Book: Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces

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




"Still she must have both with her, otherwise she could not carry out
her threat. No doubt she suspects what motive you had in taking her into
your own house, Count--a woman like that is no fool. But tell me, does
she show no anxiety, no fear of a search?"

"None, monsieur. She knows that my people search her effects; indeed,
she has told me so. But it alarms her not a whit. As she told me two
days ago, I shall find nothing; but if I did it would be useless, for,
on the moment anything of hers was touched, her servants would see that
the finder never carried it from the house."

"Oho!" said Cleek, with a strong rising inflection. "A little searching
party of her own, eh? The lady is clever, at all events. The moment
either pearl or letter should be removed from its hiding-place her
servants would allow nobody to leave the house without being searched to
the very skin?"

"Yes, monsieur. So if by any chance you were to discover either--"

"My friend, set your mind at rest," interposed Cleek. "If I find either,
or both, they will leave the house with me, I promise you. Mr. Narkom--"
he turned to the superintendent--"keep an eye on Dollops for me, will
you? There are reasons why I can't take him--can't take anybody--with me
in the working out of this case. I may be a couple of days or I may be a
week--I can't say as yet; but I start with Count Irma for Mauravania in
the morning. And, Mr. Narkom!"

"Yes, old chap?"

"Do me a favour, please. Be at Charing Cross station when the first
boat-train leaves to-morrow morning, will you, and bring me a small pot
of extract of beef--a very small pot, the smallest they make--not bigger
than a shilling nor thicker than one if they make them that size. What's
that? Hide the pearl in it? What nonsense! I don't want one half big
enough for that. Besides, they'd be sure to find it when they searched
me if I tried any such fool's trick as that. Dollops isn't the only
creature in the world that gets hungry, my friend, and beef extract is
very sustaining, very, I assure you, sir."




II


"A beautiful city, Count--an exceedingly beautiful city," said Cleek, as
the carriage which had been sent to meet them at the station rolled into
the broad Avenue des Arcs, which is at once the widest and most ornate
thoroughfare the capital city of Mauravania boasts. "Ah, what a
heritage! No wonder King Ulric is so anxious to retain his sovereignty;
no wonder this--er--Madame Tcharnovetski, I think you said the name
is--"

"Yes, monsieur. It is oddly spelled, but it is pronounced a little
broader than you give it--quite as though it were written
Shar-no-vet-skee, in fact, with the accent on the third syllable."

"Ah, yes. Thanks very much. No wonder she is anxious to become a power
here. Mauravania is a fairyland in very truth; and this beautiful avenue
with its arches, its splendid trees, its sculpture, its--Ah! _cocher_,
pull up at once. Stop, if you please, stop!"

"Oui, monsieur," replied the driver, reining in his horses and glancing
round. "_Dix mille pardons, M'sieur_, there is something amiss?"

"Yes; very much amiss--from the dog's point of view," replied Cleek,
indicating by a wave of the hand a mongrel puppy which crouched, forlorn
and hungry, in the shadow of an imposing building. "He should be a
Socialist among dogs, that little fellow, Count. The mere accident of
birth has made him what he is, and that poodled monstrosity the lady
yonder is leading the pet and pride of a thoughtless mistress. I want
that little canine outcast, Count, and with your permission I will
appropriate him, and give him his first carriage ride." With that, he
stepped down from the vehicle, whistled the cur to him, and taking it up
in his arms, returned with it to his seat.

"Monsieur, you are to me the most astonishing of men," said the Count,
noticing how he patted the puppy and settled it in his lap as the
carriage resumed its even rolling down the broad, beautiful avenue. "One
moment upholding the rights of birth, the next rebelling against the
injustice of it. Are your sympathies with the unfortunate so keen,
monsieur, that even this stray cur may claim them?"

"Perhaps," replied Cleek enigmatically. "You must wait and see, Count.
Just now I pity him for his forlornity; to-morrow--next day--a week
hence--I may hold it a better course to put an end to his hopeless lot
by chloroforming him into a painless and peaceful death."

"Monsieur, I cannot follow you--you speak in riddles."

"I deal in riddles, Count; you must wait for the solution of them, I'm
afraid."

"I wish I could grasp the solution of one which puzzles me a great deal,
monsieur. What is it that has happened to your countenance? You have
done nothing to put on a disguise; yet, since we left the train and
entered the landau, some subtle change has occurred. What is it? How has
it come about? The night before last, when I saw you for the first
time, your face was one that impressed me with a sense of
familiarity--now, monsieur, you are like a different man."

