Book: Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces

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




"Dog of an infidel!" exclaimed Arjeeb Noosrut, speaking in Hindustani,
and spitting on the pavement as he caught sight of the man. "See,
well-beloved, he is of those 'others' of which I spoke when I first met
thee. There are many of them, but true believers none. They dwell in a
room huddled up as unclean things in the house there; they drink and
make merry far into the night, and a woman veiled and in European garb
comes to them and drinks with them sometimes--and sometimes a man of
her kind with her; and they speak a tongue that is not the tongue of our
people; yet have I seen them go forth into the city and do homage as we
to the sacred son."

Cleek sucked in his breath and, twitching round, stared at the dim
figure leaning forward in the dim light.

"By George!" he said to himself; "if I know anything, I ought to know
the slouch and the low-sunk head of the Apache! And the woman
comes!--And a man comes!--And there are five lacs of rupees! I wonder! I
wonder! But no--she wouldn't come here, to a place like this, if she had
ventured back into England and had called some of the band over to help.
She'd go to the old spot--to the old haunt where she and I used to lie
low and laugh whilst the police were hunting for me. She'd go there, I'm
sure, to the old Burnt Acre Mill, where, if you were 'stalked,' you
could open the sluice gates and let the Thames and the mill stream rush
in and meet, and make a hell of whirling waters that would drown a fish.
She would go there if it were she. And yet--it is an Apache: I swear it
is an Apache!"

He turned and looked back at Arjeeb Noosrut, then raised his hand and
brushed it down the back of his head, which was always the sign "Wait!"
to Dollops--and then spoke as calmly as he could.

"Brother, I will go in and break bread and eat salt with thee," he said.
"But I may do no more, for to-night I am in haste."

"Come then," the man answered; and taking him by the hand, led him in
and up to a room at the back of the second storey, where, hot as the
night was, the windows were closed and a woman squatted before a lighted
brasier, was dripping the contents of an oil cruse over the roasting
carcass of a young kid.

"It is to shut out the sounds of the vile infidel orgies from the house
adjoining," explained Arjeeb Noosrut, as Cleek walked to the tightly
closed window and leant his forehead against it. "Yet, if the heat
oppresses thee--"

"It does," interposed Cleek, and leant far out into the darkness as
though sucking in the air when the sash was raised and the thing which
had been only a dim babel of wordless sounds a moment before, became now
the riotous laughter and the ribald comments of men upon the verses of
a comic song which one of their number was joyously singing.

"French!" said Cleek under his breath, as he caught the notes of the
singer and the words of his audience--"French--I knew it!"

Then he drew in his head, and having broken of the bread and eaten of
the salt which, at a word from Arjeeb Noosrut, the woman brought on a
wicker tray and laid before them, he moved hastily to the door.

"Brother and son of the faithful, peace be with thee--I must go," he
said. "But I come again; and it is written that thou shalt be honoured
above all men when I return to thee, and that the true believers--the
true sons of Holy Buddha--shall have cause to set thy name at the head
of the records of those who are most blest of him!"

Then he salaamed and passed out; and, closing the door behind him, ran
like a hare down the narrow stairs. At the door Dollops rose up like the
imp in a pantomime and jumped toward him.

"Law, Gov'nor, I'm nigh starved a-waitin' for yer!" he said in a
whisper. "Wot's the lay now? A double-quick change? I've got the stuff
here, look!"--holding up the package he was carrying--"or a chance for
me to do some fly catchin' with me bloomin' tickle tootsies?"

The man in the Cingalese costume had vanished from the doorway of the
adjoining house, and, catching the boy by the arm, Cleek hurried him to
it and drew him into the dark passage.

"I'm going to the back; I'm going to climb up to the windows of the
second storey and see who's there and what's going on," he whispered.
"Lie low and watch. I think it's Margot's gang."

"Oh, colour me blue! Them beauties? And in London? I'd give a tanner for
a strong cup o' tea!"

"Sh-h-h! Be quiet--speak low. Don't be seen, but keep a close watch; and
if anybody comes downstairs--"

"He's mine!" interjected Dollops, stripping up his sleeves. "Glue to the
eyebrows and warranted to stick! Nip away, Gov'nor, and leave it to the
tickle tootsies and me!" Then, as Cleek moved swiftly and silently down
the passage and slipped out into a sort of yard at the back of the house,
he pulled out his roll of brown paper squares and his tube of adhesive,
and crawling upstairs on his hands and knees, began operations at the top
step. But he had barely got the first "plaster" fairly made and ready to
apply when there came a rush of footsteps behind him and he was obliged
to duck down and flatten himself against the floor of the landing to
escape being run down by a man who dashed in through the lower floor,
flew at top speed up the stairs, and, with a sort of blended cheer and
yell, whirled open a door on the landing above and vanished. In a
twinkling other cheers rang out, there was the sound of hastily moving
feet and the uproar of general excitement.

