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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But how?"

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

"Yes, Gov'nor?"

"My things packed and ready?"

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

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

CHAPTER VI

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

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

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

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

"Suit yourself, my lad."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why?"

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

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

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

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

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

"'DISTINGUISHED MONSIEUR:

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

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

CHAPTER VII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

CHAPTER X

By this time he had concluded the alteration in his toilet which was
necessary to assure his entrance into the hotel without occasioning
comment; and as Dollops had followed suit they readily passed muster,
when they alighted, for an ordinary English gentleman accompanied by an
ordinary English manservant.

"What was the charge at the garage?" inquired Cleek of Dollops just
previously to alighting.

"I dunno wot it runs to in this 'ere rum lingo of francs and sous, sir,"
said Dollops, "but the garage gent he said it would amount to two pounds
ten in English money, so I'll have to leave you to work it out for
yourself. The shuvver, he said sommink about 'poor boars'--which I've
heard is wot you has to give 'em as a tip to themselves, Gov'nor--so I
promised him 'arf a crown to stop at 'tother end of that passage leadin'
up from The Twisted Arm till he was wanted, sir. Made it a good tip
because I wanted him to be there sure--it would have been a case of
'nab' for us if he hadn't. Wasn't too much, was it, sir?"

"No," said Cleek--and let him see that it wasn't by giving the chauffeur
a pourboire of ten francs and sending him back to the garage with the
impression that he had had dealings with a millionaire.

Ten minutes later the hotel register bore the record of the arrival of
"Mr. Philip Barch and servant"; and one attendant was engaged in showing
the servant into a neat little bedroom which was to be his resting-place
until morning while another was ushering the master into the suite
engaged by the Baron de Carjorac.

Three persons were there: the Baron, his daughter, and his daughter's
companion; but Cleek saw but one--and that the only one who made no
movement, uttered no sound, when he came into the room. Curiously pale
and curiously quiet, she stood with one arm resting on the mantelpiece
and the other hanging by her side, looking at him--looking _for_ him, in
fact--but not saying one word, not making one sound. That she left
wholly to the baron and his daughter.

They, too, maintained, although with an effort, an appearance of
composure so long as the hotel servant was present; but in the moment
the door closed and the man was gone an overpowering excitement seized
and mastered them.

"Monsieur, for the love of God, don't tell me you have failed," implored
the baron. "I have died a hundred deaths of torture and suspense since
your card was carried up. But if I am to hear bad news ... Oh, my
country!"

"Don't cross bridges, baron, until you come to them," said Cleek
composedly. "I gave Miss Lorne my promise that I would not leave France
until I had done what she asked me to do; and--I am returning to England
to-morrow by the noon boat. I have had an exciting evening, but it has
had its compensation. Here is something for you. I had a bit of a fight
for it, baron--look out that it doesn't get into the wrong hands again."

He had taken a small packet of torn papers from his pocket while he was
speaking; now he put it into the baron's hand--not wholly without a
certain sense of gratification, however, in the excitement and delight
which the act called forth; for no man is utterly devoid of personal
vanity, personal pride in his achievements, and this man was no less
human than his kind.

He let the tumult of excitement and joy wear itself out; he suffered the
baron's embraces--even the two rapturous kisses the man planted upon
first one and then the other of his cheeks--he endured Mlle. Athalie's
exuberant hand-clapping and hand-shaking and the cyclonic and wholly
Gallic manner in which she deported herself when comparison with the
fragments which the baron had still retained proved beyond all question
that these were indeed the missing portions of the all-important
document; and not until these things were over did he so much as look at
Ailsa Lorne again.

She had taken no part in the general excitement, moved not one foot from
where she had been standing from the first. Even when Athalie danced
over and hugged her and showed the important fragments; even when she
reproved her with a wondering, "Ah, you strange Anglais--you stone-cold
Anglais! Is it possible that you can have blood in your veins and yet
take wondrous things like this so calmly?"--even then, she merely smiled
and remained standing just as she still was; her pallor not one whit
lessened, her reserve but the merest shadow less apparent than it had
been before.

Cleek chose that moment to walk over to her, to lift his eyes to hers,
and to stand looking at her questioningly. For now that he was close to
her he could see that she was trembling nervously; that her calmness was
merely an outward thing, and that under it nerves writhed and a
frightened heart was beating thick and fast.

Was even the fancied moment in Paradise to be denied him then? That such
a woman could not, all in a moment--could not by just one act of heroism
on his part--be won over and lured into complete forgetfulness of such a
past as his, he realized to the fullest extent. Always he had been
conscious of that; but even so ... Ah, well, the meanest may hope, the
lowest may at least look up; and even saints and angels were not above
saying, "Well done!" to a soul that had struggled, to a sinner that had
done his best.

"I managed it, you see, Miss Lorne," he said, in a slightly lowered
voice, while the baron busied himself in looking for his cheque-book and
Athalie bustled about in quest of ink and a pen. "It wasn't an easy
night's work, and I'm a bit fagged out. So, as I leave in the morning,
it will be good-bye as well as good-night."

She moved for the first time. The hand that lay upon the shelf of the
mantelpiece shook and closed quickly. She lifted up her head and looked
at him. Her eyes were misty and faint clouds of color were coming and
going over her face.

"What is it?" he asked. "Surely, Miss Lorne, you--are not afraid of me?"

"No," she said, averting her face again. "Not of you but of myself. That
is--I--" trying to laugh, but making a parody of it--"I was always more
or less of a coward, Mr. Cleek, but ..." She faced round again sharply
and held out her hand to him. "Will you let me thank you? Will you let
me say that I must be merely a little child in intellect since it is
only now that I have begun to understand how natural it is that a pound
of gold should inevitably outweigh an ounce of dirt? And will you please
understand that I am trying to thank you, trying to let you know that I
am very, very sorry if I ever hurt your feelings. I don't think I meant
to. I couldn't see then so clearly as I do now. Please forgive me."

He took the hand she held out to him; and so had his moment in Paradise
after all.

