Book: Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces

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




"What's the matter? What's wrong?" he cried. "Is it the lion again? Is
the boy killed? Speak up!"

"No," said Cleek very quietly, "nor will he be. The father will do the
trick to-night, not the son. We've had a fright and a lesson, that's
all." And, putting the sobbing child from him, he caught young
Scarmelli's arm and hurried him away. "Take me somewhere that we can
talk in safety," he said. "We are on the threshold of the end,
Scarmelli, and I want your help."

"Oh, Mr. Cleek, have you any idea--any clue?"

"Yes, more than a clue. I know how, but I have not yet discovered why.
Now, if you know, tell me what did the chevalier mean, what did his wife
mean, when they spoke of a dream that might have come true, but didn't?
Do you know? Have you any idea? Or, if you have not, do you think your
fiancee has?"

"Why, yes," he made reply. "Zelie has told me about it often. It is of a
fortune that was promised and never materialized. Oh, such a long time
ago, when he was quite a young man, the chevalier saved the life of a
very great man, a Prussian nobleman of great wealth. He was profuse in
his thanks and his promises, that nobleman; swore that he would make him
independent for life, and all that sort of thing."

"And didn't?"

"No, he didn't. After a dozen letters promising the chevalier things
that almost turned his head, the man dropped him entirely. In the midst
of his dreams of wealth a letter came from the old skinflint's steward
enclosing him the sum of six hundred marks, and telling him that as his
master had come to the conclusion that wealth would be more of a curse
than a blessing to a man of his class and station, he had thought better
of his rash promise. He begged to tender the enclosed as a proper and
sufficient reward for the service rendered, and 'should not trouble the
young man any further.' Of course, the chevalier didn't reply. Who
would, after having been promised wealth, education, everything one had
confessed that one most desired? Being young, high-spirited, and
bitterly, bitterly disappointed, the chevalier bundled the six hundred
marks back without a single word, and that was the last he ever heard of
the Baron von Steinheid from that day to this."

"The Baron von Steinheid?" repeated Cleek, pulling himself up as though
he had trodden upon something. "Do you mean to say that the man whose
life he saved--Scarmelli--tell me something: Does it happen by any
chance that the 'Chevalier di Roma's' real name is Peter Janssen
Pullaine?"

"Yes," said Scarmelli, in reply. "That is his name. Why?"

"Nothing, but that it solves the riddle, and--the lion has smiled for
the last time! No, don't ask me any questions; there isn't time to
explain. Get me as quickly as you can to the place where we left Mr.
Narkom's motor. Will this way lead me out? Thanks! Get back to the
others, and look for me again in two hours' time; and--Scarmelli!"

"Yes, sir?"

"One last word--don't let that boy get out of your sight for one
instant, and don't, no matter at what cost, let the chevalier do his
turn to-night before I get back. Good-bye for a time. I'm off."

Then he moved like a fleetly-passing shadow round the angle of the
building, and two minutes later he was with Narkom in the red limousine.

"To the German embassy as fast as we can fly," he said as he scrambled
in. "I've something to tell you about that lion's smile, Mr. Narkom, and
I'll tell it while we're on the wing."




CHAPTER XVIII


It was nine o'clock and after. The great show at Olympia was at its
height; the packed house was roaring with delight over the daring
equestrianship of "Mlle. Marie de Zanoni," and the sound of the cheers
rolled in to the huge dressing-tent, where the artists awaited their
several turns, and the chevalier, in spangled trunks and tights, all
ready for his call, sat hugging his child and shivering like a man with
the ague.

"Come, come, buck up, man, and don't funk it like this," said Senor
Sperati, who had graciously consented to assist him with his dressing
because of the injury to his hand. "The idea of you losing your nerve,
you of all men, and because of a little affair like that. You know very
well that Nero is as safe as a kitten to-night, that he never has two
smiling turns in the same week, much less the same day. Your act's the
next on the programme. Buck up and go at it like a man."

"I can't, senor, I can't!" almost wailed the chevalier. "My nerve is
gone. Never, if I live to be a thousand, shall I forget that awful
moment, that appalling 'smile.' I tell you, there is wizardry in the
thing; the beast is bewitched. My work in the arena is done--done for
ever, senor. I shall never have courage to look into the beast's jaws
again."

