"I can do that in a very few words, Major," he replied. "It is either a gigantic swindle or it is a clear case of murder. If a swindle, then Ulchester himself is at the bottom of it and it will end in murder just the same. Frankly, the swindle theory strikes me as being the more probable; in other words, that the whole thing is a put-up game between Ulchester and the woman Anita; that they played upon Zuilika's fear of the supernatural for a purpose; that a body was procured and sunk in that particular spot for the furtherance of that purpose; and if the widow attempts to put into execution this plan—no doubt instilled into her mind by Anita—of returning with her wealth to her native land, she will simply be led into some safe place and then effectually put out of the way for ever. That is what I think of the case if it is to be regarded in the light of a swindle; but if Ulchester is really dead, murder, not suicide, is at the back of his taking off, and—Oh, well, we won't say anything more about it just yet awhile. I shall want to look over the ground before I jump to any conclusions. You are still stopping in the house, you and your son, I think you remarked? If you could contrive to put up an old army friend's son there for a night, Major, give me the address. I'll drop in on you to-morrow and have a little look round."
CHAPTER XXVIII
When, next morning, Major Burnham-Seaforth announced the dilemma in which, through his own house being temporarily closed, he found himself owing to the proposed visit of Lieutenant Rupert St. Aubyn, son of an old army friend, Zuilika was the first to suggest the very thing he was fishing for.
"Ah, let him come here, dear friend," she said in that sad, sweetly modulated voice which so often wrung this susceptible old heart. "There is plenty of room!—plenty, alas now—and any friend of yours can only be a friend of mine. He will not annoy. Let him come here."
"Yes, let him," supplemented young Burnham-Seaforth, speaking with his eyes on Señorita Rosario, who seemed nervous and ill-pleased by the news of the expected arrival. "He won't have to be entertained by us if he only comes to see the pater; and we can easily crowd him aside if he tries to thrust himself upon us—a fellow with a name like 'Rupert St. Aubyn' is bound to be a silly ass." And when, in the late afternoon, "Lieutenant Rupert St. Aubyn," in the person of Cleek, arrived with his snubnosed manservant, a kit-bag, several rugs and a bundle of golf sticks, young Burnham-Seaforth saw no reason to alter that assertion. For, a "silly ass"—albeit an unusually handsome one with his fair, curling hair and his big blonde moustache—he certainly was; a lisping "ha-ha-ing" "don't-cher-knowing" silly ass, whom the presence of ladies seemed to cover with confusion and drive into a very panic of shy embarrassment.
"Dios! but he is handsome, this big, fair lieutenant!" whispered the Spaniard to young Burnham-Seaforth. "A great, handsome fool—all beauty and no brains, like a doll of wax!" Then she bent over and murmured smilingly to Zuilika: "I shall make a bigger nincompoop of this big, fair sap-head than Heaven already has done before he leaves here, just for the sake of seeing him stammer and blush!"
Only the sad expression of Zuilika's eyes told that she so much as heard, as she rose to greet the visitor. Garbed from head to foot in the deep violet-coloured stuff which is the mourning of Turkish women, her little pointed slippers showing beneath the hem of her frock, and only her dark, mournful eyes visible between the top of the shrouding yashmak and the edge of her sequined snood, she made a pathetic picture as she stood there waiting to greet the unknown visitor.
"Sir, you are welcome—you are most welcome," she said in a voice whose modulations were not lost upon Cleek's ears as he put forth his hand and received the tips of her little, henna-stained fingers upon his palm. "Peace be with you, who are of his people—he that I loved and mourn!" Then, as if overcome with grief at the recollection of her widowhood, she plucked away her hand, covered her eyes, and moved staggeringly out of the room. And Cleek saw no more of her that day; but he knew when she performed her orisons before the mummy case—as she did each morning and evening—by the strong, pungent odour of incense drifting through the house and filling it with a sickly scent.
Her absence seemed to make but little impression upon him, however; for, following up a well-defined plan of action, he devoted himself wholly to the Spanish woman, and both amazed her and gratified her vanity by allowing her to learn that a man may be the silliest ass imaginable and yet quite understand how to flirt and to make love to a woman. And so it fell out that instead of "Lieutenant Rupert St. Aubyn" being elbowed out by young Burnham-Seaforth, it was "Lieutenant St. Aubyn" who elbowed him out; and without being in the least aware of it, the flattered Anita, like an adroitly hooked trout, was being "played" in and out and round about the eddies and the deeps until the angler had her quite ready for the final dip of the net at the landing point.
All this was to accomplish exactly what it did accomplish, namely, the ill temper, the wrath, the angry resentment of young Burnham-Seaforth. And when the evening had passed and bedtime arrived, Cleek took his candle and retired in the direction of the rooms set apart for him, with the certainty of knowing that he had done that which would this very night prove beyond all question the guilt or innocence of one person at least who was enmeshed in this mysterious tangle. He was not surprised, therefore, at what followed his next step.
Reaching the upper landing he blew out the light of his candle, slammed the door to his own room, noisily turned the key, and shot the bolt of another, then tiptoed his way back to the staircase and looked down the well-hole into the lower hall.
Zuilika had retired to her room, the Major had retired to his, and now Anita was taking up her candle to retire to hers. She had barely touched it, however, when there came a sound of swift footsteps and young Burnham-Seaforth lurched out of the drawing-room door and joined her. He was in a state of great excitement and was breathing hard.
"Anita—Miss Rosario!" he began, plucking her by the sleeve and uplifting a pale, boyish face—he was not yet twenty-two—to hers with a look of abject misery. "I want to speak to you—I simply must speak to you. I've been waiting for the chance, and now that it's come—Look here! You're not going back on me, are you?"
"Going back on you?" repeated Anita, showing her pretty white teeth in an amused smile. "What shall you mean by that 'going back on you'—eh? You are a stupid little donkey, to be sure. But then I do not care to get on the back of one—so why?"
"Oh, you know very well what I mean," he rapped out angrily. "It is not fair the way you have been treating me ever since that yellow-headed bounder came. I've had a night of misery—Zuilika never showing herself; you doing nothing, absolutely nothing, although you promised—you know you did!—and I heard you, I absolutely heard you persuade that St. Aubyn fool to stop at least another night."
"Yes, of course you did. But what of it? He is good company—he talks well, he sings well, he is very handsome and—well, what difference can it make to you? You are not interested in me, amigo?"
"No, no; of course I'm not. You are nothing to me at all—you—Oh, I beg your pardon; I didn't quite mean that. I—I mean you are nothing to me in that way. But you—you're not keeping to your word. You promised, you know, that you'd use your influence with Zuilika; that you'd get her to be more kind to me—to see me alone and—and all that sort of thing. And you've not made a single attempt—not one. You've just sat round and flirted with that tow-headed brute and done nothing at all to help me on; and—and it's jolly unkind of you, that's what!"
