Cleek of Scotland Yard Part 34

He'd never spot _you_. Lord! your own mother wouldn't know you from Adam in this spiffing get-up. And it wouldn't matter a tinker's curse then if Waldemar was back or not."

"It would matter a great deal, my friend--don't deceive yourself upon that point. For one thing, Captain Maltravers is registered at the office as having just arrived from India after a ten years'

absence, and ten years ago Miss Margaret Larue was not only unknown to fame, but must have been still in pinafores, so how was he to have made her acquaintance? Then, too, she doesn't expect to see me without you, so I should have to introduce myself and stop to explain matters--yes, and even risk her companion getting excited and saying something indiscreet, and those are rather dangerous affairs in a public tearoom, with everybody's eyes no doubt fixed upon the lady. No, you must attend to the matter yourself, my friend; so nip off and be about it. If the lady and her companion are there, just whisper them to say nothing, but follow you immediately. If they are not there, slip out and warn them not to come. Look sharp--the situation is ticklis.h.!.+"

And just how ticklish Mr. Narkom realized when he descended and made his way to the public tearoom. For the usual four o'clock gathering of shoppers and sightseers was there in full force, the well-filled room was like a hive full of buzzing bees who were engaged in imparting confidences to one another, the name of "Margaret Larue" was being whispered here, there and everywhere, and all eyes were directed toward a far corner where at a little round table Margaret Larue herself sat in company with Mr. Harrison Trent engaged in making a feeble pretence of enjoying a tea which neither of them wanted and upon which neither was bestowing a single thought.

Narkom spotted them at once, made his way across the crowded room, said something to them in a swift, low whisper, and immediately became at once the most envied and most unpopular person in the whole a.s.sembly; for Miss Larue and her companion arose instantly and, leaving some pieces of silver on the table, walked out with him and robbed the room of its chief attraction.

All present had been deeply interested in the entire proceeding, but none more so than the tall, distinguished looking foreign gentleman seated all alone at the exactly opposite end of the room from the table where Miss Larue and her companion had been located; for his had been the tensest kind of interest from the very instant Mr.

Narkom had made his appearance, and remained so to the last.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Count Irma has told," said Narkom. "It's all out at last and ... I know now. I'm to lose you."]

Even after the three persons had vanished from the room, he continued to stare at the doorway through which they had pa.s.sed, and the rather elaborate tea he had ordered remained wholly untouched. A soft step sounded near him and a soft voice broke in upon his unspoken thoughts.

"Is not the tea to Monsieur's liking?" it inquired with all the deference of the Continental waiter. And that awoke him from his abstraction.

"Yes--quite, thank you. By the way, that was Miss Larue who just left the room, was it not, Philippe?"

"Yes, Monsieur--the great Miss Larue: the most famous of all English actresses."

"So I understand. And the lame man who came in and spoke to her--who is he? Not a guest of the hotel, I am sure, since I have never seen him here before."

"I do not know, Monsieur, who the gentleman is. It shall be the first I shall see of him ever. It may be, however, that he is a new arrival. They would know at the office, if Monsieur le Baron desires me to inquire."

"Yes--do. I fancy I have seen him before. Find out for me who he is."

Philippe disappeared like a fleet shadow. After an absence of about two minutes, he came back with the desired intelligence.

"No, Monsieur le Baron, the gentleman is not a guest," he announced.

"But he is visiting a guest. The name is Yard. He arrived about a quarter of an hour ago and sent his card in to Captain Maltravers, who at once took him up to his room."

"Captain Maltravers? So! That will be the military officer from India, will it not?"

"Yes, Monsieur; the one with the fair hair and moustache who lunched to-day at the table adjoining Monsieur le Baron's own."

"Ah, to be sure. And 'pa.s.sed the time of day' with me, as they say in this peculiar language. I remember the gentleman perfectly. Thank you very much. There's something to pay you for your trouble."

"Monsieur le Baron is too generous! Is there any other service----"

"No, no--nothing, thank you. I have all that I require," interposed the "Baron" with a gesture of dismissal.

And evidently he had; for five minutes later he walked into the office of the hotel, and said to the clerk, "Make out my bill, please--I shall be leaving England at once," and immediately thereafter walked into a telephone booth, consulted his notebook, and rang up 253480 Soho, and, on getting it, began to talk rapidly and softly to some one who understood French.