"Oh, well, if you won't stop to be waited on, gents, help yourselves!"
said Dollops with a chuckle. Then he began backing hastily down the
stairs, squirting the contents of the tube all over the steps, and
concluded the operation by scattering all the loose sheets of paper on
the floor at the foot of them before slipping out into the street and
composedly waiting.

Meantime Cleek, sneaking out through the rear door, found himself in a
small, brick-paved yard hemmed in by a high wall thickly fringed on the
top with a hedge of broken bottles. At one time in its history the house
had been occupied by a catgut maker, and the rickety shed in which he
had carried on his calling still clung, sagging and broken-roofed, to
the building itself, its rotten slates all but vanished, and its
interior piled high with mildewed bedding, mouldy old carpet, broken
furniture, and refuse of every sort.

A foot or two above the roof-level of this glowed--two luminous
rectangles in the blackness of darkness--the windows of the back room on
the second storey; and out of these came floating still the song, the
laughter, and the jabbered French he had heard in the house next door.
It did not take him long to make up his mind. Gripping the swaying
supports of the sagging shed, he went up it with the agility of a
monkey, crawled to the nearer of the two windows, and, cautiously
raising himself, peeped in. What he saw made him suck in his breath
sharply and sent his heart hammering hard and fast.

A dozen men were in the room--men whose faces, despite an inartistic
attempt to appear Oriental, he recognized at a glance and knew better
than he knew his own. About them lay discarded portions of Cingalese
attire, thrown off because of the heat, and waiting to be resumed at any
moment. The air was thick with tobacco smoke and rank with spirituous
odours. Sprawled figures were everywhere, and on a sort of couch against
the opposite wall, a cigarette between her fingers, a glass of absinthe
at her elbow, her laughter and badinage ringing out as loudly as any,
lay the lissom figure of Margot!

But even as Cleek looked in upon it the picture changed. Swift, sharp,
and sudden came the rattle of flying feet on the outer stairs. Margot
flung aside her cigarette and jumped up, the song and the laughter came
to an abrupt end, the door flew open, and with a shout and a cheer a man
bounced into the room.

"Serpice! Ah, _le bon Dieu!_ it is Serpice at last!" cried out Margot in
joyous excitement, as she and the others crowded round him. "Soul of a
sluggard, don't waste time in laughing and capering like this! Speak up,
speak up, you hear? Are we to fly at once to the mill and join him? Has
he succeeded? Is it done?"

"Yes, yes, yes!" shouted back Serpice, throwing up his cap and capering.
"It is done! It is done! Under the very nose of the cracksman, too!
Merode's got them--got them both! The little lordship and the
Mademoiselle Lorne, too! They took the bait like gudgeons; they stepped
into the automobile without a fear, and--whizz! it was off to the mill
like that! La, la, la! We win, we win, we win!"

The shock of the thing was too much for Cleek. Carried out of himself by
the knowledge that the woman he loved was now in peril of her life,
discretion forsook him, blind rage mastered him, and he did one of the
few foolish things of his life.

"You lie, you brute--you lie!" he shouted, jumping up into full view.
"God help the man who lays a hand on her! Let him keep his life from me
if he can!"

"The cracksman!" yelled out Serpice. "The cracksman! The cracksman!"
echoed Margot and the rest. Then a pistol barked and spat, the light
was swept out, a bullet sang past Cleek's ear, and he realised how
foolish he had been. For part of the crowd came surging to the window,
part went in one blind rush for the door to head him off and hem him in,
and, through the din and hubbub rang viciously the voice of Margot
shrilling out: "Kill him! Kill him!" as though nothing but the sight of
his blood would glut the malice of her.

It was neck or nothing now, and the race was to the swift. He dropped
through a gap in the ragged roof--sheer down, like a shot--into the
rubble and refuse below; he lurched through the shed to the door, and
through that to the black passage leading to the street--the clatter on
the higher staircase giving warning of the crowd coming after him--and
flew like a hare hard pressed toward the outer door, and then--just
then, when every little moment counted--there was a scrambling sound, a
chorus of oaths, a slipping, a sliding, a bang on one step and a bump on
another; and, as he darted by, and sprang out into the street, the hall
was filled with a writhing, scuffling, swearing mass of glue-covered men
struggling in a whirling waste of loose brown paper.