Cleek heard Anita's soft rippling laughter; but he waited to hear no more. Moving swiftly away from the well-hole of the staircase he passed on tiptoe down the hall to the Major's rooms, and, opening the door, went in. The old soldier was standing, with arms folded, at the window looking silently out into the darkness of the night. He turned at the sound of the door's opening and moved toward Cleek with a white, agonised face and a pair of shaking, outstretched hands.
"Well?" he said with a sort of gasp.
"My dear Major," said Cleek quietly. "The wisest of men are sometimes mistaken—that is my excuse for my own short-sightedness. I said in the beginning that his was either a case of swindling or a case of murder, did I not? Well, I now amend my verdict. It is a case of swindling and murder; and your son has had nothing to do with either!"
"Oh, thank God! thank God!" the old man said; then sat down suddenly and dropped his face between his hands and was still for a long time. When he looked up again his eyes were red, but his lips were smiling.
"If you only knew what a relief it is," he said. "If you only knew how much I have suffered, Mr. Cleek. His friendship with that Spanish woman; his going with her to identify the body—even assisting in its hurried burial! These things all seemed so frightfully black—so utterly without any explanation other than personal guilt."
"Yet they are all easily explained, Major. His friendship for the Spanish woman is merely due to a promise to intercede for him with Zuilika. She is his one aim and object, poor little donkey! As for his identification of the body—well, if the widow herself could find points of undisputed resemblance, why not he? A nervous, excitable, impetuous boy like that—and anxious, too, that the lady of his heart should be freed from the one thing, the one man, whose existence made her everlastingly unattainable—why, in the hands of a clever woman like Anita Rosario such a chap could be made to identify anything and to believe it as religiously as he believes. Now, go to bed and rest easy, Major. I'm going to call up Dollops and do a little night prowling. If it turns out as I hope, this little riddle will be solved to-morrow."
"But how, Mr. Cleek? It seems to me that it is as dark as ever. You put my poor old head in a whirl. You say there is swindling; you hint one moment that the body was not that of Ulchester, and in the next that murder has been done. Do, pray, tell me what it all means—what you make of this amazing case."
"I'll do that to-morrow, Major; not to-night. The answer to the riddle—the answer that's in my mind, I mean—is at once so simple and yet so appallingly awful that I'll hazard no guess until I'm sure. Look here"—he put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a gold piece—"do you know what that is, Major?"
"It looks like a spade guinea, Mr. Cleek."
"Right; it is a spade guinea—a pocket piece I've carried for years. You've heard, no doubt, of vital things turning upon the tossing of a coin. Well, if you see me toss this coin to-morrow, something of that sort will occur. It will be tossed up in the midst of a riddle, Major; when it comes down it will be a riddle no longer."
Then he opened the door, closed it after him, and, before the Major could utter a word, was gone.
CHAPTER XXIX
The promise was so vague, so mystifying, indeed, so seemingly absurd, that the Major did not allow himself to dwell upon it. As a matter of fact, it passed completely out of his mind; nor did it again find lodgment there until it was forced back upon his memory in a most unusual manner.
Whatsoever had been the result of what Cleek had called his "night prowling," he took nobody into his confidence when he and the Major and the Major's son and Señorita Rosario met at breakfast the next day (Zuilika, true to her training and the traditions of her people, never broke morning bread save in the seclusion of her own bed-chamber, and then on her knees with her face towards the east) nor did he allude to it at any period throughout the day.
He seemed, indeed, purposely, to avoid the Major, and to devote himself to the Spanish woman with an ardour that was positively heartless, considering that as they two sang and flirted and played several sets of singles on the tennis court, Zuilika, like a spirit of misery, kept walking, walking, walking through the halls and the rooms of the house, her woeful eyes fixed on the carpet, her henna-stained fingers constantly locking and unlocking, and moans of desolation coming now and again from behind her yashmak as her swaying body moved restlessly to and fro. For to-day was memorable. Five weeks ago this coming nightfall Ulchester had flung himself out of this house in a fury of wrath, and this time of bitter regret and ceaseless mourning had begun.
"She will go out of her mind, poor creature, if something cannot be done to keep her from dwelling on her misery like this," commented the housekeeper, coming upon that restless figure pacing the darkened hall, moaning, moaning—seeing nothing, hearing nothing, doing nothing but walk and sorrow, sorrow and walk, hour in and hour out. "It's enough to tear a body's heart to hear her, poor dear. And that good-for-nothing Spanish piece racing and shrieking round the tennis court like a she tom-cat, the heartless hussy. Her and that simpering silly that's trotting round after her had ought to be put in a bag and shaken up, that they ought. It's downright scandalous to be carrying on like that at such a time."
And so both the Major and his son thought too, and tried their best to solace the lonely mourner and to persuade her to sit down and rest.
"Zuilika, you will wear yourself out, child, if you go on walking like this," said the Major solicitously. "Do rest and be at peace for a little time at least."
"I can never have peace in this land—I can never forget the day!" she answered drearily. "Oh, my beloved! Oh, my lord, it was I who sent thee to it—it was I, it was I! Give me my own country—give me the gods of my people; here there is only memory and pain, and no rest, no rest ever!"
She could not be persuaded to sit down and rest until Anita herself took the matter into her own hands and insisted that she should. That was at tea-time. Anita, showing some little trace of feeling now that Cleek had gone to wash his hands and was no longer there to occupy her thoughts, placed a deep, soft chair near the window, and would not yield until the violet-clad figure of the mourner sank down into the depths of it and leaned back with its shrouded face drooping in silent melancholy.
And it was while she was so sitting that Cleek came into the room and did a most unusual, a most ungentlemanly thing, in the eyes of the Major and his son.
Without hesitating, he walked to within a yard or two of where she was sitting, and then, in the silliest of silly tones, blurted out suddenly: "I say, don't you know, I've had a jolly rum experience. You know that blessed room at the angle just opposite the library—the one with the locked door?"
The drooping, violet figure straightened abruptly, and the Major felt for the moment as if he could have kicked Cleek with pleasure. Of course they knew the room. It was there that the two mummy cases were kept, sacred from the profaning presence of any but this stricken woman. No wonder that she bent forward, full of eagerness, full of the dreadful fear that Frankish feet had crossed the threshold, Frankish eyes looked within the sacred shrine.