"Rot! You're not going to ruin the show, are you, and after all the
money I've put into it? If you have no care for yourself, it's your duty
to think about me. You can at least try. I tell you you must try! Here,
take a sip of brandy, and see if that won't put a bit of courage into
you. Hello!" as a burst of applause and the thud of a horse's hoofs down
the passage to the stables came rolling in, "there's your wife's turn
over at last; and there--listen! the ringmaster is announcing yours. Get
up, man; get up and go out."

"I can't, senor--I can't! I can't!"

"But I tell you you must."

And just here an interruption came.

"Bad advice, my dear captain," said a voice--Cleek's voice--from the
other end of the tent; and with a twist and a snarl the "senor" screwed
round on his heel in time to see that other intruders were putting in an
appearance as well as this unwelcome one.

"Who the deuce asked you for your opinion?" rapped out the "senor"
savagely. "And what are you doing in here, anyhow? If we want the
service of a vet., we're quite capable of getting one for ourselves
without having him shove his presence upon us unasked."

"You are quite capable of doing a great many things, my dear captain,
even making lions smile!" said Cleek serenely. "It would appear that the
gallant Captain von Gossler, nephew, and, in the absence of one who has
a better claim, heir to the late Baron von Steinheid--That's it, nab the
beggar. Played, sir, played! Hustle him out and into the cab, with his
precious confederate, the Irish-Italian 'signor,' and make a clean sweep
of the pair of them. You'll find it a neck-stretching game, captain, I'm
afraid, when the jury comes to hear of that poor boy's death and your
beastly part in it."

By this time the tent was in an uproar, for the chevalier's wife had
come hurrying in, the chevalier's daughter was on the verge of
hysterics, and the chevalier's prospective son-in-law was alternately
hugging the great beast-tamer and then shaking his hand and generally
deporting himself like a respectable young man who had suddenly gone
daft.

"Governor!" he cried, half laughing, half sobbing. "Bully old governor.
It's over--it's over. Never any more danger, never any more hard times,
never any more lion's smiles."

"No, never," said Cleek. "Come here, Madame Pullaine, and hear the good
news with the rest. You married for love, and you've proved a brick. The
dream's come true, and the life of ease and of luxury is yours at last,
Mr. Pullaine."

"But, sir, I--I do not understand," stammered the chevalier. "What has
happened? Why have you arrested the Senor Sperati? What has he done? I
cannot comprehend."

"Can't you? Well, it so happens, chevalier, that the Baron von
Steinheid died something like two months ago, leaving the sum of sixty
thousand pounds sterling to one Peter Janssen Pullaine and the heirs of
his body, and that a certain Captain von Gossler, son of the baron's
only sister, meant to make sure that there was no Peter Janssen Pullaine
and no heirs of his body to inherit one farthing of it."

"Sir! Dear God, can this be true?"

"Perfectly true, chevalier. The late baron's solicitors have been
advertising for some time for news regarding the whereabouts of Peter
Janssen Pullaine, and if you had not so successfully hidden your real
name under that of your professional one, no doubt some of your
colleagues would have put you in the way of finding it out long ago. The
baron did not go back on his word and did not act ungratefully. His
will, dated twenty-nine years ago, was never altered in a single
particular. I rather suspect that that letter and that gift of money
which came to you in the name of his steward, and was supposed to close
the affair entirely, was the work of his nephew, the gentleman whose
exit has just been made. A crafty individual that, chevalier, and he
laid his plans cleverly and well. Who would be likely to connect him
with the death of a beast-tamer in a circus, who had perished in what
would appear an accident of his calling? Ah, yes, the lion's smile was a
clever idea--he was a sharp rascal to think of it."

"Sir! You--you do not mean to tell me that he caused that? He never went
near the beast--never--even once."

"Not necessary, chevalier. He kept near you and your children; that was
all that he needed to do to carry out his plan. The lion was as much his
victim as anybody else--you or your children. What it did it could not
help doing. The very simplicity of the plan was its passport to success.
All that was required was the unsuspected sifting of snuff on the hair
of the person whose head was to be put in the beast's mouth. The lion's
smile was not, properly speaking, a smile at all, chevalier; it was the
torture which came of snuff getting into its nostrils, and when the
beast made that uncanny noise and snapped its jaws together, it was
simply the outcome of a sneeze. The thing would be farcical if it were
not that tragedy hangs on the thread of it, and that a life, a useful
human life, was destroyed by means of it. Yes, it was clever, it was
diabolically clever; but you know what Bobby Burns says about the best
laid schemes of mice and men. There's always a Power--higher up--that
works the ruin of them."

