Book: Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces

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




"Is that a fact?" queried Cleek sharply, glancing over at Miss Lorne.
"You are certain it is not a fancy, but an absolute fact?"

"Yes; oh, yes!" she made answer, agitatedly. "Twice when I have gone
into the Park with him, attempts have been made to separate us, to get
him away from me; and once they did get him away--so swiftly, so
adroitly, that he had vanished before I could turn round. But, although
a bag had been thrown over his head to stifle his cries, he managed to
make a very little one. I plunged screaming into the undergrowth from
which that cry had come, and was just in time to save him. He was lying
on the ground all bundled up in a bag, and his assailant, who must have
heard me coming, had gone as if by magic. His little lordship, however,
was able to tell me that the man was a Cingalese, and that he had 'tried
to cut him with a knife.'"

"Cut him with a knife?" repeated Cleek in a reflective tone, and blew
out a long, low whistle.

"Oh! but that is not the worst, Mr. Cleek," went on Ailsa. "Three days
ago a woman--a very beautiful and distinguished-looking woman--called to
see Lady Chepstow regarding the reference of a former servant, one Jane
Catherboys, who used to be her ladyship's maid. After the caller left, a
box of sugared violets was found lying temptingly open on a table in the
main hall. Little Cedric is passionately fond of sugared violets, and,
had he happened to pass that way before the box was discovered, he
surely would have yielded to the temptation and eaten some. In removing
the box the parlour-maid accidentally upset it, and before she could
gather all the violets up her ladyship's little Pomeranian dog snapped
up one and ate it. It was dead in six minutes' time! The sweets were
simply loaded with prussic acid. When we came to inquire into the matter
in the hope of tracing the mysterious caller, we found that Jane
Catherboys was no longer in need of a position; that she had been
married for eight months; that she knew nothing whatever of the woman,
and had sent no one to inquire into her references."

"All of which shows, my dear Cleek," put in Narkom significantly, "that,
whatever hand is directing these attempts, it belongs to one who knows
more than a mere outsider possibly could: in short, to one who is aware
of his little lordship's excessive fondness for sugared violets, and is
aware that Lady Chepstow once did have a maid named Jane Catherboys."

"If," said Cleek, "you mean to suggest by that that this points
suspiciously in Captain Hawksley's direction, Mr. Narkom, permit me to
say that it does not necessarily follow. The clever people of the
under-world do nothing by halves nor without careful inquiry beforehand;
that is what makes the difference between the common pickpocket and the
brilliant swindler." He turned to Ailsa. "Is that all, Miss Lorne, or am
I right in supposing that there is even worse to come?"

"Oh, much worse--much, Mr. Cleek! The knowledge that these would-be
murderers, whoever they are, whatever may be their mysterious motive,
have grown desperate enough to invade the house itself has driven Lady
Chepstow well-nigh frantic. Of course, orders were immediately given to
the servants that no stranger, no matter how well dressed, how well
seeming, nor what the plea, was, from that moment, to be allowed past
the threshold. We felt secure in that, knowing that no servant of the
household would betray his or her trust, and that all would be on the
constant watch for any further attempt. The unknown enemy must have
found out about these precautions, for no stranger came again to the
door. But last night a thing we had never counted upon happened. In the
dead of the night the unknown broke into the house--into the very
nursery itself--and but that Lady Chepstow, impelled she does not know
by what, only that she was nervous and wakeful, and felt the need of
some companionship, rose and carried the sleeping child into her own
bed, he would assuredly have been murdered. The nurse, awakened by a
horrible suffocating sensation, opened her eyes to find a man bending
over her with a chloroform-soaked cloth, which he was about to lay over
her face. She shrieked and fainted, but not before she saw the man
spring to the little bed on the other side of her own, hack furiously
at it with a long, murderous knife, then dart to the window and vanish.
In the darkness he had not, of course, been able to see that that little
bed was empty, for its position kept it in deep shadow, and hearing the
household stir at the sound of the nurse's shriek, he struck out blindly
and flew to save himself from detection. The nurse states that he was
undoubtedly a foreigner--a dark-skinned Asiatic--and her description of
him tallies with that his little lordship gave of the man who attempted
to kill him that day in the Park. There, Mr. Cleek," she concluded,
"that's the whole story. Can't you do something to help us--something to
lift this constant state of dread and to remove this terrible danger
from little Lord Chepstow's life?"

"I'll try, Miss Lorne; but it is a most extraordinary case. Where is the
boy, now?"