"Well, don't you know," went on Cleek, without taking the slightest notice of anything, "just as I was going past that door I picked up a most remarkable thing. Wonder if it's yours, madam?" glancing at Zuilika. "Just have a look at it, will you? Here, catch!" And not until he saw a piece of gold spin through the air and fall into Zuilika's lap did the Major remember that promise of last night.
"Oh, come, I say, St. Aubyn, that's rather thick!" sang out young
Burnham-Seaforth indignantly, as Zuilika caught the coin in her lap.
"Blest if I know what you call manners, but to throw things at a lady is
a new way of passing them in this part of the world, I can assure you."
"Awfully sorry, old chap, no offence, I assure you," said Cleek, more asinine than ever, as Zuilika, having picked up the piece and looked at it, disclaimed all knowledge of it, and laid it on the edge of the table without any further interest in it or him. "Just to show, you know, that I—er—couldn't have meant anything disrespectful, why—er—you all know, don't you know, how jolly much I respect Señorita Rosario, by Jove! and so—Here, señorita, you catch, too, and see if the blessed thing's yours." And, picking up the coin, tossed it into her lap just as he had done with Zuilika.
She, too, caught it and examined it, and laughingly shook her head.
"No—not mine!" she said. "I have not seen him before. To the finder shall be the keep. Come, sit here. Will you have the tea?"
"Yes, thanks," said Cleek; then dropped down on the sofa beside her, and took tea as serenely as though there were no such things in the world as murder and swindling and puzzling police-riddles to solve.
And the Major, staring at him, was as amazed as ever. He had said, last night, that when the coin fell the answer would be given—and yet it had fallen, and nothing had happened, and he was laughing and flirting with Señorita Rosario as composedly and as persistently as ever. More than that; after he had finished his second cup of tea, and immediately following the sound of someone just beyond the verandah rail whistling the lively, lilting measures of "There's a Girl Wanted There"—the "silly ass" seemed to become a thousand times sillier than ever; for he forthwith set down his cup, and, turning to Anita, said with an inane sort of giggle, "I say, you know, here's a lark. Let's have a game of 'Slap Hand,' you and I—what? Know it, don't you? You try to slap my hands, and I try to slap yours, and whichever succeeds in doing it first gets a prize. Awful fun, don't you know. Come on—start her up."
And, Anita agreeing, they fell forthwith to slapping away at the backs of each other's hands with great gusto, until, all of a sudden, the whistler outside gave one loud, shrill note, and—there was a great and mighty change.
Those who were watching saw Anita's two hands suddenly caught, heard a sharp, metallic "click," and saw them as suddenly dropped again to the accompaniment of a shrill little scream from her ashen lips, and the next moment Cleek had risen and jumped away from her side—clear across to where Zuilika was; and those who were watching saw Anita jump up with a pair of steel handcuffs on her wrists, just as Dollops vaulted up over the verandah rail and appeared at one window, whilst Petrie appeared at another, Hammond poked his body through a third, and the opening door gave entrance to Superintendent Narkom.
"The police!" shrilled out Anita in a panic of fright. "Madre de Dios, the police!"
The Major and his son were on their feet like a shot; Zuilika, with a faint, startled cry, bounded bolt upright, like an imp shot through a trap-door; but before the little henna-stained hands could do more than simply move, Cleek's arms went round her from behind, tight and fast as a steel clamp, there was another metallic "click," another shrill cry, and another pair of wrists were in gyves.
"Come in, Mr. Narkom; come in, constables," said Cleek, with the utmost composure. "Here are your promised prisoners—nicely trussed, you see, so that they can't get at the little popguns they carry—and a worse pair of rogues never went into the hands of Jack Ketch!"
"And Jack Ketch will get them, Cleek, if I know anything about it. Your hazard was right. I've examined the caliph's mummy-case; the mummy itself has been removed—destroyed—done away with utterly—and the poor creature's body is there!"
And here the poor, dumfounded, utterly bewildered Major found voice to speak at last.
"Mummy-case! Body! Dear God in heaven, Mr. Cleek, what are you hinting at?" he gasped. "You—you don't mean that she—that Zuilika—killed him?"
"No, Major, I don't," he made reply. "I simply mean that he killed her! The body in the mummy-case is the body of Zuilika, the caliph's daughter! This is the creature you have been wasting your pity on—see!"
With that he laid an intense grip on the concealing yashmak, tore it away, and so revealed the close-shaven, ghastly-hued countenance of the cornered criminal.
"My God!—Ulchester—Ulchester himself!" said the Major in a voice of fright and surprise.
"Yes, Ulchester himself, Major. In a few more days he'd have withdrawn the money, and got out of the country, body and all, if he hadn't been nabbed, the rascal. There'd have been no tracing the crime then; and he and the Señorita here would have been in clover for the rest of their natural lives. But there's always that bright little bit of Bobby Burns to be reckoned with. You know: 'The best laid schemes of mice and men,' et cetera—that bit. But the Yard's got them, and—they'll never leave the country now. Take them, Mr. Narkom, they're yours!"
* * * * *
"How did I guess it?" said Cleek, replying to the Major's query, as they sat late that night discussing the affair. "Well, I think the first faint inkling of it came when I arrived here yesterday, and smelt the overpowering odour of the incenses. There was so much of it, and it was used so frequently—twice a day—that it seemed to suggest an attempt to hide other odours of a less pleasant kind. When I left you last night, Dollops and I went down to the mummy-chamber, and a skeleton key soon let us in. The unpleasant odour was rather pronounced in there. But even that didn't give me the cue, until I happened to find in the fireplace a considerable heap of fine ashes, and in the midst of them small lumps of gummy substance, which I knew to result from the burning of myrrh. I suspected from that and from the nature of the ashes that a mummy had been burnt, and as there was only one mummy in the affair, the inference was obvious. I laid hands on the two cases and tilted them. One was quite empty. The weight of the other told me that it contained something a little heavier than any mummy ought to be. I came to the conclusion that there was a body in it, injected full of arsenic, no doubt, to prevent as much as possible the processes of decay, the odour of which the incense was concealing. I didn't attempt to open the thing; I left that until the arrival of the men from The Yard, for whom I sent Dollops this afternoon. I had a vague notion that it would not turn out to be Ulchester's, and I had also a distinct recollection of what you said about his being able to mimic a Gaiety chorus-girl and all that sort of thing, and the more I thought over it, the more I realized what an excellent thing to cover a bearded face a yashmak is. Still, it was all hazard. I wasn't sure—indeed, I never was sure—until tea-time, when I caught this supposed 'Zuilika' sitting at last, and gave the spade guinea its chance to decide it."
"But, Mr. Cleek, how could it have decided it? That's the thing which amazes me most of all. How could the tossing of that coin have decided the sex of the wearer of those garments?"
