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CLEEK, THE MASTER DETECTIVE

by

T. W. HANSHEW

Author of
"Cleek's Government Cases," "Cleek of Scotland Yard,"
"Fate and the Man," "The Riddle of the Night"

Illustrated by Gordon Grant

[Illustration: "OF A TRUTH YOU ARE A CHARMING FELLOW, MONSIEUR.... WHAT
A PITY YOU SHOULD BE A POLICE SPY AND UPON SO HOPELESS A CASE"]

Garden City           New York
Doubleday, Page & Company 1918

Copyright, 1918, by
Doubleday, Page & Company
All rights reserved, including that of
translation into foreign languages,
including the Scandinavian

                                   TO

                              NEWMAN FLOWER

              WITH THAT SORT OF ESTEEM A MAN HAS FOR A FRIEND
                HE RESPECTS, AND THAT SORT OF LOVE HE GIVES
                         TO A COMRADE HE ADMIRES

CONTENTS

    CHAPTER

             I. THE AFFAIR OF THE MAN WHO CALLED
                HIMSELF HAMILTON CLEEK

            II. THE PROBLEM OF THE RED CRAWL

           III. THE RIDDLE OF THE SACRED SON

            IV. THE CALIPH'S DAUGHTER

             V. THE RIDDLE OF THE NINTH FINGER

            VI. THE WIZARD'S BELT

           VII. THE RIDDLE OF THE 5.28

          VIII. THE LION'S SMILE

            IX. THE MYSTERY OF THE STEEL ROOM

             X. THE RIDDLE OF THE SIVA STONES

            XI. THE DIVIDED HOUSE

           XII. THE RIDDLE OF THE RAINBOW PEARL

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

      "Of a truth you are a charming fellow, monsieur....
        What a pity you should be a police spy and upon so
        hopeless a case."

      Pulling their hair--rubbing their faces with a clean
        handkerchief in quest of any trace of "make-up" or
        disguise of any sort

      Swinging the hammer, he struck at the nymph with a
        force that shattered the monstrous thing to atoms

      With that he stripped down the counterpane, lifted
        the water-jug from its washstand and emptied
        its contents over the mattresses

CLEEK, THE MASTER DETECTIVE

CHAPTER I

THE AFFAIR OF THE MAN WHO CALLED HIMSELF HAMILTON CLEEK

The thing wouldn't have happened if any other constable than Collins had
been put on point duty at Blackfriars Bridge that morning. For Collins
was young, good-looking, and knew it. Nature had gifted him with a
susceptible heart and a fond eye for the beauties of femininity. So when
he looked round and saw the woman threading her way through the maze of
vehicles at "Dead Man's Corner," with her skirt held up just enough to
show two twinkling little feet in French shoes, and over them a
graceful, willowy figure, and over that an enchanting, if rather too
highly tinted, face, with almond eyes and a fluff of shining hair under
the screen of a big Parisian hat--that did for him on the spot.

He saw at a glance that she was French--exceedingly French--and he
preferred English beauty, as a rule. But, French or English, beauty is
beauty, and here undeniably was a perfect type, so he unhesitatingly
sprang to her assistance and piloted her safely to the kerb, revelling
in her voluble thanks and tingling as she clung timidly but rather
firmly to him.

"Sair, I have to give you much gratitude," she said in a pretty, wistful
sort of way, as they stepped on to the pavement. Then she dropped her
hand from his sleeve, looked up at him, and shyly drooped her head, as
if overcome with confusion and surprise at the youth and good looks of
him. "Ah, it is nowhere in the world but Londres one finds these
delicate attentions, these splendid sergeants de ville," she added, with
a sort of sigh. "You are wonnerful, you are mos' wonnerful, you Anglais
poliss. Sair, I am a stranger; I know not ze ways of this city of
amazement, and if monsieur would so kindly direct me where to find the
Abbey of the Ves'minster----"

Before P. C. Collins could tell her that if that were her destination,
she was a good deal out of her latitude, indeed, even before she
concluded what she was saying, over the rumble of the traffic there rose
a thin, shrill, piping sound, which to ears trained to its call
possessed a startling significance.

It was the shrilling of a police whistle far off down the Embankment.

"Hullo! That's a call to the man on point," exclaimed Collins, all alert
at once. "Excuse me, mum. See you presently. Something's up. One of my
mates is a-signalling me."

"Mates, monsieur? Mates? Signalling? I shall not unnerstand the vords.
But yes, vat shall that mean--eh?"

"Good Lord, don't bother me now! I--I mean, wait a bit. That's the call
to 'head off' some one, and---- By George! there he is now, coming head
on, the hound, and running like the wind!"

For of a sudden, through a break in the traffic, a scudding figure had
sprung into sight. It was the figure of a man in a gray frock-coat and a
shining "topper," a well-groomed, well-set-up man, with a small,
turned-up moustache and hair of a peculiar reddish shade. As he swung
into sight, the distant whistle shrilled again; far off in the distance
voices sent up cries of "Head him off!" "Stop that man!" etcetera; then
those on the pavement near to the fugitive took up the cry, joined in
pursuit, and in a twinkling, what with cabmen, tram-men, draymen, and
pedestrians all shouting, there was hubbub enough for Hades.

"A swell pickpocket, I'll lay my life," commented Collins, as he squared
himself for an encounter and made ready to leap on the man when he came
within gripping distance. "Here! get out of the way, madmazelly.
Business before pleasure. And, besides, you're like to get bowled over
in the rush. Here, chauffeur!"--this to the driver of a big, black
motor-car which swept round the angle of the bridge at that moment, and
made as though to scud down the Embankment into the thick of the
chase--"pull that thing up sharp! Stop where you are! Dead still! At
once, at once, do you hear? We don't want you getting in the way. Now,
then"--nodding his head in the direction of the running man--"come on,
you bounder; I'm ready for you!"

And, as if he really heard that invitation, and really were eager to
accept it, the red-headed man did "come on" with a vengeance. And all
the time, "madmazelly," unheeding Collins's advice, stood calmly and
silently waiting.

Onward came the runner, with the whole roaring pack in his wake, dodging
in and out among the vehicles, "flooring" people who got in his way,
scudding, dodging, leaping, like a fox hard pressed by the hounds,
until, all of a moment, he spied a break in the traffic, leapt through
it, and--then there was mischief. For Collins sprang at him like a cat,
gripped two big, strong-as-iron hands on his shoulders, and had him
tight and fast.

"Got you, you ass!" snapped he, with a short, crisp, self-satisfied
laugh. "None of your blessed squirming now. Keep still. You'll get out
of your coffin, you bounder, as soon as out of my grip. Got you, got
you! Do you understand?"

The response to this fairly took the wind out of him.

"Of course I do," said the captive gaily; "it's part of the programme
that you should get me. Only, for Heaven's sake, don't spoil the film by
remaining inactive, you goat! Struggle with me, handle me roughly, throw
me about. Make it look real; make it look as though I actually did get
away from you, not as though you let me. You chaps behind there, don't
get in the way of the camera--it's in one of those cabs. Now, then,
Bobby, don't be wooden! Struggle, struggle, you goat, and save the
film!"

"Save the what?" gasped Collins. "Here! Good Lord! Do you mean to
say----?"

"Struggle--struggle--struggle!" cut in the man impatiently. "Can't you
grasp the situation? It's a put-up thing: the taking of a kinematograph
film, a living picture, for the Alhambra to-night! Heavens above,
Marguerite, didn't you tell him?"

"Non, non! There was not ze time. You come so quick, I could not. And
he--ah, le bon Dieu!--he gif me no chance. Officair, I beg, I entreat of
you, make it real! Struggle, fight, keep on ze constant move.
Zere!"--something tinkled on the pavement with the unmistakable sound of
gold--"zere, monsieur, zere is de half-sovereign to pay you for ze
trouble, only, for ze lof of goodness, do not pick it up while the
instrument, ze camera, he is going. It is ze kinematograph, and you
would spoil everything!"

The chop-fallen cry that Collins gave was lost in a roar of laughter
from the pursuing crowd.

"Struggle, struggle! Don't you hear, you idiot?" broke in the red-headed
man irritably. "You are being devilishly well paid for it, so for
goodness' sake make it look real. That's it! Bully boy! Now, once more
to the right, then loosen your grip so that I can push you away and
make a feint of punching you off. All ready there, Marguerite? Keep a
clear space about her, gentlemen. Ready with the motor, chauffeur? All
right. Now, then, Bobby, fall back, and mind your eye when I hit out,
old chap. One, two, three--here goes!"

