CHAPTER THREE
THE SHADOW THAT LAY BEHIND
It had but just gone midnight when the car slowed down before the house in Clarges Street. Here in company with his faithful henchman, Dollops, and attended upon by an elderly housekeeper and a deaf-and-dumb maid of all work, there dwelt – under the name and guise of "Captain Horatio Burbage," a superannuated seaman – that strange and original genius who chose to call himself "Hamilton Cleek," but who was known to the police of two continents by the sobriquet of "The Man of the Forty Faces."
In the merest fraction of a minute Narkom was out of the limousine, had crossed the narrow pavement, mounted the three shallow steps, and was standing in the shadow of a pillared porch, punching a signal on the button of an electric bell. In all he could not have been kept waiting more than a minute, but it seemed forty times that length when he at last heard a bolt slip, and saw, in the gap of the open door, the figure of a slim, red-headed youth arrayed in a bed quilt, a suit of pink flannelette pajamas, and a pair of white canvas tennis shoes.
"Come in, sir, come in quick!" this young man whispered, in the broadest of Cockney accents, as he opened the door just wide enough for Narkom to sidle into the semi-dark passage.
"Where's your master, Dollops?" put in the superintendent. "Speak up! Is he in? I've got to see him at once!"
The voice which answered came, not from Dollops, but from the dark top of the dim staircase.
"Come up, Mr. Narkom," it said. "I thought that young beggar had gone to bed ages ago and was just coming down myself to let you in. Come along up. You know the way."
Narkom acted upon the invitation so promptly that he was up the stairs and in the cozy, curtained, and lamp-lit room which Cleek called his den almost as quickly as his host himself. In fact, Cleek had scarcely time to sweep into the drawer of his writing table a little pile of something which looked like a collection of odds and ends of jewellery, bits of faded ribbon, and time-stained letters, and turn the key upon them, before the police official was at the door.
"Hullo!" said Cleek in a tone of surprise and deep interest as the superintendent came fairly lurching into the room. "What's in the wind, Mr. Narkom? You look fairly bowled. Whisky and soda there – at your elbow – help yourself. I presume it is a case – nothing else would bring you here at this time and in such a state. What kind is it? And for whom? Some friend of yours or for the Yard?"
"For both, I'm afraid," replied Narkom, pouring out a stiff peg of whisky and nervously gulping it down between words. "God knows I hope it may be only for the Yard, but considering what I know – Get your hat and coat. Come with me at once, Cleek. It's a murder – a mystery after your own heart. Lennard's below with the limousine. Come quickly, do, there's a dear chap. I'll tell you all about it on the way. The thing's only just been done – within the hour – out Wimbledon way."
"I might have guessed that, Mr. Narkom, considering that you were to mingle duty with pleasure and spend the evening at Wimbledon with your old friend, Sir Philip Clavering," replied Cleek, rising at once. "Certainly I will go with you. Did you ever know the time when I wouldn't do all that I could to help the best friend I ever had – yourself? And if it is, as you hint, likely to be in the interest of the friend of my friend – "
"I'm not so sure of that, Cleek. God knows I hope it's a mistaken idea of mine; but when you have heard, when you have seen, how abominably things point to that dear boy of Clavering's and to the girl that dead fellow was conspiring with her father to take away from him – "
"Oho!" interjected Cleek, with a strong rising inflection. "So there is that element in the case, eh? – love and a woman in distress! Give me a minute to throw a few things together and I am with you, my friend."
"Thanks, old chap, I knew I could rely upon you! But don't stop to bother about a disguise, Cleek, it's too dark for anybody to see that it isn't 'the Captain' that's going out; and besides, there's everything of that sort in the limousine, you know. The street is as dark as a pocket, and there's nobody likely to be on the watch at this hour."
The curious one-sided smile so characteristic of the man looped up the corner of Cleek's mouth; his features seemed to writhe, a strange, indefinable change to come over them as he put into operation his peculiar birth gift; and an instant later, but that he had not stirred one step and his clothing was still the same, one might have thought that a totally different man was in the room.
"Will it matter who watches?" he said, with just a suspicion of vanity over the achievement. "It will be – let us see – yes, a French gentleman whom we shall call 'Monsieur Georges de Lesparre' to-night, Mr. Narkom. A French gentleman with a penchant for investigating criminal affairs, and who comes to you with the strong recommendation of the Parisian police department. Now cut down to the limousine and wait for me, I'll join you presently. And, Mr. Narkom?"
