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!"
Almost simultaneously there was a sharp metallic "snick," an electric bulb hanging from the ceiling flamed out luminously, a cupboard door flashed open, a voice cried out in joyous, perfect English: "Thank God for a man!" And, switching round with a cry of amazement, he found himself looking into the face and eyes of a woman.
And of all women in the world—Ailsa Lorne!
He sucked in his breath and his heart began to hammer.
"Miss Lorne!" he exclaimed, so carried out of himself that he scarcely knew what he did. "It was the French position that you chose, then? It is you—you—that calls upon me?"
"No, it is not," she made reply, a rush of colour reddening her cheeks, a feeling of embarrassment and of a natural restraint making her shake visibly. "I am merely the envoy of another. I should not know you, disguised as you are, but for that. Yes, I chose the French position, as you see, Mr. Cleek. I am now the companion to Mademoiselle Athalie, daughter of the Baron de Carjorac."
"Baron de Carjorac? Do you mean the French Minister of the Interior, the President of the Board of National Defences, Miss Lorne—that enthusiastic old patriot, that rabid old spitfire, whose one dream is the wresting back of Alsace-Lorraine, the driving of the hated Germans into the sea? Do you mean that ripping old firebrand?"
"Yes. But you'd not call him that if you were to see him now; if you could see the wreck, the broken and despairing wreck, that six weeks of the Château Larouge, six weeks of that horrible 'Red Crawl' have made of him."
"'The Red Crawl'! Good heavens! then that letter, that appeal for help—"
"Came from him!" she finished excitedly. "It was he who was to have met you here to-night, Mr. Cleek. This house is one he owns; he thought he might with safety risk coming here, but—he can't! he can't! He knows now that there is danger for him everywhere; that his every step is tracked; that the snare which is about him has been about him, unsuspected, for almost a year; that he dare not, absolutely dare not, appeal to the French police, and that if it were known he had appealed to you, he would be a dead man inside of twenty-four hours, and not only dead, but—disgraced. Oh, Mr. Cleek!"—she stretched out two shaking hands and laid them on his arm, lifted a white, imploring face to his—"save him! save that dear broken old man! Ah, think! think! They are our friends, our dear country's friends, these French people. Their welfare is our welfare, ours is theirs. Oh, help him, save him, Mr. Cleek—for his own sake—for mine—for France. Save him, and win my gratitude for ever!"
"That is a temptation that would carry me to the ends of the earth, Miss Lorne. Tell me what the work is, and I will carry it through. What is this incomprehensible thing of which both you and Baron de Carjorac have spoken—this thing you allude to as 'The Red Crawl'?"
She gave a little shuddering cry and fell back a step, covering her face with both hands.
"Oh!" she said, with a shiver of repulsion. "It is loathly—it is horrible—it is necromancy—beyond belief! Why, oh, why were we ever driven to that horrible Château Larouge! Why could not fate have spared the Villa de Carjorac? It could not have happened then!"
"Villa de Carjorac? That was the name of the baron's residence, I believe. I remember reading in the newspapers some five or six weeks ago that it was destroyed by fire, which originated—nobody knew how—in the apartments of the late baroness in the very dead of the night. I thought at the time it read suspiciously like the work of an incendiary, although nobody hinted at such a thing. The Château Larouge I also have a distinct memory of, as an old historic property in the neighbourhood of St. Cloud. Speaking from past experience, I know that, although it is in such a state of decay, and supposed to be uninhabitable, it has, in fact, often been occupied at a period when the police and the public believed it to be quite empty. Gentlemen of the Apache persuasion have frequently made it a place of retreat. There is also an underground passage—executed by those same individuals—which connects with the Paris sewers. That, too, the police are unaware of. What can the ruined Château Larouge possibly have to do with the affairs of the Baron de Carjorac, Miss Lorne, that you connect them like this?"
"They have everything to do with them—everything. The Château is no longer a ruin, however. It was purchased, rebuilt, refitted by the Comtesse Susanne de la Tour, Mr. Cleek, and she and her brother live there. So do we—Athalie, Baron de Carjorac, and I. So, also, does the creature—the thing—the abominable horror known as 'The Red Crawl.'"
"My dear Miss Lorne, what are you saying?"
"The truth, nothing but the truth!" she answered hysterically. "Oh, let me begin at the beginning—you'll never understand unless I do. I'll tell you in as few words as possible—as quickly as I can. It all began last winter, when Athalie and her father were at Monte Carlo. There they met Madame la Comtesse de la Tour and her brother, Monsieur Gaston Merode. The baron has position but he has not wealth, Mr. Cleek. Athalie is ambitious. She loves luxury, riches, a life of fashion—all the things that boundless money can give; and when Monsieur Merode—who is young, handsome, and said to be fabulously wealthy—showed a distinct preference for her over all the other marriageable girls he met, she was flattered out of her silly wits. Before they left Monte Carlo for Paris everybody could see that he had only to ask her hand, to have it bestowed upon him. For although the baron never has cared for the man, Athalie rules him, and her every caprice is humoured.
"But for all he was so ardent a lover, Monsieur Merode was slow in coming to the important point. Perhaps his plans were not matured. At any rate, he did not propose to Athalie at Monte Carlo; and, although he and his sister returned to Paris at the same time as the baron and his daughter, he still deferred the proposal."
"Has he not made it yet?"
"Yes, Mr. Cleek. He made it six weeks ago—to be exact, two nights before the Villa de Carjorac was fired."
"You think it was fired, then?"