With that he walked by, and, going to young Scarmelli, put out his hand.

"You're a good chap and you've got a good girl, so I expect you will be
happy," he said; and then lowered his voice so that the rest might not
reach the chevalier's ears. "You were wrong to suspect the little
stepmother," he added. "She's true blue, Scarmelli. She was only playing
up to those fellows because she was afraid the 'senor' would drop out
and close the show if she didn't, and that she and her husband and the
children would be thrown out of work. She loves her husband--that's
certain--and she's a good little woman; and, Scarmelli!"

"Yes, Mr. Cleek?"

"There's nothing better than a good woman on this earth, my lad. Always
remember that. I think you, too, have found one. I hope you have. I hope
you'll be happy. What's that? Owe me? Not a rap, my boy. Or, if you feel
that you must give me something, give me your prayers for equal luck,
and--send me a slice of the wedding cake. Good-night!"

And twisted round on his heel and walked out; making his way out to the
streets and facing the journey to Clarges Street afoot. For to be
absolutely without envy of any sort is not given to anything born of
woman; and the sight of this man's happiness, the knowledge of this
man's reward, brought upon him a bitter recollection of how far he still
was from his own.

Would he ever get that reward? he wondered. Would he ever be nearer to
it than he was to-night? It hurt--yes, it hurt horribly, sometimes, this
stone-cold silence, this walking always in shadowed paths without a ray
of light, without the certainty of arriving _anywhere_, though he plod
onward for a lifetime--and the old feeling of savage resentment, the old
sense of self-pity--the surest thing on God's earth to blaze a trail
for the oncoming of the worst that is in a man--bit at the soul of him
and touched him on the raw again.

He knew what that boded; and he also knew the antidote.

"Dollops, they broke into our holiday--they did us out of a part of it,
didn't they, old chap?" he said, when he reached home at last and found
the boy anxiously awaiting him. "Well, we'll have a day for every hour
they deprived us of, a whole day, bonny boy. Pack up again and we'll be
off to the land as God made it, and where God's things still live; and
we'll have a fortnight of it--a whole blessed fortnight, my boy, with
the river and the fields and the flowers and the dreams that hide in
trees."

Dollops made no reply. He simply bolted for the kit-bag and began to
pack at once. And the morrow, when it came, found these two--the servant
who was still a boy, and the master who had discovered the way back to
boyhood's secrets--forging up the shining river and seeking the Land of
Nightingales again.




CHAPTER XIX


The spring had blossomed itself out and the summer had bloomed itself
in. The holiday up the river was a thing of the past; the dreams of the
Dreamer had given place to those sterner phases of life which must be
coped with by the Realist; and Cleek was "back in harness" again.

A half-dozen more or less important cases had occupied his time since
his return; but, although he had carried these to a successful issue and
had again been lauded to the skies by the daily papers, the one word of
praise from the one quarter whence he so earnestly desired to hear was
never forthcoming.

Of Ailsa Lorne he had heard not a solitary thing, either directly or
indirectly, since that day when he had put her into the taxicab at
Charing Cross Station and saw her safely on her way to Hampstead before
he went his own.

True, her silence was, as he had agreed, an admission that all was well
with her and that she had secured the position in question; true it was
also that it was not for her to take the initiative and break that
silence; that he fully realised how impossible, for a girl born and bred
as she had been, to voluntarily open up a correspondence with a man who
was as yet little more than a mere acquaintance; but, all the same, he
chafed under that silence and spent many a wakeful hour at night
brooding on it.

In his heart he knew that if any advance was to be made, that advance
was the man's duty, not the woman's; but the fear that she would think
he was thrusting himself upon her, the dread that even yet the white
soul of her could not but shrink from a closer association with him,
kept him from taking one step towards breaking the silence he deplored.

The French have a proverb which says: "It is always the unexpected that
happens." And it was the unexpected that happened in this case.

In the midst of his dejection, in the very depths of returning despair,
there came to him this note from Mr. Narkom:

"My Dear Cleek,

"Kindly refrain from going out this evening. I shall call about nine
o'clock, bringing with me Miss Ailsa Lorne, whom you doubtless remember,
and her present patron, Angela, Countess Chepstow, the young widow of
that ripping old warhorse, who, as you may recall, quelled that
dangerous and fanatical rising of the Cingalese at Trincomalee. These
ladies wish to see you with reference to a most extraordinary case, an
inexplicable mystery, which both they and I believe no man but yourself
can satisfactorily probe.