"Yes, old chap?"
"As you go out, give Dollops directions where and how to get to the scene of the tragedy, and tell him to follow us in a taxi as expeditiously as possible."
"Oh, Molly 'Awkins! There ain't no rest for the wicked and no feedin' for the 'ungry this side of Kensal Green – and precious little on the other!" sighed Dollops when he received this message. "Not four weeks it ain't since I was drug off in the middle of my lunch to go Cingalee huntin' in Soho for them bounders wot was after Lady Chepstow's 'Sacred Son,' and now here I am pulled out of my blessed pajamas in the middle of the night to go 'Tickle Tootsying' in the bally fog at Wimbledon! Well, all right, sir. Where the gov'ner goes, I goes, bless his 'eart; so you can look for me as soon as I can get out of these Eytalian pants."
Narkom made no comment; merely went down and out to the waiting limousine and took his seat in it, full of a racking, nervous impatience that was like a consuming fire; and there Cleek found him, ten minutes later, when he jumped in with his kit bag and gave the signal which set Lennard to speeding the car back on its way to the scene of the mysterious tragedy.
"Pull down the blinds and turn up the light, Mr. Narkom, so I can make a few necessary changes on the way," he said, opening the locker and groping round in the depths of it as the limousine scudded around the corner and tore off up Picadilly. "You can give me the particulars of the case while I'm making up. Come on – let's have them. How did the affair begin, and where?"
Narkom detailed the occurrences of the night with the utmost clearness, from the moment when the shot and the cry attracted Lennard's attention to that when the ghastly discovery was made in the semi-ruined cottage.
"Oho!" said Cleek, with one of his curious smiles. "So our friend the mysterious assassin disappeared in the middle of a sort of tunnel did he – and with a man at either end? Hum-m-m! I see, I see!"
"Do you? Well, I'm blest if I do, then. There wasn't a place as big as your hand to hide anything in, much less shelter a man; and the fellow who could do a diabolical thing like that – "
"That is a question which simply remains to be seen," interposed Cleek. "The thing is not so supernatural as it appears at first blush. Once – in the days that lie behind me, when I was the hunted and not the hunter – in that old 'Vanishing Cracksman' time of mine, I myself did that 'amazing disappearance' twice. Once in an alley in New York when there was a night watchman and a patrolman to be eluded; and once in Paris when, with Margot's lot, I was being hunted into a trap which would have been the end of one of the biggest coups of my career had I been nabbed that night."
"Margot?" repeated Narkom. "Yes, I remember the Queen of the Apaches – the woman with whom you used to consort. Said she'd get even with you when you turned down the old life and took sides with the law instead of against it, I recollect. And you tell me that in those old days you practised a trick such as this fellow did to-night?"
"Yes. Beat him at it – if you will pardon the conceit – for I vanished in the middle of a narrow passage with a sergeant de ville chasing me at one end and a concierge accompanied by a cabman and a commissionaire racing in at the other, I always fancied that that trick was original with me. I know of no one but Margot and her crew who were aware of the exploit, and if any man has borrowed a leaf from the book of those old times – Oh, well, it will be the end of all your fears regarding any friend of ours, Mr. Narkom, for the fellow will stand convicted as a member of the criminal classes and, possibly, of Margot's crew. We shall know the truth of that when we get to the scene of this mysterious vanishment, my friend."
"Yes, but how was it done, Cleek? Where did he go? How did he elude the chasing keeper and the waiting constable? A man can't vanish into thin air, and I tell you there wasn't a place of any sort for him to hide in. Yet you speak of the trick as if it were easy."
"It is easy, provided he had the same cause and adopted the same means as I did, my friend. Wait until we come to investigate that railway arch and you will see. Now tell me something, Mr. Narkom: How came you to be in the neighbourhood of Mulberry Lane at all to-night? It is nowhere near Clavering Close; and it was decidedly out of your way if, as you tell me, you were on the way back to town. It is peculiar that you should have chosen to go out of your way like that."
"I didn't choose to do it. As a matter of fact I was executing a commission for Lady Clavering. It appears that a jewel had been found by the maid-in-attendance lying upon the floor of the ladies' room, and as Lady Clavering recollected seeing that jewel upon Miss Ailsa Lorne's person to-night, she asked me to stop at Wuthering Grange and return it to her."