"I am a different man, Count. Like puppy, here, I am a waif and a stray;
yet, at the same time, I have my purpose and am part of a carefully-laid
scheme."

The Count made no reply. He could not comprehend the man at all, and at
times--but for the world-wide reputation of him--he would have believed
him insane. Not a question as to the great and important case he was on,
but merely incomprehensible remarks, trifling fancies, apparently
aimless whims! Two nights ago a pot of beef extract; to-day a mongrel
puppy; and all the time the hopes of a kingdom, the future of a monarch
resting in his hands!

For twenty minutes longer the landau rolled on; then it came to a halt
under the broad _porte cochere_ of the Villa Irma, and two minutes after
that Cleek and the Count stood in the presence of Madame Tcharnovetski,
her purblind associate, and her retinue of servant-guards.

A handsome woman, this madame, a woman of about two-and-thirty, with the
tar-black eyes and the twilight coloured tresses of Northern Russia;
bold as brass, flippant as a French cocotte, steel-nerved and
calm-blooded as a professional gambler. It had been her whim that all
the women of the Count's family should be banished from the house during
her stay; that the great salon of the villa--a wondrous apartment, hung
in blue and silver, and lit by a huge crystal chandelier--should be put
at her disposal night and day; that the electric lights should be
replaced with dozens of wax candles (after the manner of the ballrooms
of her native Russia), and that her one-eyed companion, with his wicker
cage of screeching parakeets, should come and go when and where and how
he listed, and that an electric alarm bell be connected with her
sleeping apartment and his.

"Your hirelings will tamper with his birds and his effects in the
night--I know that, Monsieur le Comte," she had said when she demanded
this. "He is a nervous fellow, this poor Clopin; I wish him to be able
to ring for help if you and your men go too far."

Clopin was sitting by the window chattering to his birds when Cleek
entered, and a glance at him was sufficient to decide two points: first,
he was not disguised, nor was his partial blindness in any way a sham,
for an idiot could have seen that the droop of the left eyelid over the
staring, palpably artificial eye which glazed over the empty socket
beneath was due to perfectly natural causes; and, second, that the man
was indeed what the Count had said he resembled, namely, a gutter-bred
outcast.

"French!" was Cleek's silent comment upon him. "One of those charlatans
who infest the streets of Paris with their so-called 'fortune-telling
birds,' who, for ten centimes, pick out an envelope with their beaks as
a means of telling you what the future is supposed to hold. What has
made a woman like this pick up a fellow of his stamp? Hum-m-m! Puppy, I
think you are a good move," stroking the ears of the mongrel dog; "a
very much better move than a cage of useless parakeets that are meant to
throw suspicion in the wrong direction and have a seed-cup so large and
so obviously overfilled that it is safe to say there is nothing hidden
in it and never has been! And madame has a fancy for waxlights," his
gaze travelling upward to the glittering chandelier. "Hum-m-m! How well
they know, these women whose beauty is going off, that waxlights show
less of Time's ravages than gas or electricity. Candles in the
chandelier; candles in the sconces, candles on the mantelpieces. This
room should be very charming when it is lighted at night."

It was--as he learned later. Just now things not quite so charming
filled the bill, for madame was jeering at him in a manner not to be
understood.

"A police spy--that is what you are, monsieur!" she said, coming up to
him and impudently snapping her fingers under his nose. "Such a fool,
this white-headed old dotard of a Count, to think that he can take me in
with a silly yarn about going to visit a nephew and bringing him back
here to stay. Monsieur, you are a police spy. Well, good luck to you.
Get what the Mauravanian king wants, if--you--can!"

"Madame," replied Cleek, with a deeply deferential bow and with an
accent that seemed born of Paris, "madame, that is what I mean to do, I
assure you."

"Ah, do you?" she answered, with a scream of laughter. "You hear that,
Clopin? You hear that, my good servitors? This silly French noodle is
going to get the things in spite of us. Oho, but you have a fine opinion
of yourself, monsieur. You need work fast, too, pretty boaster, I can
tell you. For the royal jewellers will require the Rainbow Pearl very
soon to fix it in its place in the crown for the coronation ceremony,
and if that thing his Majesty holds is offered to them, how long, think
you, will it be before all Mauravania knows that it is an imitation?
Look you," waxing suddenly vicious, "I'll make it shorter still, the
time you have to strive. Monsieur le Comte, take this message to his
Majesty from me: If in three days he does not promise to accede to my
demands and give me a public proof of it over his royal seal, I leave
Mauravania--the pearl and letter leave with me, and they shall not come
back until I return with them for the coronation."