"Hurt me as often as you like, if it will always end like this," he said
with a queer little laugh that seemed to come from the very depths of
his chest. "As for that other time ... How could I have expected that
you would take it in any other way, being what you are and I what I had
been? I am glad I told you. You could never have respected me for an
instant if you had found it out in any other way; and I want your
respect: I want it very, very earnestly, Miss Lorne. If you can ever
give it to me I'll do my best to be worthy of it."

She had withdrawn her hand from his and was drumming with her
finger-tips upon the mantelshelf. A little pucker was between her
eyebrows, she was biting her under lip perplexedly, and appeared to be
hesitating. But of a sudden she twitched round her head sharply and a
sweep of red went up over her face.

"Shall I show you how much I do respect you, then?" she said. "One may
ask of a friend things one would not dream of asking of a mere
acquaintance, and so--Mr. Cleek, this night of horror has been too much
for me. I know now that I can no longer remain in this position in this
dreadful city. I have already resigned my post, and will return to
England, and--if I am not too late for it--make an effort to secure the
post of governess to Lady Chepstow's little son. I shall start in the
morning. Will you play the part of friend and guide and see me safely
across the Channel?"

"Do you mean that?" he asked, his face alight, his eyes shining. "You
will let me have the privilege, the honour? What a queen you are! You
give largesse with both hands when a simple coin would have been enough.
Shall I secure your tickets? When will you have your luggage ready? Is
there anything you will need before you leave?"

She smiled at his enthusiasm, coloured anew, and again held out her
hand.

"We will talk of all that in the morning," she said. "There will be
plenty of time. Mlle. de Carjorac has promised to look after my effects
and to see that they are shipped on to me in due course. But now it
really must be good-night. I shall see you again at breakfast."

"At breakfast?" repeated Cleek, with a happy laugh. "I wonder if you
understand that I shall be kicking my heels on my bedside until it is
ready?--that I shan't sleep a wink all night?"

And as events proved he came respectably close to living up to that
exuberant assertion--merely napping now and again, to wake up suddenly
and "moon" for an hour or so; and, between periodical inspections of his
watch, to wonder if God ever made a night so long and slow-dragging as
this one.

It had its recompense, however; for all--or nearly all--the next day was
passed in company with _her_; and more than that he would not have asked
of Heaven. Long before she rose he had made all arrangements for the
journey to Calais; and she was not a little gratified--yes, and touched
if the truth must be told--on arriving at the train, to find that he had
made no effort to secure accommodations which would compel her to endure
his companionship alone from the Gare du Nord to the steamer, but had
considerately reserved seats in a compartment containing other
travellers, and had done everything in his power to relieve her of any
possible embarrassment and to insure her all possible comforts. Even
magazines and pictorial papers were not omitted, but were there for her
in plenty lest she might prefer an excuse for not indulging much in
conversation; and there was also a huge bunch of La France roses bought
at the temporary flower market beside the Madeleine at daybreak that
morning.

"They are beautiful, aren't they?" he said, as he laid them in her lap.
"Will it surprise you to learn that flowers are a passion with me, and
that I am a living refutation of the fallacy that 'there can be nothing
very wrong about a man who can cultivate a garden'?"

She looked up at him and smiled.

"I think nothing about you will surprise me--you are so many-sided
and--if you will pardon me saying it--so different from what one
imagines men of--of your calling to be," she said; and laughed a little,
colouring divinely until her face was like the roses themselves. "You
treat me as if I were a queen; and I am not used to Court manners.
Where, if you please, did you acquire yours?"

"In the vast Kingdom of the World," he made answer, with just a
momentary change of countenance--a mere suspicion of embarrassment:
laughed off before she could be quite sure that it had had any real
existence. "Please remember that to appear to be what one is not, and to
ape manners foreign to one's real self is part of what you have so
nicely, so euphemistically, termed 'my calling.' I am an Actor on the
World's Stage, Miss Lorne; I should be but a very poor one if I could
not accommodate myself to many rôles."

"If you play them all so well as you do that of the _preux chevalier_,
it is no wonder you are a success," she replied gaily, slipping thus
into easy conversation with him.

And so it fell out that the magazines and the illustrated papers were
not so much of a boon as both had fancied they might be when Cleek
brought them to her; for they had not even been opened when the train
ran up to the quay side at Calais and brought them almost abreast of the
channel steamer.

CHAPTER XI

It was not until they were aboard the boat and the shores of France were
slipping off into the distance that Miss Lorne saw anything at all of
Dollops. As he had travelled down from Paris to Calais in a separate
compartment there had been no opportunity to do so. He had, too, held
himself respectfully aloof even after they had boarded the steamer; and,
but that once, when a lurch of the vessel had unexpectedly disturbed
Cleek's equilibrium and knocked his hat off, she might not have seen him
even then.

But the manner in which he pounced upon that hat, the tender care with
which he brushed it, and the affectionate interest in both voice and
eyes when he handed it back and inquired eagerly, "Didn't hurt yourself,
Gov'nor, did you, sir?" compelled her to take notice of him, and, in
doing so, to understand the position in which they stood to each other.

"You are travelling with a servant?" she enquired.

"More than a servant--a devoted henchman, Miss Lorne. They say you can't
purchase fidelity for all the money in the world, but I secured the
finest brand of it in the Universe by the simple outlay of two half
crowns. It is the boy of that night on Hampstead Heath--the boy who
stood at the turning point. The Devil didn't get him, you see. He kept
his promise and has been walking the straight road ever since."

She turned round and looked at him; realizing more of the man's
character in that moment than a hundred deeds of bravery, a thousand
acts of gentle courtesy, could ever have made her understand.

"And you took him in?" she said slowly. "You gave him a chance? You
helped him to redeem himself? How good of you."

"How good _for_ me, you mean," he laughed, "It was 'bread on the waters'
with a vengeance, Miss Lorne. I should have lost my life last night but
for that boy."--And told her briefly and airily how the thing had come
to pass.