"Ailsa Lorne!" A light flashed into Cleek's face as he repeated the name, and rising into his eyes, made them positively radiant. "Ailsa Lorne, Mr. Narkom? You surely do not mean to tell me that Ailsa Lorne is in Wimbledon?"
"Yes, certainly I do. My dear fellow, how the name seems to interest you. But I remember: you know the lady, of course."
Know her? Know the woman whose eyes had lit the way back from those old days of crime to the higher and the better things, the woman who had been his redemption in this world, and would, perhaps, be his salvation in the one to come? Cleek's very soul sang hymns of glory at the bare thought of her.
"I did not know Miss Lorne would be in Wimbledon," he said quietly, "or anywhere in the neighbourhood of London. I thought she had accepted a temporary position down in Suffolk as the companion of an old school friend, Lady Katharine Fordham."
"So she did," replied Narkom. "And it is as that unhappy young lady's companion that she was at Clavering Close to-night. Lady Katharine, as you doubtless know, is Lord St. Ulmer's only child."
"Lord St. Ulmer?" repeated Cleek, gathering up his brows thoughtfully. "Hum-m-m! Ah-h-h! I seem to remember something about a Lord St. Ulmer. Let me see! Lost his wife when his daughter was a mere baby, didn't he, and took the loss so much to heart that he went out to Argentina and left the girl to the care of an aunt? Yes, I recall it now. Story was in all the papers some months ago. Got hold of a silver mine out there; made a pot of money, and came home after something like fifteen years of absence; bought in the old family place, Ulmer Court, down in Suffolk, after it had been in the hands of strangers for a generation or two, and took his daughter down there to live. That's the man, isn't it?"
"Yes, that's the man. He's worth something like half a million sterling to-day – lucky beggar."
"Then why do you allude to his daughter and heiress as an 'unhappy young lady'? Surely with unlimited wealth at her command – "
"Which I dare say she would gladly give up to get back other things that she has lost," interposed Mr. Narkom. "Her hopes of becoming young Geoff Clavering's wife for one!"
"Young Geoff Clavering? The chap whose coming of age was celebrated to-day?"
"Yes, the son and heir of my friend, Sir Philip Clavering, as fine a boy as ever stood in shoe leather. He and Lady Katharine have almost grown up together, as her uncle and aunt, General and Mrs. Raynor, are close neighbours at Wuthering Grange. They were engaged at seventeen, a regular idyllic love match, old chap. Sir Philip and Lady Clavering were immensely fond of her and heartily approved the match. So apparently did her father, to whom she wrote, although she had not seen him since she was a baby. Even when he returned to England with a fortune big enough to warrant his daughter wedding a duke, he still appeared to approve of the engagement, and suggested that the wedding should be celebrated on the young man's twenty-first birthday."
"Which, as to-day is that day, and you still speak of her as Lady Katharine Fordham, I presume did not take place?"
"No, it did not. Some three months ago, a certain Count de Louvisan, an Austrian, appeared on the scene, claiming acquaintance with St. Ulmer; and it seems that after a subsequent interview, Lord St. Ulmer informed his daughter that her engagement with Geoff Clavering must come to an end, and that it was her father's intention that she should become the wife of Count de Louvisan."
"Oho!" said Cleek, in two different tones. "All of which goes to suggest that the count had some hold over the old gentleman and was using it to feather his own nest. Of course the girl couldn't be compelled to marry the man against her will, so if she consented to the breaking of the engagement – Did she?"
"Yes."
"Then something must have been told her – something which was either a lie or an appalling truth – to make her take a step like that, for a woman does not break with the man she loves unless something more than life is at stake. And it is this Count de Louvisan, you tell me, that has been murdered? Hum-m-m!"
"Yes, the worst of it is," said Mr. Narkom gloomily, "there was a scene between him and young Clavering but a couple of hours before the murder was discovered."
"What's that?" rapped out Cleek. "A 'scene'! A quarrel do you mean? How and where? Or perhaps you don't know?"
"As it happens, I do," said Narkom, "for I happened to be at Clavering Close when it took place. You see, Lord St. Ulmer is laid up with a sprained ankle at Wuthering Grange, where he has been staying with his sister and brother-in-law, the Raynors. Lady Katharine seized the opportunity to say farewell to Geoff, and came over at about eight o'clock; and I hope, Cleek, I may never in my life again see anything so heartbreaking as was made those last few minutes of parting."