"At home, closely guarded. We appealed to Mr. Narkom, and he generously
appointed two detective officers to sit with his little lordship and
keep constant watch over him whilst we are away."

"And in the meantime," added Mr. Narkom, "I've issued orders for a
general rounding-up of all the Cingalese who can be traced or are known
to be in town. Petrie and Hammond have that part of the job in hand, and
if they hit upon any Asiatic who answers to the description of this
murderous rascal--"

"I don't believe they will," interposed Cleek; "or, if they do, I don't
for a moment believe he will turn out to be the guilty party. In other
words, I have an idea that the fellow will prove to be a European."

"But, my dear fellow, both his little lordship and the nurse saw the
man, and, as you have heard, they both agree that he was dark-skinned
and quite Oriental in appearance."

"One of the easiest possible disguises, Mr. Narkom. A wig, a stick of
grease-paint, a threepenny twist of crepe hair, and there you are! No, I
do not believe that the man is a Cingalese at all; and, far from his
having any connection with what you were pleased to term just now a
change of front on the part of the Buddhists who have so long held the
little chap as something sacred, I don't believe that they know anything
about him. I base that upon the fact that the child is still treated
with homage whenever he goes out, according to what Miss Lorne says, and
that, with the single exception of that one woman who tried to poison
him, nobody but just one man--this particular one man--has ever made any
attempt to harm the boy. Fanatics, like those Cingalese, cleave to an
idea to the end, Mr. Narkom; they don't cast it aside and go off at
another tangent. You have heard what Lady Chepstow says the native women
told her; the boy was sacred; their priests had commanded them to
appease Buddha by doing homage to him until the tooth was found, and the
tooth has not been found up to the present day! That means that nothing
on earth could change their attitude toward him, that not one of the
Buddhist sect would harm a solitary hair of his head for a king's
ransom; so you may eliminate the Cingalese from the case entirely so far
as the attempts upon the child's life are concerned. Whoever is making
the attempts is doing so without their knowledge and for a purely
personal reason."

"Then, in that case, this Captain Hawksley--"

"I'll have a look at that gentleman before I tumble into bed to-night,
and you shall have my views upon that point to-morrow morning, Mr.
Narkom. Frankly, things point rather suspiciously in the captain's
direction, since he is apparently the only person likely to be benefited
by the boy's death, and if a motive cannot be traced to some other
person--" He stopped abruptly and held up his hand. Outside in the dim
halls of the house a sudden noise had sprung into being, the noise of
someone running upstairs in great haste, and, stepping quickly to the
door, Cleek drew it sharply open. As he did so, Dollops came puffing up
out of the lower gloom, a sheep's trotter in one hand, and a letter in
the other.

"Law, Gov'nor!" groaned he, from midway on the staircase, "I don't
believe as I'm ever goin' to be let get a square tuck-in this side of
the buryin' ground! Jist finished wot was left of that there steak and
kidney puddin', sir, and started on my seckint trotter, when I sees a
pair o' legs nip parst the area railin's to the front door, and then nip
off again like greased lightnin', and when I ups and does a flyin' leap
up the kitchen stairs, there was this here envellup in the letter-box,
and them there blessed legs nowheres in sight. I say, sir," agitatedly,
"look wot's wrote on the envellup, will yer? And us always keepin' of it
so dark."

Cleek plucked the letter from his extended hand, glanced at it, and
puckered up his lips; then, with a gesture, he sent Dollops back below
stairs, and, returning to the room, closed the door behind him.

"The enemy evidently knows all Lady Chepstow's movements, Mr. Narkom,"
he said. "I expect she and Miss Lorne have been under surveillance all
day and have been followed here. Look at that!" He flung the letter down
on a table as he spoke, and Narkom, glancing at it, saw printed in rude,
illiterate letters upon the envelope the one word "Cleek." The identity
of "Captain Burbage" was known to someone, and the secret of the house
in Clarges Street was a secret no longer!

"Purposely disguised, you see. No one, not even a little child, would
make such a botch of copying the alphabet as that," Cleek said, as he
took the letter up and opened it. The sheet it contained was lettered in
the same uncouth manner, and bore these words:

"Cleek, take a fool's advice and don't accept the Chepstow case. Be
warned. If you interfere, somebody you care about will pay the price.
You'll find it more satisfactory to buy a wedding bouquet than a funeral
wreath!"

"Oh!" shuddered the two ladies in one breath. "How horrible! How
cowardly!" And then, feeling that her last hope had gone, Lady Chepstow
broke into a fit of violent weeping and laid her head on Ailsa's
shoulder.