"Don't think it vindictive of me, but I am sorry, I am very, very sorry
you were not able to hand that dreadful woman, Margot, over to the
authorities, Mr. Cleek," she said, with an expression of great
seriousness. "She is not likely to forget or to forgive what you have
done; and some day, perhaps ... Oh, do be on your guard. It was really
foolhardy to have attempted the thing alone. Surely you might have
appealed for assistance to the Paris police and not only have minimised
your personal risk but made sure of the woman's arrest."

"Not without allowing the authorities to learn exactly what the Baron de
Carjorac was so anxious to keep them _from_ learning, Miss Lorne. They
must have found out what I was after, what really had been lost, if I
had applied to them for assistance. I had either to do the thing alone
or drop the case entirely. And drop it I would not after _you_ had asked
me to accept it, and--Pardon? No, Miss Lorne, I do not know who the
woman Margot really is. Even that name may be fictitious, as was the one
of 'Comtesse de la Tour.' I only know of her that she is one of the
great figures of the Underworld; that money is her game--money alone;
money first, last, and all the time; that her personal history is as
much of a mystery to her closest associates as was--well, no matter;
people of that ilk are not fit subjects to discuss with you. All that I
know of the woman is that she has travelled pretty well over the world;
that some six or eight months ago she was in Ceylon with a--er--a
certain member of her crew, and came within an ace of falling foul of
the law. She had put up a plan to loot the depository of the Pearl
Fisheries Company at a period when there were thousands of pounds worth
of gems awaiting transport. With her usual luck she slipped out of the
net and left the country before she could be arrested. But she will have
found something there that will repay her for the visit in one way or
another. Luck of that kind seems to follow her always."

And a long time afterward he had reason to remember what he said. For
the present, however, he had banished from his mind all things but the
happiness which was his to-day; and gave himself up to that happiness
with his whole heart.

Not once did he again intrude anything that had to do with himself, his
exploits, or his future upon Ailsa's attention until all the voyage
across the channel and all the journey from Dover up to London had come
to an end; and even then, eager though he was to know how matters might
shape themselves for _her_ future--he was tactful, considerate, careful
not to force her into any embarrassing position or to claim from her
more than the merest acquaintance might.

"You are going to your friend at Hampstead, I suppose," he said as he
handed her into a taxicab at Charing Cross. "I shall like to know if you
succeed in getting the position with Lady Chepstow; and if you send no
word to Mr. Narkom, I shall take silence as an assent and know that you
have."

And afterward, when the days grew in number and late April merged into
early May and no word came, he knew that she had succeeded; and was
comforted, thinking of her safely housed and perhaps in a position more
congenial than the last. At any rate, she was in England, she was again
in the same land with him; and that of itself was comfort.

But other comforts were not wanting. The full glory of tulip time was
here; The Yard had no immediate occasion for his services, and time was
his to dawdle in the public parks among the children, the birds, and the
flowers.

"And, lord, how he do love 'em all, bless his heart!" commented Dollops
in confidence to himself as he bustled about, putting the Den in order,
watering the plants and touching lovingly the things that belonged to
the master he adored--his daily task when Cleek was in the Park and had
no need for his services. It was a pleasure to the boy, that service.
His whole heart was in it. He resented anything that interfered with it
even for an instant; and as at this particular time he was in the very
midst of preparing a small surprise against his master's return, he was
by no means pleased when a sharp whirring sound of a telephone bell
shrilled out from the adjoining room and called him from his labour of
love.

"Oh, blow that thing! A body don't have a minute to call his own since
it's been put in," he blurted out disgustedly, and answered the call.
"'Ullo! Yuss; this is Cap'n Burbage's. Wot? No, he aren't in. Dunno when
he will be. Dunno where he is. But if there's any messidge--I say, who
wants him? Wot? Oh, s'elp me. You, is it, Mr. Narkom? Yuss, it's me,
sir--Dollops. Wot? No, sir. Went out two hours ago. Gone to Kensington
Palace Gardens. Tulips is in full bloom and you couldn't hold him
indoors with a chain at tulip-time, bless his heart. Yuss, sir. Top hat,
white spats--same as the 'Cap'n' always wears, sir."

Narkom, at the other end of the line, called back: "If I miss him, if he
comes in without seeing me, tell him to wait; I'll be round before
three. Good-bye!" then hung up the receiver and turned to the gentleman
who stood by the window on the other side of the private office,
agitatedly twirling the end of his thick grey-threaded moustache with
one hand, while with the other he drummed a nervous tattoo upon the
broad oaken sill. "Not at home, Sir Henry; but, fortunately, I know
where to find him with but little loss of time," he said, and pressed
twice upon an electric button beside his desk. "My motor will be at the
door in a couple of minutes, and with ordinary luck we ought to be able
to pick him up inside of the next half-hour."

Sir Henry--Sir Henry Wilding, Bart., to give him his full name and
title--a handsome, well-set-up man of about forty years of age, well
groomed, and with the upright bearing which comes of military training,
twisted round on his heel at this and gave the superintendent an almost
grateful look.

"I hope so--God knows I hope so, Mr. Narkom," he said agitatedly. "Time
is the one important thing at present. The suspense and uncertainty are
getting on my nerves so horribly that the very minutes seem endless.
Remember, there are only three days before the race, and if those
rascals, whoever they are, get at Black Riot before then, God help
me--that's all! And if this man Cleek can't probe the diabolical
mystery, they _will_ get at her, too, and put Logan where they put
Tolliver, the brutes!"

"You may trust Cleek to see that they don't, Sir Henry. It is just the
kind of case he will glory in; and if Black Riot is all that you believe
her, you'll carry off the Derby in spite of these enterprising gentry
who--Hallo! here's the motor. Clap on your hat, Sir Henry, and come
along. Mind the step! Kensington Palace Gardens, Lennard--and as fast as
you can streak it."

