Book: Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces

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




He stopped and threw up a warning hand. As he spoke a queer thudding
sound struck one dull note through the stillness of the house. He stood,
bent forward, listening, absolutely breathless; then, on the other side
of the wall, there rippled and rolled a something that was like the
sound of a struggle between two voiceless animals, and--the sign that he
awaited had come!

"Follow me--quickly, as noiselessly as you can. Let no one hear, let no
one see!" he said in a breath of excitement. Then he sprang cat-like to
the door, whirled it open, scudded round the angle of the passage to the
entrance of the room where the fraudulent collection was kept, and went
in with the silent fleetness of a panther. And a moment later, when
Captain Travers and Mrs. Bawdrey swung in through the door and joined
him, they came upon a horrifying sight.

For there, leaning against the open door of the case where the skeleton
of the nine-fingered man hung, was Dollops, bleeding and faint, and with
a score of tooth-marks on his neck and throat, and on the floor at his
feet Cleek was kneeling on the writhing figure of a man, who bit and
tore and snarled like a cornered wolf and fought with teeth and feet and
hands alike in the wild effort to get free from the grip of destiny. A
locked handcuff clamped one wrist, and from it swung, at the end of the
connecting chain, its unlocked mate; the marks of Dollops' fists were on
his lips and cheeks, and at the foot of the case, where the hanging
skeleton doddered and shook to the vibration of the floor, lay a
shattered phial of deep-blue glass.

"Got you, you hound!" said Cleek, through his teeth as he wrenched the
man's two wrists together and snapped the other handcuff into place.
"You beast of ingratitude--you Judas! Kissing and betraying like any
other Iscariot! And a dear old man like that! Look here, Mrs. Bawdrey;
look here Captain, Travers; what do you think of a little rat like
this?"

They came forward at his word, and, looking down, saw that the figure he
was bending over was the figure of Philip Bawdrey.

"Oh!" gulped Mrs. Bawdrey, and then shut her two hands over her eyes and
fell away weak and shivering. "Oh, Mr. Cleek, it can't be--it can't! To
do a thing like that?"

"Oh, he'd have done worse, the little reptile, if he hadn't been pulled
up short," said Cleek in reply. "He'd have hanged you for it, if it had
gone the way he planned. You look in your boxes; you, too, Captain
Travers. I'll wager each of you finds a phial of Ayupee hidden among
them somewhere. Came in to put more of the cursed stuff on the ninth
finger of the skeleton, so that it would be ready for the next time,
didn't he, Dollops?"

"Yes, Gov'nor. I waited for him behind the case just as you told me to,
sir, and when he ups and slips the finger of the skilligan into the neck
of the bottle, I nips out and whacks the bracelet on him. But he was too
quick for me, sir, so I only got one on; and then, the hound, he turns
on me like a blessed hyena, sir, and begins a-chawin' of me windpipe. I
say, Gov'nor, take off his silver wristlets, will you, sir, and lemme
have jist ten minutes with him on my own? Five for me, sir, and five for
his poor old dad!"

"Not I," said Cleek. "I wouldn't let you soil those honest lands of
yours on his vile little body, Dollops. Thought you had a noodle to deal
with, didn't you, Mr. Philip Bawdrey? Thought you could lead me by the
nose, and push me into finding those phials just where you wanted them
found, didn't you? Well, you've got a few more thoughts coming. Look
here, Captain Travers: what do you think of this fellow's little game?
Tried to take me in about you and Mrs. Bawdrey being lovers, and trying
to do away with him and his father to get the old man's money."

"Why, the contemptible little hound! Bless my soul, man, I'm engaged to
Mrs. Bawdrey's cousin. And as for his stepmother--why, she threw the
little worm over as soon as he began making love to her, and tried to
make her take up with him by telling her how much he'd be worth when his
father died."

"I guessed as much. I didn't fancy him from the first moment; and he was
so blessed eager to have me begin by suspecting you two, that I smelt a
rat at once. Oh, but he's been crafty enough in other things. Putting
that devilish stuff on the ninth finger of the skeleton, and never
losing an opportunity to get his poor old father to handle it and show
it to people. It's a strong, irritant poison--sap of the upas-tree is
the base of it--producing first an irritation of the skin, then a
blister, and, when that broke, communicating the poison directly to the
blood every time the skeleton hand touched it. A weak solution at first,
so that the decline would be natural, the growth of the malady gradual.
But if I'd found that phial in your room last night, as he hoped and
believed I had done--well, look for yourself. The finger of the skeleton
is thick with the beastly, gummy stuff to-night. Double strength, of
course. The next time his father touched it he'd have died before
morning. And the old chap fairly worshipping him. I suspected him, and
suspected what the stuff that was being used really was from the
beginning. Last night I drugged him, and then--I knew."