With that he pushed the crest-fallen Collins from him, made a feint of
punching his head as he reeled back, then sprang toward the spot where
the Frenchwoman stood, and gave a finish to the adventure that was
highly dramatic and decidedly theatrical. For "mademoiselle," seeing him
approach her, struck a pose, threw out her arms, gathered him into them,
to the exceeding enjoyment of the laughing throng, then both looked back
and behaved as people do on the stage when "pursued," gesticulated
extravagantly, and rushing to the waiting motor, jumped into it.

"Many thanks, Bobby; many thanks, everybody!" sang out the red-headed
man. "Let her go, chauffeur. The camera men will pick us up again at
Whitehall in a few minutes' time."

"Right you are, sir," responded the chauffeur gaily. Then "toot-toot"
went the motor-horn as the gentleman in gray closed the door upon
himself and his companion, and the vehicle, darting forward, sped down
the Embankment in the exact direction whence the man himself had
originally come, and, passing directly through that belated portion of
the hurrying crowd to whom the end of the adventure was not yet known,
flew on and--vanished.

And Collins, stooping to pick up the half-sovereign that had been thrown
him, felt that after all it was a poor price to receive for all the
jeers and gibes of the assembled onlookers.

"Smart capture, Bobby, wasn't it?" sang out a deriding voice that set
the crowd jeering anew. "You'll git promoted, you will! See it in all
the evenin' papers--oh, yus! ''Orrible hand-to-hand struggle with a
desperado. Brave constable has 'arf a quid's worth out of an infuriated
ruffian!' My hat! won't your missis be proud when you take her to see
that bloomin' film?"

"Move on, now, move on!" said Collins, recovering his dignity and
asserting it with a vim. "Look here, cabby, I don't take it kind of you
to laugh like that; they had you just as bad as they had me. Blow that
Frenchy! She might have tipped me off before I made such an ass of
myself. I don't say that I'd have done it so natural if I had known,
but---- Hullo! What's that? Blowed if it ain't that blessed whistle
again, and another crowd a-pelting this way; and--no!--yes, by Jupiter!
a couple of Scotland Yard chaps with 'em. My hat! what do you suppose
that means?"

He knew in the next moment. Panting and puffing, a crowd at their heels,
and people from all sides stringing out from the pavement and trooping
after them, the two "plain-clothes" men came racing through the grinning
gathering and bore down on P. C. Collins.

"Hullo, Smathers, you in this, too?" began he, his feelings softened by
the knowledge that other arms of the law would figure on that film with
him at the Alhambra to-night. "Now, what are you after, you goat? That
French lady, or the red-headed party in the gray suit?"

"Yes, yes, of course I am. You heard me signal you to head him off,
didn't you?" replied Smathers, looking round and growing suddenly
excited when he realized that Collins was empty-handed and that the
red-headed man was not there. "Heavens! you never let him get away, did
you? You grabbed him, didn't you--eh?"

"Of course I grabbed him. Come out of it. What are you giving me, you
josser?" said Collins, with a wink and a grin. "Ain't you found out even
yet, you silly? Why, it was only a faked-up thing, the taking of a
kinematograph picture for the Alhambra. You and Petrie ought to have
been here sooner and got your wages, you goats. I got half a quid for my
share when I let him go."

Smathers and Petrie lifted up their voices in one despairing howl.

"When you what?" fairly yelled Smathers. "You fool! You don't mean to
tell me that you let them take you in like that--those two? You don't
mean to tell me that you had him, had him in your hands, and then let
him go? You did? Oh, you seventy-seven kinds of a double-barrelled ass!
Had him--think of it!--had him, and let him go! Did yourself out of a
share in a reward of two hundred quid when you'd only to shut your hands
and hold on to it!"

"Two hundred quid? Two hun---- W--what are you talking about? Wasn't it
true? Wasn't it a kinematograph picture, after all?"

"No, you fool, no!" howled Smathers, fairly dancing with despair. "Oh,
you blithering idiot! You ninety-seven varieties of a fool! Do you know
who you had in your hands? Do you know who you let go? It was that devil
'Forty Faces,' the 'Vanishing Cracksman,' 'The Man Who Calls Himself
Hamilton Cleek'; and the woman was his pal, his confederate, his blessed
stool pigeon, 'Margot, the Queen of the Apaches'; and she came over from
Paris to help him in that clean scoop of Lady Dresmer's jewels last
week!"

"Heavens!" gulped Collins, too far gone to say anything else, too deeply
dejected to think of anything but that he had had the man for whom
Scotland Yard had been groping for a year; the man over whom all
England, all France, all Germany wondered, close shut in the grip of his
hands and then had let him go. He was the biggest and the boldest
criminal the police had ever had to cope with, the almost supernatural
genius of crime, who defied all systems, laughed at all laws, mocked at
all the Vidocqs, and Lupins, and Sherlock Holmeses, whether amateur or
professional, French or English, German or American, that ever had or
ever could be pitted against him, and who, for sheer devilry, for
diabolical ingenuity, and for colossal impudence, as well as for a
nature-bestowed power that was simply amazing, had not his match in all
the universe.

Who or what he really was, whence he came, whether he was English,
Irish, French, German, Yankee, Canadian, Italian, or Dutchman, no man
knew and no man might ever hope to know unless he himself chose to
reveal it. In his many encounters with the police he had assumed the
speech, the characteristics, and, indeed, the facial attributes of each
in turn, and assumed them with an ease and a perfection that were simply
marvellous and had gained for him the sobriquet of "Forty Faces" among
the police and of the "Vanishing Cracksman" among the scribes and
reporters of newspaperdom. That he came in time to possess another name
than these was due to his own whim and caprice, his own bald, unblushing
impudence; for, of a sudden, whilst London was in a fever of excitement
and all the newspapers up in arms over one of his most daring and
successful coups, he chose to write boldly to both editors and police
complaining that the title given him by each was both vulgar and cheap.

"You would not think of calling a great violinist like Paganini a
'fiddler,'" he wrote; "why, then, should you degrade me with the coarse
term of 'cracksman'? I claim to be as much an artist in my profession as
Paganini was in his, and I claim also a like courtesy from you. So,
then, if in the future it becomes necessary to allude to me, and I fear
it often will, I shall be obliged if you do so as 'The Man Who Calls
Himself Hamilton Cleek.' In return for the courtesy, gentlemen, I
promise to alter my mode of procedure, to turn over a new leaf, as it
were, to give you at all times hereafter distinct information, in
advance, of such places as I select for the field of my operations, and
of the time when I shall pay my respects to them, and, on the morning
after each such visit, to bestow some small portion of the loot upon
Scotland Yard as a souvenir of the event."

And to that remarkable programme he rigidly adhered from that time
forth, always giving the police twelve hours' notice, always evading
their traps and snares, always carrying out his plans in spite of them,
and always, on the morning after, sending some trinket or trifle to
Superintendent Narkom at Scotland Yard. This trifle would be in a little
pink cardboard box, tied up with rose-coloured ribbon, and marked, "With
the compliments of The Man Who Calls Himself Hamilton Cleek."

The detectives of the United Kingdom, the detectives of the Continent,
the detectives of America--each and all had measured swords with him,
tried wits with him, spread snares and laid traps for him, and each and
all had retired from the field vanquished.

And this was the man that he, Police Constable Samuel James Collins, had
actually had in his hands, nay, in his very arms, and then had given up
for half a sovereign and let go!

"Oh, so help me! You make my head swim, Smathers, that you do!" he
managed to say at last. "I had him--I had the Vanishing Cracksman in my
blessed paws and then went and let that French hussy---- But look here;
I say, now, how do you know it was him? Nobody can go by his looks; so
how do you know?"

"Know, you footler!" growled Smathers disgustedly. "Why shouldn't I know
when I've been after him ever since he left Scotland Yard half an hour
ago?"

"Left what? My hat! You ain't a-going to tell me that he's been there?
When? Why? What for?"