CHAPTER XII

The chauffeur proved that he could "streak it" as close to the margin of
the speed limit as the law dared wink at, even in the case of the
well-known red limousine, and in a little over ten minutes pulled up
before the park gates. Narkom jumped out, beckoned Sir Henry to follow
him, and together they hurried into the grounds in quest of Cleek.

Where the famous tulip beds made splotches of brilliant colour against
the clear emerald of the closely clipped grass they came upon him--a
solitary figure in the garb of the elderly seaman, "Captain Burbage, of
Clarges Street"--seated on one of the garden benches, his hands folded
over the knob of his thick walking-stick and his chin resting upon them,
staring fixedly at the gorgeous flowers and apparently deaf and blind to
all else.

He was not, however; for as the superintendent approached he, without
altering his gaze or his attitude in the slightest particle, said with
the utmost calmness: "Superb, are they not, my friend? What a pity they
should be scentless. It is as though Heaven had created a butterfly and
deprived it of the secret of flight. Walk on, please, without addressing
me. I am quite friendly with that policeman yonder and I do not wish him
to suspect that the elderly gentleman he is so kind to is in any way
connected with The Yard. Examine the tulips. That's right. You came in
your limousine, of course? Where is it?"

"Just outside the gates, at the end of the path on the right," replied
Narkom, halting with Sir Henry and appearing to be wholly absorbed in
pointing out the different varieties of tulips.

"Good," replied Cleek, apparently taking not the slightest notice. "I'll
toddle on presently, and when you return from inspecting the flowers you
will find me inside the motor awaiting you."

"Do, old chap--and please hurry; time is everything in this case. Let me
introduce you to your client. (Keep looking at the flowers, please, Sir
Henry.) I have the honour to make you acquainted with Sir Henry Wilding,
Cleek; he needs you, my dear fellow."

"Delighted--in both instances. My compliments, Sir Henry. By any chance
that Sir Henry Wilding whose mare, Black Riot, is the favourite for next
Wednesday's Derby?"

"Yes--that very man, Mr. Cleek; and if--"

"Don't get excited and don't turn, please; our friend the policeman is
looking this way. What's the case? One of 'nobbling'? Somebody trying to
get at the mare?"

"Yes. A desperate 'somebody,' who doesn't stop even at murder. A very
devil incarnate who seems to possess the power of invisibility, and who
strikes in the dark. Save me, Mr. Cleek! All I've got in the world is at
stake, and if anything happens to Black Riot, I'm a ruined man."

"Yar-r-r!" yawned the elderly sea captain, rising and stretching. "I do
believe, constable, I've been asleep. Warm weather, this, for May. A
glorious week for Epsom. Shan't see you to-morrow, I'm afraid. Perhaps
shan't see you until Thursday. Here, take that, my lad, and have
half-a-crown's worth on Black Riot for the Derby; she'll win it, sure."

"Thanky, sir. Good luck to you, sir."

"Same to you, my lad. Good day." Then the old gentleman in the top hat
and white spats moved slowly away, passed down the tree-shaded walk,
passed the romping children, passed the Princess Louise's statue of
Queen Victoria, and, after a moment, vanished. Ten minutes later, when
Narkom and Sir Henry returned to the waiting motor, they found him
seated within it awaiting them, as he had promised. Giving Lennard
orders to drive about slowly in the least frequented quarters, while
they talked, the superintendent got in with Sir Henry, and opened fire
on the "case" without further delay.

"My dear Cleek," he said, "as you appear to know all about Sir Henry and
his famous mare, there's no need to go into that part of the subject, so
I may as well begin by telling you at once that Sir Henry has come up to
town for the express purpose of getting you to go down to his place in
Suffolk to-night in company with him, as his only hope of outwitting a
diabolical agency which has set out to get at the horse and put it out
of commission before Derby Day, and in the most mysterious, the most
inscrutable manner ever heard of, my dear chap. Already one groom who
sat up to watch with her has been killed, another hopelessly paralysed,
and to-night Logan, the mare's trainer, is to sit up with her in the
effort to baulk the almost superhuman rascal who is at the bottom of it
all. Conceive if you can, my dear fellow, a power so crafty, so
diabolical, that it gets into a locked and guarded stable, gets in, my
dear Cleek, despite four men constantly pacing back and forth before
each and every window and door that leads into the place and with a
groom on guard inside, and then gets out again in the same mysterious
manner without having been seen or heard by a living soul. In addition
to all the windows being small and covered with a grille of iron, a fact
which would make it impossible for anyone to get in or out once the
doors were closed and guarded, Sir Henry himself will tell you that the
stable has been ransacked from top to bottom, every hole and every
corner probed into, and not a living creature of any sort discovered.
Yet only last night the groom, Tolliver, was set upon inside the place
and killed outright in his efforts to protect the horse; killed, Cleek,
with four men patrolling outside, and willing to swear--each and every
one of them--that nothing and no one, either man, woman, child or beast,
passed them going in or getting out from sunset until dawn."

"Hum-m-m!" said Cleek, sucking in his lower lip. "Mysterious, to say the
least. Was there no struggle? Did the men on guard hear no cry?"

"In the case of the first groom, Murple, the one that was
paralysed--no," said Sir Henry, as the question was addressed to him.
"But in the case of Tolliver--yes. The men heard him cry out, heard him
call out 'Help!' but by the time they could get the doors open it was
all over. He was lying doubled up before the entrance to Black Riot's
stall, with his face to the floor, as dead as Julius Caesar, poor
fellow, and not a sign of anybody anywhere."

"And the horse? Did anybody get at that?"

"No; for the best of reasons. As soon as these attacks began, Mr. Cleek,
I sent up to London. A gang of twenty-four men came down, with steel
plates, steel joists, steel posts, and in seven hours' time Black Riot's
box was converted into a sort of safe, to which I alone hold the key the
instant it is locked up for the night. A steel grille about half a foot
deep, and so tightly meshed that nothing bigger than a mouse could pass
through, runs all round the enclosure close to the top of the walls, and
this supplies ventilation. When the door is closed at night, it
automatically connects itself with an electric gong in my own bedroom,
so that the slightest attempt to open it, or even to touch it, would
hammer out an alarm close to my head."