"Oh, my baby! My darling baby boy!" she sobbed. "And now they are
threatening somebody that you, too, love. Of course, Mr. Cleek, I can't
expect you to risk the sacrifice of your own dear ones for the sake of
me and mine, and so--and so--Oh, take me away, Miss Lorne! Let me go
back to my baby and have him while I may."

"Good-night, Mr. Cleek!" said Ailsa, stretching out a shaking hand to
him. "Thank you so much for--for what you would have done but for this.
And you were our last hope, too!"

"Why give it up then, Miss Lorne?" he said, holding her hand and
looking into her eyes. "Why not go on letting me be your last hope--your
only hope?"

"Yes, but they--they spoke of a funeral wreath."

"And they also spoke of a wedding bouquet! I am going to take the case,
Miss Lorne--take it, and solve it, as I'm a living man. Thank you!" as
her brimming eyes uplifted in deep thankfulness and her shaking hand
returned the pressure of his. "Now, just give me five minutes' time in
the next room--it's my laboratory, Lady Chepstow--and I'll tell you
whether I shall begin with Captain Hawksley or eliminate him from the
case entirely. You might go in ahead, Mr. Narkom, and get the acid bath
and the powder ready for me. We'll see what the finger-prints of our
gentle correspondent have to tell, and, if they are not in the records
of Scotland Yard or down in my own private little book, we'll get a
sample of Captain Hawksley's in the morning."

Then, excusing himself to the ladies, he passed into the inner room in
company with Narkom, and carried the letter with him. When he returned
it was still in his hand, but there were greyish smudges all over it.

"There's not a finger-print in the lot that is worth anything as a means
of identification, Miss Lorne," he said. "But you and Lady Chepstow may
accept my assurance that Captain Hawksley is not the man. The writer of
this letter belongs to the criminal classes; he is on his guard against
the danger of finger-prints, and he wore rubber gloves when he penned
this message. When I find him, rest assured I shall find a man who has
had dealings with the police before and whose finger-prints are on their
records. I don't know what his game is nor what he's after yet, but I
will inside of a week. I've an idea; but it's so wild a thing I'm almost
afraid to trust myself to believe it possible until I stumble over
something that points the same way. Now, go home with Lady Chepstow, and
begin the work of helping me."

"Helping you? Oh, Mr. Cleek, can we? Is there anything we can do to
help?"

"Yes. When you leave the house, act as though you are in the utmost
state of dejection--and keep that up indefinitely. Make it appear, for I
am certain you will be followed and spied upon, as if I had declined the
case. But don't have any fear about the boy. The two constables will
sleep in the room with him to-night and every night until the thing is
cleared up and the danger past. To-morrow about dusk, however, you,
personally, take him for a walk near the Park, and if, among the other
Cingalese you may meet, you should see one dressed as an Englishman, and
wearing a scarlet flower in his buttonhole, take no notice of how often
you see him nor of what he may do."

"It will be you, Mr. Cleek?"

"Yes. Now go, please; and don't forget to act as if you and her ladyship
were utterly broken-hearted. Also"--his voice dropped lower, his hand
met her hand, and in the darkness of the hall a little silver-plated
revolver was slipped into her palm--"also, take this. Keep it always
with you, never be without it night or day, and if any living creature
offers you violence, shoot him down as you would a mad dog. Good-night,
and--remember!"

And long after she and Lady Chepstow had gone down and passed out into
the night he stood there, looking the situation straight in the face and
thinking his own troubled thoughts.

"A wedding bouquet! A threat against her, and the mention of a wedding
bouquet!" he said, as he went back into the room and sat down to figure
the puzzle out. "Only one creature in the world knows of my feelings in
that direction, and only one creature in the world would be capable of
that threat--Margot! But what interest could she or any of her tribe
have in the death of Lady Chepstow's little son? Her game is always
money. If she were after a ransom she would try to abduct the child, not
to kill him, and if"--A sudden thought came and wrenched away his voice.
He sat a moment twisting his fingers one through the other and frowning
at the floor; then, of a sudden, he gave a cry and jumped to his feet.
"Five lacs of rupees--a fortune! By George, I've got it!" he fairly
shouted. "The wild guess was a correct one, I'll stake my life. Let's
put it to the test."