"To leave one of his blessed notices, the dare-devil. What a detective
he'd 'a' made, wouldn't he, if he'd only a-turned his attention that
way, and been on the side of the law instead of against it? He walked in
bold as brass, sat down and talked with the superintendent over some
cock-and-bull yarn about a 'Black Hand' letter that he said had been
sent to him, and asked if he couldn't have police protection whilst he
was in town. It wasn't until after he'd left that the superintendent he
sees a note on the chair where the blighter had been sitting, and when
he opened it, there it was in black and white, something like this:

     "The list of presents that have been sent for the wedding
     to-morrow of Sir Horace Wyvern's eldest daughter make
     interesting reading, particularly that part which describes
     the jewels sent--no doubt as a tribute to her father's
     position as the greatest brain specialist in the world--from
     the Austrian Court and the Continental principalities. The
     care of such gems is too great a responsibility for the bride.
     I propose, therefore, to relieve her of it to-night, and to
     send you the customary souvenir of the event to-morrow
     morning. Yours faithfully,

                      "THE MAN WHO CALLS HIMSELF HAMILTON CLEEK.

"That's how I know, dash you! Superintendent sent me out after him, hot
foot; and after a bit I picked him up in the Strand, toddling along with
that French hussy as cool as you please. But, blow him! he must have
eyes all round his head, for he saw me just as soon as I saw him, and he
and Frenchy separated like a shot. She hopped into a taxi and flew off
in one direction; he dived into the crowd and bolted in another, and
before you could say Jack Robinson he was doubling and twisting, jumping
into cabs and jumping out again--all to gain time, of course, for the
woman to do what he'd put her up to doing--and leading me the devil's
own chase through the devil's own tangles till he was ready to bunk for
the Embankment. And you let him go, you blooming footler! Had him and
let him go, and chucked away a third of £200 for the price of half a
quid!"

And long after Smathers and Petrie had left him, the wondering crowd had
dispersed, and point duty at "Dead Man's Corner" was just point duty
again and nothing more, P. C. Collins stood there, chewing the cud of
bitter reflection over those words and trying to reckon up just how many
pounds and how much glory had been lost to him.

II

"But, damme, sir, the thing's an outrage! I don't mince my words, Mr.
Narkom. I say plump and plain the thing's an outrage, a disgrace to the
police, an indignity upon the community at large; and for Scotland Yard
to permit itself to be defied, bamboozled, mocked at in this appalling
fashion by a paltry burglar----"

"Uncle, dear, pray don't excite yourself in this manner. I am quite sure
that if Mr. Narkom could prevent the things----"

"Hold your tongue, Ailsa. I will not be interfered with! It's time that
somebody spoke out plainly and let this establishment know what the
public has a right to expect of it. What do I pay my rates and taxes
for--and devilish high ones they are, too, b'gad--if it's not to
maintain law and order and the proper protection of property? And to
have the whole blessed country terrorized, the police defied, and
people's houses invaded with impunity by a gutter-bred brute of a
cracksman is nothing short of a scandal and a shame! Call this sort of
tomfoolery being protected by the police? God bless my soul! one might
as well be in the charge of a parcel of doddering old women and be done
with it!"

It was an hour and a half after that exciting affair at "Dead Man's
Corner." The scene was Superintendent Narkom's private room at
headquarters, the dramatis personæ, Mr. Maverick Narkom himself, Sir
Horace Wyvern, and Miss Ailsa Lorne, his niece, a slight, fair-haired,
extremely attractive girl of twenty. She was the only and orphaned
daughter of a much-loved sister, who, up till a year ago, had known
nothing more exciting in the way of "life" than that which is to be
found in a small village in Suffolk and falls to the lot of an underpaid
vicar's only child. A railway accident had suddenly deprived her of both
parents, throwing her wholly upon her own resources without a penny in
the world. Sir Horace had gracefully come to the rescue and given her a
home and a refuge, being doubly repaid for it by the affection and care
she gave him and the manner in which she assumed control of a household
which, hitherto, had been left wholly to the attention of servants. Lady
Wyvern had long been dead, and her two daughters were of that type which
devotes itself entirely to the pleasures of society and the demands of
the world. A regular pepperbox of a man, testy, short-tempered,
exacting, Sir Horace had flown headlong to Superintendent Narkom's
office as soon as that gentleman's note, telling him of The Vanishing
Cracksman's latest threat, had been delivered, and, on Miss Lorne's
advice, had withheld all news of it from the members of his household,
and brought her with him.

"I tell you that Scotland Yard must do something--must! must! must!"
stormed he as Narkom, resenting that stigma upon the institution,
puckered up his lips and looked savage. "That fellow has always kept his
word, always, in spite of your precious band of muffs, and if you let
him keep it this time, when there's upward of £40,000 worth of jewels
in the house, it will be nothing less than a national disgrace, and you
and your wretched collection of bunglers will be covered with deserved
ridicule."

Narkom swung round, smarting under these continued taunts, these
"flings" at the efficiency of his prided department, his nostrils
dilated, his temper strained to the breaking-point.

"Well, he won't keep it this time--I promise you that!" he rapped out
sharply. "Sooner or later every criminal, no matter how clever, meets
his Waterloo, and this shall be his! I'll take this affair in hand
myself, Sir Horace. I'll not only send the pick of my men to guard the
jewels, but I'll go with them; and if that fellow crosses the threshold
of Wyvern House to-night, by the Lord, I'll have him. He will have to be
the devil himself to get away from me! Miss Lorne," recollecting himself
and bowing apologetically, "I ask your pardon for this strong
language--my temper got the better of my manners."

"It does not matter, Mr. Narkom, so that you preserve my cousin's
wedding gifts from that appalling man," she answered, with a gentle
inclination of the head and with a smile that made the superintendent
think she must certainly be the most beautiful creature in all the
world, it so irradiated her face and added to the magic of her glorious
eyes. "It does not matter what you say, what you do, so long as you
accomplish that."

"And I will accomplish it, as I'm a living man, I will! You may go home
feeling assured of that. Look for my men some time before dusk, Sir
Horace. I will arrive later. They will come in one at a time. See that
they are admitted by the area door, and that, once in, not one of them
leaves the house again before I put in an appearance. I'll look them
over when I arrive to be sure that there's no wolf in sheep's clothing
amongst them. With a fellow like that, a diabolical rascal with a
diabolical gift for impersonation, one can't be too careful. Meantime,
it is just as well not to have confided this news to your daughters,
who, naturally, would be nervous and upset; but I assume that you have
taken some one of the servants into your confidence, in order that
nobody may pass them and enter the house under any pretext whatsoever?"

"No, I have not. Miss Lorne advised against it, and, as I am always
guided by her, I said nothing of the matter to anybody."

"Was that wrong, do you think, Mr. Narkom?" queried Ailsa anxiously. "I
feared that if they knew they might lose their heads, and that my
cousins, who are intensely nervous and highly emotional, might hear of
it, and add to our difficulties by becoming hysterical and demanding our
attention at a time when we ought to be giving every moment to watching
for the possible arrival of that man. And as he has always lived up to
the strict letter of his dreadful promises heretofore, I knew that he
was not to be expected before nightfall. Besides, the jewels are locked
up in the safe in Sir Horace's consulting-room, and his assistant, Mr.
Merfroy, has promised not to leave the room for one instant before we
return."

"Oh, well, that's all right, then. I dare say there is very little
likelihood of our man getting in whilst you and Sir Horace are here, and
taking such a risk as stopping in the house until nightfall to begin his
operations. Still, it was hardly wise, and I should advise hurrying back
as fast as possible and taking at least one servant--the one you feel
least likely to lose his head--into your confidence, Sir Horace, and
putting him on the watch for my men. Otherwise, keep the matter as quiet
as you have done, and look for me about nine o'clock. And rely upon this
as a certainty: The Vanishing Cracksman will never get away with even
one of those jewels if he enters that house to-night, and never get out
of it unshackled!"

[Illustration: PULLING THEIR HAIR--RUBBING THEIR FACES WITH A CLEAN
HANDKERCHIEF IN QUEST OF ANY TRACE OF "MAKE-UP" OR DISGUISE OF ANY
SORT]

With that, he suavely bowed his visitors out and rang up the pick of his
men without an instant's delay.

Promptly at nine o'clock he arrived, as he had promised, at Wyvern
House, and was shown into Sir Horace's consulting-room, where Sir Horace
himself and Miss Lorne were awaiting him and keeping close watch before
the locked door of a communicating apartment in which sat the six men
who had preceded him. He went in and put them all and severally through
a rigid examination in quest of any trace of "make-up" or disguise of
any sort, examining their badges and the marks on the handcuffs they
carried with them to make sure that they bore the sign which he himself
had scratched upon them in the privacy of his own room a couple of hours
ago.

"No mistake about this lot," he announced, with a smile. "Has anybody
else entered or attempted to enter the house?"

"Not a soul," replied Miss Lorne. "I didn't trust anybody to do the
watching, Mr. Narkom. I watched myself."