"Has it ever done so?"

"Yes--last night, when Tolliver was killed."

"How killed, Sir Henry? Stabbed or shot?"

"Neither. He appeared to have been strangled, poor fellow, and to have
died in most awful agony."

"Strangled? But, my dear sir, that would hardly have been possible in so
short a time. You say your men heard him call out for help. Granted that
it took them a full minute--and it probably did not take them half
one--to open the doors and come to his assistance, he would not be stone
dead in so short a time; and he was stone dead when they got in, I
believe you said?"

"Yes. God knows what killed him--the coroner will find that out, no
doubt--but there was no blood shed and no mark upon him that I could
see."

"Hum-m-m! Was there any mark on the door of the steel stall?"

"Yes. A long scratch, somewhat semi-circular, and sweeping downwards at
the lower extremity. It began close to the lock and ended about a foot
and a half lower."

"Undoubtedly, you see, Cleek," put in Narkom, "someone tried to force an
entrance to the steel room and get at the mare, but the prompt arrival
of the men on guard outside the stable prevented his doing so."

Cleek made no response. Just at that moment the limousine was gliding
past a building whose courtyard was one blaze of parrot tulips, and, his
eye caught by the flaming colours, he was staring at them and
reflectively rubbing his thumb and forefinger up and down his chin.
After a moment, however:

"Tell me something, Sir Henry," he said abruptly. "Is anybody interested
in your not putting Black Riot into the field on Derby Day? Anybody with
whom you have a personal acquaintance, I mean, for of course I know
there are other owners who would be glad enough to see him scratched.
But is there anybody who would have a particular interest in your
failure?"

"Yes--one. Major Lambson-Bowles, owner of Minnow. Minnow's second
favourite, as perhaps you know. It would delight Lambson-Bowles to see
me 'go under'; and as I'm so certain of Black Riot that I've mortgaged
every stick and stone I have in the world to back her, I should go under
if anything happened to the mare. That would suit Lambson-Bowles down to
the ground."

"Bad blood between you, then?"

"Yes--very. The fellow's a brute, and--I thrashed him once, as he
deserved, the bounder. It may interest you to know that my only sister
was his first wife. He led her a dog's life, poor girl, and death was a
merciful release to her. Twelve months ago he married a rich American
woman--widow of a man who made millions in hides and leather. That's
when Lambson-Bowles took up racing, and how he got the money to keep a
stud. Had the beastly bad taste, too, to come down to Suffolk--within a
gunshot of Wilding Hall--take Elmslie Manor, the biggest and grandest
place in the neighbourhood, and cut a dash under my very nose, as it
were."

"Oho!" said Cleek; "then the major is a neighbour as well as a rival for
the Derby plate. I see! I see!"

"No, you don't--altogether," said Sir Henry quickly. "Lambson-Bowles is
a brute and a bounder in many ways, but--well, I don't believe he is
low-down enough to do this sort of thing--and with murder attached to
it, too--although he did try to bribe poor Tolliver to leave me. Offered
my trainer double wages, too, to chuck me and take up his horses."

"Oh, he did that, did he? Sure of it, Sir Henry?"

"Absolutely. Saw the letter he wrote to Logan."

"Hum-m-m! Feel that you can rely on Logan, do you?"

"To the last gasp. He's as true to me as my own shadow. If you want
proof of it, Mr. Cleek, he's going to sit in the stable and keep guard
himself to-night--in the face of what happened to Murple and Tolliver."

"Murple is the groom who was paralysed, is he not?" said Cleek, after a
moment. "Singular thing, that. What paralysed him, do you think?"

"Heaven knows. He might just as well have been killed as poor Tolliver
was, for he'll never be any use again, the doctors say. Some injury to
the spinal column, and with it a curious affection of the throat and
tongue. He can neither swallow nor speak. Nourishment has to be
administered by tube, and the tongue is horribly swollen."

"I'm of the opinion, Cleek," put in Narkom, "that strangulation is
merely part of the procedure of the rascal who makes these diabolical
nocturnal visits. In other words, that he is armed with some
quick-acting infernal poison, which he forces into the mouths of his
victims. That paralysis of the muscles of the throat is one of the
symptoms of prussic acid poisoning, you must remember."

"I do remember, Mr. Narkom," replied Cleek enigmatically. "My memory is
much stimulated by these details, I assure you. I gather from them that,
whatever is administered, Murple did not get quite so much of it as
Tolliver, or he, too, would be dead. Sir Henry"--he turned again to the
baronet--"do you trust everybody else connected with your establishment
as much as you trust Logan?"

"Yes. There's not a servant connected with the hall that hasn't been in
my service for years, and all are loyal to me."

"May I ask who else is in the house besides the servants?"

"My wife, Lady Wilding, for one; her cousin, Mr. Sharpless, who is on a
visit to us, for another; and, for a third, my uncle, the Rev. Ambrose
Smeer, the famous revivalist."

"Mr. Smeer does not approve of the race track, of course?"

"No, he does not. He is absurdly 'narrow' on some subjects, and 'sport'
of all sorts is one of them. But, beyond that, he is a dear, lovable old
fellow, of whom I am amazingly fond."

"Hum-m-m! And Lady Wilding and Mr. Sharpless--do they, too, disapprove
of racing?"

"Quite to the contrary. Both are enthusiastic upon the subject, and both
have the utmost faith in Black Riot's certainty of winning. Lady Wilding
is something more than attached to the mare; and as for Mr. Sharpless,
he is so upset over these rascally attempts that every morning when the
steel room is opened and the animal taken out, although nothing ever
happens in the daylight, he won't let her get out of his sight for a
single instant until she is groomed and locked up for the night. He is
so incensed, so worked up over this diabolical business, that I verily
believe if he caught any stranger coming near the mare he'd shoot him in
his tracks."