"This way! come quickly, for your life!" he shouted to Dollops, as he
came plunging out into the street. "They've got them--got his little
lordship! Got Miss Lorne--in spite of me. Come on! come on! come
on!"--and flew like an arrow from crossing to crossing and street to
street with Dollops, like a shadow, at his heels.

A sudden swerve to the right brought them into a lighted and populous
thoroughfare. Italian restaurants, German delicatessen shops, eating
places of a dozen other nationalities lined the pavements on both sides
of the street, and, in front of these a high-power motor stood,
protected by the watchful eye of an accommodating policeman while the
chauffeur sampled Chianti in a wine-shop close by. With a rush and a
leap Cleek was upon it, and with another rush and a leap the constable
was upon him, only to be greeted with the swift flicking open of a coat
and the gleam of a badge that every man in the force knew.

"Cleek?"

"Yes! In the name of The Yard; in the name of the king! get out of the
way! In with you, Dollops! We'll get the brutes yet!"

Then he bent over, threw in the clutch, and discarding all speed laws,
sent the car humming and tearing away.

"Hold tight!" he said, through his teeth. "Whatever comes, we've got to
get to Burnt Acre Mill inside of an hour. If you know any prayers,
Dollops, say them."

"The Lord fetch us home in time for supper!" gulped the boy obediently.
"S'help me, Gov'nor, the wind's goin' through my teeth like I was a
mouth organ--and I'm hollow enough for a flute!"




CHAPTER XXII


It is strange how, in moments of stress and trial, even in times of
tragedy, the most commonplace thoughts will intrude themselves and the
mind separate itself from the immediate events. As Merode put the cold
muzzle of the revolver to Ailsa's temple and she ought, one would have
supposed, to have been deaf and blind to all things but the horror of
her position, one of these strange mental lapses occurred, and her mind,
travelling back over the years of her early schooldays, dwelt on a
punishment task set her by her preceptress--the task of copying three
hundred times the phrase "Discretion is the better part of valour."

As the recollection of that time rose before her mental vision, the
value of the phrase itself forced its worth upon her and, huddling back
in the corner of the limousine, she clutched the frightened child to her
and gave implicit obedience to Merode's command to make no effort to
attract attention either by word or deed. And he, fancying that he had
thoroughly cowed her, withdrew the touch of the weapon from her temple,
but held it ready for possible use in the grip of his thin, strong hand.

For a time the limousine kept straight on in its headlong course, then,
of a sudden, it swerved to the left, the gleam of a river--all silver
with moonlight--struck up through a line of trees on one side of the
car, the blank unbroken dreariness of a stretch of waste land spread out
upon the other; and presently, by the slowing down of the motor, Ailsa
guessed that they were nearing their destination. They reached it a few
moments later, and a peep from the window, as the vehicle stopped,
showed her the outlines of a ruined watermill--ghostly, crumbling,
owl-haunted--looming black against the silver sky.

A crumbled wheel hung, rotten and moss-grown, over a dry water-course,
where straggling willows stretched out from the bank and trailed their
long, feathery ends a yard or so above the level of the weeds and
grasses that carpeted the sandy bed of it, and along its edge--once
built as a protection for the heedless or unwary, but now a ruin and a
wreck--a moss-grown wall with a narrow, gateless archway made an
irregular shadow on the moon-drenched earth. She saw that archway and
that dry water-course, and a new, strong hope arose within her.
Discretion had played its part; now it was time for Valour to take the
stage.

"Come, get out--this is the end," said Merode, as he unlatched the door
of the limousine and alighted. "You may yell here until your throat
splits, for all the good it will do you. Lanisterre, show us a light;
the path to the door is uncertain, and the floor of the mill is unsafe.
This way, if you please, Miss Lorne. Let me have the boy--I'll look
after him!"

"No, no!--not yet! Please, not yet!" said Ailsa, with a little catch in
her voice as she plucked his little lordship to her and smothered his
frightened cries against her breast. "Let me have him whilst I may--let
me hold him to--the last, Monsieur Merode. His mother trusts me. She
will want to know that I--I stood by him until I could stand no longer.
Please!--we are so helpless--I am so fond of him, and--he is such a very
little boy. Listen! You want me to write to Mr. Cleek; you want me to
ask something of him. I won't do it for myself--no, not if you kill me
for refusing. I'll never do it for myself; but--but I will do it if you
won't separate us until he has had time to say his prayers."