"My dear Major, it is an infallible test. Did you ever notice that if you throw anything for a man to catch in his lap, he pulls his knees together to make a lap in order to catch it; whereas a woman—used to wearing skirts and, thereby, having a lap already prepared—immediately broadens that lap by the exactly opposite movement, knowing that whatever is thrown has no chance of slipping through and falling to the floor. When I tossed the coin to Ulchester, he instinctively jerked his knees together. That settled it, of course. And now, if you won't mind my saying it, I'm a bit sleepy and it is about time I took myself off to home and bed."
"But not at this late hour, surely? You will never catch a train."
"I shan't need one, Major. They are holding a horse and trap ready for me at the stables of the 'Coach and Horses.' Mr. Narkom promised to look out for that, and—I beg pardon? No, I can't stop over night. Thank you for the invitation, but Dollops would raise half London if I didn't turn up after promising to do so."
"I should have thought you might have simplified matters and obviated that by keeping the boy when you had him here," said the Major. "We could easily have found a place to put him up for the night."
"Thanks very much, but I wouldn't interrupt the course of his studies for the world," replied Cleek. "I've found an old chap—an ex-schoolmaster, down on his luck and glad for the chance to turn an honest penny—who takes him on every night from eight to ten; and the young monkey is so eager and is absorbing knowledge at such a rate that he positively amazes me. But now, really, it must be good-night. The boy will be waiting and I must hear his lessons before I go to bed."
"Not surely when you are so tired as you say?"
"Never too tired for that, Major. It makes me sleep better and sounder to know that the lad's getting on and that I've cheated the Devil in just one more instance. Good-night and good luck to you. It's a bully old world after all, isn't it, Major?" Then laughed and shook hands with him and fared forth into the starlight, whistling.
CHAPTER XXX
Who feeds on Hope alone makes but a sorry banquet; and for the next few weeks Hope was all—or nearly all—that came Cleek's way.
For some unexplained reason, Miss Lorne's letters—never very frequent, and always very brief—had, of late been gradually growing briefer: as if written in haste and from a mere sense of duty and at odd moments snatched from the call of more absorbing things; and, finally, there came a dropping off altogether and a week that brought no message from her at all.
The old restlessness, the almost outlived sense of personal injury and rebellion against circumstances, took hold of Cleek again when that time came; and the soul of him drank deep of the waters of bitterness.
So, then, it was all to be in vain, was it, this long struggle with the Devil of Circumstances, this long striving for a Goal? And after all, "Thou shalt not enter" was to be written over the gateway of his ambition? He had been lifted only to be dropped again, redeemed only to let him see how vain it was for the leopard, even though he achieved the impossible and changed his spots, to be other than a leopard always; how impossible it was for a man to override the decrees of Nature or evade the edicts of Providence? That was what it meant, eh?
To a nature such as his, Life was always a picture drawn out of perspective. There was never any Middle Distance; never any proper gradation. It was always either the Highest Heights or the Lowest Depths; the glare of fierce light or the black of deepest darkness. He could not plod; he must either fly or fall; either loll at the Gates of Paradise or groan in the depths of Hell. And the failure of Ailsa Lorne's letters sent him to the darkest and most hopeless corner of it.
Not that he blamed her—wholly; but that he blamed that Fate which had so persistently dogged him from childhood on. For now that the letters had ceased altogether, he recalled things which otherwise would have been forgotten; and, his sense of proportion being distorted, made mountains out of sand dunes.
In one of those letters, he recollected, she had spoken of meeting unexpectedly an old friend whom she had not seen since the days of his boyhood; in another, she had casually remarked, "I met Captain Morford again to-day and we spent a very pleasant half hour together," and in a third had written, "The Captain promised to call and take tea to-day but didn't. I rather fancy he divines the fact that Lady Chepstow does not care for him. Indeed, she dislikes him immensely. Why, I wonder? Personally, I think him exceedingly pleasant, and there are things in his character for which I have the deepest respect and admiration."
And out of these trifling circumstances—lo! the darkest corner that darkest Hell contained.
So that was how it was to end, was it? That was the card which Fate had all along kept up her sleeve while she stood off laughing at his endeavours, his hopes, his struggles against the inevitable? In the end, another man was to appear, another man was to win her, and the dream was to turn out nothing more than a dream after all.
Once again the voices of the Wild called out to the Caged Wolf; once again, the old things beckoned and the new things lost their savour and the Devil said, as before, "What is the use? What is the use?" and the Savage cried out to be stripped and flung back into the wilderness as God made him, and called and called and called for an end to the things that stank in his nostrils and for the fierce companionship of his kind. And but that Time had staled these things a little and blunted the keen edge of them so that they could not endure for long, and there was Dollops and the lessons and Dollops' future to recollect, the Wolf and the Savage and the Devil might not have hungered in vain.
Followed a period of intense depression when all things seemed to lose their savour and when Narkom, amazed, said to himself that the man had come to the end of his usefulness and had lost every attribute of the successful criminologist. For the next three cases he brought him Cleek botched in a manner that would have disgraced the merest tyro. Two, he failed utterly to solve, although the solutions were eventually worked out by the ordinary forces of the Yard; and in the third he let his man get away under his very nose and convey Government secrets to a foreign Power. It was but natural that these three dismal failures should find their way to the newspapers and that, in the hysterical condition of modern journalism, they should be flung out to the world at large with all the ostentation of leaded type and panicky scare heads, and that learned editors should discourse knowingly of "the limitations of mentality" and "the well-authenticated cases of the sudden warping of abnormal intelligences resulting in the startling termination of amazing careers," or snivel dismally over "the complete collapse of that imaginative power which, hitherto, had been this detective's greatest asset, and which now, on the principle that however deep a well may be if a force-pump be put into it it must some time suck gravel, seemed to have come to its end."
These things, when Cleek heard of them, affected him not at all. He seemed not to care whether his career was ended or not, whether the world praised or censured. Neither his pride nor his vanity was stirred even to the very smallest degree.
But Narkom, loyal still, took these gloomy prophecies and editorial vapourings much to heart and strove valiantly to confound the man's detractors and to put the spur to the man himself. He would not believe that the end had come, that his mental powers had run suddenly against a dead wall beyond which there was no possibility of proceeding. Something was weighing upon his mind and damping his spirits that was all; and it must be the business of those who were his friends to take steps to discover what that something was and, if possible, to eliminate it. He therefore sought out Dollops and held secret conclave with him; and Dollops dolefully epitomized the difficulty thus: "A skirt—that's what's at the bottom of it, sir. No letter at all these ten days past. She's chucked him, I'm afraid." And with this brief preface told all that he was able to tell; which, after all, was not much.