"Hum-m-m!" said Cleek abstractedly, and then sat silent for a long time,
staring at his spats and moving one thumb slowly round the breadth of
the other, his fingers interlaced and his lower lip pushed upwards over
the one above.

"There, that's the case, Cleek," said Narkom, after a time. "Do you make
anything out of it?"

"Yes," he replied; "I make a good deal out of it, Mr. Narkom, but, like
the language of the man who stepped on the banana skin, it isn't fit for
publication. One question more, Sir Henry. Heaven forbid it, of course,
but if anything should happen to Logan to-night, whom would you put on
guard over the horse to-morrow?"

"Do you think I could persuade anybody if a third man perished?" said
the baronet, answering one question with another. "I don't believe
there's a groom in England who'd take the risk for love or money. There
would be nothing for it but to do the watching myself. What's that? Do
it? Certainly, I'd do it! Everybody that knows me knows that."

"Ah, I see!" said Cleek, and lapsed into silence again.

"But you'll come, won't you?" exclaimed Sir Henry agitatedly. "It won't
happen if you take up the case; Mr. Narkom tells me he is sure of that.
Come with me, Mr. Cleek. My motor is waiting at the garage. Come back
with me, for God's sake--for humanity's sake--and get to the bottom of
the thing."

"Yes," said Cleek in reply. "Give Lennard the address of the garage,
please; and--Mr. Narkom!"

"Yes, old chap?"

"Pull up at the first grocer's shop you see, will you, and buy me a
couple of pounds of the best white flour that's milled; and if you can't
manage to get me either a sieve or a flour dredger, a tin pepper-pot
will do!"

CHAPTER XIII

It was two o'clock when Sir Henry Wilding's motor turned its back upon
the outskirts of London, and it was a quarter past seven when it whirled
up to the stables of Wilding Hall, and the baronet and his grey-headed,
bespectacled and white-spatted companion alighted, having taken five
hours and a quarter to make a journey which the trains which run daily
between Liverpool Street and Darsham make in four.

As a matter of fact, however, they really had outstripped the train, but
it had been Cleek's pleasure to make two calls on the way, one at
Saxmundham, where the paralysed Murple lay in the infirmary of the local
practitioner, the other at the mortuary where the body of Tolliver was
retained, awaiting the sitting of the coroner. Both the dead and the
still living man Cleek had subjected to a critical personal examination,
but whether either furnished him with any suggested clue he did not say;
indeed, the only remark he made upon the subject was when Sir Henry, on
hearing from Murple's wife that the doctor had said he would probably
not last the week out, had inquired if the woman knew where to "put her
hand on the receipt for the payment of the last premium, so that her
claim could be sent into the life assurance company without delay when
the end came."

"Tell me something, Sir Henry," said Cleek when he heard that, and
noticed how gratefully the woman looked at the baronet when she replied,
"Yes, Sir Henry, God bless you, sir!" "Tell me, if it is not an
impertinent question, did you take out an insurance policy on Murple's
life and pay the premium on it yourself? I gathered the idea that you
did from the manner in which the woman spoke to you."

"Yes, I did," replied Sir Henry. "As a matter of fact, I take out a
similar policy--payable to the widow--for every married man I employ in
connection with my racing stud."

"May I ask why?"

"Well, for one thing, they usually are too poor and have too many
children to support to be able to take it out for themselves, and
exercising racers has a good many risks. Then, for another thing, I'm a
firm believer in the policy of life assurance. It's just so much money
laid up in safety, and one never knows what may happen."

"Then it is fair," said Cleek, "to suppose, in that case, that you have
taken out one on your own life?"

"Yes--rather! And a whacking big one, too."

"And Lady Wilding is, of course, the beneficiary?"

"Certainly. There are no children, you know. As a matter of fact, we
have been married only seven months. Before the date of my wedding the
policy was in my uncle Ambrose's--the Rev. Mr. Smeer's--favour."

"Ah, I see!" said Cleek reflectively. Then fell to thinking deeply over
the subject, and was still thinking of it when the motor whizzed into
the stable yard at Wilding Hall and brought him into contact for the
first time with the trainer, Logan. He didn't much fancy Logan at first
blush--and Logan didn't fancy him at all at any time.

"Hur!" he said disgustedly, in a stage aside to his master, as Cleek
stood on the threshold of the stable, with his head thrown back and his
chin at an angle, sniffing the air somewhat after the manner of a
bird-dog. "Hur! If un's the best Scotland Yard could let out to ye,
sir--a half-baked old softy like that!--the rest of 'em must be a
blessed poor lot, Ah'm thinkin'. What's un doin' now, the
noodle?--snuffin' the air like he did not understand the smell of it!
He'd not be expectin' a stable to be scented with eau de cologne, would
he? What's un name, sir?"

"Cleek."

"Hur! Sounds like a golf-stick--an' Ah've no doubt he's got a head like
one: main thick and with a twist in un. I dunna like 'tecs, Sir Henry,
and I dunna like this one especial. Who's to tell as he aren't in with
they devils as is after Black Riot? Naw! I dunna like him at all."

Meantime, serenely unconscious of the displeasure he had excited in
Logan's breast, Cleek went on sniffing the air and "poking about," as he
phrased it, in all corners of the stable; and when, a moment later, Sir
Henry went in and joined him, he was standing before the door of the
steel room examining the curving scratch of which the baronet had
spoken.

"What do you make of it, Mr. Cleek?"

"Not much in the way of a clue, Sir Henry--a clue to any possible
intruder, I mean. If your artistic soul hadn't rebelled against bare
steel--which would, of course, have soon rusted in this
ammonia-impregnated atmosphere--and led you to put a coat of paint over
the metal, there would have been no mark at all, the thing is so slight.
I am of the opinion that Tolliver himself caused it. In short, that it
was made by either a pin or a cuff button in his wristband when he was
attacked and fell. But, enlighten me upon a puzzling point, Sir Henry:
What do you use coriander and oil of sassafras for in a stable?"