Meantime Mr. Narkom, unaware of the little powder train he had unconsciously lighted, had gone on up the stairs with his two companions--purposely avoiding the lift that he might explain matters as they went--piloted them safely to the suite occupied by "Captain Maltravers," and at the precise moment when "Baron Rodolf de Montravanne" walked into the telephone booth, Cleek was meeting Miss Larue for the first time since those distressing days of eleven months ago, and meeting Mr. Harrison Trent for the first time ever.

Chapter x.x.xV

Cleek found young Trent an extremely handsome man of about three-and-thirty; of a highly strung, nervous temperament, and with an irritating habit of running his fingers through his hair when excited. Also, it seemed impossible for him to sit still for half a minute at a stretch; he must be constantly hopping up only to sit down again, and moving restlessly about as if he were doing his best to retain his composure and found it difficult with Cleek's calm eyes fixed constantly upon him.

"I want to tell you something about that bloodstained sponge business, Mr. Cleek," he said in his abrupt, jerky, uneasy manner.

"I never heard a word about it until last night, when Miss Larue confessed her former suspicions of my dear old dad, and gave me all the details of the matter. That sponge had nothing to do with the affair at all. It was I that tucked it under the staircase where it was found, and I did so on the day before James Colliver's disappearance. The blood that had been on it was mine, not his."

"I see," said Cleek, serenely. "The explanation, of course, is the good, old tried-and-true refuge of the story-writers--namely, a case of nose-bleeding, is it not?"

"Yes," admitted Trent. "But with this difference: mine wasn't an accidental affair at all--it was the result of getting a jolly good hiding; and I made an excuse to get away and hop out of town, so that the dad wouldn't know about it nor see how I'd been battered. The fact is, I met one of our carmen in the upper hall. He was as drunk as a lord, and when I took him to task about it and threatened him with discharge, he said something to me that I thought needed a jolly sight more than words by way of chastis.e.m.e.nt, so I nipped off my coat and sailed into him. It turned out that he was the better man, and gave me all that I'd asked for in less than a minute's time; so I shook hands with him, told him to bundle off home and sleep himself sober, and that if he wouldn't say anything about the matter I wouldn't either, and he could turn up for work in the morning as usual. Then I washed up, shoved the sponge under the staircase, and nipped off out of town; because, you know, it would make a deuced bad impression if any of the other workmen should find out that a member of the firm had been thrashed by one of the employees--and Draycott had done me up so beautifully that I was a sight for the G.o.ds."

The thing had been so frankly confessed that, in spite of the fact of having in the beginning been rather repelled by him, Cleek could not but experience a feeling of liking for the man. "So that's how it happened, is it?" he said, with a laugh. "It is a brave man, Mr. Trent, that will resist the opportunity to make himself a hero in the presence of the lady he loves; and I hope I may be permitted to congratulate Miss Larue on the wisdom of her choice. But now, if you please, let us get down at once to the details of the melancholy business we have in hand. Mr. Narkom has been telling me the amazing story of the boy's visit to the building and of his strange disappearance therein, but I should like to have a few further facts, if you will be so kind. What took the boy to the building, in the first place? I am told he went there upon your invitation, but I confess that that seems rather odd to me. Why should a man of business want a boy to visit him during business hours?"

"Good Lord, man! I couldn't have let him see what he wanted to see if he didn't come during business hours, could I? But that's rather ambiguous, so I'll make haste to put it plainer. Young Stan--his Christian name is Stanley, as I suppose you know--young Stan is mad to learn the business of theatrical property making, and particularly that of the manufacture of those wax effigies, et cetera, which we supply for the use of drapers in their show windows; and as he is now sixteen and of an age to begin thinking of _some_ trade or profession for the future, I thought it would save Miss Larue putting up a jolly big premium to have him taught outside if we took him into our business free, so I invited him to come and look round and see if he thought he'd like it when he came to look into the messy details.

"Well, he came rather late yesterday afternoon, and I'd taken him round for just about ten or a dozen minutes when word was suddenly brought to me that the representative of one of the biggest managers in the country had just called with reference to an important order, so, of course, I put back to the office as quickly as I could foot it, young Stan quite naturally following me, as he didn't know his way about the place alone, and, being a modest, retiring sort of boy, didn't like facing the possibility of blundering into what might prove to be private quarters, and things of that sort. He said as much to me at the time.

