Book: Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces

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







CHAPTER I


The sound came again--so unmistakably, this time, the sound of a
footstep in the soft, squashy ooze on the Heath, there could be no
question regarding the nature of it. Miss Lorne came to an instant
standstill and clutched her belongings closer to her with a shake and a
quiver; and a swift prickle of goose-flesh ran round her shoulders and up
and down the backs of her hands. There was good, brave blood in her, it
is true; but good, brave blood isn't much to fall back upon if you
happen to be a girl without escort, carrying a hand-bag containing
twenty-odd pounds in money, several bits of valuable jewellery--your
whole earthly possessions, in fact--and have lost your way on Hampstead
Heath at half-past eight o'clock at night, with a spring fog shutting
you in like a wall and shutting out everything else but a "mackerel"
collection of clouds that looked like grey smudges on the greasy-silver
of a twilit sky.

She looked round, but she could see nothing and nobody. The Heath was a
white waste that might have been part of the scenery in Lapland for all
there was to tell that it lay within reach of the heart and pulse of the
sluggish leviathan London. Over it the vapours of night crowded, an
almost palpable wall of thick, wet mist, stirred now and again by some
atmospheric movement which could scarcely be called a wind, although, at
times, it drew long, lacey filaments above the level of the denser mass
of fog and melted away with them into the calm, still upper air.

Miss Lorne hesitated between two very natural impulses--to gather up her
skirts and run, or to stand her ground and demand an explanation from
the person who was undoubtedly following her. She chose the latter.

"Who is there? Why are you following me? What do you want?" she flung
out, keeping her voice as steady as the hard, sharp hammering of her
heart would permit.

The question was answered at once--rather startlingly, since the
footsteps which caused her alarm, had all the while proceeded from
behind, and slightly to the left of her. Now there came a hurried rush
and scramble on the right; there was the sound of a match being
scratched, a blob of light in the grey of the mist, and she saw standing
in front of her, a ragged, weedy, red-headed youth, with the blazing
match in his scooped hands.

He was thin to the point of ghastliness. Hunger was in his pinched face,
his high cheekbones, his gouged jaws; staring like a starved wolf,
through the unnatural brightness of his pale eyes, from every gaunt
feature of him.

"'Ullo!" he said with a strong Cockney accent, as he came up out of the
fog, and the flare of the match gave him a full view of her, standing
there with her lips shut hard, and, the hand-bag dutched up close to her
with both hands. "You wot called, was it? Wot price me for arnswerin' of
you, eh?"

"Yes, it was I that called," she replied, making a brave front of it.
"But I do not think it was you that I called to. Keep away, please.
Don't come any nearer. What do you want?" "Well, I'll take that blessed
'and-bag to go on with; and if there aren't no money in it--tumble it
out--let's see--lively now! I'll feed for the rest of this week--Gawd,
yuss!"

She made no reply, no attempt to obey him, no movement of any sort. Fear
had absolutely stricken every atom of strength from her. She could do
nothing but look at him with big, frightened eyes, and shake.

"Look 'ere, aren't you a-goin' to do it quiet, or are you a-goin' to mike
me tike the blessed thing from you?" he asked.

"I'll do it if you put me to it--my hat! yuss! It aren't my gime--I'm
wot you might call a hammer-chewer at it, but when there's summink
inside you, wot tears and tears and tears, any gime's worth tryin' that
pulls out the claws of it."

She did not move even yet. He flung the spent match from him, and made a
sharp step toward her, and he had just reached out his hand to lay hold
of her, when another hand--strong, sinewy, hard-shutting as an iron
clamp--reached out from the mist, and laid hold of him; plucking him by
the neckband and intruding a bunch of knuckles and shut fingers between
that and his up-slanted chin.

"Now, then, drop that little game at once, you young monkey!" struck in
the sharp staccato of a semi-excited voice. "Interfering with young
ladies, eh? Let's have a look at you. Don't be afraid, Miss
Lorne--nobody's going to hurt you."

Then a pocket torch spat out a sudden ray of light; and by it both the
half-throttled boy and the wholly frightened girl could see the man who
had thus intruded himself upon their notice.

"Oh, it is you--it is you again, Mr. Cleek?" said Ailsa with something
between a laugh and a sigh of relief as she recognized him.

"Yes, it is I. I have been behind you ever since you left the house in
Bardon Road. It was rash of you to cross the heath at this time and in
this weather. I rather fancied that something of this kind would be
likely to happen, and so took the liberty of following you."

