Book: Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces

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




With that, he suavely bowed his visitors out and rang up the pick of his
men without an instant's delay.

Promptly at nine o'clock he arrived, as he had promised, at Wyvern
House, and was shown into Sir Horace's consulting-room, where Sir Horace
himself and Miss Lorne were awaiting him, and keeping close watch before
the locked door of a communicating apartment in which sat the six men
who had preceded him. He went in and put them all and severally through
a rigid examination--pulling their hair and beards, rubbing their faces
with a clean handkerchief in quest of any trace of "make-up" or disguise
of any sort, examining their badges and the marks on the handcuffs they
carried with them to make sure that they bore the sign which he himself
had scratched upon them in the privacy of his own room a couple of hours
ago.

"No mistake about this lot," he announced, with a smile. "Has anybody
else entered or attempted to enter the house?"

"Not a soul," replied Miss Lorne. "I didn't trust anybody to do the
watching, Mr. Narkom--I watched myself."

"Good. Where are the jewels? In that safe?"

"No," replied Sir Horace. "They are to be exhibited in the
picture-gallery for the benefit of the guests at the wedding breakfast
to-morrow, and as Miss Wyvern wished to superintend the arrangement of
them herself, and there would be no time for that in the morning, she
and her sister are in there laying them out at this moment. As I could
not prevent that without telling them what we have to dread, I did not
protest against it; but if you think it will be safer to return them to
the safe after my daughters have gone to bed, Mr. Narkom--"

"Not at all necessary. If our man gets in, their lying there in full
view like that will prove a tempting bait, and--well, he'll find there's
a hook behind it. I shall be there waiting for him. Now go and join the
ladies, you and Miss Lorne, and act as though nothing out of the common
was in the wind. My men and I will stop here, and you had better put out
the light and lock us in, so that there may be no danger of anybody
finding out that we are here. No doubt Miss Wyvern and her sister will
go to bed earlier than usual on this particular occasion. Let them do
so. Send the servants to bed, too. You and Miss Lorne go to your beds at
the same time as the others--or, at least, let them think that you have
done so; then come down and let us out."

To this Sir Horace assented, and, taking Miss Lorne with him, went at
once to the picture-gallery and joined his daughters, with whom they
remained until eleven o'clock. Promptly at that hour, however, the house
was locked up, the bride-elect and her sister went to bed--the servants
having already gone to theirs--and stillness settled down over the
darkened house. At the end of a dozen minutes, however, it was faintly
disturbed by the sound of slippered feet coming along the passage
outside the consulting-room, then a key slipped into the lock, the door
was opened, the light switched on, and Sir Horace and Miss Lorne
appeared before the eager watchers.

"Now, then, lively, my men--look sharp!" whispered Narkom. "A man to
each window and each staircase, so that nobody may go up or down or in
or out without dropping into the arms of one of you. Confine your
attention to this particular floor, and if you hear anybody coming, lay
low until he's within reach, and you can drop on him before he bolts. Is
this the door of the picture-gallery, Sir Horace?"

"Yes," answered Sir Horace, as he fitted a key to the lock. "But surely
you will need more men than you have brought, Mr. Narkom, if it is your
intention to guard every window individually, for there are four to this
room--see!"

With that he swung open the door, switched on the electric light, and
Narkom fairly blinked at the dazzling sight that confronted him. Three
long tables, laden with crystal and silver, cut glass and jewels, and
running the full length of the room, flashed and scintillated under the
glare of the electric bulbs which encircled the cornice of the gallery,
and clustered in luminous splendour in the crystal and frosted silver of
a huge central chandelier, and spread out on the middle one of these--a
dazzle of splintered rainbows, a very plain of living light--lay caskets
and cases, boxes and trays, containing those royal gifts of which the
newspapers had made so much and the Vanishing Cracksman had sworn to
make so few.

Mr. Narkom went over and stood beside the glittering mass, resting his
hand against the table and feasting his eyes upon all that opulent
splendour.

"God bless my soul! it's superb, it's amazing," he commented. "No wonder
the fellow is willing to take risks for a prize like this. You are a
splendid temptation; a gorgeous bait, you beauties; but the fish that
snaps at you will find that there's a nasty hook underneath in the shape
of Maverick Narkom. Never mind the many windows, Sir Horace. Let him
come in by them, if that's his plan. I'll never leave these things for
one instant between now and the morning. Good night, Miss Lorne. Go to
bed and to sleep--you do the same, Sir Horace. My lay is here!"