He could only explain about the letter that used to come off and on in the other days and which brought such a flow of high spirits to the man for whom it was intended; he could only say that it was addressed in a woman's hand and bore always the one postmark; and when Narkom heard what that postmark was and recollected where Lady Chepstow's country seat lay, and who was with her, he puckered up his lips as if he were about to whistle and made two slim arches with his uplifted eyebrows.
"Sir, if only you could sneak off and run down there without his knowing of it—it wouldn't do to write a letter, Mr. Narkom: he'd be on to that before you could turn round, sir," the boy ventured hopefully; "but if only you could run down there and give her a tip what she's a doing of and what she's a chuckin' away, what a Man she's a throwin' down, maybe, sir, maybe—"
"Yes, 'maybe,'" agreed the superintendent, after a moment's reflection.
"At any rate it's worth a trial." And went, forthwith.
Not that it was a prudent thing to do; not that it is wise for any man at any time to interfere, even with the best intentions, with the course of another man's love affairs; and, finally, not that it was at all necessary or had any influence whatsoever upon the events which succeeded the step. Indeed, he might have spared himself the trouble, for he had barely covered a fifth of the distance when the country post was delivered in London, and Cleek, rocketing up in one sweep from the Pit to the Gateway, stood laughing huskily with a letter from Ailsa in his hand.
He ripped off the envelope and read it greedily.
"Dear Friend," she wrote, "I cannot imagine what you must think of my silence; but whatsoever you do think cannot be half so terrible as the actual cause of it. I have been in close touch with misery and death, with things so appalling that heart and mind have had room to hold nothing else. Indeed, I am still so horribly nervous and upset that I scarcely know how to think coherently much less write. I can only remember that you once said that if ever I needed your help I was to ask; and oh, Mr. Cleek, I need it very very much indeed now. Not for myself—let me find time to add that—but for a dear, dear friend—the friend I have so often written about: Captain Morford—who is involved in an affair of the most distressing and mysterious character and whose only hope lies, I feel, in you. Will you come to the rescue, for my sake? That is what I am asking. Let me say, however, that there is no possibility of a reward, for the captain is in no position to offer one; but I seem to feel that that will not weigh with you. Neither can I ask you to call at the house, for, as I have already told you, Lady Chepstow does not care for the Captain and under those circumstances it would be embarrassing to ask him there to meet you. So then, if no other case intervenes, and you really can grant me this great favour, will you be in the neighbourhood of the lich-gate of Lyntonhurst Old Church at nine o'clock in the morning of Thursday, you will win the everlasting gratitude of, Your sincere friend—AILSA LORNE."
Would he be there? He laughed aloud as he put the question to himself. A Bradshaw was on his table. He caught it up, found that there was a train that could be caught in thirty-five minutes' time, and clapped on his hat and—caught it.
That night he slept at the inn of the Three Desires—which, as you may possibly know, lies but a gunshot beyond the boundary wall of the glebe of Lyntonhurst Old Church—slept with an alarm clock at his head and every servant at the inn from the boots to the barmaid tipped a shilling to see that he did not oversleep himself.
He was up before any of them, however—up and out into the pearl-dusk of the morning before ever the alarm-clock shrilled its first note, or the sun's sheen slid lower than the spurs of the weather-cock on the spire of Lyntonhurst Old Church—and twice he had walked past the big gates and looked up the still avenue to the windows of the huge house whose roof covered her before Lyntonhurst Old Church spoke up through the dawn-hush and told the parish it was half-past four o'clock.
By five, he had found a pool cupped in the beech woods with mallows and marsh marigolds and a screen of green things all round it and a tent of blue sky over the sun-touched tree tops; and had stripped and splashed into it and set all the birds to flight with the harsher song of human things; by seven he was back at the Three Desires; by eight he had shaved and changed and breakfasted and was out again in the fields and the leafy lanes, and by nine he was at the lich-gate of the church.
CHAPTER XXXI
She was there already; sitting far back at the end of one of the narrow wooden side benches with the shadow of the gate's moss-grown roof and of the big cypress above it partly screening her, her shrinking position evincing a desire to escape general observation as clearly as her pale face and nervously drumming hand betrayed a state of extreme agitation.
She rose as Cleek lifted the latch and came in, and advanced to meet him with both hands outstretched in greeting and a rich colour staining all her face.
"I knew that you would come—I was as certain of it as I am now this minute," she said with a little embarrassed laugh, then dropped her eyes and said no more, for he had taken those two hands in his and was holding them tightly and looking at her with an expression that was half a reproach and half a caress.
"I am glad you did not doubt," he said, with an odd, wistful little smile. "It is good to know one's friends have faith in one, Miss Lorne. I had almost come to believe that you had forgotten me."
"Because I did not write? Oh, but I could not—indeed I could not. I have been spending days and nights in a house of mourning—Lady Chepstow gave me leave of absence; and my heart was so full I did not write even to her. I have been trying to soothe and to comfort a distracted girl, a half-crazed old man, a bereft and horribly smitten family. I have been doing all in my power to put hope and courage into the heart of a despairing and most unhappy lover."
"Meaning Captain Morford?"
"Yes. He has been almost beside himself. And since this last blow fell…. Oh, I had been so sure that it would not, that between us all we would manage to avert it; yet in spite of everything it did fall—it did!—and if I live to be a hundred I shall never forget it."
"Calm yourself, Miss Lorne. You are shaking like a leaf. Try to tell me plainly what it is that has happened; what the danger is that threatens this—er—Captain Morford."
"Oh, nothing threatens him, personally," she replied. "He says he could stand it better if it were only that; and I believe him—I truly do. The thing that nearly drives him out of his mind is the thought that one day she—the girl he loves—the girl he is to marry—the girl for whose dear sake he stands ready to give up so much—the thought that one day her turn will come, that one day she, too, will be stricken down as mother and brothers have been is almost driving him frantic."
"Mother and brothers?—brothers?" Cleek looked up sharply, and there was a curious break in his voice, a yet more curious brightening of his eyes. "Miss Lorne, am I to understand that this Captain Morford is engaged to a girl who has brothers?"
"Yes. That is—no. She has 'brothers' no longer. There is only one left living now, Mr. Cleek, only one. Ah, think of it! of that whole family of six persons, but three are left: Miriam, Flora, and Ronald."
"Miriam, Flora, and … Miss Lorne, will you tell me please the name of the lady to whom Captain Morford is engaged?"
"Why Miriam Comstock, of course—did I forget to mention it?"