"I do now, although I had no suspicion of it at the time. Athalie received her proposal on the Saturday, the baron gave his consent on the Sunday, and on Monday night the villa was mysteriously burnt, leaving all three of us without an immediate refuge. In the meantime, Madame la Comtesse had purchased the ruin of the Château Larouge, and during the period of her brother's deferred proposal was engaged in fitting it up as an abode for herself and him. On the very day it was finished, Monsieur Merode asked for Athalie's hand."
"Oho!" said Cleek, with a strong rising inflection. "I think I begin to smell the toasting of the cheese. Of course, when the villa was burnt out, Madame la Comtesse insisted that, as the fiancée of her brother, Mlle. de Carjorac must make her home at the Château until the necessary repairs could be completed; and, of course, the baron had to go with her?"
"Yes," admitted Ailsa. "The baron accepted—Athalie would not have allowed him to decline had he wished to—so we all three went there and have been residing there ever since. On the night after our arrival an alarming, a horrifying thing occurred. It was while we were at dinner that the conversation turned upon the supernatural—upon houses and places that were reputed to be haunted—and then Madame la Comtesse made a remarkable statement. She laughingly asserted that she had just learned that, in purchasing the Château Larouge, she had also become the possessor of a sort of family ghost. She said that she had only just heard—from an outside source—that there was a horrible legend connected with the place; in short, that for centuries it had been reputed to be under a sort of spell of evil and to be cursed by a dreadful visitant known as 'The Red Crawl'—a hideous and loathsome creature, neither spider nor octopus, but horribly resembling both—which was supposed to 'appear' at intervals in the middle of the night, and, like the fabled giants of fairy tales, carry off 'lovely maidens and devour them.'"
"Who is responsible for that ridiculous assertion, I wonder? I think I may say that I know as much about the Château Larouge and its history as anybody, Miss Lorne, but I never heard of this supposed 'legend' before in all my life."
"So the baron, too, declared, laughing as derisively as any of us over the story, although it is well known that he has a natural antipathy to all crawling things—an abhorrence inherited from his mother—and has been known to run like a frightened child from the appearance of a mere garden spider."
"Oho!" said Cleek again. "I see! I see! The toasted cheese smells stronger, and there's a distinct suggestion of the Rhine about it this time. There's something decidedly German about that fabulous 'monster' and that haunted château, Miss Lorne. They are clever and careful schemers, those German Johnnies. Of course, this amazing 'Red Crawl' was proved to have an absolute foundation in fact, and equally, of course, it 'appeared' to the Baron de Carjorac?"
"Yes—that very night. After we had all gone to bed, the house was roused by his screams. Everybody rushed to his chamber, only to find him lying on the floor in a state of collapse. The thing had been in his room, he said. He had seen it—it had even touched him—a horrible, hideous red reptile, with squirming tentacles, a huge, glowing body, and eyes like flame. It had crept upon him out of the darkness—he knew not from where. It had seized him, resisted all his wild efforts to tear loose from it, and when he finally sank, overcome and fainting, upon the floor, his last conscious recollection was of the loathsome thing settling down upon his breast and running its squirming 'feelers' up and down his body."
"Of course! Of course! That was part of the game. It was after something. Something of the utmost importance to German interests. That's why the Château Larouge was refitted, why the Villa de Carjorac was burnt down, and why this Monsieur Gaston Merode became engaged to Mademoiselle Athalie."
"Oh, how could you know that, Mr. Cleek? Nobody ever suspected. The baron never confessed to any living soul until he did so to me, to-day—and then only because he had to tell somebody, in order that the appointment with you might be kept. How, then, could you guess?"
"By putting two and two together, Miss Lorne, and discovering that they do not make five. The inference is very clear: Baron de Carjorac is President of the Board of National Defences; Germany, in spite of its public assurances to the contrary, is known by those who are 'on the inside' to harbour a very determined intention of making a secret attack, an unwarned invasion, upon England. France is the key to the situation. If, without the warning that must come through the delay of picking a quarrel and entering into an open war with the Republic, the German army can swoop down in the night, cross the frontier, and gain immediate possession of the ports of France, in five hours' time it can be across the English Channel, and its hordes pouring down upon a sleeping people. To carry out this programme, the first step would, of course, be to secure knowledge of the number, location, manner of the secret defences of France—the plans of fortification, the maps of the 'danger zone,' the documentary evidence of her strongest and weakest points—and who so likely to be the guardian of these as the Baron de Carjorac? That is how I know that 'The Red Crawl' was after something of vital importance to German interests, Miss Lorne. That he got it, I know from the fact that the baron, while hinting at disgrace and speaking of peril to his own life, dared not confide in the French authorities and ask the assistance of the French police. Moreover, if 'The Red Crawl' had failed to secure anything, the baron, with his congenital loathing of all crawling things, would have left the Château Larouge immediately."
"Oh, to think that you guessed it so easily—and it was all such a puzzle to me. I could not think, Mr. Cleek, why he did remain—why he would not be persuaded to go, although every night was adding to the horror of the thing and it seemed clear to me that he was going mad. Of course, Madame la Comtesse and her brother tried to reason him out of what he declared, tried to make him believe that it was all fancy—that he did not really see the fearful thing; it was equally in vain that I myself tried to persuade him to leave the place before his reason became unsettled. Last night"—she paused, shuddered, put both hands over her face, and drew in a deep breath—"last night, I, too, saw 'The Red Crawl,' Mr. Cleek—I, too!"