"Few? Why few, pray?"
"Because they had not been together half an hour when the Count de Louvisan came over, posthaste, after his fiancée. Lady Katharine's absence had been discovered from the Grange, and naturally he was the one who would come after her. You can guess what followed, Cleek. Young Clavering fairly flew at the fellow, and would have thrashed him but that his father and I got hold of him, and Hammond and Petrie hustled the count out of the room. But even so, nobody could prevent that wild, impetuous, excited boy from challenging the man, then and there. To that the count merely threw back a laugh and said, as Petrie and Hammond hustled him out of the room: 'Monsieur, one does not fight a fallen foe – one merely pities him!' And it took all his father's strength and mine to hold the boy in check. 'Pity yourself if ever I meet you!' he shouted. 'There'll be one blackguard the less in the world if ever I come within reach of you again, damn you! I had nine years of hope until you came, and I'll put a mark on you for every one of them that you've spoilt!"
"'A mark'!" repeated Cleek, with some slight show of agitation. "A mark for every year? It is true that the barking dog is the last to bite but – What were those figures that you tell me were smeared on the dead man's shirt bosom – 2-4-1-2, were they not? And that sum equals nine!"
"Yes," said Narkom, with a sort of groan. "Just nine, Cleek, just exactly nine. That's what cut the heart out of me when I saw that dead man spiked to the cottage wall, bearing the very mark he had sworn that he should bear."
"I see," murmured Cleek thoughtfully. "Of course, the wisest of men are sometimes mistaken, but somehow I took those numerals to stand for a sign of a secret society; but, as you say, the numbers do indeed total nine – the years of young Clavering's threat, but – "
His voice trailed off; he sat for a moment deep in thought.
"Then there is the 'spike,' that is an old Apache punishment. They spiked Lanisterre to the wall when he went over to the police. Which is it? The Apaches or this foolish, hot-headed boy lover?"
Narkom wisely refrained from comment. He knew the ways and methods of his famous ally only too well, and he sat silent therefore till Lennard pulled up the limousine sharply in front of Gleer Cottage.
"Here we are at the cottage – unless you would like to see the arch first?"
"Oh, no," Cleek smiled softly. "That part of the mystery, my friend, is quite simple. Lead the way, please."
They alighted without further remark, and Narkom was followed by as complete a specimen of a French dandy as could be found in Paris, from the gardens of the Tuileries to the benches of the Luxembourg.
CHAPTER FOUR
CLEWS AND SUSPICIONS
A minute more and Cleek was in the house – in the presence of Hammond and Petrie – and Narkom had introduced him as "Monsieur Georges de Lesparre, a distinguished French criminologist who had come over to England this morning upon a matter connected with the French Police Department and who, in the absence of Mr. Cleek, had consented to take up this peculiar case."
"My hat! Wouldn't that drive you to drink!" commented Petrie in a disgusted aside as he eyed this suave and sallow gentleman with open disapproval. "What will we be importing from the continent next, Hammond? As if there aren't detectives in England good enough to do the Yard's work without setting them to twiddling their blessed thumbs whilst a blooming Froggie runs the show and – beg pardon! what's that? Yes, Mr. Narkom. Searched the house from top to bottom, sir. Nobody in it, and nobody been here either, sir, not a soul since you left."
"You are quite sure, monsieur?" This from Cleek. "About the 'nobody in the house,' I mean, of course. You are quite sure?"
"Of course we're sure!" snapped Hammond savagely. "Been from the top to the bottom of it – me and Petrie and the constable here – and not a soul in it anywhere."
"Ah, the constable, eh? You shall tell me, please, Mr. Narkom, is this the constable who was at the one end of the arch while the keeper was chasing the man in at the other? Ah, it is, eh? Well – er – shall not we see the keeper, too? I do not find him about and I should much like to speak with him. Where is he?"
"Who – the keeper?" said Narkom. "Blest if I know. Is he about, my lads?"
"No, sir. Ain't been about – has he, Petrie? – for the Lord knows how long. Never thought of the beggar until this moment, sir."
"Nor did I," said Narkom. "Come to think of it, I haven't seen the fellow since we came to the 'Y' of the road and found those footprints leading here. No doubt he has gone back to his shelter on the Common and – Monsieur! Why are you smiling? Good God! you – I – Monsieur, shall I send my men for the fellow? Do you want to see him?"