With that he stooped and, lifting the long drapery which covered the
table and swept down in heavy folds to the floor, crept out of sight
under it, and let it drop back into place again.

"Switch off the light and go," he called to them in a low-sunk voice.
"Don't worry yourselves, either of you. Go to bed, and to sleep if you
can."

"As if we could," answered Miss Lorne agitatedly. "I shan't be able to
close an eyelid. I'll try, of course, but I know I shall not succeed.
Come, uncle, come! Oh, do be careful, Mr. Narkom; and if that horrible
man does come--"

"I'll have him, so help me God!" he vowed. "Switch off the light, and
shut the door as you go out. This is 'Forty Faces'' Waterloo at last."

And in another moment the light snicked out, the door closed, and he was
alone in the silent room.

For ten or a dozen minutes not even the bare suggestion of a noise
disturbed the absolute stillness; then of a sudden, his trained ear
caught a faint sound that made him suck in his breath and rise on his
elbow, the better to listen--a sound which came, not without the house,
but from within, from the dark hall where he had stationed his men, to
be exact. As he listened he was conscious that some living creature had
approached the door, touched the handle, and by the swift, low rustle
and the sound of hard breathing, that it had been pounced upon and
seized. He scrambled out from beneath the table, snicked on the light,
whirled open the door, and was in time to hear the irritable voice of
Sir Horace say, testily: "Don't make an ass of yourself by your
over-zealousness. I've only come down to have a word with Mr. Narkom,"
and to see him standing on the threshold, grotesque in a baggy suit of
striped pyjamas, with one wrist enclosed as in a steel band by the
gripped fingers of Petrie.

"Why didn't you say it was you, sir?" exclaimed that crestfallen
individual, as the flashing light made manifest his mistake. "When I
heard you first, and see you come up out of that back passage, I made
sure it was him; and if you'd a struggled, I'd have bashed your head as
sure as eggs."

"Thank you for nothing," he responded testily. "You might have
remembered, however, that the man's first got to get into the place
before he can come downstairs. Mr. Narkom," turning to the
superintendent, "I was just getting into bed when I thought of something
I'd neglected to tell you; and as my niece is sitting in her room with
the door open, and I wasn't anxious to parade myself before her in my
night clothes, I came down by the back staircase. I don't know how in
the world I came to overlook it, but I think you ought to know that
there's a way of getting into the picture gallery without using either
the windows or the stairs, and that way ought to be both searched and
guarded."

"Where is it? What is it? Why in the world didn't you tell me in the
first place?" exclaimed Narkom irritably, as he glanced round the place
searchingly. "Is it a panel? a secret door? or what? This is an old
house, and old houses are sometimes a very nest of such things."

"Happily, this one isn't. It's a modern innovation, not an ancient
relic, that offers the means of entrance in this case. A Yankee occupied
this house before I bought it from him--one of those blessed shivery
individuals his country breeds, who can't stand a breath of cold air
indoors after the passing of the autumn. The wretched man put one of
those wretched American inflictions, a hot-air furnace, in the cellar,
with huge pipes running to every room in the house--great tin
monstrosities bigger round than a man's body, ending in openings in the
wall, with what they call 'registers,' to let the heat in, or shut it
out as they please. I didn't have the wretched contrivance removed or
those blessed 'registers' plastered up. I simply had them papered over
when the rooms were done up (there's one over there near that settee),
and if a man got into this house, he could get into that furnace thing
and hide in one of those flues until he got ready to crawl up it as
easily as not. It struck me that perhaps it would be as well for you to
examine that furnace and those flues before matters go any further."

"Of course it would. Great Scott! Sir Horace, why didn't you think to
tell me of this thing before?" said Narkom, excitedly. "The fellow may
be in it at this minute. Come, show me the wretched thing."

"It's below--in the cellar. We shall have to go down the kitchen stairs,
and I haven't a light."

"Here's one," said Petrie, unhitching a bull's-eye from his belt and
putting it into Narkom's hand. "Better go with Sir Horace at once, sir.
Leave the door of the gallery open and the light on. Fish and me will
stand guard over the stuff till you come back, so in case the man is in
one of them flues and tries to bolt out at this end, we can nab him
before he can get to the windows."

"A good idea," commented Narkom. "Come on, Sir Horace. Is this the way?"

"Yes, but you'll have to tread carefully, and mind you don't fall over
anything. A good deal of my paraphernalia--bottles, retorts and the
like--is stored in the little recess at the foot of the staircase, and
my assistant is careless and leaves things lying about."