"Well, when I got back to the office, I soon found that the business with my visitor was a matter that would take some time to settle--you can't give a man an estimate all on a jump, and without doing a bit of figuring, you know--so I told young Stan that he might cut off and go over the place on his own, if he liked, as it had been arranged that, when knocking-off time came, I was to go back with him to Miss Larue's flat, where we all were to have supper together.

When I told him that, he asked eagerly if he might go up to the wax-figure department, as he was particularly anxious to see Loti at work, and so----"

"Loti!" Cleek flung in the word so sharply that Trent gave a nervous start. "Just a moment, please, before you go any further, Mr. Trent.

Sorry to interrupt, but, tell me, please: is the man who models your show-window effigies named Loti, then? Is, eh? Hum-m! Any connection by chance with that once famous Italian worker in wax, Giuseppe Loti--chap that used to make those splendid wax tableaux for the Eden Musee in Paris some eighteen or twenty years ago?"

"Same chap. Went all to pieces all of a sudden--clear off his head for a time, I've heard--in the very height of his career, because his wife left him. Handsome French woman--years younger than he--ran off with another chap and took every blessed thing of value she could lay her hands upon when--but maybe you've heard the story?"

"I have," said Cleek. "It is one that is all too common on the Continent. Also, it happened that I was in Paris at the time of the occurrence. And so you have that great Giuseppe Loti at the head of your waxwork department, eh? What a come-down in the world for him! Poor devil! I thought he was dead ages ago. He dropped out suddenly and disappeared from France entirely after that affair with his unfaithful wife. The rumour was that he had committed suicide; although that seemed as improbable as it now turns out to be, in the face of the fact that on the night after his wife left him he turned up at the Cafe Royal and publicly----No matter! Go on with the case, please. What about the boy?"

"Let's see, now, where was I?" said Trent, knotting up his brow.

"Oh, ah! I recollect--just where he asked me if he could go up and see Loti at work. Of course, I said that he could; there wasn't any reason why I shouldn't, as the place is open to inspection always, so I opened the door and showed him the way to the staircase leading up to the gla.s.s-room, and then went to the speaking-tube and called up to Loti to expect him, and to treat him nicely, as he was the nephew of the great Miss Larue and would, in time, be mine also."

"Was there any necessity for taking that precaution, Mr. Trent?"

"Yes. Loti has developed a dashed bad temper since last autumn and is very eccentric, very irritable--not a bit like the solemn, sedate old johnnie he used to be. Even his work has deteriorated, I think, but one daren't criticise it or he flies into a temper and threatens to leave."

"And you don't wish him to, of course--his name must stand for something."

"It stands for a great deal. It's one of our biggest cards. We can command twice as much for a Loti figure as for one made by any other waxworker. So we humour him in his little eccentricities and defer to him a great deal. Also, as he prefers to live on the premises, he saves us money in other ways. Serves for a watchman as well, you understand."

"Oh, he lives on the premises, does he? Where? In the gla.s.s-room?"

"Oh, no; that would not be possible. The character as well as the position of that renders it impossible as a place of habitation. He uses it after hours as a sort of sitting-room, to be sure, and has partly fitted it up as one, but he sleeps, eats, and dresses in a room on the floor below."

"Not an adjoining one?"

"Oh, no; an adjoining room would be an impossibility. Our building is an end one, standing on the corner of a short pa.s.sage which leads to nothing but a narrow alley running along parallel with the back of our premises, and the gla.s.s-room covers nearly the entire roof of it. As a matter of fact, Mr. Cleek, although we call it that at the works, the term Gla.s.s Room is a misnomer. In reality, it's nothing more nor less than a good sized 'lean-to' greenhouse that the dad bought and had taken up there in sections, and its rear elevation rests against the side wall of a still higher building than ours, next door--the premises of Storminger the carriage builder, to be exact. But look here: perhaps I can make the situation clearer by a rough sketch. Got a lead pencil and a bit of paper, anybody? Oh, thanks very much, dear. One can always rely upon _you_. Now, look here, Mr. Cleek--this is the way of it. You mustn't mind if it's a crude thing, because, you know, I'm a rotten bad draughtsman and can't draw for nuts. But all the same, this will do at a pinch."

Here he leaned over the table in the centre of the room and, taking the pencil and the blank back of the letter which Miss Larue had supplied, made a crude outline sketch thus:

[Ill.u.s.tration of a group of houses]