"For the love of God, madame," said the Count, "don't make it harder
still. Oh, wait, wait, I beseech you!"

"Not an hour longer than I have now said!" she flung back at him. "I
have waited until I am tired of it, and my patience is worn out. Three
days, Count; three days, monsieur with the puppy dog; three days, and
not an instant longer, do you hear?"

"Quite enough, madame," replied Cleek, with a courtly bow, "I promise to
have them in two!"

She threw back her head and fairly shook with laughter.

"Of a truth, monsieur, you are a candid boaster!" she cried. "Look you,
my good fellows, and you too, my poor dumb Clopin, pretty monsieur here
will have the letter and the pearl in two days' time. Look to it that he
never leaves this house at any minute from this time forth that you do
not search him from top to toe. If he resists--ah, well, a pistol may go
off accidentally, and things that Mauravania's king would give his life
to keep hidden will come to light if any charge of murder is preferred.
Monsieur the police spy, I wish you joy of your task."

"Madame, I shall take joy in it," Cleek replied. "But why should we talk
of unpleasant things when the future looks so bright? Come, may we not
give ourselves a pleasant evening? Look, there is a piano, and--Count,
hold my puppy for me, and please see that no one feeds him at any time.
I am starving him so that he may devour some of Clopin's parakeets,
because I hate the sight of the little beasts. Thank you. Madame, do you
like music? Listen, then: I'll sing you Mauravania's national anthem:
'God guard the throne; God shield the right!'" and, dropping down upon
the seat before the open instrument, he did so.

* * * * *

That night was ever memorable at the Villa Irma, for the detective
seemed somehow to have given place to the courtier, and so merry was his
mood, so infectious his good nature, that even madame came under the
spell of it. She sang with him, she even danced a Russian polka with
him; she sat with him at dinner, and flirted with him in the salon
afterward; and when the time came for her to retire, it was he who took
her bedroom candle from the shelf and put it into her hand.

"Of a truth, you are a charming fellow, monsieur," she said, when he
bent and kissed her hand. "What a pity you should be a police spy and
upon so hopeless a case."

"Hopeless cases are my delight, madame. Believe me, I shall not fail."

"Only three days, remember, _cher ami_--only three days!"

"Madame is too kind. I have said it: two will do. On the morning of the
third madame's passport will be ready and the Rainbow Pearl be in the
royal jeweller's hands. A thousand pleasant dreams--_bon soir_!" And
bowed her out and kissed his hand to her as she went up the stairs to
bed.




III


Thrice during the next twenty-four hours Cleek, who seemed to have
become so attached to the mongrel dog that he kept it under his arm
continually, had reason to leave the house, and thrice was he seized by
madame's henchmen, bundled unceremoniously into a convenient room, and
searched to the very skin before he was suffered to pass beyond the
threshold. And if so much as a pin had been hidden upon his person, it
must have been discovered.

"You see, monsieur, how hopeless it is!" said the Count despairfully.
"One dare not rebel: one dare not lift a finger, or the woman speaks and
his Majesty's ruin falls. Oh, the madness of that boast of yours! Only
another twenty-four hours--only another day--and then God help his
Majesty!"

"God has helped him a great deal better than he deserves, Count,"
replied Cleek. "By to-morrow night at ten o'clock be in the square of
the Aquisola, please. Bring with you the passports of madame and her
companions, also a detachment of the Royal Guard, and his Majesty's
cheque for the reward I am to receive."

"Monsieur! You really hope to get the things? You really do?"

"Oh, I do more than 'hope,' Count--I have succeeded. I knew last night
where both pearl and letter were. To-morrow night--ah, well, let
to-morrow tell its own tale. Only be in the square at the hour I
mention, and when I lift a lighted candle and pass it across the salon
window, send the guard here with the passports. Let them remain
outside--within sight, but not within range of hearing what is said and
done. You are alone to enter--remember that."

"To receive the jewel and the letter?" eagerly. "Or, at least, to have
you point out the hiding-place of them?"

"No; we should be shot down like dogs if I undertook a mad thing like
that."

"Then, monsieur, how are we to seize them? How get them into our
possession, his Majesty and I?"

"From my hand, Count; this hand which held them both before I went to
bed last night."

"Monsieur!" The Count fell back from him as if from some supernatural
presence. "You found them? You held them? You took possession of them
last night? How did you get them out of the house?"