"Oh, all right, then," he agreed. "If it's any consolation doing a
fool's trick like that, why--do it! Now come along, and let's get inside
the mill without any more nonsense. Lanisterre, bring that lantern here
so that mademoiselle can see the path to the door. This way, if you
please, Miss Lorne."

"Thank you," she said as she alighted and moved slowly in the direction
of the door, soothing the child as they crept along almost within touch
of the crumbling wall. "Ceddie, darling, don't cry. You are a brave
little hero, I know, and heroes are never afraid to die." From the tail
of her eye she watched Merode. He seemed to realise from these words to
the child that she was reconciled to the inevitable, and with an air of
satisfaction he put the pistol back into his pocket and walked beside
her. She kept straight on with her soothing words; and, in the
half-shadow, neither Merode nor Lanisterre could see that one hand was
lost in the folds of her skirt.

"Ceddie, darling, let Miss Lorne be able to tell mummie that her little
man was a hero; that he died, as heroes always die, without a fear or a
weakening to the very last. I'll stand by you, precious; I'll hold your
hand; and, when the time comes--"

It came then! The gateless archway was reached at last; and the thing
she had been planning all along now became possible. With one sudden
push she sent the boy reeling down the incline into the dry
water-course, flashed round sharply, and before Merode really knew how
the thing happened, she was standing with her back to the arch and a
revolver in her levelled hand.

"Throw up your arms--throw them up at once, or, as God hears me, I'll
shoot!" she cried. "Run, Ceddie--run, baby! He shan't follow you--I'll
kill him if he tries!"

"You idiot!" began Merode, and made a lurch toward her. But the pistol
barked, and something white-hot zigzagged along his arm and bit like a
flame into his shoulder.

"Up with your hands--up with them!" she said in a voice that shook with
excitement as he howled out and made a reeling backward step. "Next time
it will be the head I aim at, not the arm!" Then, lifting up her voice
in one loud shriek that made the echoes bound, she called with all her
strength; "Help, somebody--for God's sake help! Scream, Ceddie--scream!
Help! Help!"

And lo! as she called, as if a miracle had been wrought, out of the
darkness an answering voice called back to her, and the wild, swift
notes of a motor horn bleated along the lonely road.

"I'm coming--I--Cleek!" that voice rang out. "Hold your own--hold it to
the last, Miss Lorne, and God help the man who lays a finger on you!"

"Mr. Cleek! Mr. Cleek, oh, thank God!" she flung back with all the
rapture a human voice could contain. "Come on, come on! I've got
him--got that man Merode, and the boy is safe, the boy is safe! Come on!
come on! come on!"

"We're a-comin', miss, you gamble on that--and the lightnin's a fool to
us!" shouted Dollops in reply. "Let her have it, Gov'nor! Bust the
bloomin' tank. Give her her head; give her her feet; give her her
blessed merry-thought if she wants it! Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!"

And then, just then, when she most needed her strength and her courage,
Ailsa's evaporated. The reaction came and with the despairing cries of
Merode and Lanisterre ringing in her ears, she sank back, weak, white,
almost fainting--and, leaning against the side of the archway, began to
laugh and to sob hysterically. Merode seized that one moment and sprang
to the breach.

Realising that the game was all but up, that there was nothing for him
now but to save his own skin if he could, he called out to Lanisterre to
follow him, then plunged into the mill, swung over the lever which
controlled the sluice gates, and, darting out by the back way, fled
across the waste.

But behind him he left a scene of indescribable horror, and the shrill
screaming of a little child told him when that horror began. For as the
sluice gates opened a sullen roar sounded; on one side the diverted
millstream, and on the other the river, rose as two solid walls of
water, rushed forward and--met; and in the twinkling of an eye the old
water-course was one wild, leaping, roaring, gyrating whirlpool of
up-flung froth and twisting waves that bore in their eddying clutch the
battling figure of a drowning child.

Even before he came in sight of it the roaring waters and the fearful
splash of their impact told Cleek what had been done. He could hear
Ailsa's screams; he could hear the boy's feeble cries, and a moment
later, when the whizzing motor panted up through the moonlight and sped
by the broken wall, there was Ailsa, fairly palsied with fright,
clinging weakly to the crumbling arch and uttering little sobbing,
wordless, incoherent moans of fright as she stared down into the hell of
waters; and below, in the foam, a little yellow head was spinning round
and round and round, in dizzying circles of torn and leaping waves.