"Then it was you I heard behind me?"

"It was I--yes. I shouldn't have intruded myself upon your notice if you
hadn't called out. A moment, please. Let's have a look at this young
highwayman, who so freely advertises himself as an amateur."

The light spat full into the gaunt, starved face of the young man and
made it stare forth doubly ghastly. He had made no effort to get away
from the very first. Perhaps he understood the uselessness of it, with
that strong hand gripped on his ragged neckband. Perhaps he was, in his
way, something of a fatalist--London breeds so many among such as he:
starved things that find every boat chained, every effort thrust back
upon them unrewarded. At any rate, from the moment he had heard the girl
give to this man a name which every soul in England had heard at one
time or another during the past two years, he had gone into a sort of
mild collapse, as though realising the utter uselessness of battling
against fate, and had given himself up to what was to be.

"Hello," said Cleek, as he looked the youth over. "Yours is a face I
don't remember running foul of before, my young beauty. Where did you
come from?"

"Where I seem like to be goin' now you've got your currant-pickers on
me--Hell," answered the boy, with something like a sigh of despair.
"Leastways, I been in Hell ever since I can remember anyfink, so I
reckon I must have come from there."

"What's your name?"

"Dollops. S'pose I must a had another sometime, but I never heard of it.
Wot's that? Yuss--most nineteen. _Wot?_ Oh, go throw summink at
yourself! I aren't too young to be 'ungry, am I? And where's a cove
goin' to _find_ this 'ere 'honest work' you're a-talkin' of? I'm fair
sick of the gime of lookin' for it. Besides, you don't see parties as
goes in for the other thing walkin' round with ribs on 'em like
bed-slats, and not even the price of a cup of corfy in their pockets, do
you? No fear! I wouldn't've 'urt the young lydie; but I tell you strite,
I'd a took every blessed farthin' she 'ad on her if you 'adn't've
dropped on me like this."

"Got down to the last ditch--down to the point of desperation, eh?"

"Yuss. So would you if you 'ad a fing inside you tearin' and tearin'
like I 'ave. Aren't et a bloomin' crumb since the day before yusterday
at four in the mawnin' when a gent in an 'ansom--drunk as a lord, he
was--treated me and a parcel of others to a bun and a cup of corfy at a
corfy stall over 'Ighgate way. Stood out agin bein' a crook as long as
ever I could--as long as ever I'm goin' to, I reckon, now _you've_ got
your maulers on me. I'll be on the list after this. The cops 'ull know
me; and when you've got the nime--well, wot's the odds? You might as
well 'ave the gime as well, and git over goin' empty. All right, run me
in, sir. Any'ow, I'll 'ave a bit to eat and a bed to sleep in to-night,
and that's one comfort--"

Cleek had been watching the boy closely, narrowly, with an
ever-deepening interest; now he loosened the grip of his fingers and let
his hand drop to his side.

"Suppose I don't 'run you in,' as you put it? Suppose I take a chance
and lend you five shillings, will you do some work and pay it back to me
in time?" he asked.

The boy looked up at him and laughed in his face.

"Look 'ere, Gov'nor, it's playin' it low down to lark wiv a chap jist
before you're goin' to 'ang 'im," he said. "You come off your blessed
perch."

"Right," said Cleek. "And now you get up on yours and let us see what
you're made of." Then he put his hand into his trousers pocket; there
was a chink of coins and two half-crowns lay on his outstretched palm.
"There you are--off with you now, and if you are any good, turn up some
time to-night at No. 204, Clarges Street, and ask for Captain Horatio
Burbage. He'll see that there's work for you. Toddle along now and get a
meal and a bed. And mind you keep a close mouth about this."

The boy neither moved nor spoke nor made any sound. For a moment or two
he stood looking from the man to the coins and from the coins back to
the man; then, gradually, the truth of the thing seemed to trickle into
his mind and, as a hungry fox might pounce upon a stray fowl, he grabbed
the money and--bolted.

"Remember the name and remember the street," Cleek called after him.

"You take your bloomin' oath I will!" came back through the enfolding
mist; "Gawd, yuss!"--Just that; and the youth was gone.

"I wonder what you will think of me, Miss Lorne," said Cleek, turning to
her; "taking a chance like this; and, above all, with a fellow who would
have stripped you of every jewel and every penny you have with you if
things hadn't happened as they have?"

