Cleek of Scotland Yard Part 36

Cleek's equanimity did not desert him, however. It was one of his strong points that he always kept his mental balance even when his most promising theories were deracinated. He therefore showed not the slightest trace of the disappointment with which this utterly unexpected discovery had filled him, but, with the most placid exterior imaginable, suffered himself to be introduced to the old waxworker, who was at the time working a.s.siduously upon the huge tableau-piece designed for the forthcoming Indian Exhibition, a well-executed a.s.sembly of figures which occupied a considerable portion of the rear end of the gla.s.s-room, and represented that moment when the relief force burst through the stockade at Lucknow and came to the rescue of the beleaguered garrison.

"A couple of gentlemen from Scotland Yard, Loti, who have come to look into the matter of young Colliver's disappearance," was the way in which Trent made that introduction. "You can go on with your work; they won't interfere with you."

"Welcome, gentlemen--most welcome," said Loti, with that courtesy which Continental people never quite forget; then nodded, and went on with his work as he had been told, adding, with a mournful shake of the head: "Ah! a strange business that, signori; an exceedingly strange business."

"Very," agreed Cleek off-handedly and from the other end of the room.

"Rippin' quarters, these, signor; and now that I've seen 'em I don't mind confessing that my pet theory has gone all to smash and I'm up a gum-tree, so to speak. I'd an idea, you know, that there might be a sliding-panel or a trapdoor which you chaps here might have overlooked, and down which the boy might have dropped, or maybe gone on a little explorin' expedition of his own, don't you know, and hadn't been able to get back."

"Well, of all the idiotic ideas--," began Trent, but was suffered to get no further.

"Yes, isn't it?" agreed Cleek, with his best blithering-idiot air.

"I realize that, now that I see your floor's of concrete. Necessary, I suppose, on account of the chemicals and the inflammable nature of the wax? You could have a rippin' old flare-up here if that stuff was to catch fire from a dropped match or anything of that sort--eh, what? Blest if I can see"--turning slowly on his heel and looking all round the room--"a ghost of a place where the young nipper could have got. It's a facer for me. But, I say"--as if suddenly struck with an idea--"you don't think that he nipped something valuable and cut off with it, do you? Didn't miss any money or anything of that sort which you'd left lying about, did you, Mr.--er--Lotus, eh?"

"Loti, if you please, signor. I had indeed hoped that my name was well known enough to--_Pouffe!_ No, I miss nothing--I miss not so much as a pin. I am told he shall not have been that kind of a boy."

And then, with a shake of the head and a pitying glance toward the author of these two asinine theories regarding the strange disappearance, returned to his work of putting the finis.h.i.+ng touches to a rec.u.mbent figure representing a dead soldier lying in the foreground of the tableau.

"Oh, well, you never can tell what boys will do; and it's an old saying that 'a good booty makes many a thief,'" replied Cleek airily.

"Reckon I'll have to hunt up something a bit more promising, then.

Don't mind my poking about a bit, do you?"

"Not in the slightest, signor," replied the Italian, and glanced sympathizingly up at Trent and gave his shoulders a significant shrug, as if to say: "Is this the best that Scotland Yard can turn out?" when Cleek began turning over costume plates and looking under books and sc.r.a.ps of material which lay scattered about the floor, and even took to examining the jugs and vases and tumblers in which the signor's bunches of cut flowers were placed. There were many of them--on tables and chairs and shelves, and even on the platform of the tableau itself--so many, in fact, that he was minded, by their profusion, of what Trent had said regarding the old waxworker's great love of flowers.

He looked round the room, in an apparently perfunctory manner, but in reality with a photographic eye for its every detail, finding that it agreed in every particular with the description which Trent had given him.

There were the cheap lace curtains all along the glazed side which overlooked the short pa.s.sage leading down to the narrow alley, but they were of so thin a quality, and so scantily patterned, that the mesh did not obstruct the view in any manner, merely rendering it a trifle hazy; for he could himself see from where he stood the window in the side of the house opposite, and, seated at that window, Mrs.

Sherman and her daughter, busy at their endless sewing.