"You, Miss Lorne?"
"Yes. I made up my mind that I would—that, if it existed, I would have absolute proof of it. The countess and her brother had scoffed so frequently, had promised the baron so often that they would set a servant on guard in the corridor to watch, and then had said so often to poor, foolish, easily persuaded Athalie that it was useless doing anything so silly, as it was absolutely certain that her father only imagined the thing, that I—I determined to take the step myself, unknown to any of them. After everybody had gone to bed, I threw on a loose, dark gown, crept into the corridor, and hid in a niche from which I could see the door of the baron's room. I waited until after midnight—long after—and then—and then—"
"Calm yourself, Miss Lorne. Then the thing appeared, I suppose?"
"Yes; but not before something equally terrible had happened. I saw the door of the countess's room open; I saw the countess herself come out, accompanied by the man who up till then I had believed, like everybody else, was her brother."
"And who is not her brother, after all?"
"No, he is not. Theirs is a closer tie. I saw her kiss him. I saw her go with him to an angle of the corridor, lift a rug, and raise a trap in the floor."
"Hullo! Hullo!" ejaculated Cleek. "Then she, too; knows of the passage which leads to the sewers. Clearly, then, this Countess de la Tour is not what she seems, when she knows secrets that are known only to the followers of—well, never mind. Go on, Miss Lorne, go on. You saw her lift that trap; and—what then?"
"Then there came up out of it—oh, the most loathsome-looking creature I ever saw; a huge, crawling, red shape that was like a blood-red spider, with the eyes, the hooked beak, and the writhing tentacles of an octopus. It made no sound, but it seemed to know her, to understand her, for when she waved her hand toward the open door of her own room it crawled away and, obeying that gesture, dragged its huge bulk over the threshold, and passed from sight. Then the man she called her brother kissed her again, and as he descended into the darkness below the trap I heard her say quite distinctly: 'Tell Marise that I will come as soon as I can; but not to delay the revel. If I am compelled to forego it to-night, there shall be a wilder one to-morrow, when Clodoche arrives.'"
"Clodoche! By Jupiter!" Cleek almost jumped as he spoke. "Now I know the 'lay'! No; don't ask me anything yet. Go on with the story, please. What then, Miss Lorne, what then?"
"Then the man below said something which I could not hear—something to which she answered in these words: 'No, no; there is no danger. I will guard it safely, and it shall go into no hands but Clodoche's. He and Count von Hetzler will be there about midnight to-morrow to complete the deal and pay over the money. Clodoche will want the fragment, of course, to show to the count as a proof that it is the right one, as "an earnest" of what the remainder is worth. And you must bring me that "remainder" without fail, Gaston—you hear me?—without fail! I shall be there, at the rendezvous, awaiting you, and the thing must be in our hands when von Hetzler comes. The thing must be finished to-morrow night, even if you and Serpice have to throw all caution to the winds and throttle the old fool.' Then, as if answering a further question, she laughingly added: 'Oh, get that fear out of your head. I'm not a bat, to be caught napping. I'll give it to no one but Clodoche—and not even to him until he gives the secret sign.' And then, Mr. Cleek, as she closed the trap I heard the man call back to her 'Good night' and give her a name I had not heard before. We had always supposed that she had been christened 'Suzanne,' but as that man left he called her—"
"I know before you tell me—'Margot'!" interjected Cleek. "I guessed the identity of this 'Countess de la Tour' from the moment you spoke of Clodoche and that secret trap. Her knowledge of those two betrayed her to me. Clodoche is a renegade Alsatian, a spy in the pay of the German Government, and an old habitué of 'The Inn of the Twisted Arm,' where the Queen of the Apaches and her pals hold their frequent revels. I can guess the remainder of your story now. You carried this news to the Baron de Carjorac, and he, breaking down, confessed to you that he had lost something."
"Yes, yes—a dreadful 'something,' Mr. Cleek: the horrible thing that has been making life an agony to him ever since. On the night when that abominable 'Red Crawl' first overcame him, there was upon his person a most important document—a rough draft of the maps of fortification and the plan of the secret defences of France, the identical document from which was afterwards transcribed the parchment now deposited in the secret archives of the Republic. When Baron de Carjorac recovered his senses after his horrifying experience—"
"That document was gone?"
"Part of it, Mr. Cleek—thank God, only a part! If it had been the parchment itself, no such merciful thing could possibly have happened. But the paper was old, much folding and handling had worn the creases through, and when, in his haste, the secret robber grabbed it, whilst that loathsome creature held the old man down, it parted directly down the middle, and he got only a vertical section of each of its many pages."
"Victoria! 'And the fool hath said in his heart, There is no God,'" quoted Cleek. "So, then, the hirelings of the enemy have only got half what they are after; and, as no single sentence can be complete upon a paper torn like that, nothing can be made of it until the other half is secured, and—our German friends are still 'up a gum-tree.' I know now why the baron stayed on at the Château Larouge, and why 'The Red Crawl' is preparing to pay him another visit to-night: he hoped, poor chap, to find a clue to the whereabouts of the fragment he had lost; and that thing is after the fragment he still retains. Well, it will be a long, long day before either of those two fragments fall into German hands."
"Oh, Mr. Cleek, you think you can get the stolen paper back? You believe you can outwit those dreadful people and save the Baron de Carjorac's honour and his life?"