"Good. Where are the jewels? In that safe?"

"No," replied Sir Horace. "They are to be exhibited in the picture
gallery for the benefit of the guests at the wedding breakfast
to-morrow, and as Miss Wyvern wished to superintend the arrangement of
them herself, and there would be no time for that in the morning, she
and her sister are in there laying them out at this moment. As I could
not prevent that without telling them what we have to dread, I did not
protest against it; but if you think it will be safer to return them to
the safe after my daughters have gone to bed, Mr. Narkom----"

"Not at all necessary. If our man gets in, their lying there in full
view like that will prove a tempting bait, and--well, he'll find there's
a hook behind it. I shall be there waiting for him. Now go and join the
ladies, you and Miss Lorne, and act as though nothing out of the common
was in the wind. My men and I will stop here, and you had better put out
the light and lock us in, so that there's no danger of anybody finding
out that we are here. No doubt Miss Wyvern and her sister will go to bed
earlier than usual on this particular occasion. Let them do so. Send the
servants to bed, too. You and Miss Lorne go to your beds at the same
time as the others--or, at least, let them think that you have done so;
then come down and let us out."

To this Sir Horace assented, and, taking Miss Lorne with him, went at
once to the picture gallery and joined his daughters, with whom they
remained until eleven o'clock. Promptly at that hour, however, the house
was locked up, the bride-elect and her sister went to bed, the servants
having already gone to theirs, and stillness settled down over the
darkened house. At the end of a dozen minutes, however, it was faintly
disturbed by the sound of slippered feet coming along the passage
outside the consulting-room, then a key slipped into the lock, the door
was opened, the light switched on, and Sir Horace and Miss Lorne
appeared before the eager watchers.

"Now, then, lively, my men, look sharp!" whispered Narkom. "A man to
each window and each staircase, so that nobody may go up or down or in
or out without dropping into the arms of one of you. Confine your
attention to this particular floor, and if you hear anybody coming, lay
low until he's within reach, and you can drop on him before he bolts. Is
this the door of the picture gallery, Sir Horace?"

"Yes," answered Sir Horace, as he fitted a key to the lock. "But surely
you will need more men than you have brought, Mr. Narkom, if it is your
intention to guard every window individually, for there are four to this
room--see!"

With that he swung open the door, switched on the electric light, and
Narkom fairly blinked at the dazzling sight that confronted him. Three
long tables, laden with crystal and silver, cut glass and jewels, and
running the full length of the room, flashed and scintillated under the
glare of the electric bulbs which encircled the cornice of the gallery
and clustered in luminous splendour in the crystal and frosted silver of
a huge central chandelier. Spread out on the middle one of these, a
dazzle of splintered rainbows, a very plain of living light, lay caskets
and cases, boxes and trays, containing those royal gifts of which the
newspapers had made so much and the Vanishing Cracksman had sworn to
make so few.

Mr. Narkom went over and stood beside the glittering mass, resting his
hand against the table and feasting his eyes upon all that opulent
splendour.

"God bless my soul! it's superb, it's amazing," he commented. "No wonder
the fellow is willing to take risks for a prize like this. You are a
splendid temptation, a gorgeous bait, you beauties; but the fish that
snaps at you will find that there's a nasty hook underneath in the shape
of Maverick Narkom. Never mind the many windows, Sir Horace. Let him
come in by them, if that's his plan. I'll never leave these things for
one instant between now and the morning. Good-night, Miss Lorne. Go to
bed and to sleep. You do the same, Sir Horace. My 'lay' is here!"

With that he stooped and, lifting the long drapery which covered the
table and swept down in heavy folds to the floor, crept out of sight
under it, and let it drop back into place again.

"Switch off the light and go," he called to them in a low-sunk voice.
"Don't worry yourselves, either of you. Go to bed, and to sleep if you
can."

"As if we could," answered Miss Lorne agitatedly. "I shan't be able to
close an eyelid. I'll try, of course, but I know I shall not succeed.
Come, uncle, come! Oh, do be careful, Mr. Narkom; and if that horrible
man does come----"

"I'll have him, so help me God!" he vowed. "Switch off the light, and
shut the door as you go out. This is 'Forty Faces'. Waterloo at last."

And in another moment the light snicked out, the door closed, and he was
alone in the silent room.

For ten or a dozen minutes not even the bare suggestion of a noise
disturbed the absolute stillness; then, of a sudden, his trained ear
caught a faint sound that made him suck in his breath and rise on his
elbow, the better to listen. The sound came, not from without the house,
but from within, from the dark hall where he had stationed his men. As
he listened he was conscious that some living creature had approached
the door, touched the handle, and by the swift, low rustle and the sound
of hard breathing, that it had been pounced upon and seized. He
scrambled out from beneath the table, snicked on the light, whirled open
the door, and was in time to hear the irritable voice of Sir Horace say,
testily, "Don't make an ass of yourself by your over-zealousness. I've
only come down to have a word with Mr. Narkom," and to see him standing
on the threshold, grotesque in a baggy suit of striped pyjamas, with one
wrist enclosed as in a steel band by the gripped fingers of Petrie.

"Why didn't you say it was you, sir?" exclaimed that crestfallen
individual, as the flashing light made manifest his mistake. "When I
heard you first, and see you come up out of that back passage, I made
sure it was him; and if you'd a-struggled, I'd have bashed your head as
sure as eggs."

"Thank you for nothing," he responded testily. "You might have
remembered, however, that the man's first got to get into the place
before he can come downstairs. Mr. Narkom," turning to the
superintendent, "I was just getting into bed when I thought of something
I'd neglected to tell you; and as my niece is sitting in her room with
the door open, and I wasn't anxious to parade myself before her in my
night clothes, I came down by the back staircase. I don't know how in
the world I came to overlook it, but I think you ought to know that
there's a way of getting into the picture gallery without using either
the windows or the stairs, and that way ought to be both searched and
guarded."

"Where is it? What is it? Why in the world didn't you tell me in the
first place?" exclaimed Narkom irritably, as he glanced round the place
searchingly. "Is it a panel? a secret door? or what? This is an old
house, and old houses are sometimes a very nest of such things."

"Happily, this one isn't. It's a modern innovation, not an ancient
relic, that offers the means of entrance in this case. A Yankee occupied
this house before I bought it from him, one of those blessed shivery
individuals his country breeds, who can't stand a breath of cold air
indoors after the passing of the autumn. The wretched man put one of
those wretched American inflictions, a hot-air furnace, in the cellar,
with huge pipes running to every room in the house, great tin
monstrosities bigger round than a man's body, ending in openings in the
wall, with what they call 'registers' to let the heat in or shut it out
as they please. I didn't have the wretched contrivance removed or those
blessed 'registers' plastered up. I simply had them papered over when
the rooms were done up (there's one over there near that settee), and if
a man got into this house, he could get into that furnace thing and hide
in one of those flues until he got ready to crawl up it as easily as
not. It struck me that perhaps it would be as well for you to examine
that furnace and those flues before matters go any further."

"Of course it would. Great Scott! Sir Horace, why didn't you think to
tell me of this thing before?" said Narkom excitedly. "The fellow may be
in it at this minute. Come, show me the wretched thing."

"It's in the cellar. We shall have to go down the kitchen stairs, and I
haven't a light."

"Here's one," said Petrie, unhitching a bull's-eye from his belt and
putting it into Narkom's hand. "Better go with Sir Horace at once, sir.
Leave the door of the gallery open and the light on. Fish and me will
stand guard over the stuff till you come back, so in case the man is in
one of them flues and tries to bolt out at this end, we can nab him
before he can get to the windows."

"A good idea," commented Narkom. "Come on, Sir Horace. Is this the way?"

"Yes, but you'll have to tread carefully, and mind you don't fall over
anything. A good deal of my paraphernalia--bottles, retorts, and the
like--is stored in the little recess at the foot of the staircase, and
my assistant is careless and leaves things lying about."

Evidently the caution was necessary, for a minute or so after they had
disappeared behind the door leading to the kitchen stairway, Petrie and
his colleagues heard a sound as of something being overturned and
smashed, and laughed softly to themselves. Evidently, too, the danger of
the furnace had been grossly exaggerated by Sir Horace, for when, a few
minutes later, the door opened and closed, and Narkom's men, glancing
toward it, saw the figure of their chief reappear, it was plain that he
was in no good temper. His features were knotted up into a scowl, and he
swore audibly as he snapped the shutter over the bull's-eye and handed
it back to Petrie.