Evidently the caution was necessary, for a minute or so after they had
passed on and disappeared behind the door leading to the kitchen
stairway, Petrie and his colleagues heard a sound as of something being
overturned and smashed, and laughed softly to themselves. Evidently,
too, the danger of the furnace had been grossly exaggerated by Sir
Horace, for when, a few minutes later, the door opened and closed, and
Narkom's men, glancing toward it, saw the figure of their chief
reappear, it was plain that he was in no good temper, since his features
were knotted up into a scowl, and he swore audibly as he snapped the
shutter over the bull's-eye and handed it back to Petrie.

"Nothing worth looking into, superintendent?"

"No--not a thing!" he replied. "The silly old josser! pulling me down
there amongst the coals and rubbish for an insane idea like that! Why,
the flues wouldn't admit the passage of a child; and even then, there's
a bend--an abrupt 'elbow'--that nothing but a cat could crawl up. And
that's a man who's an authority on the human brain! I sent the old silly
back to bed by the way he came, and if--"

There he stopped, stopped short, and sucked in his breath with a sharp,
wheezing sound. For, of a sudden, a swift pattering footfall and a
glimmer of moving light had sprung into being and drawn his eyes upward;
and there, overhead, was Miss Lome coming down the stairs from the upper
floor in a state of nervous excitement, and with a bedroom candle in her
shaking hand, a loose gown flung on over her nightdress, and her hair
streaming over her shoulders in glorious disarray.

He stood and looked at her, with ever-quickening breath, with
ever-widening eyes, as though the beauty of her had wakened some dormant
sense whose existence he had never suspected; as though, until now, he
had never known how fair it was possible for a woman to be, how fair,
how lovable, how much to be desired; and whilst he was so looking she
reached the foot of the staircase and came pantingly toward him.

"Oh, Mr. Narkom, what was it--that noise I heard?" she said in a tone of
deepest agitation. "It sounded like a struggle--like the noise of
something breaking--and I dressed as hastily as I could and came down.
Did he come? Has he been here? Have you caught him? Oh! why don't you
answer me, instead of staring at me like this? Can't you see how
nervous, how frightened, I am? Dear Heaven! will no one tell me what has
happened?"

"Nothing has happened, miss," answered Petrie, catching her eye as she
flashed round on him. "You'd better go back to bed. Nobody's been here
but Sir Horace. The noise you heard was me a-grabbing of him, and he and
Mr. Narkom a-tumbling over something as they went down to look at the
furnace."

"Furnace? What furnace? What are you talking about?" she cried
agitatedly. "What do you mean by saying that Sir Horace came down?"

"Only what the superintendent himself will tell you, miss, if you ask
him. Sir Horace came downstairs in his pyjamas a few minutes ago to say
as he'd recollected about the flues of the furnace in the cellar being
big enough to hold a man, and then him and Mr. Narkom went below to have
a look at it."

She gave a sharp and sudden cry, and her face went as pale as a dead
face.

"Sir Horace came down?" she repeated, moving back a step and leaning
heavily against the bannister. "Sir Horace came down to look at the
furnace? We have no furnace!"

"What!"

"We have no furnace, I tell you, and Sir Horace did not come down. He is
up there still. I know--I know, I tell you--because I feared for his
safety, and when he went to his room I locked him in!"

"Superintendent!" The word was voiced by every man present, and six
pairs of eyes turned toward Narkom with a look of despairing
comprehension.

"Get to the cellar. Head the man off! It's he--the Cracksman!" he
shouted out. "Find him! Get him! Nab him, if you have to turn the house
upside down!"

They needed no second bidding, for each man grasped the situation
instantly, and in a twinkling there was a veritable pandemonium.
Shouting and scrambling like a band of madmen, they lurched to the door,
whirled it open, and went flying down the staircase to the kitchen and
so to a discovery which none might have foreseen. For, almost as they
entered they saw lying on the floor a suit of striped pyjamas, and close
to it, gagged, bound, helpless, trussed up like a goose that was ready
for the oven, gyves on his wrists, gyves on his ankles, their chief,
their superintendent, Mr. Maverick Narkom, in a state of collapse, and
with all his outer clothing gone!

"After him! After that devil, and a thousand pounds to the man that gets
him!" he managed to gasp as they rushed to him and ripped loose the gag.
"He was here when we came! He has been in the house for hours. Get him!
get him! get him!"