"Miss Lorne"—he took her hand in his and lifted it to his lips—"Miss Lorne, I thank you for giving me the chance! If you will do what I ask you, be where I ask you in two hours' time, so surely as we two stand here this minute, I will put back the German calendar by ten years at least. They drink 'To the day,' those German Johnnies, but by to-morrow morning the English hand you are holding will have given them reason to groan over the night!"
CHAPTER VIII
It was half-past eleven o'clock. Madame la Comtesse, answering a reputed call to the bedside of a dying friend, had departed early, and was not to be expected back, she said, until to-morrow noon. The servants—given permission by the gentleman known in the house as Monsieur Gaston Merode, and who had graciously provided a huge char-à-banc for the purpose—had gone in a body to a fair over in the neighbourhood of Sèvres, and darkness and stillness filled the long, broad corridor of the Château Larouge. Of a sudden, however, a mere thread of sound wavered through the silence, and from the direction of Miss Lorne's room a figure in black, with feet muffled in thick, woollen stockings, padded to an angle of the passage, lifted a trap carefully hidden beneath a huge tiger-skin rug, and almost immediately Cleek's head rose up out of the gap.
"Thank God you managed to do it. I was horribly afraid you would not," said Ailsa in a palpitating whisper.
"You need not have been," he answered. "I know a dozen places beside 'The Inn of the Twisted Arm' from which one can get into the sewers. I've screwed a bolt and socket on the inner side of this trap in case of an emergency, and I've carried a few things into the passage for 'afterwards.' I suppose that fellow Merode, as he calls himself, is in his room, waiting?"
"Yes; and, although he pretends to be alone to-night, he—he has other men with him, hideous, ruffianly looking creatures, whom I saw him admit after the servants had gone. The countess has left the house and gone I don't know where."
"I do, then. Make certain she's at 'The Twisted Arm,' waiting, first, for the coming of Clodoche, and, second, for the arrival of this precious 'Merode' with the remaining half of the document. I've sent Dollops there to carry out his part of the programme, and when once I get the password Margot requires before she will hand over the paper, the game will be in my hands entirely. They are desperate to-night, Miss Lorne, and will stop at nothing—not even murder. There! the rug's replaced. Quick! lead me to the baron's room—there's not a minute to waste."
She took his hand and led him tiptoe through the darkness, and in another moment he was in the Baron de Carjorac's presence.
"Oh, monsieur, God for ever bless you!" exclaimed the broken old man, throwing himself on his knees before Cleek.
"Out with the light—out with the light!" exclaimed he, ducking down suddenly. "Were you mad to keep it burning till I came, with that"—pointing to a huge bay window opening upon a balcony—"uncurtained and the grounds, no doubt, alive with spies?"
Miss Lorne sprang to the table where the baron's reading-lamp stood, jerked the cord of the extinguisher, and darkness enveloped the room, darkness tempered only by the faint gleams of the moon streaming over the balcony, and through the panes of the uncurtained window.
Cleek, on his knees beside the kneeling baron, whipped a tiny electric torch from his pocket, and, shielding its flare with his scooped hands, flashed it upon the old man's face.
"Simple as rolling off a log—exactly like your pictures," he commented. "I'll 'do' you as easily as I 'do' Clodoche—and I could 'do' him in the dark from memory. Quick"—snicking off the light of the electric torch and rising to his feet—"into your dressing-room, baron. I want that suit of clothes; I want that ribbon, that cross—and I want them at once. You're a bit thicker-set than me, but I've got my Clodoche rig on underneath this, and it will fill out your coat admirably and make us as like as two peas. Give me five minutes, Miss Lorne, and I promise you a surprise."
He flashed out of sight with the baron as he ceased speaking; and Ailsa, creeping to the window and peering cautiously out, was startled presently by a voice at her elbow saying, in a tone of extreme agitation: "Oh, mademoiselle, I fear, even yet I fear, that this Anglais monsieur attempts too much, and that the papier he is gone for ever."
"Oh, no, baron, no!" she soothed, as she laid a solicitous hand upon his arm. "Do believe in him; do have faith in him. Ah, if you only knew—"
"Thanks. I reckon I shall pass muster!" interposed Cleek's voice; and it was only then she realised. "You'll find the baron in the other room, Miss Lorne, looking a little grotesque in that grey suit of mine. In with you, quickly; go with him through the other door, and get below before those fellows begin to stir. Get out of the house as quietly and as expeditiously as you can. With God's help, I'll meet you at the Hôtel du Louvre in the morning, and put the missing fragment in the baron's hands."
"And may God give you that help!" she answered fervently as she moved towards the dressing-room door. "Ah, what a man! what a man!"
Then, in a twinkling she was gone, and Cleek stood alone in the silent room. Giving her and the baron time to get clear of the other one, he went in on tiptoe, locked the door through which they had passed, put the key in his pocket, and returned. Going to the door which led from the main room into the corridor, he took the key from the lock of that, too, replacing it upon the outer side, and leaving the door itself slightly ajar.
"Now then for you, Mr. 'The Red Crawl,'" he said, as he walked to the baron's table, and, sinking down into a deep chair beside it, leaned back with his eyes closed as if in sleep, and the faint light of the moon half-revealing his face. "I want that password, and I'll get it, if I have to choke it out of your devil's throat! And she said that she would be grateful to me all the rest of her life! Only 'grateful,' I wonder? Is nothing else possible? What a good, good thing a real woman is!"