"Coriander? Oil of sassafras? I don't know what the dickens they are.
Have you found such things here?"

"No; simply smelt them. The combination is not usual--indeed, I know of
but one race in the world who make any use of it, and they merely for a
purpose which, of course, could not possibly exist here, unless--"

He allowed the rest of the sentence to go by default, and turning,
looked all round the place. For the first time he seemed to notice
something unusual for the equipment of a stable, and regarded it with
silent interest. It was nothing more nor less than a box, covered with
sheets of virgin cork, and standing on the floor just under one of the
windows, where the light and air could get to a weird-looking,
rubbery-leaved, orchid-like plant, covered with ligulated scarlet
blossoms which grew within it.

"Sir Henry," he said, after a moment, "may I ask how long it is since
you were in South America?"

"I? Never was there in my life, Mr. Cleek--never."

"Ah! Then who connected with the hall has been?"

"Oh, I see what you are driving at," said Sir Henry, following the
direction of his gaze. "That Patagonian plant, eh? That belonged to poor
Tolliver. He had a strange fancy for ferns and rock plants and things of
that description, and as that particular specimen happens to be one that
does better in the atmosphere of a stable than elsewhere, he kept it in
here."

"Who told him that it does better in the atmosphere of a stable?"

"Lady Wilding's cousin, Mr. Sharpless. It was he who gave Tolliver the
plant."

"Oho! Then Mr. Sharpless has been to South America, has he?"

"Why, yes. As a matter of fact, he comes from there; so also does Lady
Wilding. I should have thought you would have remembered that, Mr.
Cleek, when--But perhaps you have never heard? She--they--that is,"
stammering confusedly and colouring to the temples, "up to seven months
ago, Mr. Cleek, Lady Wilding was on the--er--music-hall stage. She and
Mr. Sharpless were known as 'Signor Morando and La Belle Creole'--they
did a living statue turn together. It was highly artistic; people raved;
I--er--fell in love with the lady and--that's all!"

But it wasn't; for Cleek, reading between the lines, saw that the mad
infatuation which had brought the lady a title and an over-generous
husband had simmered down--as such things always do sooner or later--and
that the marriage was very far from being a happy one. As a matter of
fact, he learned later that the county, to a woman, had refused to
accept Lady Wilding; that her ladyship, chafing under this ostracism,
was for having a number of her old professional friends come down to
visit her and make a time of it, and that, on Sir Henry's objecting, a
violent quarrel had ensued, and the Rev. Ambrose Smeer had come down to
the hall in the effort to make peace. And he learned something else that
night which gave him food for deep reflection: the Rev. Ambrose Smeer,
too, had been to South America, and when he met that gentleman--well, in
spite of the fact that Sir Henry thought so highly of him, and it was
known that his revival meetings had done a world of good, Cleek did not
fancy the Rev. Ambrose Smeer any more than he fancied the trainer,
Logan.

But to return to the present. By this time the late falling twilight of
May had begun to close in, and presently--as the day was now done and
the night approaching--Logan led in Black Riot from the paddock,
followed by a slim, sallow-featured, small-moustached man, bearing a
shotgun, and dressed in grey tweeds. Sir Henry, who, it was plain to
see, had a liking for the man, introduced this newcomer to Cleek as the
South American, Mr. Andrew Sharpless.

"That's the English of it, Mr. Cleek," said the latter jovially, but
with an undoubted Spanish twist to the tongue. "I wouldn't have you risk
breaking your jaw with the Brazilian original. Delighted to meet you,
sir. I hope to Heaven you will get at the bottom of this diabolical
thing. What do you think, Henry? Lambson-Bowles's jockey was over in
this neighbourhood this afternoon. Trying to see how Black Riot shapes,
of course, the bounder! Fortunately I saw him skulking along on the
other side of the hedge, and gave him two minutes in which to make
himself scarce. If he hadn't, if he had come a step nearer to the mare,
I'd have shot him down like a dog. That's right, Logan, put her up for
the night, old chap, and I'll get out your bedding."

"Aye," said Logan, through his clamped teeth, "and God help man or devil
that comes a-nigh her this night--God help him, Lunnon Mister, that's
all Ah say!" Then he passed into the steel room with the mare, attended
her for the night, and coming out a minute or two later, locked her up
and gave Sir Henry the key.

"Broke her and trained her, Ah did; and willin' to die for her, Ah am,
if Ah can't pull un through no other way," he said, pausing before Cleek
and giving him a black look, "A Derby winner her's cut out for, Lunnon
Mister, and a Derby winner her's goin' to be, in spite of all the
Lambson-Bowleses and the low-down horse-nobblers in Christendom!" Then
he switched round and walked over to Sharpless, who had taken a pillow
and a bundle of blankets from a convenient cupboard, and was making a
bed of them on the floor at the foot of the locked steel door.

"Thanky, sir, 'bliged to un, sir," said Logan as Sharpless hung up the
shotgun and, with a word to the baronet, excused himself and went in to
dress for dinner. Then he faced round again on Cleek, who was once more
sniffing the air, and pointed to the rude bed: "There's where Ted Logan
sleeps this night--there!" he went on suddenly; "and them as tries to
get at Black Riot comes to grips with me first, me and the shotgun Mr.
Sharpless has left Ah. And if Ah shoot, Lunnon Mister, Ah shoot to
kill!"

"Do me a favour, Sir Henry," said Cleek. "For reasons of my own, I want
to be in this stable alone for the next ten minutes, and after that let
no one come into it until morning. I won't be accountable for this man's
life if he stops in here to-night, and for his sake, as well as for your
own, I want you to forbid him to do so."

Logan seemed to go nearly mad with rage at this.

"Ah won't listen to it! Ah will stop here--Ah will! Ah will!" he cried
out in a passion. "Who comes ull find Ah here waitin' to come to grips
with un. Ah won't stop out--Ah won't! Don't un listen to Lunnon Mister,
Sir Henry--for God's sake, don't!"