They surged from the room and up the stairs like a pack of stampeded
animals; they raced through the hall and bore down on the
picture-gallery in a body, and, whirling open the now closed door, went
tumbling headlong in.

The light was still burning. At the far end of the room a window was
wide open, and the curtains of it fluttered in the wind. A collection of
empty cases and caskets lay on the middle table, but man and jewels were
alike gone! Once again the Vanishing Cracksman had lived up to his
promise, up to his reputation, up to the very letter of his name, and
for all Mr. Maverick Narkom's care and shrewdness, "Forty Faces" had
"turned the trick" and Scotland Yard was "done!"




III


Through all the night its best men sought him, its dragnets fished for
him, its tentacles groped into every hole and corner of London in quest
of him, but sought and fished and groped in vain. They might as well
have hoped to find last summer's partridges or last winter's snow as any
trace of him. He had vanished as mysteriously as he had appeared, and no
royal jewels graced the display of Miss Wyvern's wedding gifts on the
morrow.

But it was fruitful of other "gifts," fruitful of an even greater
surprise, that "morrow." For the first time since the day he had given
his promise, no "souvenir" from "The Man Who Called Himself Hamilton
Cleek," no part of last night's loot came to Scotland Yard; and it was
while the evening papers were making screaming "copy" and glaring
headlines out of this that the surprise in question came to pass.

Miss Wyvern's wedding was over, the day and the bride had gone, and it
was half-past ten at night, when Sir Horace, answering a hurry call from
headquarters, drove post haste to Superintendent Narkom's private room,
and passing in under a red and green lamp which burned over the doorway,
entered and met that "surprise."

Maverick Narkom was there alone, standing beside his desk, with the
curtains of his window drawn and pinned together, and at his elbow an
unlighted lamp of violet-coloured glass, standing and looking
thoughtfully down at something which lay before him. He turned as his
visitor entered and made an open-handed gesture toward it.

"Look here," he said laconically, "what do you think of this?"

Sir Horace moved forward and looked; then stopped and gave a sort of
wondering cry. The electric bulbs overhead struck a glare of light down
on the surface of the desk, and there, spread out on the shining oak,
lay a part of the royal jewels that had been stolen from Wyvern House
last night.

"Narkom! You got him, then--got him after all?"

"No, I did not get him. I doubt if any man could, if he chose not to be
found," said Narkom bitterly. "I did not recover these jewels by any act
of my own. He sent them to me; gave them up voluntarily."

"Gave them up? After he had risked so much to get them? God bless my
soul, what a man! Why, there must be quite half here of what he took."

"There is half--an even half. He sent them to-night, and with them this
letter. Look at it, and you will understand why I sent for you and asked
you to come alone."

"There's some good in even the devil, I suppose, if one but knows how to
reach it and stir it up," Sir Horace read. "I have lived a life of crime
from my very boyhood because I couldn't help it, because it appealed to
me, because I glory in risks and revel in dangers. I never knew where it
would lead me--I never thought, never cared--but I looked into the
gateway of heaven last night, and I can't go down the path to hell any
longer. Here is an even half of Miss Wyvern's jewels. If you and her
father would have me hand over the other half to you, and would have
'The Vanishing Cracksman' disappear forever, and a useless life
converted into a useful one, you have only to say so to make it an
accomplished thing. All I ask in return is your word of honour (to be
given to me by signal) that you will send for Sir Horace Wyvern to be at
your office at eleven o'clock to-night, and that you and he will grant
me a private interview unknown to any other living being. A red and
green lantern hung over the doorway leading to your office will be the
signal that you agree, and a violet light in your window will be the
pledge of Sir Horace Wyvern. When these two signals, these two pledges,
are given, I shall come in and hand over the remainder of the jewels,
and you will have looked for the first time in your life upon the real
face of 'The Man Who Calls Himself Hamilton Cleek.'"

"God bless my soul! What an amazing creature--what an astounding
request!" exclaimed Sir Horace, as he laid the letter down. "Willing to
give up L20,000 worth of jewels for the mere sake of a private
interview! What on earth can be his object? And why should he include
me?"

"I don't know," said Narkom in reply. "It's worth something, at all
events, to be rid of 'The Vanishing Cracksman' for good and all; and he
says that it rests with us to do that. It's close to eleven now. Shall
we give him the pledge he asks, Sir Horace? My signal is already hung
out; shall we agree to the conditions and give him yours?"