"I have not done so yet."

"But can you? Oh, monsieur, wizard though you are, can you get them past
her guards? Can you, monsieur--can you?"

"Watch for the light at the window, Count. It will not be waved unless
it is safe for you to come and the pearl is already out of the house."

"And the letter, monsieur--the damning letter?"

Cleek smiled one of his strange, inscrutable smiles.

"Ask me that to-morrow, Count," he said. "You shall hear something, you
and madame, that will surprise you both," then twisted round on his heel
and walked hurriedly away.

And all that day and all that night he danced attendance upon madame,
and sang to her, and handed her bedroom candle to her as he had done the
night before, and gave back jest for jest and returned her merry
badinage in kind.

Nor did he change in that when the fateful to-morrow came. From morning
to night he was at her side, at her beck and call, doing nothing that
was different from the doings of yesterday, save that at evening he
locked the mongrel dog up in his room instead of carrying him about. And
the dog, feeling its loneliness, or, possibly, famishing--for he had
given it not a morsel of food since he found it--howled and howled until
the din became unbearable.

"Monsieur, I wish you would silence that beast or else feed it," said
madame pettishly. "The howling of the wretched thing gets on my nerves.
Give it some food for pity's sake."

"Not I," said Cleek. "Do you remember what I said, madame? I am getting
it hungry enough to eat one--or perhaps all--of Clopin's wretched little
parakeets."

"You think they have to do with the hiding of the paper or the pearl,
cher ami? Eh?"

"I am sure of it. He would not carry the beastly little things about for
nothing."

"Ah, you are clever--you are very, very clever, monsieur," she made
answer, with a laugh. "But he must begin his bird-eating quickly, that
nuisance-dog, or it will be too late. See, it is already half-past nine;
I retire to my bed in another hour and a half, as always, and then your
last hope he is gone--z-zic! like that; for it will be the end of the
second day, monsieur, and your promise not yet kept. Pestilence,
monsieur," with a little outburst of temper, "do stop the little beast
his howl. It is unbearable! I would you to sing to me like last night,
but the noise of the dog is maddening."

"Oh, if it annoys you like that, madame," said Cleek, "I'll take him
round to the stable and tie him up there, so we may have the song
undisturbed. Your men will not want to search me of course, when I am
merely popping out and popping in again like that, I am sure?"

Nevertheless they did, for although they had heard and did not stir when
he left the room and ran up for the dog, when he came down with it under
his arm and made to leave the house, he was pounced upon, dragged into
an adjoining apartment by half a dozen burly fellows, stripped to the
buff, and searched, as the workers in a diamond mine are searched,
before they suffered him to leave the house. There was neither a sign of
a pearl nor a scrap of a letter to be found upon him--they made sure of
that before they let him go.

"An enterprising lot, those lackeys of yours, madame," he said, when he
returned from tying the dog up in the stable and rejoined her in the
salon. "It will be an added pleasure to get the better of them, I can
assure you."

"Oui! if you can!" she answered, with a mocking laugh. "Clopin, cher
ami, your poor little parakeets are safe for the night--unless monsieur
grows desperate and eats them for himself."

"Even that, if it were necessary to get the pearl, madame," said Cleek,
with the utmost sang-froid. "Faugh!" looking at his watch, "a good
twenty minutes wasted by the zealousness of those idiotic searchers of
yours. Ten minutes to ten! Just time for one brief song. Let us make hay
while the sun lasts, madame, for it goes down suddenly in Mauravania;
and for some of us--it never comes up again!" Then, throwing himself
upon the piano-seat, he ran his fingers across the keys and broke into
the stately measures of the national anthem. And, of a sudden, while the
song was yet in progress, the clock in the corridor jingled its musical
chimes and struck the first note of the hour.

He jumped to his feet and lifted both hands above his head.

"Mauravania!" he cried. "Oh, Mauravania! For you! For you!" Then jumped
to the mantelpiece, and catching up a lighted candle, flashed it twice
across the window's width, and broke again into the national hymn.

"Monsieur," cried out madame, "monsieur, what is the meaning of that?
Have you lost your wits? You give a signal! For what? To whom?"

"To the guards of Mauravania's king, madame, in honour of his safe
escape from you!" he made reply; then twitched back the window curtains
until the whole expanse of glass was bared. "Look! do you see them--do
you, madame? His Majesty of Mauravania sends Madame Tcharnovetski a
command to leave his kingdom, since he no longer has cause to fear a
wasp whose sting has been plucked out."