And there, too, were the blinds--strong blue linen ones running on rings and cords--with which, as he had been told, it was possible to arrange the light as occasion required. They were fas.h.i.+oned somewhat after the manner of those seen in the studios of photographers--several sectional ones overhead and one long one for that side of the room which overlooked the short pa.s.sage; and, as showing how minute was Cleek's inspection for all its seeming indifference, it may be remarked that he observed a peculiarity regarding that long blind which not one person in a hundred would have noticed. That is to say, that, whereas, when one looks at a window from the interior of a room, one invariably finds that the blinds are against the gla.s.s, and that the curtains are so hung as to be behind them when viewed from the street, here was a case of the exactly opposite arrangement being put into force; to wit: It was the lace curtains which hung against the window panes and the big blind which was next the room, so that, if pulled down, a person standing within would see no lace curtains at all, while at the same time they would remain distinctly visible to anybody standing without.

If this small discrepancy called for any comment, Cleek made none audibly; merely glanced at the blind and glanced away again, and went on examining the books and the vases of flowers, and continued his apparently aimless wandering about the room.

Of a sudden, however, he did a singular thing, one which was fraught with much significance to Mr. Narkom, who knew the "signs" so well.

His wandering had brought him within touching distance of the busy waxworker, who, just at that moment, half turned and stretched forth his hand to pick up a tool which had fallen to the floor, the act of recovering which sent his wrist protruding a bit beyond the cuff of his working-blouse. What Narkom saw was the quick twitch of Cleek's eye in the direction of that hand, then its swift travelling to the man's face and travelling off again to other things; and he knew what was coming when his great ally began to pat his pockets and rummage about his person as if endeavouring to find something.

"My luck!" said Cleek, with an impatient jerk of the head. "Not a blessed cigarette with me, Mr. Narkom; and you know what a duffer I am if I can't smoke when I'm trying to think. I say--nip out, will you, and get me a packet? There!"--scribbling something on a leaf from his notebook and pus.h.i.+ng it into the superintendent's hand--"that's the brand I like. It's no use bringing me any other.

Look 'em up for me, will you? There's a good friend."

Narkom made no reply, but merely left the room with the paper crumpled in his shut hand and went downstairs as fast as he could travel. What he did in the interval is a matter for further consideration. At present it need only be said that had any one looked across the short pa.s.sage some eight or ten minutes after his departure Narkom might have been seen standing in the background of the room at whose window Mrs. Sherman and her daughter still sat sewing.

Meanwhile Cleek appeared to have forgotten all about the matter which was the prime reason for his presence in the place and to have become absorbingly interested in the business of tableau making, for he plied the old Italian with endless questions relative to the one he was engaged in constructing.

"Jip! You don't mean to tell me that you make the whole blessed thing yourself, do you--model the figures, group 'em, paint the blessed background, and all?" said he, with yokel-like amazement.

"You _do_? My hat! but you're a wonder! That background's one of the best I've ever clapped eyes on. And the figures! I could swear that that fellow bursting in with a sword in his hand was alive if I didn't know better; and as for this dead johnnie here in the foreground that you're working on, he's a marvel. What do you stuff the blessed things with? Or don't you stuff 'em at all?"

"Oh, yes, signor, they are stuffed, all of them. There is a wicker framework covered with canvas; and inside cotton waste, old paper, straw."

"You don't mean it! Well, I'm blest! Nothing but waste stuff and straw? Why, that fellow over there--the Sepoy chap with the gun in his hands----Oh, good Lord! just my blessed luck! I hope to heaven I haven't spoilt anything!" For, in leaning over to indicate the figure alluded to, he had blundered against the edge of the low platform, lost his balance, and sprawled over so awkwardly and abruptly that, but for the fact that the figure of the dead soldier was there for his hand to fall upon in time to check it, he must have pitched headlong into the very heart of the tableau, and done no end of damage. Fortunately, however, not a figure had been thrown down, and even the "dead soldier" had stood the shock uncommonly well, not even a dent showing, though Cleek had come down rather heavily and his palm had struck smack on the figure's chest.

"Tut! tut! tut! tut!" exclaimed the Italian with angry impatience.

"Oh, do have a little care, signor! The bull in a china-shop is alone like this." And he turned his back upon this stupid blunderer, even though Cleek was profuse in his apologies, and looked as sorry as he declared. After a time, however, he went off on another tack, for his quick-travelling glance had shown him Mr. Narkom in the house across the pa.s.sage, and he turned on his heel and walked away rapidly.

"Tell you what it is: it's this blessed glare of light that's accountable," he said. "A body's likely to stumble over anything with the light streaming into the place in this fas.h.i.+on. What you want in here is a bit of shade--like this."