CHAPTER XX


The summer twilight was deepening into the summer dusk when Ailsa,
acting upon Cleek's advice, set forth with his little lordship the
following evening, and turned her steps in the direction of the Park;
but although, on her way there, she observed more than once that a
swarthy-skinned man in European dress who wore a scarlet flower in his
coat, and was so perfect a type of the Asiatic that he would have passed
muster for one even among a gathering of Cingalese, kept appearing and
disappearing at irregular intervals, it spoke well for the powers of
imitation and self-effacement possessed by Dollops, that she never once
thought of associating that young man with the dawdling messenger boy
who strolled leisurely along with a package under his arm and patronised
every bun-shop, winkle-stall, and pork-pie purveyor on the line of
march.

For upward of an hour this sort of thing went on without any
interruption or any solitary thing out of the ordinary, Ailsa strolling
along leisurely, with the boy's hands in hers and his innocent prattle
running on ceaselessly; then, of a sudden, whilst they were moving along
close to the Park railings and in the shadow of the overhanging trees,
the figure of an undersized man in semi-European costume, but wearing on
his head the twisted turban of a Cingalese, issued from one of the
gates, and well-nigh collided with them.

He drew back, murmuring an apology in pidgin-English, then, seeing the
child, he salaamed profoundly and murmured in a voice of deep reverence,
"Holy, most holy!" and prostrated himself, with his forehead touching
the ground, until Ailsa and the child had passed on. But barely had they
taken five steps before Cleek appeared upon the scene, and did exactly
the same thing as the Cingalese.

"All right. You may go home now. I've got my man," he whispered, as
Ailsa and the boy passed by. "Look for me at Chepstow House some time
to-night." Then rose, as she walked on, and went after the man who first
had prostrated himself before the child.

He had risen and gone on his way, but not before witnessing Cleek's
obeisance, and flashing upon him a sharp, searching look. Cleek
quickened his steps and shortened the distance between them. Now or
never was the time to put to the test that wild thought which last night
had hammered on his brain, for it was certain that this man was in very
truth a Cingalese, and, as such, must know! He stretched forth his hand
and touched the man, who drew back sharply, half indignantly, but
changed his attitude entirely when Cleek, who knew Hindustani more than
well, spoke to him in the native tongue.

"Unto thee, oh, brother!" Cleek said. "Thou, too, art of us, for thou,
too, dost acknowledge the sacred shrine. These eyes have beheld thee."

All his hopes rested on the slim pillar of that one word, "shrine," and
his heart almost ceased to beat as he watched to see how it was
received. It broke, however, into a very tumult of disturbance in the
next instant, for the man positively beamed as he gave reply.

"Sacred be the shrine!" he answered in Hindustani. "Clearly thou art of
us--not of those others."

"Others? What others? I am but newly come to this country."

"Walk with me, then, to my abode, sup with me, eat of my salt, and I
will tell thee then, oh, brother. But I forget: thou hast no knowledge
of me. Listen, then. I am Arjeeb Noosrut, father of the High Priest
Seydama, and it is among the people of my house that the gun is yet
preserved. Nor has the blood of Seydama been ever washed from the wood
of it. Come."

All in a moment a light seemed to break over Cleek's brain. The missing
link had been supplied--the one thing that could make possible the wild
thought which had come to him last night had been given into his hands,
and here at last was the key to the amazing mystery! He turned without a
word and went with Arjeeb Noosrut.

"What an ass!" he said to himself in the soundless words of thought
"What an ass never to have suspected it when it is all so dear!"

Meantime Ailsa and the boy, dismissed from any further need of service,
walked on through the deepening dusk and turned their faces homeward.
But they had not gone twenty yards from the spot where Cleek had seen
them last when his little lordship set up a joyful cry and pointed
excitedly to a claret-coloured limousine which at that moment swung in
from the middle of the roadway and slowed down as it neared the kerb.

"Oh, look, Miss Lorne; here's mummie's motor car; and I do believe
that's Bimbi peeping out of it!" exclaimed the child--"Bimbi" being his
pet name for Captain Hawksley--then broke, in wild excitement, from
Ailsa's detaining hand and fled to a tall, military-looking man with a
fair beard and moustache who had just that moment alighted from the
vehicle. "It is Bimbi--it is!--it is!" he shouted as he ran. "Oh, Bimbi,
I _am_ glad!"

"Ceddie, dear, you mustn't be so boisterous!" chided Ailsa, coming up
with him at the kerb. "How fond he is of you to be sure, Captain
Hawksley. You've come for us, I suppose? Ceddie recognised the car at
once."

"Yes; jump in," he answered. "Lady Chepstow sent me after you. She's
nervous, poor soul, every moment the boy's away from her. Jump in, old
chap!"--catching up his little lordship and swinging him inside. "Better
take the back seat, Miss Lorne; it's more comfortable. Quite settled,
both of you? That's good. All right, chauffeur--Home!"