* * * * *
How long was it that he had been reclining there waiting before his strained ears caught the sound of something like the rustling of silk shivering through the stillness, and he knew that at last it was coming? It might have been ten minutes, it might have been twenty—he had no means of determining—when he caught that first movement, and, peering through the slit of a partly opened eye, saw the appalling thing drag its huge bulk along the balcony, and, with squirming tentacles writhing, slide over the low sill of the window, and settle down in a glowing red heap upon the floor; and—fake though he knew it to be—he could not repress a swift rush and prickle of "goose-flesh" at sight of it.
For a few seconds it lay dormant; then one red feeler shot out, then another, and another, and it began to edge its way across the carpet to the chair. Cleek lay still and waited, his heavy breathing sounding regularly, his head thrown back, his limp hands lying loosely, palms upward, beside him; and nearer and nearer crept the loathsome, red, glowing thing.
It crawled to his feet, and still he was quiet; it slid first one tentacle, and then another, over his knees and up toward his breast, and still he made no movement; then, as it rose higher—rose until its hideous beaked countenance was close to his own, his hands flashed upward and clamped together like a vice—clamped on a palpitating human throat—and in the twinkling of an eye the tentacles were wrapped about him, and he and "The Red Crawl" were rolling over and over on the floor and battling together.
"Serpice, you low-bred hound, I know you!" he whispered, as they struggled. "You can't utter a cry—you shan't utter a cry—to bring help. I'll throttle you, you beastly renegade, that's willing to sell his own country—throttle you, do you hear?—before you shall bring any of your mates to the rescue. Oh, you've not got a weak old man to fight with this time! Do you know me? It's the 'cracksman'—the 'cracksman' who went over to the police. If you doubt it, now that we're in the moonlight, look up and see my face. Oho! you recognise me, I see. Well, you will die looking at me, you dog, if you deny me what I'm after. I'll loosen my grip enough for you to whisper, and no more. Now what's the password that Clodoche must give to Margot to-night at 'The Twisted Arm'? Tell me what it is; if you want your life, tell me what it is."
"I'll see you dead first!" came in a whisper from beneath the hideous mask. Then, as Cleek's fingers clamped tight again and the battle began anew, one long, thin arm shot out from amongst the writhing tentacles, one clutching hand gripped the leg of the table, and, with a wrench and a twist, brought it crashing to the ground with a sound that a deaf man might have heard.
And in an instant there was pandemonium.
A door flung open, and clashing heavily against the wall, sent an echo reeling along the corridor; then came a clatter of rushing feet, a voice cried out excitedly: "Come on! come on! He's had to kill the old fool to get it!" and Cleek had just time to tear loose from the shape with which he was battling, and dodge out of the way when the man Merode lurched into the room, with half a dozen Apaches tumbling in at his heels.
"Serpice!" he cried, rushing forward, as he saw the gasping red shape upon the floor; "Serpice! Mon Dieu! what is it?"
"The cracksman!" he gulped. "Cleek!—the cracksman who went against us!
Catch him! stop him!"
"The cracksman!" howled out Merode, twisting round in the darkness and reaching blindly for the haft of his dirk. "Nom de Dieu! Where?"
And almost before the last word was uttered a fist like a sledge-hammer shot out, caught him full in the face, and he went down with a whole smithy of sparks flashing and hissing before his eyes.
"There!" answered Cleek, as he bowled him over. "Gentlemen of the sewers, my compliments. You'll make no short cut to 'The Twisted Arm' to-night!"
Then, like something shot from a catapult, he sprang to the door, whisked through it, banged it behind him, turned the key, and went racing down the corridor like a hare.
"It must be sheer luck now!" he panted, as he reached the angle and, kicking aside the rug, pulled up the trap. "They'll have that door down in a brace of shakes, and be after me like a pack of ravening wolves. The race is to the swift this time, gentlemen, and you'll have to take a long way round if you mean to head me off."
Then he passed down into the darkness, closed the trap-door after him, shot into its socket the bolt he had screwed there, flashed up the light of his electric torch, and, without the password, turned toward the sewers, and ran, and ran, and ran!
CHAPTER IX
It lacked but a minute of the stroke of twelve, and the revels at "The Twisted Arm"—wild at all times, but wilder to-night than ever—were at their noisiest and most exciting pitch. And why not? It was not often that Margot could spend a whole night with her rapscallion crew, and she had been here since early evening—was to remain here until the dawn broke grey over the house-tops and the murmurs of the workaday world awoke anew in the streets of the populous city. It was not often that each man and each abandoned woman present knew to a certainty that he or she would go home through the mists of the grey morning with a fistful of gold that had been won without labour or the taking of any personal risk; and to-night the half of four hundred thousand francs was to be divided among them.
No wonder they had made a carnival of it, and tricked themselves out in gala attire; no wonder they had brought a paste tiara and crowned Margot—Margot, who was in flaming red to-night, and looked a devil's daughter indeed, with her fire-like sequins and her red ankles twinkling as she threw herself into the thick of the dance and kicked, and whirled, and flung her bare arms about to the lilt of the music and the fluting of her own happy laughter.
"Per Bacco! The devil's in her to-night!" grinned old Marise, the innkeeper, from her place behind the bar, where the lid of the sewer-trap opened. "She has not been like it since the cracksman broke with her, Toinette. But that was before your time, ma fille. Mother of the heavens! but there was a man for you! There was a king that was worthy of such a queen. Name of disaster! that she could not hold him, that the curse of virtue sapped such a splendid tree, and that she could take up with another after him!"
"Why not?" cried Toinette, as she tossed down the last half of her absinthe and twitched her flower-crowned head. "A kingdom must have a king, ma mère; and Dieu: but he is handsome, this Monsieur Gaston Merode! And if he carries out his part of the work to-night he will be worthy of the homage of all."