"Nothing worth looking into, superintendent?"

"No, not a thing!" he replied. "The silly old josser! pulling me down
there amongst the coals and rubbish for an insane idea like that! Why,
the flues wouldn't admit the passage of a child; and, even then, there's
a bend, an abrupt 'elbow,' that nothing but a cat could crawl up. And
that's a man who's an authority on the human brain! I sent the old silly
back to bed by the way he came, and if----"

There he stopped, stopped short, and sucked in his breath with a sharp,
wheezing sound. For, of a sudden, a swift pattering footfall and a
glimmer of moving light had sprung into being and drawn his eyes upward.
There, overhead, was Miss Lorne coming down the stairs from the upper
floor in a state of nervous excitement, with a bedroom candle in her
shaking hand, a loose gown flung on over her nightdress, and her hair
streaming over her shoulders in glorious disarray.

He stood and looked at her, with ever-quickening breath, with
ever-widening eyes, as though the beauty of her had wakened some dormant
sense whose existence he had never suspected, as though, until now, he
had never known how fair it was possible for a woman to be, how much to
be desired. And whilst he was so looking she reached the foot of the
staircase and came pantingly toward him.

"Oh, Mr. Narkom, what was it--that noise I heard?" she said in a tone of
deepest agitation. "It sounded like a struggle, like the noise of
something breaking, and I dressed as hastily as I could and came down.
Did he come? Has he been here? Have you caught him? Oh! why don't you
answer me, instead of staring at me like this? Can't you see how
nervous, how frightened I am? Dear Heaven! will no one tell me what has
happened?"

"Nothing has happened, Miss," answered Petrie, catching her eye as she
flashed round on him. "You'd better go back to bed. Nobody's been here
but Sir Horace. The noise you heard was me a-grabbing of him, and he and
Mr. Narkom a-tumbling over something as they went down to look at the
furnace."

"Furnace? What furnace? What are you talking about?" she cried
agitatedly. "What do you mean by saying that Sir Horace came down?"

"Only what the superintendent himself will tell you, Miss, if you ask
him. Sir Horace came downstairs in his pyjamas a few minutes ago to say
as he'd recollected about the flues of the furnace in the cellar being
big enough to hold a man, and then him and Mr. Narkom went below to have
a look at it."

She gave a sharp and sudden cry, and her face went as pale as a dead
face.

"Sir Horace came down?" she repeated, moving back a step and leaning
heavily against the banister. "Sir Horace came down to look at the
furnace? We have no furnace!"

"What?"

"We have no furnace, I tell you, and Sir Horace did not come down. He is
up there still. I know, because I feared for his safety, and when he
went to his room I locked him in!"

"Superintendent!" The word was voiced by every man present and six pairs
of eyes turned toward Narkom with a look of despairing comprehension.

"Get to the cellar. Head the man off! It's he, the Cracksman!" he
shouted out. "Find him! Get him! Nab him, if you have to turn the house
upside down!"

They needed no second bidding, for each man grasped the situation
instantly, and in a twinkling there was a veritable pandemonium.
Shouting and scrambling like a band of madmen, they lurched to the door,
whirled it open, and went flying down the staircase to the kitchen and
so to a discovery which none might have foreseen. For almost as they
entered they saw lying on the floor a suit of striped pyjamas, and close
to it, gagged, bound, helpless, trussed up like a goose that was ready
for the oven, gyves on his wrists, gyves on his ankles, their chief,
their superintendent, Mr. Maverick Narkom, in a state of collapse and
with all his outer clothing gone!

"After him! After that devil, and a thousand pounds to the man that gets
him!" he managed to gasp as they rushed to him and ripped loose the gag.
"He was here when we came! He has been in the house for hours. Get him!
get him! get him!"

They surged from the room and up the stairs like a pack of stampeded
animals; they raced through the hall and bore down on the picture
gallery in a body, and, whirling open the now closed door, went tumbling
headlong in.

The light was still burning. At the far end of the room a window was
wide open, and the curtains of it fluttered in the wind. A collection of
empty cases and caskets lay on the middle table, but man and jewels were
alike gone! Once again the Vanishing Cracksman had lived up to his
promise, up to his reputation, up to the very letter of his name, and
for all Mr. Maverick Narkom's care and shrewdness, "Forty Faces" had
"turned the trick," and Scotland Yard was "done!"

Through all the night its best men sought him, its dragnets fished for
him, its tentacles groped into every hole and corner of London in quest
of him, but sought and fished and groped in vain. They might as well
have hoped to find last summer's partridges or last winter's snow as any
trace of him. He had vanished as mysteriously as he had appeared, and no
royal jewels graced the display of Miss Wyvern's wedding gifts on the
morrow.

But it was fruitful of other "gifts," fruitful of an even greater
surprise, that "morrow." For the first time since the day he had given
his promise, no "souvenir" from "The Man Who Called Himself Hamilton
Cleek," no part of last night's loot came to Scotland Yard; and it was
while the evening papers were making screaming "copy" and glaring
headlines out of this that the surprise in question came to pass.

Miss Wyvern's wedding was over, the day and the bride had gone, and it
was half-past ten at night, when Sir Horace, answering a hurry call from
headquarters, drove post haste to Superintendent Narkom's private room,
and, passing in under a red-and-green lamp which burned over the
doorway, met that "surprise."

Maverick Narkom was there alone, standing beside his desk. The curtains
of his window were drawn and pinned together, and at his elbow was an
unlighted lamp of violet-coloured glass. Narkom turned as his visitor
entered and made an open-handed gesture toward something which lay
before him.

"Look here," he said laconically, "what do you think of this?"

Sir Horace moved forward and looked; then stopped and gave a sort of
wondering cry. The electric bulbs overhead struck a glare of light on
the surface of the desk, and there, spread out on the shining oak, lay a
part of the royal jewels that had been stolen from Wyvern House last
night.

"Narkom! You got him then, got him after all?"

"No, I did not get him. I doubt if any man could, if he chose not to be
found," said Narkom bitterly. "I did not recover these jewels by any act
of my own. He sent them to me; gave them up voluntarily."

"Gave them up? After he had risked so much to get them? God bless my
soul, what a man! Why, there must be quite half here of what he took."

"There is half--an even half. He sent them to-night, and with them this
letter. Look at it, and you will understand why I sent for you and asked
you to come alone."

Sir Horace read:

     There's some good in even the devil, I suppose, if one but
     knows how to reach it and stir it up.

     I have lived a life of crime from my very boyhood because I
     couldn't help it, because it appealed to me, because I glory
     in risks and revel in dangers. I never knew, I never thought,
     never cared, where it would lead me, but I looked into the
     gateway of heaven last night, and I can't go down the path to
     hell any longer. Here is an even half of Miss Wyvern's jewels.
     If you and her father would have me hand over the other half
     to you, and would have The Vanishing Cracksman disappear
     forever, and a useless life converted into a useful one, you
     have only to say so to make it an accomplished thing. All I
     ask in return is your word of honour (to be given to me by
     signal) that you will send for Sir Horace Wyvern to be at your
     office at eleven o'clock to-night, and that you and he will
     grant me a private interview unknown to any other living
     being. A red-and-green lantern hung over the doorway leading
     to your office will be the signal that you agree, and a violet
     light in your window will be the pledge of Sir Horace Wyvern.
     When these two signals, these two pledges, are given, I shall
     come in and hand over the remainder of the jewels, and you
     will have looked for the first time in your life upon the real
     face of The Man Who Calls Himself Hamilton Cleek.

"God bless my soul! what an amazing creature, what an astounding
request!" exclaimed Sir Horace, as he laid the letter down. "Willing to
give up £20,000 worth of jewels for the mere sake of a private
interview! What on earth can be his object? And why should he include
me?"

"I don't know," said Narkom in reply. "It's worth something, at all
events, to be rid of 'The Vanishing Cracksman' for good and all; and he
says that it rests with us to do that. It's close to eleven now. Shall
we give him the pledge he asks, Sir Horace? My signal is already hung
out; shall we agree to the conditions and give him yours?"

"Yes, yes, by all means," Sir Horace made answer. And, lighting the
violet lamp, Narkom flicked open the pinned curtains and set it in the
window.

For ten minutes nothing came of it, and the two men, talking in whispers
while they waited, began to grow nervous. Then somewhere in the distance
a clock started striking eleven, and, without so much as a warning
sound, the door flashed open, flashed shut again, a voice that was
undeniably the voice of breeding and refinement said quietly,
"Gentlemen, my compliments. Here are the diamonds and here am I!" and
the figure of a man, faultlessly dressed, faultlessly mannered, and with
the clear-cut features of the born aristocrat, stood in the room.