"Yours in haste,

"Maverick Narkom."

So, then, he was to see her again, to touch her hand, hear her voice,
look into the eyes that had lighted him back from the path to
destruction! Cleek's heart began to hammer and his pulses to drum.
Needless to say, he took extraordinary care with his toilet that
evening, with the result that when the ladies arrived there was nothing
even vaguely suggestive of the detective about him.

"Oh, Mr. Cleek, do help us--please do," implored Ailsa, after the first
greetings were over. "Lady Chepstow is almost beside herself with dread
and anxiety over the inexplicable thing, and I have persuaded her that
if anybody on earth can solve the mystery of it, avert the new and
appalling danger of it, it is you! Oh, say that you will take the case,
say that you will save little Lord Chepstow and put an end to this
maddening mystery!"

"Little Lord Chepstow?" repeated Cleek, glancing over at the countess,
who stood, a very Niobe in her grief and despair, holding out two
imploring hands in silent supplication. "That is your ladyship's son, is
it not?"

"Yes," she answered, with a sort of wail; "my only son--my only child.
All that I have to love--all that I have to live for in this world."

"And you think the little fellow is in peril?"

"Yes--in deadly peril."

"From what source? From whose hand?"

"I don't know--I don't know!" she answered, distractedly. "Sometimes I
am wild enough to suspect even Captain Hawksley, unjust and unkind as it
seems."

"Captain Hawksley? Who is he?"

"My late husband's cousin; heir, after my little son, to the title and
estates. He is very poor, deeply in debt, and the inheritance would put
an end to all his difficulties. But he is fond of my son; they seem
almost to worship each other. I, too, am fond of him. But, for all that,
I have to remember that he and he alone would benefit by Cedric's death,
and--and--wicked as it seems--Oh, Mr. Cleek, help me! Direct me!
Sometimes I doubt him. Sometimes I doubt everybody. Sometimes I think of
those other days, that other mystery, that land which reeks of them; and
then--and then--Oh, that horrible Ceylon! I wish I had never set foot in
it in all my life!"

Her agitation and distress were so great as to make her utterances only
half coherent; and Ailsa, realising that this sort of thing must only
perplex Cleek, and leave him in the dark regarding the matter upon which
they had come to consult him, gently interposed.

"Do try to calm yourself and to tell the story as briefly as possible,
dear Lady Chepstow," she advised. Then, taking the initiative, added
quietly, "It begins, Mr. Cleek, at a period when his little lordship,
whose governess I have the honour to be, was but two years old, and at
Trincomalee, where his late father was stationed with his regiment four
years ago. Somebody, for some absurd reason, had set afoot a ridiculous
rumour that the English had received orders from the Throne to stamp out
every religion but their own--in short, if the British were not
exterminated, dreadful desecrations would occur, as they were
determined--"

"To loot all the temples erected to Buddha, destroy the images, and make
a bonfire of all the sacred relics," finished Cleek himself. "I rarely
forget history, Miss Lorne, especially when it is such recent history
as that memorable Buddhist rising at Trincomalee. It began upon an
utterly unfounded, ridiculous rumour; it terminated, if my memory serves
me correctly, in something akin to the very thing it was supposed to
avert. That is to say, during the outburst of fanaticism, that most
sacred of all relics--the holy tooth of Buddha--disappeared mysteriously
from the temple of Dambool, and in spite of the fact that many lacs of
rupees were offered for its recovery, it has never, I believe, been
found, or even traced, to this day, although a huge fortune awaits the
restorer, and, with it, overpowering honours from the native princes.
Those must have been trying times, Lady Chepstow, for the commandant's
wife, the mother of the commandant's only child?"

"Horrible! horrible!" she answered, with a shudder, forgetting for an
instant the dangers of the present in the recollection of the tragical
past. "For a period, our lives were not safe; murder hid behind every
bush, skulked in the shadow of every rock and tree, and we knew not at
what minute the little garrison might be rushed under cover of the
darkness and every soul slaughtered before the relief force could come
to our assistance. I died a hundred deaths in a day in my anxiety for
husband and child. And once the very zealousness of our comrades almost
brought about the horror I feared. Oh!"--with a shudder of horrified
recollection and a covering of the eyes, as if to shut out the memory of
it--"Oh! that night--that horrible night! Unknown to any of us, my baby,
rising from the bed where I had left him sleeping, whilst I went outside
to stand by Lord Chepstow, wandered beyond the line of defence, and,
before anybody realised it, was out in the open, alone and unprotected.