"I think so," said Cleek; and shook out a little jerky laugh, and stood looking at her foolishly; not quite knowing what to do with his feet and hands. But suddenly—"Oh come, let's have the case—let's have it at once," he broke out impetuously. "Tell me what it is, what I'm to do for this Captain Morford, and I'll do it if mortal man can."
"And no mortal man can if you cannot—I've faith enough in you for that," she began, then stopped short and sucked in her breath, and crept back to the extreme end of the lich-gate and stood shaking and very pale. Someone had come suddenly round the angle of the church and was moving up the road that ran past the gate.
"Please—no—let me get away as quickly as possible," she said in a swift whisper as Cleek, startled by the change in her, made an eager step forward. "It is known that I have been with them—the Comstocks—and it is all so mysterious and awful…. Oh, who can tell whose hand it may be? who may be spying? or what? It is best that I should give no hint that assistance has been asked for; best that nobody should see me talking with you—Mr. Narkom says that it is."
"Mr. Narkom?"
"Yes. He was in the neighbourhood accidentally. He called last night. I told him and he was glad that I had sent for you. He is over there, on the other side of the churchyard. Oh, please will you go to him? Captain Morford is within easy call and has agreed to come when he is wanted. Do go, do go quickly, Mr. Cleek. There's someone coming up the road and I am horribly frightened."
"But why? It is merely a farm labourer," said Cleek, glancing through the open side of the lich-gate and down the road. "You can see that for yourself."
"Yes, but—who knows? who can tell? There is no clue to the actual person and he is so cunning, so crafty—Oh, please, will you go? Afterward, if you like, we can meet here again. To-day I am too frightened to stay."
He saw that she was in a state of extreme nervous terror; that it would be cruel to subject her to any further suffering, and without one more word, walked past her into the Churchyard and made his way over the green ridge that rose immediately behind the building and down the slope beyond until he came to the extreme other side. And there in the shade of a thickly grown spinney, he found Mr. Marverick Narkom sitting with his back against a beech-tree smoking a nerve-soothing cigar and expectantly awaiting him.
"My dear fellow, I never was so glad," he said, tossing away his smoke and jumping up as Cleek appeared. "Happy coincidence my motoring down here—eh, what? Wife in these parts visiting. Rum, my turning up just after Miss Lorne had written you and at a time when we both are needed, wasn't it?"
"Very," said Cleek, pulling out a cigarette and stretching himself full length upon the ground. "Would as soon have expected to run foul of a specimen of the Great Auk endeavouring to rear a family in the neighbourhood of Trafalgar Square. Well, what's it now, Mr. Narkom?—I'm told you know the details. A match please, if you have one. Thanks very much. Now then let's have the facts. What sort of a case is it?"
"The knottiest in all my experience, the strangest that even you have ever handled," replied the Superintendent, impressively. "It's a murder—three murders, in fact, with a possible fourth and a fifth in the near future if the diabolical rascal who is at the bottom of it isn't pulled up sharp and his amazing modus operandi discovered.
"The case will interest you, my dear chap; it is so startlingly original in its methods of procedure, so complex, so weird, and so appallingly mysterious. Conceive if you can, my dear fellow, an individual so supernaturally cunning that he not only kills without a trace, but kills in the presence of watchers—kills whilst the victim is in the very arms of those watchers! And yet escapes, unseen, unknown, without a clue to tell when, where, or how he entered the room or left it; when, where, or how he struck the blow, or why; yet did strike it, despite the sleepless vigil of a man who not only sat up all night with the victim, but held him in his arms to be sure that nobody could get at him; nobody so much as approach him without his guardian's knowledge!"
Cleek twitched round sharply and sat up, leaning upon his elbow and looking at Narkom as though he doubted his sanity.
"Let me have that again!" he said in sharp, crisp tones. "A man killed whilst another man held him—held him in his arms—and watched over him, and yet the other man saw nothing of the murderer? Is that what you said?"
"That's it, precisely. Only I must tell you that, in the instance when the victim was held in the arms of the person watching him, it was not a man that was killed, but a boy. There had been a man killed, however, four weeks previously in the same house, in the same mysterious manner, and by the same unknown agency. A month earlier a woman, too, had been done to death there in the same way. The man was the brother of that boy, and the woman was the mother of both."
Cleek moved so quickly that he might fairly have been said to flash from a sitting to a standing position, and then began to feel round in his pockets for his cigarette case with a nervous sort of haste, which Narkom knew and understood.
"Ah," he said, in a tone of satisfaction, "I thought the case would interest you. You've been down in the dumps lately and needed something to buck you up a bit. I told Captain Morford that this would be sure to do it. Heard of him, haven't you? Extremely nice chap. Home on leave from Bombay. Only recently got his captaincy. Grandson and heir to that fine old snob, Sir Gilbert Morford, who's known everywhere as 'The Titled Teapot.' You know, 'Morford & Morford's Unrivalled Tea.' Knighted for something or other—the Lord knows what or why—and puts on more side over his tin-plate title than Royalty itself. The Captain is a decent sort, however. He'll give you the full particulars of this astounding case. Wait a bit. I'll call him"—pausing a moment to put the first two fingers of each hand into his mouth and blow out a shrill, ear-splitting whistle. "That'll fetch him! He'll be here before you can say Jack Robinson!"
He wasn't, of course; but you couldn't have said it half a hundred times before he was; or, at least, before Cleek, startled by a rustling of the boughs, glanced round and saw a tall, fairish young man who had no more the appearance of a soldier than a currant has of a gooseberry. He looked more like a bank clerk than anything else that Cleek could think of at the minute, and a none too prepossessing bank clerk at that, for Nature had not been any too lavish of her gifts as regards personal attractiveness, seeming to prefer to make up for her miserliness in the bestowal of good looks by an absolute prodigality in the gifts of ears—ears as big as an oyster-shell and so prominent that they seemed even larger than they were, and that is saying a great deal.
Still, unprepossessing as the man was, there was a certain charm of manner about him and a certain attractiveness in his voice Cleek discovered when he was introduced to him and found himself being "sized up," so to speak, by a pair of keen grey eyes.