His age might lie anywhere between twenty-five and thirty-five, his eyes
were straight looking and clear, his fresh, clean-shaven face was
undeniably handsome, and, whatever his origin, whatever his history,
there was something about him, in look, in speech, in bearing, that
mutely stood sponsor for the thing called "birth."

"God bless my soul!" exclaimed Sir Horace, amazed and appalled to find
the reality so widely different from the image he had drawn. "What
monstrous juggle is this? Why, man alive, you're a gentleman! Who are
you? What's driven you to a dog's life like this?"

"A natural bent, perhaps; a supernatural gift, certainly, Sir Horace,"
he made reply. "Look here. Could any man resist the temptation to use it
when he was endowed by Nature with the power to do this?" His features
seemed to writhe and knot and assume in as many moments a dozen
different aspects. "I've had the knack of doing that since the hour I
could breathe. Could any man 'go straight' with a fateful gift like that
if the laws of Nature said that he should not?"

"And do they say that?"

"That's what I want you to tell me. That's why I have requested this
interview. I want you to examine me, Sir Horace, to put me through
those tests you use to determine the state of mind of the mentally fit
and mentally unfit. I want to know if it is my fault that I am what I
am, and if it is myself I have to fight in future or the devil that
lives within me. I'm tired of wallowing in the mire. A woman's eyes have
lit the way to heaven for me. I want to climb up to her, to win her, be
worthy of her, and to stand beside her in the light."

"Her? What 'her'?"

"That's my business, Mr. Narkom, and I'll take no man into my confidence
regarding that."

"Yes, my friend, but 'Margot'?"

"I'm done with her! We broke last night, when I returned, and she
learned---- Never mind what she learned! I'm done with her, done with
the lot of them. My life is changed forever."

"In the name of Heaven, man, who and what are you?"

"Cleek--just Cleek: let it go at that," he made reply. "Whether it's my
name or not is no man's business; who I am, what I am, whence I came, is
no man's business, either. Cleek will do, Cleek of the Forty Faces.
Never mind the past; my fight is with the future, and so---- Examine me,
Sir Horace, and let me know if I or Fate's to blame for what I am."

"Absolutely Fate," Sir Horace said, when, after a long examination, the
man put the question to him again. "It is the criminal brain fully
developed, horribly pronounced. God help you, my poor fellow; but a man
simply could not be other than a thief and a criminal with an organ like
that. There's no hope for you to escape your natural bent except by
death. You can't be honest. You can't rise. You never will rise: it's
useless to fight against it!"

"I will fight against it! I will rise! I will! I will! I will!" he cried
out vehemently. "There is a way to put such craft and cunning to
account; a way to fight the devil with his own weapons and crush him
under the weight of his own gifts, and that way I'll take!

"Mr. Narkom"--he whirled and walked toward the superintendent, his hand
outstretched, his eager face aglow--"Mr. Narkom, help me! Take me under
your wing. Give me a start, give me a chance, give me a lift on the way
up!"

"Good heaven, man, you--you don't mean----?"

"I do. I do. So help me Heaven, I do. All my life I've fought against
the law, now let me switch over and fight with it. I'm tired of being
Cleek, the thief; Cleek, the burglar. Make me Cleek, the detective, and
let us work together, hand in hand, for a common cause and for the
public good. Will you, Mr. Narkom? Will you?"

"Will I? Won't I!" said Narkom, springing forward and gripping his hand.
"Jove! what a detective you will make. Bully boy! Bully boy!"

"It's a compact, then?"

"It's a compact--Cleek."

"Thank you," he said in a choked voice. "You've given me my chance; now
watch me live up to it. The Vanishing Cracksman has vanished forever,
Mr. Narkom, and it's Cleek, the detective--Cleek of the Forty Faces from
this time on. Now, give me your riddles, I'll solve them one by one."

CHAPTER II

THE PROBLEM OF THE RED CRAWL

It was half-past two o'clock in the morning of July 25, when the
constable on duty at the head of Clarges Street, Piccadilly, was
startled to see a red limousine swing into that quiet thoroughfare from
the Curzon Street end, come to an abrupt halt, and a man who had every
appearance of a sailor alight therefrom, fish a key from his pocket, and
admit himself to a certain house. This house for more than a year had
been known to be occupied only by one Captain Burbage, a retired seaman
of advanced years, his elderly housekeeper, a deaf and dumb
maid-of-all-work, and a snub-nosed, ginger-haired young chap of about
nineteen--as pure a specimen of the genus Cockney as you could pick up
anywhere from Bow Church to the Guildhall--who acted as a sort of body
servant to the aged captain, and was known by the expressive name of
"Dollops."

"Don't like the goings-on at that house at all," commented the policeman
in a sort of growl. "All sorts of parties coming and going at all hours
of the night. Reported it more than once, I have; and yet Superintendent
Narkom says there's nothing in it and it needn't be watched. I wonder
why?"

He wouldn't have wondered any longer could he have looked into the hall
of the house at that moment; for the man who had just entered had no
sooner closed the lower door than one above flashed open, a stream of
light gushed down the stairs, and a calm, well-modulated voice said
serenely: "Come right up, Mr. Narkom. I knew it would be you before your
motor turned the corner. I'd know the purr of your machine among a
thousand."

"Fancy that!" said Narkom, as he removed the hot wig and beard he wore,
and went up the stairs two at a time. "My dear Cleek, what an abnormal
animal you are! Had you"--entering the room where his now famous ally
(divested of the disguise which served for the rôle of "Captain
Burbage") stood leaning against the mantelpiece and calmly smoking a
cigarette--"had you by any chance a fox among your forbears?"

"Oh, no. The night is very still, the back window is open, and there's a
trifling irregularity in the operations of your detonator: that's all.
But tell me, you've got something else for me; something important
enough to bring you racing here at top speed in the middle of the night,
so to speak?"

"Yes. An amazing something. It's a letter. It arrived at headquarters by
the nine o'clock post to-night--or, rather, it's last night now. Merton,
of course, forwarded it to my home; but I was away--did not return until
after one, or I should have been here sooner. It's not an affair for
'the Yard' this time, Cleek; and I tell you frankly I do not like it."

"Why?"

"Well, it's from Paris. If you were to accept it, you--well, you know
what dangers Paris would have for you above all men. There's that
she-devil you broke with, that woman Margot. You know what she swore,
what she wrote back 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 to 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 this 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."

Narkom, obeying the request, read:

     "TO THE SUPERINTENDENT OF POLICE, SCOTLAND YARD,

     "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 evildoers 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?"

"A very real, a very moving thing, Mr. Narkom. The cry of a human heart
in deep distress; the agonized 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, fussy, red-faced Englishman in a gray
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 his devoted henchman Dollops--a youth he
had picked up out of the streets of London and given a home, and whose
especial virtues were a dog-like devotion to his employer, a facility
for eating without ever seeming to get filled, and fighting without ever
seeming to get tired.

"Lumme, guv'ner," 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, guv'ner. 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 adhered to the feet of anybody incautiously stepping upon
it, and so interfered 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. More than once this novel method of hampering
for a brief period the movement of a fugitive had stood him and his
master in good stead, and Dollops, who was rather proud of his
achievement, never travelled without 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. The dark Toison d'Or was 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. "Good heavens above!--Miss Lorne!"

"Oh!" she ejaculated, with a little startled cry, looking up, but
finding no trace of features that she knew in the round, red face of the
fat gray man before her. "You know me, then? How can you? But I forget!
You are English; you are that great and mysterious man Cleek; and
he--ah, he must surely know everything!"

"I know you, at least," he replied, shaking with mingled embarrassment
and delight at the knowledge that at last he was permitted to speak to
her, to have her speak to him. "I have seen you often in London; and to
find you here, like this? It fairly takes away my breath."

"The explanation is very simple, Mr. Cleek. I suppose you know that my
uncle, Sir Horace Wyvern, married again last spring? The new Lady Wyvern
soon let me know that I was a superfluous person in the household. I
left it, of course. Sir Horace would have pensioned me off if I had let
him. I couldn't bring myself to eat the bread of charity, however, and
when a former schoolmate offered me a post as her companion, I
gratefully accepted it. So for the past three months I have been living
here in Paris with Athalie and her father, 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 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
forever!"

