
I should be as near happy as makes no difference."

He had his day--breaking it only to 'phone up to Clarges Street and
quiet any possible fears upon Dollops's part--and if ever man was
satisfied, that man was he.




CHAPTER XV


It was late on the afternoon of the day following when he turned up at
Clarges Street and threw Dollops into a very transport of delight at the
bare sight of him.

"Crumbs, Gov'nor, but I am glad to see you, sir!" said the boy, with a
look of positive adoration. "A fish out o' water ain't a patch to wot
I've felt like--Lord, no! Why, sir, it's the first time you've ever been
away from me since you took me on; and the dreams I've had is enough to
drive a body fair dotty. I've seen parties a-stickin' knives in your
back and puttin' poison in your food and doin' the Lord knows wot not to
you, sir; and every blessed nerve in my body has been a doin' of a
constant shake--like a jelly-fish on a cold day."

Cleek laughed, and catching him by the shoulder whirled him round,
looked at him, and then clapped him on the back.

"Look here, don't you get to worrying and to developing nerves, young
man," he said, "or I shall have to ship you off somewhere for a long
rest; and I'm just beginning to feel as if I couldn't do without you.
What you want is a change; and what I want is the river, so, if there is
no message from The Yard--"

"There isn't, sir."

"Good. Then 'phone through to Mr. Narkom and tell him that you and I are
going for a few days up the river as far as Henley, and that we are
going to break it on Wednesday to go to the Derby."

"Gov'nor! Gawd's truth, sir, you aren't never a-goin' to give me two
sich treats as that? From now till Thursday with jist you--jist _you_,
sir? I'll go balmy on the crumpet--I'll get to stickin' straws in my
bloomin' 'air!"

"You 'get to' the telephone and send that message to The Yard, if you
know when you're well off," said Cleek, laughing. "And, after that, out
with the kit bag and in with such things as we shall need; and--Hullo!
what's this thing?"

"A necktie and a rose bush wot I took the liberty of buyin' for you,
sir, bein' as you give me ten shillin's for myself," said Dollops
sheepishly. "I been a-keepin' of my eye on that rose bush and that
necktie for a week past, sir. I 'ope you'll take 'em, Gov'nor, and not
think me presumin', sir."

Cleek faced round and looked at him--a long look--without saying
anything, then he screwed round on his heel and walked to the window.

"It is very nice and very thoughtful of you, Dollops," he said
presently, his voice a little thick, his tones a little uneven. "But
don't be silly and waste your money, my lad. Lay it by. You may need it
one day. Now toddle on and get things ready for our outing." But
afterwards--when the boy had gone and he was alone in the room--he
walked back to the potted rose bush and touched its buds lovingly, and
stood leaning over it and saying nothing for a long time. And though the
necktie that hung on its branches was a harlequin thing of red and green
and violent purple, when he came to dress for that promised outing he
put it on and adjusted it as tenderly, wore it as proudly as ever knight
of old wore the colours of his lady.

"You look a fair treat in it, sir," said Dollops, delightedly and
admiringly, when he came in later and saw that he had it on. And if
anything had been wanting to make him quite, quite happy, it was wanting
no more. Or, if it had been, the night that came down and found them
housed in a little old-world inn, with a shining river at its door and
the hush and the odorous darkness of the country lanes about it, must of
itself have supplied the omission; for when all the house was still and
all the lights were out, he crept from his bed and curled up like a dog
on the mat before Cleek's door, and would not have changed places with
an emperor.

They were up and on the river, master and man, almost as soon as the
dawn itself; taking their morning plunge under a sky that was but just
changing the tints of rose to those of saffron before they merged into
the actual light of day; and to the boy the man seemed almost a god in
that dim light, which showed but an ivory shoulder lifting now and again
as he struck outwards and deft his way through a yielding, yellow-grey
waste that leaped in little lilac-hued ripples to his chin, and thence
wavered off behind him in dancing lines of light. And once, when he
heard him lift up his voice and sing as he swam, he felt sure that he
_must_ be a god--that that alone could explain why he had found him so
different from other men, and cared for him as he had never cared for
any human thing before.

From dawn to dark that day was one of unalloyed delight to him. Never
before had the starved soul of him--fed, all his life, when it was fed
at all, from the drippings of the flesh-pots and the "leavings" of the
City--found any savour in the insipid offerings of the Country; never
before had he known what charms lie on a river's breast, what spells of
magic a blossoming hedge and the white "candles" of a horse-chestnut
tree may weave, and never before had a meadow been anything to him but a
simple grass-grown field. To-day Nature--through this man who was so
essentially bred in the very womb of her--spoke to his understanding and
found her words not lost on air. The dormant things within the boy had
awakened. Life spoke; Hope sang; and between them all the world was
changed. Yesterday, he had looked upon this day of idling in the country
as a pleasant interlude, as a happy prologue to those greater delights
that would come when he at last went to Epsom and really saw the famous
race for the Derby. To-day, he was sorry that anything--even so great a
thing as that--must come to disturb such placid happiness as this.