"'If' he carries it out—'if'!" exclaimed Marise, with a lurch of the shoulders and a flirt of her pudgy hand. "Soul of me! that's where the difference lies. Had it been the cracksman, there would have been no 'if'—it were done as surely as he attempted it. Name of misfortune! I had gone into a nunnery had I lost such a man. But she—"
The voice of Margot shrilled out and cut into her words. "Absinthe,
Marise, absinthe for them all—and set the score down to me!" she cried.
"Drink up, my bonny boys; drink up, my loyal maids. Drink—drink till
your skins will hold no more. No one pays to-night but me!"
They broke into a cheer, and bearing down in a body upon Marise, threw her into a fever of haste to serve them.
"To Margot!" they shouted, catching up the glasses and lifting them high. "Vive la Reine des Apaches! Vive la compagnie! To Margot! To Margot!"
She swept them a merry bow, threw them a laughing salute, and drank the toast with them.
"Messieurs, my love—mesdames et mademoiselles, my admiration," she cried, with a ripple of joy-mad laughter. "To the success of the Apaches, to the glory of four hundred thousand francs, and to the quick arrival of Serpice and Gaston!" Then, her upward glance catching sight of the musicians sipping their absinthe in the little gallery above, she flung her empty glass against the wall behind them, and shook with laughter as they started in alarm and spilled the green poison when they dodged aside. "Another dance, you dawdlers!" she cried. "Does Marise pay you to sit there like mourners? Strike up, you mummies, or you pay yourselves for what you drink to-night. Soul of desires!"—as the musicians grabbed up their instruments, and a leaping, lilting, quick-beating air went rollicking out over the hubbub—"a quadrille, you angels of inspiration! Partners, gentlemen! Partners, ladies! A quadrille! A quadrille!"
They set up a many-throated cheer and flocked out with her upon the floor; and in one instant feet were flying, skirts were whirling, laughter and jest mingling with waving arms and kicking toes, and the whole place was in one mad riot of delirious joy.
And in the midst of this there rolled up suddenly a voice crying, as from the bowels of the earth, "Hola! Hola! La la! loi!" the cry of the Apache to his kind.
"Mother of delights! It is one of us, and it comes from the sewer passage—from the sewer!" shrilled out Marise, as the dancers halted and Margot ran, with fleet steps, towards the bar. "Listen! listen! They come to you, Margot—Serpice and Gaston. The work is done."
"And before even Clodoche or von Hetzler have arrived!" she replied excitedly. "Give them light, give them welcome. Be quick!"
Marise ducked down, loosened the fastenings of the trap-door, flung it back, and, leaning over the gap with a light in her hand, called down into the darkness, "Hola! Hola! La! la! loi! Come on, comrades, come on!"
The caller obeyed instantly. A hand reached up and gripped the edge of the flooring, and out of the darkness into the light emerged the figure of a man in a leather cap and the blue blouse of a mechanic—a pale, fox-faced, fox-eyed fellow, with lank, fair hair, a brush of ragged, yellow beard, and with the look and air of the sneak and spy indelibly branded upon him.
It was Cleek.
"Clodoche!" exclaimed Marise, falling back in surprise.
"Clodoche!" echoed Margot. "Clodoche—and from the sewers?"
"Yes—why not?" he answered, his tongue thick-burred with the accent of Alsace, his shifting eyes flashing toward the huge window behind the bar, where, in the moonlight, the narrow passage leading down to the door of "The Twisted Arm" gaped evilly between double rows of scowling, thief-sheltering houses. "Name of the fiend! Is this the welcome you give the bringer of fortune, Margot?"
"But from the sewer?" she repeated. "It is incomprehensible, cher ami. You were to pilot von Hetzler over from the Café Dupin to the square beyond there"—pointing to the window—"to leave him waiting a moment while you came on to see if it were safe for him to enter; and now you come from the sewer—from the opposite direction entirely!"
"Mother of misfortunes! You had done the same yourself—you, Lantier; you, Clopin; you, Cadarousse; any of you—had you been in my boots," he made answer. "I stole a leaf from your own book, earlier in the evening. Garotted a fellow with jewels on him—in the Rue Noir, near the Market Place—and nearly got into 'the stone bottle' for doing it. He was a decoy, set there by the police for some of you fellows, and there was a sergeant de ville after me like a whirlwind. I was not fool enough to turn the chase in this direction, so I doubled and twisted until it was safe to dive into the tavern of Fouchard, and lay in hiding there. Fouchard let his son carry a message to the count for me, and will guide him to the square. When it grew near the time to come, Fouchard let me down into the sewer passage from there. Get on with your dance—silence is always suspicious. An absinthe, Marise! Have Gaston and Serpice arrived yet with the rest of the document, Margot la reine?"
"Not yet," she answered. "But one may expect them at any minute."
"Where is the fragment we already possess?"
"Here," tapping her bodice and laughing, "tenderly shielded, mon ami, and why not? Who would not mother a thing that is to bring one four hundred thousand francs?"
"Let me see it. It must be shown to the count, remember. He will take no risks, come not one step beyond the square, until he is certain that it is the paper his Government requires. Let me have it—let me take it to him—quick!"
She waved aside airily the hand he stretched toward her, and danced into the thick of the resumed quadrille.
"Ah, non! non! non!" she laughed, as he came after her. "The conditions were of your own making, cher ami; we break no rules even among ourselves."