"Now let us have the details of the case, if you please, Captain," said Cleek, coming to the point of the interview with as little beating about the bush as possible. "Mr. Narkom has given me a vague idea of the nature of it, but I want something more than that, of course. I am told that three persons in one family have been done to death in a most mysterious manner, and without any clue to the assassin or his motive; indeed that the hand which strikes strikes even in the presence of others, yet remains unknown and invisible. Frankly, I never heard of but one instance which at all resembles this or—No, Mr. Narkom, it is nothing that ever came your way, no affair that has happened since you and I first met, sir. It was a long time ago—eight or ten years, to be exact—and a good many miles from England. The cases were somewhat similar, judging from the scanty outline you have given me, and—What's that? No, the criminal was never apprehended. He got away, and his methods were never generally known. Even if they had been, they were not those which any desperado might have emulated, any tyro practised. They required a certain knowledge of anatomy, chemical action—even surgery. I don't believe that ten people in the world knew about the thing at that time. I stumbled upon what I believed was the solution of the mystery whilst I was taking a course of chemistry for—well, for the purpose of demonstrating the possibility of manufacturing precious stones of a size and weight to make them a profitable—er—speculation. The science in medicine was not so advanced in those days as it is now, and when I ventured to suggest to certain doctors what I believed to have been the cause of the mysterious deaths and the modus operandi of the murderer, I simply got laughed at for my pains. I felt pretty certain of my facts, however, and pretty certain of the man who was guilty. Pardon? No, not alive now; that fellow had his brains blown out in a bar-room brawl before I left New Zealand."
"New Zealand?" struck in Captain Morford agitatedly. "I say, that's a rum go, isn't it, Mr. Narkom. New Zealand is where the Comstocks come from—or, rather, the father and mother did."
"By Jove! Cleek, that looks suspicious, old chap," chimed in Narkom.
"Don't think, do you, that there can possibly be any connection between
the two cases? In other words, that that fellow you suspected in New
Zealand didn't really die after all?"
"Shortly, the chemist? Not a doubt about his death, Mr. Narkom. I was in the bar-room when he was killed. Three bullets went through his head, and he was as dead as Napoleon Bonaparte by the time he struck the floor. The methods may be the same, but not the man—there is not the ghost of possibility of there being any connection between the two. But let us give the Captain a chance to explain the case. When, where, and how did these mysterious murders begin, Captain, if you please?"
"At Lilac Lodge, over Windsor way," replied the Captain, trying to answer all three questions at once. "They started about a week after the Comstocks went to live there. And the thing was so appalling, the place seemed so certainly under a curse, that although he had paid a good round sum for it, and had spent a pot of money having the house decorated and the garden laid out just as Miriam and her mother fancied it—Miriam is Miss Comstock, my fiancée, Mr. Cleek—nothing would induce Mr. Harmstead to stop in it another hour after the second murder occurred."
"Mr. Harmstead! Who is Mr. Harmstead, Captain?"
"The late Mrs. Comstock's bachelor uncle—a very rich old chap, who was once a sheep-farmer in New Zealand, and afterwards in Australia. Mrs. Comstock hadn't seen him since she was a very little girl until he came to England some few months ago to settle down and to take care of her children and her."
"How did it happen that she hadn't seen him in all that time? I take it there must have been some good reason, Captain?"
"Yes, rather. You see it was like this: The Harmsteads—Mrs. Comstock was a Harmstead by birth, and Uncle Phil was her father's only brother—the Harmsteads had never been well to-do as a family: indeed none of them but dear old Uncle Phil ever had a hundred pounds they could call their own, so when Miss Harmstead's father died, which was about eight months after his brother left New Zealand and went to Australia, she married a young joiner and cabinet-maker, George Comstock, to whom she had long been engaged, and a few weeks later, fancying there would be a better chance for advancement in his trade in England than out there, Mr. Comstock sold out what few belongings he had in the world and brought his wife over here."
"Oh, I see. Then of course she had no opportunity of seeing her uncle until he came here?"
"No, not a ghost of one. She corresponded with him for a time, however—wrote him after the first child was born—and christened 'Philip' in honour of him. In those days it used to take six months to get a letter to Australia, and another six to get word back, so the baby was more than a year old when Uncle Phil wrote that if he didn't marry in the meantime and have a son of his own—which was very unlikely—he would make young Phil his heir and come out after him, too, one of these fine days."
"One moment. Was the person you allude to as 'Young Phil' one of the sons that was murdered?"
"Yes. He was the first victim, poor, chap!"
"Oh, I see!" said Cleek. "I see! So there is money in the background, eh? Well go on. What next? Hear any more from Uncle Phil after that?"
"Oh, yes—for a long time. Miriam and Flora were born, and word of their arrival in the world was sent out to him before the final letter for years and years reached them. In that letter he wrote that he was doing better and better every year, and getting so rich that he didn't have time to do anything but just stop where he was and 'gather in the shekels.' There'd be enough for all when he did come, however, and he was altering his will so that in case anything should happen to young Phil—'which God forbid,' he wrote—the girls would come next, and so on to all the heirs of his niece. After that letter years went by, and never another one. They, thinking that he had married after all—for in his last letter he had spoken of a young widow who had lately been engaged to fill the post of housekeeper at his ranch—gave up all hope when after three times writing no reply came, and finally desisted entirely. He says, however, that it was just the other way about. That he did write—wrote six or seven times—but could get no reply; and as he afterwards found the housekeeper in question a designing and deceitful person, and shipped her off about her business, he makes no doubt that she received and destroyed Mrs. Comstock's letter to him and burnt his to her, hoping, no doubt, to inveigle him into marrying her."
"Quite likely, if she were a designing woman," commented Cleek. "But go on, please. What next?"
"Oh, years of hardship, during which Mr. Comstock died and his widow had to earn their own living unaided. Young Phil got a post as bookkeeper, Flora taught music and painting, Mrs. Comstock did needlework, and Miriam became a governess in the family of a distant connection of my grandfather, Sir Gilbert Morford. That's where and how I met her, Mr. Cleek, and—Well, that's another story!" his cheeks reddening and a flash of fire coming into his eyes. "My grandfather says he will 'chuck me out neck and crop' if I marry her; but it does not matter—I will!"
"Yes, you will—if the cut of that chin stands for anything," commented Cleek. "Well, to get on: the Comstocks were down in the deeps, and no hope of hearing any more from Australia and Uncle Phil, eh? What next?"
"Why, all of a sudden he dropped in on them, bless his bully old heart!—and then good-bye to hard times and any more struggling for them. He'd been in England searching for them for seven months before he found them; but when he did find them there was a time! Inside of ten hours, the whole world was changed for them. Made the boys and the girls give up their positions and come home to live with him and their mother, poured money out by the handful, bought Lilac Lodge and fitted it up like a little palace, dressed his niece and her daughters like queens, and settled down with them to what seemed about to be a life of glorious and luxurious ease, and in the midst of all this peace and plenty, brightness and hope, the first blow fell. Mrs. Comstock, going to bed at night in perfect health, was found in the morning stone-dead! Of course, as no doctor could give a death certificate when none had been in attendance upon her, the Law stepped in, the coroner held an inquest, an autopsy was decided upon, and the result of it was a deeper and more amazing mystery than ever. She had died—but from what? Every organ was found to be in a thoroughly healthy condition. The heart was sound, the lungs betrayed no sign of an anesthetic, the blood and kidneys not the faintest trace of poison—everything about her was perfectly normal. She had not died through drugs, she had not died through strangulation, suffocation, electrical shock, or failure of the heart. She had not been stabbed, she had not been shot, she had not succumbed to any mortal disease—yet there she was, stone-dead, slain by something which no one could trace and for which Science could find no name."