And yet, when the wondrous "Wednesday" came and he was actually on his
way to Epsom Downs at last ... Ah, well, Joy is elastic; Youth is a time
of many dreams, and who blames a boy for being delighted that one of
them is coming true at last?

Cleek did not, at all events. Indeed, Cleek aided and abetted him in all
his boisterous outbursts from first to last; and was quite as excited as
he when the event of the meeting--the great race for the famous Derby
Stakes--was put up at last. Indeed, he was a bit wilder, if anything,
than the boy himself when the flag fell and the whole field swept by in
one thunderous rush, with Minnow in the lead and Black Riot far and
away behind. Nor did his excitement abate when, as the whole cavalcade
swung onwards over the green turf with the yelling thousands waving and
shouting about it, Sir Henry Wilding's mare began to lessen that lead,
and foot by foot to creep up towards the head.

He shouted then--as wildly as Dollops himself, as wildly as any man
present. He jumped up on his seat and waved his hat; he thumped Dollops
on the back and cried: "She's creeping up! She's creeping up! Stick to
it, old chap, stick to it! Give her her head, you fool! She'll do it--by
God, she'll do it! Hurrah! Hurrah!" And was shouted down, and even
seized and pulled down by others whose view he obstructed, and whose
interest and excitement were as great as his.

Onwards they flew, horses and riders, the whole pounding, mixing,
ever-changing mass of them; jackets and caps of every hue flashing here
and there--now in a huddled mass, now with this one in the lead, and
again with that: a vast, ever-moving, ever-altering kaleidoscope that
was, presently, hidden entirely from the main mass of the onlookers, by
the surging crowd, the mass of drags and carriages of all sorts in the
huge square of the central enclosure, and most of all by the people who
stood up on seats and wheels and even the tops of the vehicles. Then,
for a little time, the roars came from a distance only--from those in
the enclosure who alone could see--then neared and neared and grew in
volume, as the unseen racers pounded onward and came pelting up the long
stretch toward Tattenham Corner. And by and bye they swung into view
again--still a huddled mass, still so closely packed together that the
positions of the individual horses was a matter of uncertainty--but
always the roaring sound went on and always it came nearer and nearer,
until a thousand voices took it up at the foot of the grand stand, and
other thousands bellowed it up and up from tier to tier to the very
roof.

For, of a sudden, that blaze of caps and jackets, that huddle of horses
red and horses grey, horses black and horses roan, piebald, white--every
colour that a horse may be--had come at last to Tattenham Corner and
burst into the full view of everybody. Yet, as they came, a black mare,
hugging the railed enclosure on the inner side of the sweep, arrowed
forward with a sudden spurt, came like a rocket to the fore, and all the
earth and all the sky seemed to ring with the cry: "Wilding! Wilding!
Black Riot leads! Black Riot leads!"

She did--and kept it to the end!

In half a minute her number was up, yelling thousands were tumbling out
upon the field to cheer her, to cheer her rider, to cheer her proud
owner when he came out to lead her to the paddock and the weighing room,
and to feel in that moment the proudest and the happiest man in England;
and of those, not the least excited and delighted was Cleek.

Carried away by enthusiasm, he had risen again in his seat and, with his
hat held aloft upon a walking stick, was waving and stamping and
shouting enthusiastically: "Black Riot wins! Black Riot! Black Riot!
Bully boy! Bully boy!"

And so he was still shouting when he felt a hand touch him, and looking
round saw Mr. Narkom.

"Ripping, wasn't it, old chap?" said the superintendent. "No wonder you
are excited, considering what interest you have. Been looking for you,
my dear fellow. Knew of course, from your telling me, that you would be
here to-day, but shouldn't have been able to identify you but for the
presence of young Dollops here. I say: you're not going to stop now that
the great race is over, are you? The rest won't amount to anything."

"No, I shall not stop," said Cleek. "Why? Do you want me?"

"Yes. Lennard's outside with the limousine. Hop into it, will you, and
meet me at the Fiddle and Horseshoe, between Shepherd's Bush and Acton?
It's only half-past three and the limousine can cover the distance in
less than no time. Can't go with you. Got to round up my men here,
first. Join you shortly, however. McTavish has a sixty-horse-power
Mercedes, and he'll rush me over almost on your heels. Let Dollops go
home by train, and you meet me as I've asked, will you?"