"Ferralt, the cook, saw him first; saw, too, the crouching figure of a
native, armed with a gun, in the shadow of the undergrowth. Without
hesitation the brave fellow rushed out, fell upon the native before he
could dart away, wrenched the gun from him, and brained him with the
butt. A cry of the utmost horror rang out upon the air, and, uttering
it, another native bounded out from a hiding-place close to where the
first had been killed, and flew zigzagging across the open, where
Cedric was. Evidently he had no intention of molesting the little
fellow, for he fled straight on past him, still shrieking after the
accident occurred; but to Ferralt it seemed as if his intention were to
murder the boy, and, clapping the gun to his shoulder, in a panic of
excitement, he fired. If it had been one of the soldiers,
someone--anyone--who understood marksmanship and was not likely to be in
a nervous quake over the circumstances, the thing could not have
happened, although the fugitive was careering along in a direct line
with my precious little one. But, with Ferralt--Oh, Mr. Cleek, can you
imagine my horror when I saw the flash of that shot, heard a shrill cry
of pain, and saw my child drop to the ground?"

"Good heaven!" exclaimed Cleek, agitated in spite of himself. "Then the
blunderer shot the child instead of the native?"

"Yes; and was so horrified by the mishap that, without waiting to learn
the result, he rushed blindly to the brink of a deep ravine, and threw
himself headlong to death. But the injury to Cedric was only a trifling
one after all. The bullet seemed merely to have grazed him in passing,
and, beyond a ragged gash in the fleshy part of the thigh, he was not
harmed at all. That I myself dressed and bandaged, and in a couple of
weeks it was quite healed. But it taught me a lesson, that night of
horror, and I never let my baby out of my sight for one instant from
that time until the rising was entirely quelled.

"As suddenly as it had started, the trouble subsided. Native priests
came under a flag of truce to Lord Chepstow, and confessed their error,
acknowledged that they had never any right to suspect the British of any
design upon their gods, for the loot of the temple had actually taken
place in the midst of the rising, and they knew that it could not have
come from the hands of the soldiers, for they had had them under
surveillance all the time, and not one person of the race had ventured
within a mile of the temple.

"Yet the tooth of Buddha had been taken, the sacred tooth which is more
holy to Buddhists than the statue of Gautama Buddha itself. Their
remorse was very real, and after that, to the day of his death from
fever, eighteen months afterward, they could never show enough honour to
Lord Chepstow. And even then their favour continued. They transferred
to the little son the homage they had done the father, but in a far, far
greater degree. If he had been a king's son they could have shown him no
greater honour. Native princes showered him with rich gifts; if he
walked out, his path was strewn with flowers by bowing maidens; if he
went into the market-place, the people prostrated themselves before him.

"When I questioned Buddhist women of this amazing homage to Cedric, they
gave me a full explanation. My son was sacred, they said. Buddha had
withdrawn his favour from his people because of the evil they had done
in suspecting the father and of the innocent life--Ferralt's--which had
been sacrificed, and they had been commanded of the priests to do homage
to the child and thereby appease the offended god, who, doubtless, had
himself spirited away the holy tooth, and would not restore it until
full recompense was made to the sacred son of the sacred dead.

"When it became known that I had decided to return to England with my
boy, native princes offered me fabulous sums to remain, and when they
found that I could not be tempted to stay, the populace turned out in
every town and village through which we passed on our way to the ship,
and bowing multitudes followed us to the very last. Nor did it cease
with that, for in all the years that have followed, even here in London,
the homage and worship have continued. My son can go nowhere but that he
is followed by Cingalese; can see no man or woman of the race, but he or
she prostrates herself before him and murmurs, 'Holy, most holy!' And
daily, almost hourly, rich gifts are showered upon him from unknown
hands, and he is watched over and guarded constantly. I tell you all
this, Mr. Cleek, that you may the better understand how appalling is the
horror which now assails us, how frightful is the knowledge that someone
now seeks his life, and is using every means to take it."

"In other words, my dear Cleek," put in Narkom, as her ladyship,
overcome with emotion, broke down suddenly, "there appears to be a
sudden and inexplicable change of front on the part of these fanatics,
and they now seem as anxious to bring evil to his little lordship as
they formerly were to protect and cherish him. At any rate, someone of
their order has, upon three separate occasions within the last month,
endeavoured to kidnap him, and, in one instance, even attempted to
murder him."

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