"Knew, Mr. Cleek? Why, how could you?"

"The most virulent poisons have their remedial uses, Captain," he made
reply. "You can kill a man with strychnine; you can put him in his
grave with arsenic; you can also use both these powerful agents to cure
and to save, in their proper proportions and in the proper way. The same
rule applies to Ayupee. Properly diluted and properly used, it is one of
the most powerful agents for the relief, and, in some cases, the cure,
of Bright's disease of the kidneys. But the Government guards this
unholy drug most carefully. You can't get a drop of it in Java for love
or money, unless on the order of a recognized physician; and you can't
bring it into the ports of England unless backed by that physician's
sworn statement and the official stamp of the Javanese authorities. A
man undeniably afflicted with Bright's disease could get these
things--no other could. Well, I wanted to know who had succeeded in
getting Ayupee into this country and into this house. Last night I
drugged every man in it, and--I found out."

"But how?"

"By finding the one who could not sleep stretched out at full length.
One of the strongest symptoms of Bright's disease is a tendency to draw
the knees up close to the body in sleep. Captain, and to twist the arms
above the head. Of all the men under this roof, this man here was the
only one who slept like that last night!" He paused and looked down at
the scowling, sullen creature on the floor. "You wretched little cur!"
he said, with a gesture of unspeakable contempt. "And all for the sake
of an old man's money! If I did my duty, I'd gaol you. But if I did, it
would be punishing the innocent for the crimes of the guilty. It would
kill that dear old man to learn this; and so he's not going to learn it,
and the law's not going to get its own." He twitched out his hand, and
something tinkled on the floor. "Get up!" he said sharply. "There's the
key of the handcuffs; take it and set yourself free. Do you know what's
going to happen to you? To-morrow morning Dr. Phillipson is going to
examine you, and to report that you'll be a dead man in a year's time if
you stop another week in this country. You are going out of it, and you
are going to stop out of it. Do you understand? _Stop_ out of it to the
end of your days. For if ever you put foot in it again I'll handle you
as a terrier handles a rat! Dollops!"

"Yes, Gov'nor?"

"My things packed and ready?"

"Yes, sir. And all waitin' in the arbour, sir, as you told me to have
'em."

"Good lad! Get them, and we'll catch the first train back. Mrs. Bawdrey,
my best respects. Captain, all good luck to you," said Cleek--and swung
out into the darkness and the moist, warm fragrance of the night; his
mental poise a bit unsteady, his nerves raw. It was not in him to have
stopped longer, to have remained under the same roof with a monster like
young Bawdrey and keep his temper in check.




CHAPTER VI


The stillness, the balm, the soothing influences of the night worked
their own spell; and, after a time, rubbed out the mental wrinkles and
brought a sense of restfulness and peace. It could not well do otherwise
with such a nature as his. The night was all a-musk with mignonette and
roses, the sky all a-glitter with stars. A gunshot distant the river
ran--a silver thing ribboning along between the dark of bending trees;
somewhere in the darkness a nightingale shook out the scale of Nature's
Anthem to the listening Night, and, farther afield, others took up the
chorus of it and sang and sang with the sheer joy of living.

What a world--God, what a world for parricides to exist in, and for the
sons of men to forget the Fifth Commandment!

He walked on faster, and made his way to the arbour where Dollops
waited. The boy rose to meet him.

"Everythink all ready, sir--see!" he said, holding up a kit bag. "Wot's
it now, Gov'nor?--the railway station? Good enough. Shall I nip off
ahead or keep with you till we get there?"

"Suit yourself, my lad."

"Thanky, sir; then I'll walk at your heels, if you don't mind. I'd like
to walk at your heels all the rest of my blessed life. Did I carry it
off all right, Gov'nor? Did I do it jist as you wanted of it done?"

"To a T, my lad," said Cleek, smiling and patting him on the shoulder.
"You'll do, Dollops--you'll do finely. I think I did a good job for the
pair of us, my boy, when I gave you those two half-crowns."