"Soul of a fool! But if the count comes to the square—he is due there now, mignonne—and I am not there to show him the thing—Margot, for the love of God, let me have the paper!"
"Let me have the sign, the password!"
Cleek snapped at a desperate chance because there was nothing else to do, because he knew that at any moment now the end might come.
"'When the purse will not open, slit it!'" he hazarded, desperately—choosing, on the off-chance of its correctness, the password of the Apache.
"It is not the right one! It is by no means the right one!" she made reply, backing away from him suddenly, her absinthe-brightened eyes deriding him, her absinthe-sharpened laughter mocking him. "Your thoughts are in the Bois, cher ami. What is the password of the brotherhood to the cause of Germany, stupid? It is not right, non! non! It is not right!"
The cause of Germany! At the words the truth rushed like a flash of inspiration across Cleek's mind. The cause of Germany! What a dolt he was not to have thought of that before! There was but one phrase ever used for that among the Kaiser's people, and that phrase—
"'To the day!'" he said, with a burst of sudden laughter. "My wits are in the moon to-night, la reine. 'To the day,' of course—'To the day!'" And even before she replied to him, he knew that he had guessed aright.
"Bravo!" she said, with a little hiccough—for the absinthe, of which she had imbibed so freely to-night, was beginning to take hold of her. "A pretty conspirator to forget how to open the door he himself locked! It is well I know thee—it is well it was the word of les Apaches in the beginning, or I had been suspicious, silly! Wait but a moment!"—putting her hand to her breast and beginning to unfasten her bodice—"wait but a moment, Monsieur Twitching-Fingers, and the thing shall be in your hand."
The strain, the relief, were all too great for even such nerves as Cleek's, and if he had not laughed aloud, he knew that he must have cheered.
"Oho! you grin because one's fingers blunder with eagerness," hiccoughed Margot, thinking his laughter was for the trouble she had in getting the fastenings of her bodice undone. "Peste, monsieur! may not a lady well be modestly careful, when—Name of the devil! what's that?"
It was the note of a whistle shrilling down the narrow passage without—the passage where Dollops, in Apache garb, had been set on watch; and, hearing it, Cleek clamped his jaws together and breathed hard. A single whistle—short and sharp, such as this one was—was the signal agreed upon that the real Clodoche was coming, and that he and Count von Hetzler had already appeared in the square beyond.
"Soul of a sloth! Will not that hurry you, la reine?" he said excitedly, in reply to Margot's startled question. "It is the signal Fouchard's son was to give when he and von Hetzler arrived at the place where I am to meet them. Give me the paper—quick! quick! Tear the fastenings, if they will not come undone else. One cannot keep a von Hetzler waiting like a lackey for a scrap of ribbon and a bit of lace."
"Pardieu! they have kept better men than he waiting many an hour before this," she made reply. "But you shall have the thing in a twinkling now. There! but one more knot, and then it is in your hands."
And, had the fates not decreed otherwise, so, indeed, it would have been. But then, just then, when another second would have brought the paper into view, another moment seen it shut tight in the grip of his itching fingers, disaster came and blotted out his hopes!
Without hint or warning, without sign or sound to lessen the shock of it, the trap-door behind the bar flew up and backward with a crash that sent Marise and her assistants darting away from it in shrieking alarm; a babel of excited voices sounded, a scurry of rushing feet scuffled and flashed along the shaking floor, and Merode and his followers tumbled helter-skelter into the room.
Cleek, counting on the bolt which kept them from entering the passage from the corridor of the Château Larouge—forcing them to take a long, roundabout journey to "The Twisted Arm"—had not counted on their shortening that journey by entering the passage from Fouchard's tavern, doing, in fact, the very thing which he had declared to Margot he himself had done. And lo! here they were, howling and crowding about him—dirks in their hands and devils in their eyes and hearts—and the paper not his yet!
A clamour rose as they poured in; the dancers ceased to dance; the music ceased to play; and Margot, shutting a tight clutch on the loosened part of her half-unfastened bodice, swung away from Cleek's side, and flew in a panic to Merode.
"Gaston!" she cried, knowing from his wild look and the string of oaths and curses his followers were blurting out that something had gone amiss. "Gaston, mon coeur! Name of disaster! what is wrong?"
"Everything is wrong!" he flung back excitedly. "That devil—that renegade—that fury, Cleek, the cracksman, is here. He came to the rescue—came out of the very skies—and all but killed Serpice!"
"Cleek!" Fifty shrill voices joined Margot's in that screaming cry; fifty more dirks flashed into view. "Cleek in France? Cleek? Where is he? Which way did he go? Where's the narker—where—where?"
"Here, if anywhere!"
"Here?"
"Yes—unless you've been fooled, and let him get away. He knows about the paper, and is after it, Margot; and if anyone has come up from the sewers within the past twenty minutes—"
They knew—they grasped the situation instantly—and a roar of excited voices yelled out: "Clodoche! Clodoche! Clodoche!" as, snarling and howling like a pack of wolves, they bore down with a rush on the blue-bloused figure that was creeping towards the door.
But as they sprang it sprang also! It was neck or nothing now. Cleek realised it, and, throwing himself headlong over the bar, clutched frantically at the lever which he knew controlled the flow of gas, jammed it down with all his strength, shut off the light, and, grabbing up a chair, sent it crashing through the window.