"Yes, Monsieur Narkom, I want to see him very, very much indeed – if you can find him! But you can't, monsieur; and I fear me that you never will. What you will find, however, if you will send your men to the shelter of which you speak will be the real keeper, either dead or stunned or gagged, and his coat and hat and badge removed from his body by the man who personated him."
"Good heavens above, man, you don't mean to say – "
"That you had the real criminal in your hands and let him go, that you talked with him, walked with him, were taken in by him, and that he told you no lie when he said the assassin really did run into the arch," replied Cleek quietly. "It is the old old trick of that fellow who was called the 'Vanishing Cracksman,' my friend: to knock down the fellow who first gives the alarm, rip off his clothing, and then to lead the hue and cry until there's a chance to steal away unobserved. Send your men to the keeper's shelter and see if I have guessed the truth of that little riddle or not. I'll lay you a sovereign, my friend, that your man has slipped the leash, and it will be but a fluke of fate if you ever lay hands on him again."
In a sort of panic Narkom turned to his men and sent them flying from the house to investigate this startling assertion; and, turning as they went, Cleek walked into the room where that awful dead figure hung. He had taken but one step across the threshold, however, when he stopped suddenly and began to sniff the air – less to the surprise of Narkom, who had often seen him do this sort of thing before, than to Constable Mellish, who stood looking at him in open-mouthed amazement.
"Good lud, man – I should say, monsieur," exclaimed the superintendent agitatedly, "after what you have just hinted, my head is in a whirl and I am prepared for almost anything; but surely you cannot find anything suspicious in the mere atmosphere of the place?"
"No; nothing but what you yourself must have observed. There is a distinct odour of violets in the room; so that unless that unhappy man yonder was of the kind that scents itself, we may set it down that a woman has been in here."
"A woman? But no woman could do a thing like that," pointing to the position of the dead man. "Nor," after sniffing the air repeatedly, "do I notice anything of the odour which you speak."
"Nor me nuther, sir," put in the constable.
"Still, the odour is here," returned Cleek. "And – no! it does not emanate from the dead man. There is scent on him to be sure, but it is not the scent of violets. Odours last at best but a little time after the person bearing them has left the room, and as it must now be upward of an hour since the discovery of the crime – "
Cleek sucked in his upper lip and took his chin between his thumb and forefinger and pinched it hard. What was that that Narkom had told him regarding Lennard's startling experience after he had been left on guard at the old railway arch? Hum-m-m! Certainly there was one woman abroad in this neighbourhood to-night, and a woman decidedly not of the lower classes at that, as witness the fact that she had worn an ermine cloak. Certainly, that would point to the wearer being a woman to whom money was no object – and to Lady Katharine Fordham, with all the great St. Ulmer wealth behind her, it assuredly was not. Clearly, then, whoever was or was not the actual perpetrator of this night's crime, a woman of the higher walk of life – a rich and fashionable woman, in fact – was in some way connected with it.
The question was, did Lady Katharine Fordham possess an ermine cloak? And if she did, would she be likely to have brought it up from Suffolk at this time of the year? The curious smile slid down his cheek and vanished. He turned to Mr. Narkom, who had been watching him anxiously all the time.
"Well, my friend, let us poke about a bit more till your assistants get back from the shelter on the Common," he said and dropped down on his knees, examining every inch of the flooring with the aid of a pocket torch and a magnifying glass. For some moments nothing came of this, but of a sudden Narkom saw him come to an abrupt halt.
Twitching back his head, he sniffed at the air, two or three times, after the manner of a hound catching up a lost scent; then he bent over, brought his nose close to the level of the bare and dirty boards, sniffed again, blew aside the dust, and exposed to view a tiny grease spot not bigger than a child's thumbnail.
"Huile Violette!" he said, with a sound as of satisfied laughter in his voice. "No wonder the scent of violets lingered. Look! here is another spot – and here another," he added, blowing the dust away and creeping on all fours in the direction the perfumed trail led. "Oh, I know this stuff well, my friend," he went on. "For many, many years its manufacture was a secret known only to the Spanish monks who carried it with them to South America and subsequently established in that part of the country now known as Argentina a monastery celebrated all over the world as the only source from which this essential oil could be procured."