"Advanced, Gov'nor, advanced," corrected Dollops, with a look of sheer
affection. "Let me work 'em off, sir, like you said I might. I don't
want nothin' but wot I earns, Gov'nor; nothin' but wot I've got a right
to have; for when I sees wot wantin' money as don't belong to you leads
to; when I thinks wot that young Bawdrey chap was willin' to do for the
love of havin' it--"

"Don't!" struck in Cleek, a trifle roughly. "Drop the man's name--I
can't trust myself to think of it. That the one world, the one self-same
world, could hold two such widely dissimilar creations of God as that
monster and ... No matter. Thank God, I've been able to do something
to-night for a good woman--I owe so much to another of her kind. No;
don't speak--just walk quietly and"--jerking his thumb in the direction
of the fluting nightingales--"listen to that. God! the man who could
think evil things when a nightingale sings, isn't fit to stand even in
the Devil's presence."

Dollops looked at him--half-puzzled, half-awed. He could not understand
the character of the man: there were so many sides to it; and they came
and went so oddly. One minute, a very brute-beast in his ferocity, the
next, a woman in his tenderness and a poet in his thoughts. But if the
boy was puzzled, he was, at least, discreet. He put nothing into words:
merely walked on in silence, and left the man to his thoughts and the
nightingales to their melody.

And Cleek was unusually thoughtful from that period onward; speaking
hardly a word through all the journey home. For now that the events
which had occupied his mind for the past two or three days were over and
done with, his memory harked back to those things which had to do with
his own affairs, and he caught himself wondering how matters had gone
with Ailsa Lorne; which of the two positions--the English one or the
French--she had finally elected to apply for; and if time had as yet
softened the shock of that disclosure made in the mist and darkness at
Hampstead Heath.

He had, of course, heard nothing of her since that time; and the days he
had spent at Richmond had utterly precluded the possibility of giving
himself that small pleasure--so often indulged in--of adopting a safe
disguise, prowling about the neighbourhood where she lived until she
should come forth upon one errand or another, and then following her,
unsuspected.

That she could have taken the knowledge of what he once had been in no
other way than she had done; that to such a woman, such a man must at
the first blush be an object of abhorrence--a thing to be put out of her
life as completely and as expeditiously as possible--he fully realised;
yet, at bottom, he was conscious of a hope that Time--even so little as
had passed--might lend a softening influence that should lead eventually
to Pity, and from that to a day when the word Forgiveness might be
spoken.

He wanted that forgiveness--the soul of the man needed it, as parched
plants need water. He had not climbed up out of himself without some
struggle, some moments when he wavered between what he had become, and
what Nature had written that he was meant to be; for no Soul is purged
all in a moment, no man may conquer himself with just one solitary
fight. He needed her forgiveness, the thought of her, the hope of her,
to rivet his armour for the long, brave fight. He needed her
Friendship--if he might never have her love he needed _that_. And if she
were to pass like this from his life.... If the Light were to go out ...
and all the long, dark way of the Future still to be faced.... Something
within him seemed to writhe. He took his lower lip between his thumb and
forefinger and squeezed it hard.

That he had hoped for some token, some word--forwarded through Mr.
Narkom--he did not quite realise until he got back to Clarges Street and
found that there was none.

Followed a sense of despair, a moment of deep dejection, that passed in
turn and gave place to a feeling of personal injury, of savage
resentment, and of the ferocity which comes when the half-tamed wolf
wakes to the realisation that here is nothing before it evermore, but
the bars of the cage and the goad of the keeper; and that far and away
in the world there are still the free woods, the naked body of Nature,
and the savage company of its kind.

Under the stress of that gust of passion, he sent Dollops flying from
the room. He wrenched open the drawer of his writing-table, and scooped
up in his hands some trifles of faded ribbon and trinkets of
gold--things that he treasured, none knew why or for what--and holding
them thus, looked down on them and laughed, bitterly and savagely, as
though a devil were within him.

"Me! She scorns me!" he said, and laughed again, and flung them all
back and shut the drawer upon them. And presently he knew that he held
her all the higher because she did scorn him; because her life was such
that she _could_ scorn him; and the bitterness dropped out of him, his
eyes softened, and though he still laughed, it was for an utterly
different reason, and in a wholly different way.

Some pots of tulips and mignonette stood on the ledge of his window. He
walked over to see that they were watered before he went to bed. And
between the time when he got down on his knees to fish out his
bath-slippers from beneath the bed-stead and the creak of the springs
when he lay down for the night, he was so long and so still that one
might have believed he was doing something else.

He slept long, and rose in the morning soothed and subdued in
spirit--better and brighter in every way; for now no affair, for The
Yard hampered his movements and claimed his time. He was free; he was
back in the Town--beautiful because it contained her--and he might hark
back to the old trick of watching and following and being close to her
without her knowledge.