"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 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. 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,
Mademoiselle 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. It was neither spider nor octopus, but horribly resembled both
and 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! 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 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 the most loathsome-looking creature I have
ever seen: 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,
obeying that gesture, it 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 and 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 work 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. It was a rough draft of the maps of
fortification and the plan of the secret defences of France, the
identical document from which was afterward 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 falls 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!"

II

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
Sevres, 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 besides
'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
'afterward.' 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 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 that 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 forever 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 moch, and that the papier he is gone forever."

"Oh, no, baron, no!" she said soothingly, 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 realized. "You'll find the baron in the other room,
Miss Lorne, looking a little grotesque in that gray 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 Hotel
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
toward 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, 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 tentacles writhing, slide over
the low sill of the window, and settle down in a glowing red heap upon
the floor. Fake though he knew it to be, Cleek 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. 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 until its hideous beaked
countenance was close to his own, his hands flashed upward and clamped
together like a vise--clamped on a palpitating human throat. 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 recognize 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 floor with a sound that a deaf man
might have heard.

And in an instant there was pandemonium.

A door flew open, and, clashing heavily against the wall, sent an echo
reeling along the corridor; then came a clatter of rustling 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!

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 and was to remain here until the dawn
broke gray over the housetops 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 gray 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, 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 Baccho! 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 mere; 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 Apache! 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, 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!" shrilled out Marise, as the dancers halted and Margot ran,
with fleet steps, toward 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. He was a
pale, fox-faced, fox-eyed fellow, with lank, fair hair, a brush of
ragged yellow beard, and 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.
Garrotted 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 our word 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, 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! 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, 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 and thus 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 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 any one has come up from the
sewers within the past twenty minutes----"

They knew 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
toward the door.

But as they sprang it sprang also! It was neck or nothing now. Cleek
realized 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 toward the wrecked bar with a yell, surged from all
directions, and then abruptly stopped. For the sudden darkness within
had made more prominent the moonlighted 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,
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, and befogged
their brains; 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 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 a limousine whirl up
out of the darkness, cut across the square, and like a flash dash off
westward. 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!"

THE RIDDLE OF THE SACRED SON

Had I followed my own inclination in the matter, I think I should have
elected to call this particular adventure "The Riddle of the Amazing
Demi-God," but as it is set down under the above title in the private
note-book of Superintendent Narkom--to which volume I am under
obligation for the details regarding the life and work of this most
marvellous man--it follows that I must adhere closely to the recorded
facts of each of his adventures, even to the most minute particular, if
I am to prove myself worthy of the favour Mr. Narkom has shown me. I may
freely confess, however, that I have not at all times adhered to the
chronological sequence of those adventures, but have picked and chosen
here and there from the record of his amazing career such cases as I
have fancied most likely to appeal to the public at large, without
regard to their natural order of succession or the many others that have
intervened.

As Superintendent Narkom's records cover a number of years and embrace
upward of three hundred adventures, obviously some must, of necessity,
be omitted from these chronicles. Such omission sometimes--as in the
present instance--renders it compulsory to record a few after facts
connected with the adventure last detailed, in order that the reader may
not be confused by the reappearance of certain persons under
circumstances and in places widely separated from those in which they
were left.

More than a year had passed since the affair of "The Red Crawl," when
the events now to be told occurred, and while that year was fruitful of
many stirring things so far as Cleek himself was concerned, but little
record is obtainable of the movements of Margot and the man Merode, the
two foremost figures in the Apache band with whom Cleek came to grips,
for they chose to vanish suddenly from their Parisian haunts immediately
after that tragical night at "The Inn of the Twisted Arm." It is
certain, however, that they proceeded in due time to the East, for they
were seen in both India and Ceylon several months after their
disappearance from Paris. Indeed, they were obliged to fly from the
latter place to escape arrest when the confession of a drunken native
exposed, before its fulfilment, a plan to loot the repository of the
Pearl Fisheries Company at a time when it contained several thousand
pounds' worth of gems. From that point there is no record of their
movements for many, many months.

Of course, after such a terrifying experience in the French capital, and
not knowing when the Apache band might, knowing her part in the affair,
avenge themselves upon her for the failure of the snare of "The Red
Crawl," residence in France became a bugbear to Ailsa Lorne. Despite the
pleadings of Athalie and the baron, whom she had served so well in
giving help to Cleek, she was steadfast in her determination to leave it
and to return to her native land. She therefore packed up her
belongings, journeyed back to London, and set about finding some other
position whereby she could earn her living.

Circumstances had so shaped themselves that Cleek had seen next to
nothing of her since her return to England, much and deeply as he longed
to do so. Beyond one delightful call at the modest little boarding-place
where she was stopping, whilst waiting for an answer to her
advertisement for a post as governess or companion, an answer which
speedily came and was as speedily accepted, he had not met her at all
since their parting in Paris, and, as their friendship was not
sufficiently close to warrant the interchange of letters, she seemed as
far away from him as ever.

Imagine, then, his surprise and delight, on returning to the house in
Clarges Street late one afternoon, in company with the redoubtable
Dollops, to find lying upon his table a note containing these words:

     MY DEAR CLEEK:

     Kindly refrain from going out this evening. I shall call about
     nine o'clock, bringing with me Miss Ailsa Lorne, whom you
     doubtless remember, and her present patron, Angela, Countess
     Chepstow, the young widow of that ripping old war-horse who,
     as you may recall, quelled that dangerous and fanatical rising
     of the Cingalese at Trincomalee. These ladies wish to see you
     with reference to a most extraordinary case, an inexplicable
     mystery, which both they and I believe no man but yourself can
     satisfactorily probe.

                                  Yours in haste,

                                             MAVERICK NARKOM.

So, then, he was to see her again, to touch her hand, hear her voice,
look into the eyes that had lighted him back from the path to
destruction! Cleek's heart began to hammer and his pulses to drum.
Needless to say, he took extraordinary care with his toilet that
evening, with the result that when the ladies arrived there was nothing
even vaguely suggestive of the detective about him.

"Oh, Mr. Cleek, do help us!" implored Ailsa, after the first greetings
were over. "Lady Chepstow is almost beside herself with dread and
anxiety over the inexplicable thing, and I have persuaded her that if
anybody on earth can solve the mystery of it, avert the new and
appalling danger of it, it is you! Oh, say that you will take the case,
say that you will solve it, say that you will save little Lord Chepstow
and put an end to this maddening mystery!"

"Little Lord Chepstow?" repeated Cleek, glancing over at the countess,
who stood, a very Niobe in her grief and despair, holding out two
imploring hands in silent supplication. "That is your ladyship's son, is
it not?"

"Yes," she answered, with a sort of wail; "my only son--my only child.
All that I have to love, all that I have to live for in this world."

"And you think the little fellow is in peril?"

"Yes--in deadly peril."

"From what source? From whose hand?"

"I don't know! I don't know!" she answered distractedly. "Sometimes I am
wild enough to suspect even Captain Hawksley, unjust and unkind as it
seems."

"Captain Hawksley? Who is he?"

"My late husband's cousin; heir, after my little son, to the title and
estates. He is very poor, deeply in debt, and the inheritance would put
an end to all his difficulties. But he is fond of my son; they seem
almost to worship each other. I, too, am fond of him. But, for all that,
I have to remember that he and he alone would benefit by Cedric's death,
and--and--wicked as it seems---- Oh, Mr. Cleek, help me! Direct me!
Sometimes I doubt him. Sometimes I doubt everybody. Sometimes I think of
those other days, that other mystery, that land which reeks of them; and
then--and then---- Oh, that horrible Ceylon! I wish I had never set foot
in it in all my life!"

Her agitation and distress were so great as to make her utterances only
half coherent; and Ailsa, realizing that this sort of thing must only
perplex Cleek, and leave him in the dark regarding the matter upon which
they had come to consult him, gently interposed.