Her swift glance flashed to the fireplace, then to the corner where
Clopin still sat with his jabbering parakeets, then flashed back to
Cleek, and--she laughed in his face.

"I think not, monsieur," she said, with a swaggering air. "Truly, I
think not, my excellent friend."

"What a pity you only think so, madame! As for me--Ah, welcome, Count,
welcome a thousand times. The paper, my friend; you have brought it?
Good! Give it to me. Madame, your passport--yours and your associates'.
You leave Mauravania by the midnight train, and you have but little time
to pack your effects. Your passport, madame, and--your bedroom candle.
Oh, yes, the paper is still round it--see!" slipping off a sheet of note
paper that was wrapped round the full length of the candle from top to
bottom, "but if you will examine it, madame, you will find it is blank.
I burned the real letter the night before last when I put this in its
place."

"You what?" she snapped; then caught the tube-shaped covering he had
stripped from the candle, uncurled it, and--screamed.

"Blank, madame, quite blank, you see," said Cleek serenely. "For one so
clever in other things, you should have been more careful. A little
pinch of powder in the punch at dinner-time--just that--and on the first
night, too! It was so easy afterward to get into your room, remove the
real paper, and wrap the candle in a blank piece while you slept."

"You--you dog!" she snapped out viciously. "You drugged me?"

"Yes, madame; you and the one-eyed man as well! Oh, don't excite
yourself--don't pull at the poor wretch like that. The glass eye will
come out quite easily, but--I assure you there is only a small lump of
beeswax in the socket now. I removed the Rainbow Pearl from poor
Monsieur Clopin's blind eye ten minutes after I burnt the letter,
madame, and--it passed out of this house to-night! A clever idea to pick
up a one-eyed pauper, madame, and hide the pearl in the empty socket of
the lost eye, but--it was too bad, you had to supply a glass eye to keep
it in, after the lid and the socket had withered and shrunk from so many
years of emptiness. It worried the poor man, madame; he was always
feeling it, always afraid that the lump behind would force it out; and,
what is an added misfortune for your plans, the glass shell did not
allow you to see the change when the pearl vanished and the bit of
beeswax took its place. Madame Tcharnovetski, your passport. I know
enough of the King of Mauravania to be sure that your life will not be
safe if you are not past the frontier before daybreak!"

* * * * *

"Monsieur le comte--no! I thank you, but I cannot wait to be presented
to his Majesty, for I, too, leave Mauravania to-night, and, like Madame
yonder, return to other and more promising fields," said Cleek, an hour
later, as he stood on the terrace of the Villa Irma and watched the slow
progress down the moonlit avenue of the carriage which was bearing
Madame Tcharnovetski and her effects to the railway station. "Give me
the cheque, please; I have earned that, and--there is good use for it. I
thank you, Count. Now do an act of charity, my friend: give the little
dog in the stable a good meal, and then have a surgeon chloroform him
into a peaceful and merciful death. They will find the Rainbow Pearl in
his intestines when they come to dissect the body. I starved him,
Count--starved him purposely, poor little wretch, so that he could be
hungry enough to snap at anything in the way of food and bolt it
instantly. To-night, when I went up to take him out to the stable, a
thick smearing of beef extract over the surface of the pearl was
sufficient; he swallowed it in a gulp! For a double reason, Count, there
should be a cur quartered on the royal arms of this country after
to-night."

His voice dropped off into silence. The carriage containing madame had
swung out through the gateway, and its shadow no longer blotted the
broad, unbroken space of moonlit avenue. He turned and looked far out,
over the square of the Aquisola, along the light-lined esplanade, to the
palace gates and the fluttering flag that streamed against the sky above
and beyond them.

"Oh, Mauravania!" he said. "An Englishman's heritage! Dear country, how
beautiful! My love to your Queen--my prayers for you."

"Monsieur!" exclaimed the Count, "monsieur, what juggle is this? Your
face is again the face of that other night--the face that stirs memory
yet does not rivet it. Monsieur, speak, I beg of you. What are you? Who
are you?"

"Cleek," he made answer. "Just Cleek! It will do. Oh, Mauravania, dear
land of desolated hopes, dear grave of murdered joys!"

"Monsieur!"

"Hush! Let me alone. There are things too sacred; and this--" His
hands reached outward as if in benediction; his face, upturned, was as a
face transfigured, and something that shone as silver gleamed in the
corner of his eye. "Mauravania!" he said. "Oh, Mauravania! My
country--my people--good-bye!"

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