It was a vain hope that, however. For, although he dressed and went out
and haunted the neighbourhood of Sir Horace Wyvern's house for hours on
end, he saw nothing of her that day. Nor did he see her the next, nor
the next, nor yet the next again. At first, he began to think that she
must come out and return during the times when he was obliged to go off
guard and get his meal--for he could not bring himself to play the part
of the spy or the common policeman, and filch news from the
servants--but when a week had gone by in this manner, he set all
question upon that point at rest by remaining at his post from sunrise
to ten o'clock at night. She did not appear. He wondered what that
meant--whether it indicated that she had already accepted one of the two
positions, or had gone to stop with her friend on the other side of
Hampstead Heath.

The result of that wondering was that, for the next five days, the
gentleman who was known in Clarges Street as "Captain Horatio Burbage,"
became a regular visitor to the neighbourhood of the house in Bardon
Road. The issue was exactly the same. Miss Lorne did not appear.

He could no longer doubt that she had accepted one or other of the two
positions; but steadfastly refrained from making any personal inquiry.
She would hear of it if anybody called to inquire her whereabouts; and
she would guess who had done it. He would not have her feel that he was
thrusting himself upon her, inquiring about her as one might inquire
about a common servant. If it was her will that he should know, then
that knowledge should come from her, not be picked up as one picks up
clues to missing people of the criminal class.

So then, it was good-bye to Bardon Road, just as it had been good-bye to
Mayfair. He turned his back upon it in the very moment he came to that
conclusion, and had just set his face in the direction of the heath when
he was brought to a standstill by the sound of someone calling out
sharply: "Burbage--I say, Captain Burbage: stop a moment, please." And,
screwing round instantly, he saw a red limousine pelting toward him, and
an excited chauffeur waving a gloved hand.

He knew that red limousine, and he knew that chauffeur. Both belonged to
Mr. Maverick Narkom.

He stood waiting until the motor was abreast of him--had, in fact, come
to a standstill--then spoke in a guarded tone:

"What is it, Lennard?" he asked. "The Yard?"

"Yessir. Young Dollops told us where to look for you. Hop in quickly,
sir. Superintendent inside."

Cleek opened the door of the vehicle at once, stepped in, shut it after
him, and sat down beside Mr. Narkom with the utmost composure.

"My dear fellow, I _have_ had a chase!" said the superintendent, with a
long deep breath of relief, as the limousine swung out into the roadway,
and pelted off westward at a pace that brushed the very fringes of the
speed limit. "I made certain I should find you at home. Fairly floored
when I discovered that you weren't. If it hadn't been for that boy,
Dollops--bright young button, that Dollops, Cleek; exceedingly bright,
b'gad."

"Yes," agreed Cleek, quietly. "Bright, faithful, and--inventive."

"Really? What has the young beggar invented, then?"

"An original appliance which may possibly be of a good deal of service
one of these days. But, never mind that at present. It is fair to
suppose, from your rushing out here in quest of me, that you've got
something on hand, isn't it?"

"Yes--rather! An amazing 'something,' old chap. It's a letter. Arrived at
headquarters about an hour and a half ago. Not an affair for The Yard
this time, Cleek, but a thing you must take up on your own, if you take
it up at all; and I tell you frankly, I don't like it."

"Why?"

"For one thing, it's from Paris; and--well, you know what dangers Paris
would have for _you_. There's that she-devil you broke with--that woman
Margot. You know what she swore, what she wrote when you sent her that
letter telling her that you were done with her and her lot, and warning
her never to set foot on English soil again? If you were to run foul of
her--if she were ever to get any hint of your real identity--"

"She can't. She knows no more of my real history than you do; no more
than I actually know of hers. Our knowledge of each other began when we
started to 'pal' together--it ended when we split, eighteen months ago.
But about that letter? What is it? Why do you say that you don't like
it?"

"Well, to begin with, I'm afraid it is some trap of hers to decoy you
over there--get you into some unknown place--"

"There are no 'unknown places' in Paris so far as I am concerned.
I know every hole and corner of it, from the sewers on. I know it
as well as I know London, as well as I know Berlin--New
York--Vienna--Edinburgh--Rome. You couldn't lose me or trap me in any
one of them. Is that the letter in your hand? Good--then read it,
please."

"To the Superintendent of Police, Scotland Yard," read Narkom, obeying
the request.