"Argentina?" repeated Narkom agitatedly. "My dear chap, have you forgotten that it was in Argentina Lord St. Ulmer spent those many years of his self-imposed exile? If then, the stuff is only to be procured there – "
"Gently, gently – you rush at top speed, Mr. Narkom. I said 'was,' recollect. It is still the chief point of its manufacture, but since those days when the Spanish monks carried it there others have learned the secret of it, notably the Turks who now manufacture an attar of violets just as they have for years manufactured an attar of roses. It is enormously expensive; for the veriest drop of it is sufficient, with the necessary addition of alcohol, to manufacture half a pint of the perfume known to commerce as 'Extract of Violet.' At one time it was a favourite trick of very great ladies to wear on a bracelet a tiny golden capsule containing two or three drops of it and supplied with a minute jewelled stopper attached to a slender golden chain, which stopper they occasionally removed for a moment or two that the aroma of the contents might diffuse itself about them. I knew one woman – and one only – who possessed such a bracelet. You, too, have heard of her. Whatever her real name may be, she is simply known to those with whom she associates as 'Margot.'"
"Scotland! The queen of the Apaches?"
"Yes."
"You are sure of that?"
"I ought to be. I, myself, stole the bracelet from the collection of the Comte de Champdoce and presented it to her. I remember that the stopper to the capsule was carved from a single emerald that, owing to its age – it was said to have belonged in its day to Catherine de Medicis – had worn loose, and could only be prevented from dropping out and allowing the contents to drip away by wedging it into the orifice in the capsule by winding the stopper with silk."
Narkom's face positively glowed.
"My dear Cleek, you give me the brightest kind of hope," he said enthusiastically, as he stooped and investigated the tiny, perfumed grease spots on the floor, so clearly made by the dropping of some oily substance that there could be no question regarding their origin. "Then, there can be no possibility of connecting young Geoff Clavering or the girl he loves with this ghastly business if that Margot woman has been here, and it was from her bracelet that these stains were dropped? Besides, after what you said about that fellow of her crew who was spiked to the wall as this poor wretch here is – "
"A moment, my friend – you are on the rush again," interjected Cleek. "All that we actually know, at present, Mr. Narkom, is that some one, and very likely a woman, has been here and – unconsciously, of course – has spilled some drops of a very valuable and highly concentrated perfume. This naturally points to a defective stopper to the article containing that perfume, but whether or not that defective stopper was one carved from a single emerald and wound with silk – "
He stopped and let the rest of the sentence go by default. All the while he had been speaking he had been following, after the manner of a hound on the scent, the trail of that perfume's lead; now it had brought him to a litter of rat-gnawed paper and a parcel containing a peach and the remnants of a roasted fowl. As if the scent seemed stronger here than elsewhere – so strong, in fact, that it was suggestive of a goal – he began tossing the scraps about, till at last he gave a sort of cry and pounced upon something in a distant corner.
"Cleek!" rapped out Narkom in an excited but guarded tone, as he noted this, "Cleek, you have found something? Something that decides?"
"Yes," the detective made answer. "Something which proves that, whoever the woman who dropped the scent may be, Mr. Narkom, she was not Margot!"
He unclosed his hand and stretched it out toward the superintendent, and Narkom saw lying on his palm a crushed and gleaming thing which looked like a child's gold thimble that had been trodden upon. The snapped fragment of a hairlike gold chain still clung to it, and at the end of this dangled a liliputian stopper, a wee mite of a thing that was little more than a short, thick pin of plain, unjewelled, unornamented gold.
"One of the 'capsules' of which I spoke, you see," said Cleek, "and bearing not the slightest resemblance to the one belonging to Margot. The thing has snapped from its fastening and been trodden upon – trodden under a very heavy foot, I should say, from the condition of it. There is something engraved upon it, something that won't tend to ease your mind, Mr. Narkom. Take my glass and look at it."
Narkom did so. Engraved on the crushed and fragrant-smelling bit of gold he saw a coat-of-arms – arms which he, at least, knew to be those of the house of St. Ulmer – and under this the name "Katharine."
"Good Lord!" he said, and let the crushed bauble fall back upon the palm from which he had lifted it. "That child – that dear girl who is as much as life itself to young Geoff Clavering? But how could she – a slip of a girl like that – "
He turned and looked over at the dead figure spiked to the cottage wall.
Cleek made no reply – at least for the moment. He had gone back to the "hound's trick" of sniffing the trail and was creeping on again —past the litter of papers this time – and crawling on all fours toward the very doorway by which the police had first gained access to the room.