Then he jumped in after them, closed the door, dropped into a seat, and
the motor, making a wide curve out into the road, pelted away into the
fast-gathering darkness.

"Bimbi says maybe he's going to be my daddy one day--didn't you, Bimbi?"
said his little lordship, climbing up on to "Bimbi's" knee and snuggling
close to him.

"I say, you know, you mustn't tell secrets, old chap!" was the laughing
response. "Miss Lorne will hand you over to Nursie with orders to put
you to bed if you do, _I_ know--won't you, Miss Lorne?"

"He ought to be in bed, anyhow," responded Ailsa gaily; and then, this
giving the conversation a merry turn, they talked and laughed and kept
up such a chatter that three-quarters of an hour went like magic and
nobody seemed aware of it. But suddenly Ailsa thought, and then put her
thoughts into words.

"What a long time we are in getting home," she said, and bent forward so
that the light from the window might fall upon the dial of her wrist
watch, then gave a little startled cry and half rose from her seat. For
the darkness was now tempered by moonlight, and she could see that they
were no longer in the populous districts of the town, but were speeding
along past woodlands and open fields in the very depths of the country.
"Good gracious! Johnston must have lost his senses!" she exclaimed
agitatedly. "Look where we are, Captain Hawksley!--out in the country
with only a farmhouse or two in sight. Johnston! Johnston!" She bent
forward and rapped wildly on the glass panel. "Johnston, stop!--turn
round!--are you out of your head? Captain Hawksley, stop him--stop him
for pity's sake!"

"Sit down, Miss Lorne." He made reply in a low, level voice, a voice in
which there was something that made her pluck the child to her and hold
him right to her breast. "You are not going home to-night. You are going
for a ride with me; and if--Oh, that's your little game, is it?" lurching
forward as she made a frantic clutch at the handle of the door. "Sit
down, do you hear me?--or it will be worse for you! There!"--the cold
bore of a revolver barrel touched her temple and wrung a quaking gasp of
terror from her--"Do you feel that? Now you sit down and be quiet! If
you make a single move, utter a single cry, I'll blow your brains out
before you've half finished it. Look here, do you know who you're
dealing with now? See!"

His hand reached up and twitched away the fair beard and moustache; he
bent forward so that the moonlight through the glass could fall on his
face. It had changed as his voice had now changed, and she saw that she
was looking at the man who in those other days of stress and trial had
posed as "Gaston Merode," brother to the fictitious "Countess de la
Tour."

"You!" she said in a bleak voice of desolation and fright. "Dear
heaven, that horrible Margot's confederate, the King of the Apaches!"

"Yes!" he rapped out. "You and that fellow Cleek came between us in one
promising game, but I'm hanged if you shall do it in this one! I want
this boy, and--I've got him. Now, you call off Cleek and tell him to
drop this case--to make no effort to follow us or to come between us and
the kid--or I'll slit your throat after I've done with his little
lordship here. Lanisterre!"--to the chauffeur--"Lanisterre, do you
hear?"

"_Oui, monsieur_."

"Give her her head--full speed--and get to the mill as fast as you can.
Margot will be with us in another two hours' time."




CHAPTER XXI


Through the ever-deepening dusk Cleek and Arjeeb Noosrut moved onward
together; and onward behind them moved, too, the same dilatory messenger
boy who had loitered about in the neighbourhood of the park, squandering
his halfpence now as then, leaving a small trail of winkle shells and
trotter bones to mark the record of his passage, and never seeming to
lose one iota of his appetite, eat as much and as often as he would.

The walk led down into the depths of Soho, that refuge of the foreign
element in London; but long before they halted at the narrow doorway of
a narrow house in a narrow side street--a street that seemed to have
gone to sleep in an atmosphere of gloom and smells--Cleek had adroitly
"pumped" Arjeeb Noosrut dry, and the riddle of the sacred son was a
riddle to him no longer. He was now only anxious to part from the man
and return with the news to Lady Chepstow, and was casting round in his
mind for some excuse to avoid going indoors with him and wasting
precious time in breaking bread and eating salt, when there lurched out
of an adjoining doorway an ungainly figure in turban and sandals and the
full flower of that grotesque regalia which passes muster at cheap
theatres and masquerade balls for the costume of a Cingalese. The fellow
had bent forward out of the deeper darkness of the house-passage into
the murk and gloom of the ill-lit street, and was straining his eyes as
if in search for someone long expected.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.