"'DISTINGUISHED MONSIEUR:

"'Of your grace and pity, I implore you to listen to the prayer of
an unhappy man whose honour, whose reason, whose very life are in
deadly peril, not alone of "The Red Crawl," but of things he may
not even name, dare not commit to writing, lest this letter should
go astray. It shall happen, monsieur, that the whole world shall
hear with amazement of that most marvellous "Cleek"--that great
reader of riddles and unmasker of evil-doers who, in the past year,
has made the police department of England the envy of all nations;
and it shall happen also that I who dare not appeal to the police
of France appeal to the mercy, the humanity, of this great man, as
it is my only hope. Monsieur, you have his ear, you have his
confidence, you have the means at your command. Ah! ask him, pray
him, implore him for the love of God, and the sake of a fellow-man,
to come alone to the top floor of the house number 7 of the Rue
Toison d'Or, Paris, at nine hours of the night of Friday, the 26th
inst., to enter into the darkness and say but the one word "Cleek"
as a signal it is he, and I may come forward and throw myself upon
his mercy. Oh, save me, Monsieur Cleek--save me! save me!'

"There, that's the lot, and there's no signature," said Narkom, laying
down the letter. "What do you make of it, Cleek?"




CHAPTER VII


"A very real, a very moving thing, Mr. Narkom," he replied. "The cry of
a human heart in deep distress; the agonised appeal of a man so wrought
up by the horrors of his position that he forgets to offer a temptation
in the way of reward, and speaks of outlandish things as though they
must be understood of all. As witness his allusion to something which he
calls 'The Red Crawl,' without attempting to explain the meaningless
phrase. Whatever it is, it is so real to him that it seems as if
everybody must understand."

"You think, then, that the thing is genuine?"

"So genuine that I shall answer its call, Mr. Narkom, and be alone in
the dark on the top floor of No. 7, Rue Toison d'Or, to-morrow night as
surely as the clock strikes nine."

And that was how the few persons who happened to be in the quiet upper
reaches of the Rue Bienfaisance at half-past eight o'clock the next
evening came to see a fat, fussing, red-faced Englishman in a grey
frock-coat, white spats, and a shining topper, followed by a liveried
servant with a hat-box in one hand and a portmanteau in the other--so
conspicuous, the pair of them, that they couldn't have any desire to
conceal themselves--cross over the square before the Church of St.
Augustine, fare forth into the darker side passages, and move in the
direction of the street of the Golden Fleece.

They were, of course, Cleek and the boy Dollops.

"Lumme, Gov'nor," whispered he, as they turned at last into the utter
darkness and desertion of the narrow Rue Toison d'Or, "if this is wot
yer calls Gay Paree--this precious black slit between two rows of
houses--I'll take a slice of the Old Kent Road with thanks. Not even so
much as a winkle-stall in sight, and me that empty my shirt-bosom's
a-chafing my blessed shoulder-blades!"

"You'll see plenty of life before the game's over, I warrant you,
Dollops. Now then, my lad, here's a safe spot. Sit down on the hat-box
and wait. That's No. 7, that empty house with the open door, just across
the way. Keep your eye on it. I don't know how long I'll be, but if
anybody comes out before I do, mind you don't let him get away."

"No fear!" said Dollops sententiously. "I'll be after him as if he was a
ham sandwich, sir. Look out for my patent 'Tickle Tootsies' when you
come out, Gov'nor. I'll sneak over and put 'em round the door as soon as
you've gone in." For Dollops, who was of an inventive turn of mind, had
an especial "man-trap" of his own, which consisted of heavy brown paper,
cut into squares, and thickly smeared over with a viscid varnish-like
substance that would adhere to the feet of anybody incautiously stepping
upon it, and so interfere with flight that it was an absolute necessity
to stop and tear the papers away before running with any sort of ease
and swiftness was possible. This was the "invention" to which Cleek had
alluded. Dollops, who was rather proud of the achievement, carried with
him a full supply of ready-cut papers and a big collapsible tube of the
viscid, ropy, varnish-like glue.

Meantime, Cleek, having left the boy sitting on the hat-box in the
darkness, crossed the narrow street to the open doorway of No. 7, and,
without hesitation, stepped in. The place was as black as a pocket, and
had that peculiar smell which belongs to houses that have long stood
vacant. The house, nevertheless, was a respectable one, and, like all
the others, fronted on another street--this dark Toison d'Or being
merely a back passage used principally by the tradespeople for the
delivery of supplies. Feeling his way to the first of the three flights
of stairs which led upward into the stillness and gloom above, Cleek
mounted steadily until he found himself at length in a sort of
attic--quite windowless, and lit only by a skylight through which shone
the ineffectual light of the stars. It was the top at last. Bracing his
back against the wall, so that nobody could get behind him, and holding
himself ready for any emergency, he called out in a clear, calm voice:
"Cleek!"

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