"Do try to calm yourself and to tell the story as briefly as possible,
dear Lady Chepstow," she advised. Then, taking the initiative, added
quietly, "it begins, Mr. Cleek, at a period when the little boy, whose
governess I am at present, was but two years old, and at Trincomalee,
where his late father was stationed with his regiment four years ago.
Somebody, for some absurd reason, had set afoot a ridiculous rumour that
the English had received orders from the Throne to stamp out every
religion but their own. It was said if British were not exterminated,
dreadful desecrations would occur, as they were determined----"

"To loot all the temples erected to Buddha, destroy the images, and make
a bonfire of all the sacred relics," finished Cleek himself. "I rarely
forget history, Miss Lorne, especially when it is such recent history as
that memorable Buddhist rising at Trincomalee. It began upon an utterly
unfounded, ridiculous rumour; it terminated, if my memory serves me
correctly, in something akin to the very thing it was supposed to avert.
That is to say, during the outburst of fanaticism, that most sacred of
all relics--the holy tooth of Buddha--disappeared mysteriously from the
temple of Dambool, and in spite of the fact that many lacs of rupees
were offered for its recovery, it has never, I believe, been found, or
even traced, although a huge fortune awaits the restorer, and, with it,
overpowering honours from the native princes. Those must have been
trying times, Lady Chepstow, for the commandant's wife, the mother of
the commandant's only child?"

"Horrible! horrible!" she answered, with a shudder, forgetting for an
instant the dangers of the present in the recollection of the tragical
past. "For a period our lives were not safe: murder hid behind every
bush, skulked in the shadow of every rock and tree, and we knew not at
what minute the little garrison might be rushed under cover of the
darkness and every soul slaughtered before the relief force could come
to our assistance. I died a hundred deaths a day in my anxiety for
husband and child. And once the very zealousness of our comrades almost
brought about the horror I feared. Oh!"--with a shudder of horrified
recollections she covered her eyes, as if to shut out the memory of
it--"Oh! that night--that horrible night! Unknown to any of us, my baby,
rising from the bed where I had left him sleeping, whilst I went outside
to stand by Lord Chepstow, wandered beyond the line of defence, and,
before anybody realized it, was out in the open, alone and unprotected.

"Ferralt, the cook, saw him first; saw, too, the crouching figure of a
native, armed with a gun, in the shadow of the undergrowth. Without
hesitation the brave fellow rushed out, fell upon the native before he
could dart away, wrenched the gun from him, and brained him with the
butt. A cry of the utmost horror rang out upon the air, and, uttering
it, another native bounded out from a hiding-place close to where the
first had been killed, and flew zig-zagging across the open where Cedric
was. Evidently he had no intention of molesting the little fellow, for
he fled straight on past him, still shrieking after the accident
occurred; but to Ferralt it seemed as if his intention were to murder
the boy, and, clapping the gun to his shoulder, in a panic of
excitement, he fired. If it had been one of the soldiers, who understood
marksmanship and was not likely to be in a nervous quake over the
circumstances, the thing could not have happened, although the fugitive
was careering along in a direct line with my precious little one. But,
with Ferralt---- Oh, Mr. Cleek, can you imagine my horror when I saw the
flash of that shot, heard a shrill cry of pain, and saw my child drop to
the ground?"

"Good heaven!" exclaimed Cleek, agitated in spite of himself. "Then the
blunderer shot the child instead of the native?"

"Yes; and was so horrified by the mishap that, without waiting to learn
the result, he rushed blindly to the brink of a deep ravine, and threw
himself headlong to death. But the injury to Cedric was only a trifling
one, after all. The bullet seemed merely to have grazed him in passing,
and, beyond a ragged gash in the fleshy part of the thigh, he was not
harmed at all. This I myself dressed and bandaged, and in a couple of
weeks it was quite healed. But it taught me a lesson, that night of
horror, and I never let my baby out of my sight for one instant from
that time until the rising was entirely quelled.

"As suddenly as it had started, the trouble subsided. Native priests
came under a flag of truce to Lord Chepstow, and confessed their error,
acknowledged that they had never any right to suspect the British of any
design upon their gods, for the loot of the temple had actually taken
place in the midst of the rising, and they knew that it could not have
come from the hands of the soldiers, for they had had them under
surveillance all the time, and not one person of the race had ventured
within a mile of the temple.

"Yet the tooth of Buddha had been taken, the sacred tooth which is more
holy to Buddhists than the statue of Gautama Buddha itself. Their
remorse was very real, and after that, to the day of his death from
fever, eighteen months afterward, they could never show enough honour to
Lord Chepstow. And even then their favour continued. They transferred to
the little son the homage they had done the father, but in a far, far
greater degree. If he had been a king's son they could have shown him no
greater honour. Native princes showered him with rich gifts; if he
walked out, his path was strewn with flowers by bowing maidens; if he
went into the market-place, the people prostrated themselves before him.

"When I questioned Buddhist women of this amazing homage to Cedric,
they gave me a full explanation. My son was sacred, they said. Buddha
had withdrawn his favour from his people because of the evil they had
done in suspecting the father and of the innocent life--Ferralt's--which
had been sacrificed, and they had been commanded of the priests to do
homage to the child and thereby appease the offended god, who,
doubtless, had himself spirited away the holy tooth, and would not
restore it until full recompense was made to the sacred son of the
sacred dead.

"When it became known that I had decided to return to England with my
boy, native princes offered me fabulous sums to remain, and when they
found that I could not be tempted to stay, the populace turned out in
every town and village through which we passed on our way to the ship,
and bowing multitudes followed us to the very last. Nor did it cease
with that, for in all the years that have followed, even here in London,
the homage and worship have continued. My son can go nowhere but that he
is followed by Cingalese; can see no man or woman of the race but he or
she prostrates herself before him and murmurs, 'Holy, most holy!' And
daily, almost hourly, rich gifts are showered upon him from unknown
hands, and he is watched over and guarded constantly. I tell you all
this, Mr. Cleek, that you may the better understand how appalling is the
horror which now assails us, how frightful is the knowledge that some
one now seeks his life, and is using every means to take it."

"In other words, my dear Cleek," put in Narkom, as Lady Chepstow,
overcome with emotion, broke down suddenly, "there appears to be a
sudden and inexplicable change of front on the part of these fanatics,
and they now seem as anxious to bring evil to the little lad as they
formerly were to protect and cherish him. At any rate, some one of their
order has, upon three separate occasions within the last month,
endeavoured to kidnap him, and, in one instance, even attempted to
murder him."

"Is that a fact?" queried Cleek sharply, glancing over at Miss Lorne.
"You are certain it is not a fancy, but an absolute fact?"

"Yes; oh, yes!" she made answer agitatedly. "Twice when I have gone into
the Park with him, attempts have been made to separate us, to get him
away from me; and once they did get him away, so swiftly, so adroitly,
that he had vanished before I could turn round. But, although a bag had
been thrown over his head to stifle his cries, he managed to make a very
little one. I plunged screaming into the undergrowth from which that cry
had come, and was just in time to save him. He was lying on the ground
all bundled up in the bag, and his assailant, who must have heard me
coming, had gone as if by magic. He, however, was able to tell me that
the man was a Cingalese, and that he had 'tried to cut him with a
knife.'"

"Cut him with a knife?" repeated Cleek in a reflective tone, and blew
out a long, low whistle.

"Oh, but that is not the worst, Mr. Cleek," went on Ailsa. "Three days
ago a woman, very beautiful and distinguished-looking, called to see
Lady Chepstow regarding the reference of a former servant, one Jane
Catherboys, who used to be her ladyship's maid. After the caller left, a
box of sugared violets was found lying temptingly open on a table in the
main hall. Little Cedric is passionately fond of sugared violets, and,
had he happened to pass that way before the box was discovered, he
surely would have yielded to the temptation and eaten some. In removing
the box the parlour maid accidentally upset it, and before she could
gather all the violets up her ladyship's little pomeranian dog snapped
up one and ate it. It was dead in six minutes' time! The sweets were
simply loaded with prussic acid. When we came to inquire into the
matter in the hope of tracing the mysterious caller, we found that Jane
Catherboys was no longer in need of a position; that she had been
married for eight months; that she knew nothing whatever of the woman,
and had sent no one to inquire into her references."

"All of which shows, my dear Cleek," put in Narkom significantly, "that,
whatever hand is directing these attempts, it belongs to one who knows
more than a mere outsider possibly could. In short, to one who is aware
of the little boy's excessive fondness for sugared violets, and is aware
that Lady Chepstow once did have a maid named Jane Catherboys."

"If," said Cleek, "you mean to suggest by that that this points
suspiciously in Captain Hawksley's direction, Mr. Narkom, permit me to
say that it does not necessarily follow. The clever people of the
under-world do nothing by halves nor without careful inquiry beforehand;
that is what makes the difference between the common pickpocket and the
brilliant swindler." He turned to Ailsa. "Is that all, Miss Lorne, or am
I right in supposing that there is even worse to come?"

"Oh, much worse, Mr. Cleek! The knowledge that these would-be murderers,
whoever they are, whatever may be their mysterious motive, have grown