"And I can very ill afford to lose anything _now_--as I suppose you
know, Mr. Cleek. Things have changed sadly for me since that day Mr.
Narkom introduced us at Ascot," she said, with just a shadow of
seriousness in her eyes. "But as to what I think regarding your action
toward that dreadful boy.... Oh, of course, if there is a chance of
saving him from a career of crime, I think one owes him that as a duty.
In the circumstances, the temptation was very great. It must be a
horrible thing to be so hungry that one is driven to robbery to satisfy
the longing for food."

"Yes, very horrible--very, very indeed. I once knew a boy who stood as
that boy stands--at the parting of the ways; when the good that was in
him fought the last great fight with the Devil of Circumstances. If a
hand had been stretched forth to help that boy at that time ... Ah,
well! it wasn't. The Devil took the reins and the game went _his_ way.
If five shillings will put the reins into that boy's hands to-night and
steer him back to the right path, so much the better for him and--for
me. I'll know if he's worth the chance I took to-morrow. Now let us talk
about something else. Will you allow me to escort you across the heath
and see you safely on your way home? Or would you prefer that I should
remain in the background as before?"

"How ungrateful you must think me, to suggest such a thing as that," she
said with a reproachful smile. "Walk with me if you will be so kind. I
hope you know that this is the third time you have rendered me a service
since I had the pleasure of meeting you. It is very nice of you; and I
am extremely grateful. I wonder you find the time or--well, take the
trouble," rather archly; "a great man like you."

"Shall I take off my hat and say 'thank you, ma'am'; or just the
hackneyed 'Praise from Sir Hubert is praise indeed'?" he said with a
laugh as he fell into step with her and they faced the mist and the
distance together. "I suppose you are alluding to my success in the
famous Stanhope Case--the newspapers made a great fuss over that, Mr.
Narkom tells me. But--please. One big success doesn't make a 'great man'
any more than one rosebush makes a garden."

"Are you fishing for a compliment? Or is that really natural
modesty? I had heard of your exploits and seen your name in the papers,
oh, dozens of times before I first had the pleasure of meeting you; and
since then ... No, I shan't flatter you by saying how many successes I
have seen recorded to your credit in the past two years. Do you know that
I have a natural predilection for such things? It may be morbid of me--is
it?--but I have the strongest kind of a leaning toward the tales of
Gaboriau; and I have always wanted to know a really great detective--like
Lecocq, or Dupin. And that day at Ascot when Mr. Narkom told me that he
would introduce me to the famous 'Man of the Forty Faces'... Mr. Cleek,
why do they call you 'the Man of the Forty Faces'? You always look the
same to me."

"Perhaps I shan't, when we come to the end of the heath and get into the
public street, where there are lights and people," he said. "That I
always look the same in your eyes, Miss Lorne, is because I have but one
face for you, and that is my real one. Not many people see it, even
among the men of The Yard whom I occasionally work with. You do,
however; so does Mr. Narkom, occasionally. So did that boy,
unfortunately. I had to show it when I came to your assistance, if only
to assure you that you were in friendly hands and to prevent you taking
fright and running off into the mist in a panic and losing yourself
where even I might not be able to find you. That is why I told the boy
to apply for work to 'Captain Burbage of Clarges Street.' _I_ am Captain
Burbage, Miss Lome. Nobody knows that but my good friend Mr. Narkom and,
now, you."

"I shall respect it, of course," she said. "I hope I need not assure you
of that, Mr. Cleek."

"You need assure me of nothing, Miss Lome," he made reply. "I owe so
much more to you than you are aware, that--Oh, well, it doesn't matter.
You asked me a question a moment ago. If you want the answer to it--look
here."

He stopped short as he spoke; the pocket-torch clicked faintly and from
the shelter of a curved hand, the glow of it struck upward to his face.
It was not the same face for ten seconds at a time. What Sir Horace
Wyvern had seen in Mr. Narkom's private office at Scotland Yard on that
night of nights more than two years ago, Sir Horace Wyvern's niece saw
now.

"Oh!" she said, with a sharp intaking of the breath as she saw the
writhing features knot and twist and blend. "Oh, don't! It is uncanny!
It is amazing. It is awful!" And, after a moment, when the light had
been shut off and the man beside her was only a shape in the mist: "I
hope I may never see you do it again," she merely more than whispered.
"It is the most appalling thing. I can't think how you do it--how you
came by the power to do such a thing."