"Yes, yes, by all means," Sir Horace made answer. And lighting the
violet lamp, Narkom flicked open the pinned curtains and set it in the
window.

For ten minutes nothing came of it, and the two men, talking in whispers
while they waited, began to grow nervous. Then somewhere in the distance
a clock started striking eleven, and without so much as a warning sound,
the door flashed open, flashed shut again, a voice that was undeniably
the voice of breeding and refinement said quietly: "Gentlemen, my
compliments. Here are the diamonds and here am I!" and the figure of a
man, faultlessly dressed, faultlessly mannered, with the slim-loined
form, the slim-walled nose, and the clear-cut features of the born
aristocrat, stood in the room.

His age might lie anywhere between twenty-five and thirty-five, his eyes
were straight-looking and clear, his fresh, clean-shaven face was
undeniably handsome, and, whatever his origin, whatever his history,
there was something about him, in look, in speech, in bearing, that
mutely stood sponsor for the thing called "birth."

"God bless my soul!" exclaimed Sir Horace, amazed and appalled to find
the reality so widely different from the image he had drawn. "What
monstrous juggle is this? Why, man alive, you're a gentleman! Who are
you? What's driven you to a dog's life like this?"

"A natural bent, perhaps; a supernatural gift, certainly, Sir Horace,"
he made reply. "Look here! Could any man resist the temptation to use it
when he was endowed by Nature with the power to do this?" His features
seemed to writhe and knot and assume in as many moments a dozen
different aspects. "I've had the knack of doing that since the hour I
could breathe. Could any man 'go straight' with a fateful gift like that
if the laws of Nature said that he should not?"

"And do they say that?"

"That's what I want you to tell me--that's why I have requested this
interview. I want you to examine me, Sir Horace, to put me through those
tests you use to determine the state of mind of the mentally fit and
mentally unfit; I want to know if it is my fault that I am what I am,
and if it is myself I have to fight in future, or the devil that lives
within me. I'm tired of wallowing in the mire. A woman's eyes have lit
the way to heaven for me. I want to climb up to her, to win her, to be
worthy of her, and to stand beside her in the light."

"Her? What 'her'?"

"That's my business, Mr. Narkom, and I'll take no man into my confidence
regarding that."

"Yes, my friend, but 'Margot'--how about her?"

"I'm done with her! We broke last night, when I returned and she
learned--never mind what she learned! I'm done with her--done with the
lot of them. My life is changed forever."

"In the name of Heaven, man, who and what are you?"

"Cleek--just Cleek; let it go at that," he made reply. "Whether it's my
name or not is no man's business; who I am, what I am, whence I came, is
no man's business either. Cleek will do--Cleek of the Forty Faces. Never
mind the past; my fight is with the future, and so--examine me, Sir
Horace, and let me know if I or Fate's to blame for what I am."

Sir Horace did.

"Absolutely Fate," he said, when, after a long examination, the man put
the question to him again. "It is the criminal brain fully developed,
horribly pronounced. God help you, my poor fellow; but a man simply
could not be other than a thief and a criminal with an organ like that.
There's no hope for you to escape your natural bent except by death. You
can't be honest. You can't rise--you never will rise; it's useless to
fight against it!"

"I will fight against it! I will rise! I will! I will! I will!" he cried
out vehemently. "There is a way to put such craft and cunning to
account; a way to fight the devil with his own weapons and crush him
under the weight of his own gifts, and that way I'll take!"

"Mr. Narkom"--he whirled and walked toward the superintendent, his hand
outstretched, his eager face aglow--"Mr. Narkom, help me! Take me under
your wing. Give me a start--give me a chance--give me a lift on the way
up!"

"Good heaven, man, you--you don't mean--?"

"I do--I do! So help me heaven, I do. All my life I've fought against
the law--now let me switch over and fight with it. I'm tired of being
Cleek, the thief; Cleek, the burglar. Make me Cleek, the detective, and
let us work together, hand in hand, for a common cause and for the
public good. Will you, Mr. Narkom? Will you?"

"Will I? Won't I!" said Narkom, springing forward and gripping his hand.
"Jove! what a detective you will make. Bully boy! Bully boy!"

"It's a compact, then?"

"It's a compact--Cleek."

"Thank you," he said in a choked voice. "You've given me my chance; now
watch me live up to it. The Vanishing Cracksman has vanished forever,
Mr. Narkom, and it's Cleek, the detective--Cleek of the Forty Faces from
this time on. Now, give me your riddles--I'll solve them one by one."

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