"Yes," said Cleek.

And so the joyous holiday came to an unexpected end.

Parting from Dollops, and leaving the boy to journey on to Clarges
Street alone, he fared forth to find Lennard and the red limousine, and
was whirled away in record time to the inn of the Fiddle and Horseshoe.




CHAPTER XVI


It had but just gone five when Narkom walked into the little bar parlour
and found him standing there, looking out on the quaint, old-fashioned
bowling green that lay all steeped in sunshine and zoned with the froth
of pear and apple blossoms thick piled above the time-stained bricks of
an enclosing wall.

"What a model of punctuality you are, old chap," the superintendent
said, nodding approvingly. "Wait a moment while I go and order tea, and
then we will get down to business in real earnest. Shan't be long."

"Pray, don't hurry yourself on my account, Mr. Narkom," returned Cleek,
"coming down to earth" out of a mental airship. "I could do with another
hour of that"--nodding toward the view--"and still wonder where the time
had gone. These quaint old inns, which the march of what we are pleased
to call 'Progress' is steadily crowding off the face of the land, are
always deeply interesting to me; I love them. What a day! What a
picture! What a sky! As blue as what Dollops calls the 'Merry Geranium
Sea.' I'd give a Jew's eye for a handful of those apple blossoms--they
are divine!"

Narkom hastened from the room without replying. The strain of poetry
underlying the character of this strange, inscrutable man, his amazing
love of Nature, his moments of almost womanish weakness and sentiment,
astonished and mystified him. It was as if a hawk had acquired the
utterly useless trick of fluting like a nightingale, and being himself
wholly without imagination, he could not comprehend it in the smallest
degree.

When he returned a few minutes later, however, the idealist seemed to
have simmered down into the materialist, the extraordinary to have
become merged in the ordinary, for he found his famous ally no longer
studying the beauties of Nature, but giving his whole attention to the
sordid commonplaces of man, for he was standing before a glaringly
printed bill one of many that were tacked upon the walls, which set
forth in amazing pictures and double-leaded type the wonders that were
to be seen daily and nightly at Olympia, where, for a month past, "Van
Zant's Royal Belgian Circus and World-famed Menagerie" had been holding
forth to "Crowded and delighted audiences." Much was made of two "star
turns" upon this lurid bill: "Mademoiselle Marie de Zanoni, the
beautiful and peerless bare-back equestrienne, the most daring lady
rider in the universe," for the one; and for the other, "Chevalier
Adrian di Roma, king of the animal world, with his great aggregation of
savage and ferocious wild beasts, including the famous man-eating
African lion, Nero, the largest and most ferocious animal of its species
in captivity." And under this latter announcement there was a picture of
a young and handsome man, literally smothered with medals, lying at full
length, with his arms crossed and his head in the wide-open jaws of a
snarling, wild-eyed lion.

"My dear chap, you really do make me believe that there actually is such
a thing as instinct," said Narkom, as he came in. "Fancy your selecting
that particular bill out of all the others in the room! What an abnormal
individual you are!"

"Why? Has it anything to do with the case you have in hand?"

"Anything to do with it? My dear fellow, it _is_ 'the case.' I can't
imagine what drew your attention to it."

"Can't you?" said Cleek, with a half-smile. Then he stretched forth his
hand and touched the word "Nero" with the tip of his forefinger. "That
did. Things awaken a man's memory occasionally, Mr. Narkom, and--Tell
me, isn't that the beast there was such a stir about in the newspapers a
fortnight or so ago--the lion that crushed the head of a man in full
view of the audience?"

"Yes," replied Narkom, with a slight shudder. "Awful thing, wasn't it?
Gave me the creeps to read about it. The chap who was killed, poor
beggar, was a mere boy, not twenty, son of the Chevalier di Roma
himself. There was a great stir about it. Talk of the authorities
forbidding the performance, and all that sort of thing. They never did,
however, for on investigation--Ah, the tea at last, thank fortune.
Come, sit down, my dear fellow, and we'll talk whilst we refresh
ourselves. Landlady, see that we are not disturbed, will you, and that
nobody is admitted but the parties I mentioned?"

"Clients?" queried Cleek, as the door closed and they were alone
together.

"Yes. One, Mlle. Zelie, the 'chevalier's' only daughter, a slack-wire
artist; the other, Signor Scarmelli, a trapeze performer, who is the
lady's fiance."

"Ah, then our friend the chevalier is not so young as the picture on the
bill would have us believe he is."

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