"Perhaps by inheritance," said Cleek, as they walked on again. "Once
upon a time, Miss Lorne, there was a--er--lady of extremely high
position who, at a time when she should have been giving her thoughts
to--well, more serious things, used to play with one of those curious
little rubber faces which you can pinch up into all sorts of distorted
countenances--you have seen the things, no doubt. She would sit for
hours screaming with laughter over the droll shapes into which she
squeezed the thing. Afterward, when her little son was born, he
inherited the trick of that rubber face as a birthright. It may have
been the same case with me. Let us say it was, and drop the subject,
since you have not found the sight a pleasing one. Now tell me
something, please, that I want to know about you."




CHAPTER II


"About me, Mr. Cleek?"

"Yes. You spoke about there being a change in your circumstances--spoke
as though you thought I knew. I do not; but I should like to if I may.
It will perhaps explain why you are out alone and in this neighbourhood
at this time of night."

"It will," she said, with just a shadow of deeper colour coming into her
cheeks. "The house you saw me coming out of is the residence of a friend
and former schoolmate. I went there to inquire if she could help me in
any way to secure a position; and stopped later than I realised."

"Procure you a position, Miss Lorne? A position as what?"

"Companion, amanuensis, governess--anything that," with a laugh and a
blush, "'respectable young females' may do to earn a living when they
come down in the world. You may possibly have heard that my uncle, Sir
Horace, has married again. I think you must have done so, for the papers
were full of it at the time. But I forget"--quizzically--"you don't read
newspapers, do you, even when they contain accounts of your own
greatness."

"I wonder if I deserve that? At any rate, I got it," said Cleek with a
laugh. "Yes, I heard all about Sir Horace's wedding. Some four or five
months ago, wasn't it?"

"No, three--three, last Thursday, the fourteenth. A woman doesn't forget
the date of her enforced abdication. The new Lady Wyvern soon let me
know that I was a superfluous person in the household. To-day, I came to
the conclusion to leave it; and have taken the first actual step toward
doing so. A lucky step, too, I fancy; or, at least, it promises to be."

"As how?"

"My friend knows of two people who would be likely to need me: one, a
titled lady here in England, who might be 'very glad to have me'--I am
quoting that, please--as governess to her little boy. The other, a young
French girl who is returning shortly to Paris, who also might be 'glad
to have me' as companion. Of course, I would sooner remain in England,
but--well, it is nicer to be a companion than a governess; and the young
lady is very nearly my own age. Indeed, we were actually at the same
school together when we were very little girls."

"I see," said Cleek, a trifle gloomily. "So then it is possible that it
will, eventually, be the young French lady and--Paris, in future. When,
do you fancy? Soon?"

"Oh, I don't know about that. I haven't quite made up my mind as yet
which of the two it will be. And then there's the application to be sent
afterwards."

"Still, it will be one of the two certainly?"

"Oh, yes. I shall have to earn my living in future, you know; so,
naturally, of course--" She gave her shoulder an eloquent upward
movement, and let the rest go by default.

Cleek did not speak for a moment: merely walked on beside her--a ridge
between his eyebrows and his lower lip sucked in; as if he were mentally
debating upon something and was afraid he might speak incautiously. But
of a sudden:

"Miss Lorne," he said, in a curiously tense voice, "may I ask you
something? Let us say that you had set your heart upon obtaining one or
the other of these two positions--set it so entirely that life wouldn't
be worth a straw to you if you didn't get it. Let us say, too, that
there was something you had done, something in your past which, if
known, might utterly preclude the possibility of your obtaining what you
wanted--it is an absurd hypothesis, of course: but let us use it for the
sake of argument. We will say you had done your best to live down that
offensive 'something' done, and were still doing all that lay in your
power to atone for it; that nobody but one person shared the knowledge
of that 'something' with you, and upon his silence you could rely. Now
tell me: would you feel justified in accepting the position upon which
you had set your heart _without_ confessing the thing; or would you feel
in duty bound to speak, well knowing that it would in all human
probability be the end of all your hopes? I should like to have your
opinion upon that point, please."

"I can't see that I or anybody else could have other than the one," she
replied. "It is an age-old maxim, is it not, Mr. Cleek, that two wrongs
cannot by any possibility constitute a right? I should feel in duty
bound, in honour bound, to speak, of course. To do the other would be to
obtain the position by fraud--to steal it, as a thief steals things that
_he_ wants. No sort of atonement is possible, is even worth the name, if
it is backed up by deceit, Mr. Cleek."

"Even though that deceit is the only thing that could give you your
heart's desire? The only thing that could open the Gates of Heaven for
you?"