"Heavens, Gov'nor!" began Dollops in a voice of appalling despair; but
before he could get beyond that, Cleek's coat was off, Cleek's body had
described a sort of semi-circle, and--the child was no longer alone in
the whirlpool!

Battling, struggling, fairly leaping, as a fish leaps in a torrent, one
moment half out of the water, the next wholly submerged, Cleek struck
from eddy to eddy, from circle to circle; until that little yellow head
was within reach, then put forth his hand and gripped it, pulled it to
him, and in another moment he was whirling round and round the
whirlpool's course with the child clutched to him and his wet, white
face gleaming wax-like over the angle of his shoulder.

They had not made the half of the first circle thus before Dollops had
leaped to the bending willows, had scrambled up the rough trunk of the
nearest of them, and, pushing his weight out upon a strong and supple
bough, bent it downward until the half of its strongest withes were deep
in the whirling waters.

"Grab 'em, Gov'nor--grab 'em when you come by!" he sang out over the
roar of the waters. "They'll hold you, sir--hold a dozen like you; and
if--Well played! Got 'em the first grab! Hang on! Get a tight grip!
Now then, sir, hand over hand till you're at the bank! Good biz! Good
biz! Blest if you won't be goin' in for the circus trade next! Steady
does it, sir--steady, steady! Goal, by Jupiter! Now then, hand me up the
nipper--I should say the young gent--and in two minutes' time--Right!
Got him! 'Ere you are, Miss Lorne--lay hold of his little lordship, will
you? I've got me blessed hands full a keepin' to me perch whilst the
guv'nor's a-wobbling of the branch like this. Good biz! Now then, sir,
another 'arf a yard. That's the call! Hands on this bough and foot on
the bank there. One, two, three--knew you'd do it! Safe as houses, Gawd
bless yer bully heart!"

And then as Cleek, wet, white, panting, dragged himself out of the
clutch of the whirlpool and lay breathing heavily on the ground:

"By gums, Gov'nor," Dollops added as he looked down on the whirling
waters, "what an egg-beater it would make, wouldn't it, sir? Ain't got
such a thing as a biscuit about yer, have you? Me spine's a rasping
holes in me necktie, and I'm so flat you could slip me into a pillar
box and they'd take me home for a penny stamp."

But Cleek made no reply. Wet and spent after his fierce struggle with
the whirling fury he had just escaped, he lay looking up into Ailsa's
eyes as she came to him with the sobbing child close pressed to her
bosom and all heaven in her beaming face.

"It is not the 'funeral wreath' after all, you see, Miss Lorne," he
said. "It came near to being it; but--it is not, it is not. I wonder,
oh, I wonder!"

Then he laughed the foolish, vacuous laugh of a man whose thoughts are
too happy for the banality of words.




CHAPTER XXIII


It was midnight and after. In the close-curtained library of Chepstow
House, Cleek, with his little lordship sleeping in his arms, sat in
solemn conclave with Lady Chepstow, Captain Hawksley, and Maverick
Narkom; and while they talked, Ailsa, like a restless spirit, wandered
to and fro, now lifting the curtains to peep out into the darkness, now
listening as if her whole life's hope lay in the coming of some expected
sound. And in her veins there burned a fever of suspense.

"So you failed to get the rascals, did you, Mr. Narkom?" Cleek was
saying. "I feared as much; but I couldn't get word to you sooner. We
injured the machine in that mad race to the mill, and of course we had
to come at a snail's pace afterwards. I'm sorry we didn't get
Margot--sorrier still that that hound Merode got away. They are bound to
make more trouble before the race is run. Not for her ladyship, however,
and not for this dear little chap. Their troubles are at an end, and the
sacred son will be a sacred son no longer."

"Oh, Mr. Cleek, do tell me what you mean," implored Lady Chepstow. "Do
tell me how--"

"Doctor Fordyce, at last!" struck in Ailsa excitedly, as the door-bell
and knocker clashed and the butler's swift footsteps went along the
hall. "Now we shall know, Mr. Cleek--oh, now we shall know for certain!"

"And so shall all the world," he replied as the door opened and the
doctor was ushered into the room. "I don't think you were ever so
welcome anywhere or at any time before, doctor," he added with a smile.
"Come and look at this little chap. Bonny little specimen of a
Britisher, isn't he?"

"Yes; but my dear sir, I--I was under the impression that I was called
to a scene of excitement; and you seem as peaceful as Eden here. The
constable who came for me said it was something to do with Scotland
Yard."

"So it is, doctor. I had Mr. Narkom send for you to perform a very
trifling but most important operation upon his little lordship here."

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