"I am afraid I must in this instance, Logan. You are far too suspicious,
my good fellow. Mr. Cleek doesn't want to 'get at' the mare; he wants to
protect her; to keep anybody else from getting at her, so--join the
guard outside if you are so eager. You must let him have his way." And,
in spite of all Logan's pleading, Cleek did have his way.

Protesting, swearing, almost weeping, the trainer was turned out and the
doors closed, leaving Cleek alone in the stable; and the last Logan and
Sir Henry saw of him until he came out and rejoined them he was standing
in the middle of the floor, with his hands on both hips, staring fixedly
at the impromptu bed in front of the steel-room door.

"Put on the guard now and see that nobody goes into the place until
morning, Sir Henry," he said when he came out and rejoined them some
minutes later. "Logan, you silly fellow, you'll do no good fighting
against Fate. Make the best of it and stop where you are."

CHAPTER XIV

That night Cleek met Lady Wilding for the first time. He found her what
he afterwards termed "a splendid animal," beautiful, statuesque, more of
Juno than of Venus, and freely endowed with the languorous temperament
and the splendid earthy loveliness which grows nowhere but under
tropical skies and in the shadow of palm groves and the flame of cactus
flowers. She showed him but scant courtesy, however, for she was but a
poor hostess, and after dinner carried her cousin away to the
billiard-room, and left her husband to entertain the Rev. Ambrose and
the detective as best he could. Cleek needed but little entertaining,
however, for in spite of his serenity he was full of the case on hand,
and kept wandering in and out of the house and upstairs and down until
eleven o'clock came and bed claimed him with the rest.

His last wakeful recollection was of the clock in the lower corridor
striking the first quarter after eleven; then sleep claimed him, and he
knew no more until all the stillness was suddenly shattered by a
loud-voiced gong hammering out an alarm and the sound of people tumbling
out of bed and scurrying about in a panic of fright. He jumped out of
bed, pulled on his clothing, and rushed out into the hall, only to find
it alive with people, and at their head Sir Henry, with a dressing-gown
thrown on over his pyjamas and a bedroom candle in his shaking hand.

"The stable!" he cried out excitedly. "Come on, come on, for God's sake!
Someone has touched the door of the steel room; and yet the place was
left empty--empty!"

But it was no longer empty, as they found out when they reached it, for
the doors had been flung open, the men who had been left on guard
outside the stables were now inside it, the electric lights were in full
blaze, the shotgun still hanging where Sharpless had left it, the
impromptu bed was tumbled and tossed in a man's death agony, and at the
foot of the steel door Logan lay, curled up in a heap and stone dead!

"He would get in, Sir Henry, he'd have shot one or the other of us if we
hadn't let him," said one of the outer guards as Sir Henry and Cleek
appeared. "He would lie before the door and watch, sir--he simply would;
and God have mercy on him, poor chap; he was faithful to the last!"

"And the last might not have come for years, the fool, if he had only
obeyed," said Cleek; then lapsed into silence and stood staring at a
dust of white flour on the red-tiled floor and at a thin wavering line
that broke the even surface of it.

It was perhaps two minutes later when the entire household--mistress,
guests, and servants alike--came trooping across the open space between
the hall and the stables in a state of semi-deshabille, but in that
brief space of time friendly hands had reverently lifted the body of the
dead man from its place before the steel door, and Sir Henry was
nervously fitting the key to the lock in a frantic effort to get in and
see if Black Riot was safe.

"Dios! what is it? What has happened?" cried Lady Wilding as she came
hurrying in, followed closely by Sharpless and the Rev. Ambrose Smeer.
Then, catching sight of Logan's body, she gave a little scream and
covered her eyes. "The trainer, Andrew, the trainer now!" she went on
half hysterically. "Another death--another! Surely they have got the
wretch at last?"

"The mare! The mare, Henry! Is she safe?" exclaimed Sharpless excitedly
as he whirled away from his cousin's side and bore down upon the
baronet. "Give me the key--you're too nervous." And, taking it from him,
unlocked the steel room and passed swiftly into it.

In another instant Black Riot was led out--uninjured, untouched, in the
very pink of condition--and, in spite of the tragedy and the dead man's
presence, one or two of the guards were so carried away that they
essayed a cheer.

"Stop that! Stop it instantly!" rapped out Sir Henry, facing round upon
them. "What's a horse--even the best--beside the loss of an honest life
like that?" and flung out a shaking hand in the direction of dead Logan.
"It will be the story of last night over again, of course? You heard his
scream, heard his fall, but he was dead when you got to him--dead--and
you found no one here?"

"Not a soul, Sir Henry. The doors were all locked; no grille is missing
from any window; no one is in the loft; no one in any of the stalls; no
one in any crook or corner of the place."

"Send for the constable--the justice of the peace--anybody!" chimed in
the Rev. Ambrose Smeer at this. "Henry, will you never be warned, never
take these awful lessons to heart? This sinful practice of racing horses
for money--"

"Oh, hush, hush! Don't preach me a sermon now, uncle," interposed Sir
Henry. "My heart's torn, my mind crazed by this abominable thing. Poor
old Logan! Poor, faithful old chap! Oh!" He whirled and looked over at
Cleek, who still stood inactive, staring at the flour-dusted floor. "And
they said that no mystery was too great for you to get to the bottom of
it, no riddle too complex for you to find the answer! Can't you do
something? Can't you suggest something? Can't you see any glimmer of
light at all?"

Cleek looked up, and that curious smile which Narkom knew so well--and
would have known had he been there was the "danger signal"--looped up
one corner of his mouth.

"I fancy it is _all_ 'light,' Sir Henry," he said. "I may be wrong, but
I fancy it is merely a question of comparative height. Do I puzzle you
by that? Well, let me explain. Lady Wilding there is one height, Mr.
Sharpless is another, and I am a third; and if they two were to place
themselves side by side and, say, about four inches apart, and I were to
stand immediately behind them, the difference would be most apparent.
There you are. Do you grasp it?"