The crowd surged on towards the wrecked bar with a yell, surged from all directions, and then abruptly stopped and huddled together in one. For the sudden flashing down of the darkness within, had made more prominent, the moon-lighted passage without; and there, scuttling away in alarm from this sudden uproar, and the outward flying of that hurled chair, a figure which but a moment before had come skulking to the window, could now be seen.
"There he goes—there! there!" shrilled out a chorus of excited voices, as the yellow-bearded, blue-bloused figure came into view. "After him! Catch him! Knife him!"
In an instant they were at the door, tumbling out into the darkness, pouring up the passage in hot pursuit. And it was at that moment the balance changed again. Those who were in the front rank of the pursuers were in time to see a lithe, thin figure—dressed as one of their own kind—spring up in the path of that other figure, jump on it, grip it, clap a huge square of sticky brown paper over the howling mouth of it, and bear it, struggling and kicking, to the ground.
In another second they, too, were upon it—swarming over it like rats, and digging and hacking at it with their dirks. And so they were still hacking at it—although it had long since ceased to move, or to make any sound—when Merode came up and called them to a halt.
"Drag it inside; let Margot have a thrust at it—it is her right. Pull off the dog's disguise, and bring me the plucky one that captured him. He shall have absinthe enough to swim in, the little king! Off with it all, Lanchere. First, the plaster—that's right. Now, the wig and beard, and after that—What's that you say? The beard is real? The hair is real? They will not come off? Name of the devil! what are you saying?"
"The truth, mon roi, the truth! Mother of disasters! It is not the cracksman—it is the real Clodoche we have killed!"
For one moment a sort of panic held them, swayed them, befogged the brains of them; then, of a sudden, Merode howled out, "Get back! Get back! The fellow's in there still!" and led a blind race down the passage to the bar, where they had seen Cleek last. It was still in darkness; but an eager hand gripping the lever, turned on the gas again, and matches everywhere were lifted to the jets.
And when the light flamed out and the room was again ablaze they knew that they might as well hope to call back yesterday as dream of finding Cleek again. For there on the floor, her limp hands turned palms upward, a chloroformed cloth folded over her mouth and nose, lay, in a deep stupor, the figure of Margot, her bodice torn wide open and the paper forever gone!
* * * * *
It was five minutes later when the Count von Hetzler, crouching back in the shadow of the square and waiting for the return of Clodoche, heard a dull, whirring sound that was unmistakably the purr of a motor throb through the stillness; and, leaning forward, saw an automobile whirl up out of the darkness, cut across the square, and dash off westward like a flash. Yet in the brief instant it took to go past the place where he waited there was time for him to catch the sharp click of a lowered window, see the clear outlines of a man's face looking out, and to hear a voice from within the vehicle speak.
"Herr Count," it said in clear, incisive tones. "A positively infallible recipe for the invasion of England: Wait until the Channel freezes and then skate over. Good night!"
"One for his nob that, Gov'nor—my hat, yuss!" said Dollops, with a shrill laugh, as he stuck a red head and a face all shiny with cocoa butter and half-removed grease-paint out of the window, and, despite the fact that the swift pace of the automobile had already carried it far past the place where the count had been in hiding, made a fan of his five fingers and his snub nose. "Oh, Mother 'Ubbard! Did you see him, sir? Bunked back in his 'ole like somebody had 'give him the hook,' and cleared the blessed stage before the eggs began to fly. I don't think them Germans 'ull be sittin' on the steps of St. Paul's this year, sir—not them!"
Cleek laughed; and, ordering the boy to shut down the window and get on with the work of changing his clothes, set about doing the same thing himself.
"I suppose you know, you clever little monkey, that I should have been floating down the Seine with a slit throat and enough lead in me to sink a barrel by this time, if it hadn't been for you," he said, as he pushed the outward semblance of Clodoche into the kit-bag, and began to get into ordinary civilian's dress as expeditiously as possible. "If you had slipped up—if you had been one-half minute late—or if that fellow had had a chance to make one cry before you covered his mouth—"
"Please, sir—don't!" interposed Dollops, with a sort of shiver. "If anythink had've happened to you, Gov'nor …" Then stopped short and made a sound as if he were swallowing something, and then grew very, very still.
Cleek looked at him out of the corner of his eye—moved in spite of himself—hesitated a moment and then, obeying an impulse, leaned over and gently tapped him on the shoulder.
"Dollops, shake hands," he said.
"Sir!"
"Shake hands."
"Gawd, Gov'nor! You don't never mean that, sir?"
"Shake hands," said Cleek for the third time. "Do you know, you little monkey, that you're the only soul in all God's world that could ever muster up a tear for me? Thank you, my lad—you're a brick!"—then gripped the grimy hand that was reached out with a sort of awe, wrung it heartily, patted the astonished boy on the shoulder; and fell to whistling merrily as he went on with his dressing.
"Sir, you do lick me, you fair do," said Dollops, laughing unsteadily, and drawing his sleeve across his eyes. "Arfter wot you've been and went through, a-sittin' there and whistlin' as merry as can be—like as if life was all beer and skittles, and you hadn't a care in the world."
"I haven't—for the minute, my lad," said Cleek with a laugh of utter happiness. "Beer and skittles? Lord, it's all roses my boy, roses! I've had the good luck to accomplish a thing that's going to give me—well, at least one moment in Paradise—and when a man has a prospect like that in view …" His voice trailed off; he laughed again; then fell to whistling once more—noisily, joyously, as if some schoolboy sort of madness was in his blood to-night—and was still whistling when the automobile pulled up sharply in front of the Hôtel du Louvre.