Narkom opened his lips to speak, but Cleek signalled him to silence, and stood studying the Captain from under down-drawn brows, looking and listening and thoughtfully rubbing his thumb and forefinger up and down his chin.
CHAPTER XXXII
"Of course the family was horribly shocked and upset by this sudden and mysterious interruption to the dream of peace," went on the Captain; "but nothing was left but to accept the verdict of 'Death from unknown causes,' and to believe it the will of God. The body was buried a few days later, and, comforting each other as best they could, the sorrowing uncle and heart-broken nieces and nephews settled down to living their lives without the one who had been the sunshine of the home, and whose loss seemed the greatest blow that could have been dealt them. A month passed and they were just beginning to forget details of the tragedy when a second and equally mysterious and horrifying one occurred, and the eldest son of the dead woman—Philip—was stricken down precisely as his mother had been, and, as his horrified brother, sisters, and uncle now recalled, like her, on the tenth day of the month!"
"Hum-m-m!" said Cleek, reflectively. "Rather significant, that. It was, I assume, that circumstance which first suggested the idea of something more than mere chance being at the back of these sudden and mysterious deaths?"
"That and one other circumstance. The condition of the bedclothing, Mr. Cleek, showed that in Philip's case there had been something in the nature of a struggle before he had succumbed to the Power which had assailed him. In other words, he had not been, as doubtless the poor mother had, so infinitely inferior in point of strength to the murderer as to be absolutely powerless in the wretch's grip from the very first instant of the attack. He had fought for his life, poor fellow, but it must have been a brief fight and death itself almost instantaneous; for although the bedclothing was tangled round his feet in a manner which could only have occurred in a struggle, he did not live long enough to get off the bed itself or slide so much as one foot to the floor. He died as his mother had died, and the verdict of the doctors and of the coroner's jury was the same: 'Death from unknown causes'!"
"Hm-m-m!" said Cleek again. "And were all the symptoms—or, rather, the absence of symptoms—the same?"
"Precisely. All the organs were discovered to be in a normal condition, the blood was untainted by any suggestion of either mineral or animal poison, the heart was sound, the lungs healthy—there was neither an internal disturbance nor an external wound, unless one could call a 'wound' a slight, a very slight, swelling upon the left side of the neck; a small thing, not so big as a sixpence."
"And appearing very much like the inflammation resulting from the bite of a gnat or a spider, Captain?"
"Exactly like it, Mr. Cleek. In fact, the doctors fancied at first that it was the result of his having been bitten by some poisonous insect, and were for accounting for his death that way. But, of course, the entire absence of poison in the blood soon put an end to that idea, so it was certain that whatever he died from, it was not from a bite or a sting of any sort."
"Clever chaps, those doctors," commented Cleek with a curious one-sided smile. "However, they were quite correct in that, I imagine, poison, either animal, vegetable, or mineral, was not the means of destruction. Still, I should have thought that at this second post-mortem the likeness of the son's case to that of the mother's would have impelled them to extra vigilance, and resulted in a much more careful searching, and minute examination of the viscera. If my theory is correct, I do not suppose they would have found anything in the contents of the thorax or the abdomen, but it is just possible that analysis of the matter removed from the cranial cavity might have revealed a small blood-clot in the brain."
The Captain twitched up his eyebrows and stared at him in open-mouthed amazement.
"Of all the—By Jove! you know, this beats me! To think of your guessing that!" he said. "As a matter of fact, that's precisely what they did do, Mr. Cleek. But as they couldn't arrive at any conclusion nor trace a probable cause of its origin they were more in the dark than ever. Selwin, the local practitioner, was for putting it down as a case of apoplexy on the strength of that small blood-clot, but as there was an entire absence of every other symptom of apoplectic conditions the other doctors scouted the suggestion as preposterous—pointed out the generally healthy state of the brain and of the heart, lungs, arterial walls, et cetera, as utterly refuting such a theory—and in the end the verdict on the son was the verdict given on the mother: 'Death from unknown causes'; and he was buried as she had been buried, with the secret of the murder undiscovered."
"And then what, Captain?"
"What I have already told you, Mr. Cleek. Nothing under God's heaven would or could persuade Mr. Harmstead to let his nieces and their two surviving brothers remain another hour in that house of disaster. He removed them from it instantly—fled the very neighbourhood, hired a house down here—at Dalehampton; a dozen miles or so on the other side of the Tor, yonder—and carried them there to live. The family now consisted of Miriam and Flora, the two girls, Paul, a boy of thirteen—old Mr. Harmstead's special pride and pet—and Ronald, a little chap of eleven. In this new home they hoped and prayed to be free from the horrible visitant who had made the memory of the old one a nightmare to them, but—they couldn't forget, Mr. Cleek, what the Tenth of each month had taken from them, and grew sick with dread at the steady approach of the Tenth of this one."
"And as this is the Twelfth," said Cleek, "the day before yesterday was the Tenth. Did anything happen?"
"Yes," replied the Captain, his voice dropping until it was little more than a whisper. "I tried to cheer them; Miss Lorne tried to cheer them. We sat with them, tried to make them think that our presence there would act as a shield and a guard—and tried to think so ourselves. But old Mr. Harmstead took even stronger measures. 'Nothing shall touch Paul—nothing that lives and breathes,' he said, desperately. 'I'll take him into my room; I'll sit up with him in my arms all night!'"
"And did so?"
"Yes. At twelve o'clock, Miss Lorne, Miss Comstock, and I went in to say good-night to him. He was sitting in a deep chair with the boy fast asleep in his arms—sitting and looking all about him with the dumb agony of a trapped mouse. I'll never forget how he clutched the boy to him nor the cry he gave when the door opened to admit us, the sob of relief when he saw it was only us. His cry and his movement awoke the boy, but he dropped off to sleep again before I left, and was breathing healthily and peacefully. The last look I had at the picture as I went out, Mr. Cleek, the dear old chap was holding his pet in his arms and smiling down into his boyish face. So he was still sitting, Miss Comstock tells me, when she came down this morning. 'Look,' he said to her, 'I watched him—I held him—the tenth day is past and the death didn't get him, my bonnie!' Then called her to his side and shook the little fellow to awaken him. It was then only that he discovered the truth. The boy was stone-dead!"