"The 'Gates of Heaven,' as you put it, can never be opened with a lie,
Mr. Cleek. They might be opened by the very thing of which you
speak--confession. I think I should take my chances upon that. At any
rate, if I failed, I should at least have preserved my self-respect and
done more to merit what I wanted than if I had secured it by treachery.
Think of the boy you helped a little while ago. How much respect will
you have for him if he never lives up to his promise; never goes to
Clarges Street at all? Yet if he does live up to it, will he not be
doubly worth the saving? But please!" with a sudden change from
seriousness to gaiety, "if I am to be led into sermonizing, might I not
know what it is all about? I shall be right, shall I not, in supposing
that all this is merely the preface to something else?"

"Either the Preface or--the Finis," said Cleek, with a deeply drawn
breath. "Still, as you say, no atonement is worth calling an atonement
if it is based upon fraud; and so--Miss Lorne, I am going to ask you to
indulge in yet another little flight of fancy. Carry your mind back,
will you, to the night when your cousin--to the night two years ago when
Sir Horace Wyvern's daughter had her wedding presents stolen and you, I
believe, had rather a trying moment with that fellow who was known as
'The Vanishing Cracksman.' You can remember it, can you not?"

"Remember it? I shall never forget it. I thought, when the police ran
down stairs and left me with him, that I was talking to Mr. Narkom. I
think I nearly went daft with terror when I found out that it was he."

"And you found it out only through his telling you, did you not?
Afterward, I am told, the police found you lying fainting at the foot of
the stairs. The man had touched you, spoken to you, even caught up your
hand and put it to his lips? Can you remember what he said when he did
that? Can you?"

"Yes," she answered, with a little shudder of recollection. "For weeks
afterward I used to wake up in the middle of the night thinking of it
and going cold all over. He said, 'You have come down into Hell and
lifted me out. Under God, you shall lift me into Heaven as well!'"

"And perhaps you shall," said Cleek, stopping short and uncovering his
head. "At any rate, I'll not attempt to win it by fraud. Miss Lorne, I
am that man. I am the 'Vanishing Cracksman' of those other days. I've
walked the 'straight path' since the moment I kissed your hand."

She said nothing, made no faintest sound. She couldn't--all the
strength, all the power to do anything but simply stand and look at him
had gone out of her. But even so, she was conscious--dimly but yet
conscious--of a feeling of relief that they had come at last close to
the end of the heath, that there was the faint glow of lights dimly
observable through the enfolding mist, and that there was the rumble of
wheels, the pulse of life, the law-guarded paths of the city's streets
beyond.




CHAPTER III


She could not herself have been more conscious of that feeling of relief
than he was of its coming. It spoke to him in the swift glance she gave
toward those distant, fog-blurred lights, in the white, drained face of
her, in the shrinking backward movement of her body when he spoke again;
and something within him voiced "the exceeding bitter cry."

"I am not sure that I even hoped you would take the revelation in any
other way than this," he said. "A hawk--even a tamed one--must be a
thing of terror in the eyes of a dove. Still, I am not sorry that I have
made the confession, Miss Lorne. When the worst has been told, a burden
rolls away."

"Yes," she acquiesced faintly, finding her voice; but finding it only to
lose it again. "But that you--that _you_...." And was faint and very
still again.

"Shall we go on? It isn't more than fifty paces to the road; and you may
rely upon finding a taxicab there. Would you like me to show you the
way?"

"Yes, please. I--oh, don't think me unsympathetic, unkind, severe. It is
such a shock; it is all so horrible--I mean--that is.... Let me get used
to it. I shall never tell, of course--no, never! Now, please, may we not
walk faster? I am very, very late as it is; and they will be worrying at
home."

They did walk faster, and in a minute more were at the common's end.
Cleek stopped and again lifted his hat.

"We will part here, Miss Lorne," he said. "I won't force my company on
you any further. From here, you are quite beyond all danger, and I am
sure you would rather I left you to find a taxi for yourself. Good
night." He did not even offer to put out his hand. "May I say again,
that I am not sorry I told you? Nor did I ever expect you would, take it
other than like this. It is only natural. Try to forgive me; or, at the
least, believe that I have not tried to keep your friendship by a lie,
or to atone in seeming only. Good night."

He gave her no chance to reply, no time to say one single word. Deep
wounds require time in which to heal. He knew that he had wounded the
white soul of her so that it was sick with uncertainty, faint with
dread; and, putting on his hat, stepped sharply back and let the mist
take him and hide him from her sight.

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