Here he crossed the room hastily and, reaching up, pulled down the long window blind with a sudden jerk. But before either Trent or the Italian could offer any objection to this interference with the conditions under which the waxworker chose to conduct his labours, he seemed, himself, to realize that the proceeding did not mend matters, and, releasing his hold upon the blind, let the spring of the roller carry it up again to its original position. As he did this he said with a peculiarly asinine air:

"That's a bit worse than the other, by Jip! Makes the blessed place too dashed dark altogether; so it's not the light that's to blame after all."

"I should have thought even a fool might have known that!" gave back the waxworker, almost savagely. "The light is poor enough as it is. Look for yourself. It is only the afterglow--and even that is already declining. _Pouffe!_" And here, as if in disgust too great for words, he blew the breath from his lips with a sharp, short gust, and facing about again went back to his work on the tableau.

Cleek made no response; nor yet did Trent. By this time even he had begun to think that accident more than brains must have been at the bottom of the man's many successes; that he was, in reality, nothing more than a blundering muddler; and, after another ten minutes of putting up with his crazy methods, had just made up his mind to appeal to Narkom for the aid of another detective, when the end which was all along being prepared came with such a rush that it fairly made his head swim.

All that he was ever able clearly to recall of it was that there came a sudden sound of clattering footsteps rus.h.i.+ng pell-mell up the staircase; that the part.i.tion door was flung open abruptly to admit Mr. Maverick Narkom, with three or four of the firm's employees pressing close upon his heels; that the superintendent had but just cried out excitedly, "Yes, man, _yes!_" when there arose a wild clatter of falling figures, a snarl, a scuffle, a cry, and that, when he faced round in the direction of it, there was the Lucknow tableau piled up in a heap of fallen scenery and smashed waxworks, and in the middle of the ruin there was the "signor" lying on his back with a band of steel upon each wrist, and over him Cleek, with a knee on the man's chest and the look of a fury in his eyes, crying aloud: "Come out of it! Come out of it, you brute-beast! Your little dodge has failed!"

And hard on the heels of that shock Mr. Trent received another. For of a sudden he saw Cleek pluck a wig from the man's head and leave a white line showing above the place where the joining paste once had met the grease paint with which the fellow's face was coloured, and heard him say as he tossed that wig toward him and rose, "Out of your own stage properties, Mr. Trent--borrowed to be returned like this."

"Heaven above, man," said Trent in utter bewilderment, "what's the meaning of it all? Who is that man, then, since it's clear he's not Loti?"

"A very excellent actor in his day, Mr. Trent; his name is James Colliver," replied Cleek. "I came to this place fully convinced that Loti had murdered him; I now know that he murdered Loti, and that to that crime he has added a yet more abominable one by killing his own son!"

"It's a lie! It's a lie! I didn't! I didn't! I never saw the boy!"

screeched out Colliver in a very panic of terror. "I've never killed any one. Loti sold out to me! Loti went back to France. I p.a.w.ned the jewels to get the money to pay him to go."

"Oh, no, you didn't, my friend," said Cleek. "You performed that operation to shut Felix Murchison's mouth--the one man who could swear, and did swear, that James Colliver never left this building on the day of his disappearance, and who probably would have said more if you hadn't made it worth his while to shut his mouth and to disappear. You and I know, my friend, that Loti was the last man on this earth with whom you could come to terms upon anything. He had publicly declared that he would have your life, and he'd have kept his word if you hadn't turned the tables and killed him. You stole his wife, and you were never even man enough to marry her even though she had borne you a son and clung to you to the end, poor wretch! You killed Loti, and you killed your own son. No doubt he is better off, poor little chap, to be dead and gone rather than to live with the shadow of illegitimacy upon him; and no doubt, either, that when he came up here yesterday to meet Giuseppe Loti, he saw what I saw to-day, and knew you as I knew you then--the scar on the wrist, which was one of the marks of identification given me at the time I was sent to hunt you up! And you killed him to shut his mouth."

"I didn't! I didn't!" he protested wildly. "I never saw him. He wasn't here. The women in the house across the way will swear that they saw the empty room."

"Not now!" declared Cleek, with emphasis. "I've convinced them to the contrary. Mr. Trent, let a couple of your men come over here and take charge of this fellow, please, and I will convince you as well. That's right, my lads. Lay hold of the beggar and don't let him get a chance to make a dash for the stairs. Got him fast, have you?

Good! Now then, Mr. James Colliver, _this_ is what those deluded women saw--this little dodge, which is going to help Jack Ketch to come into his own."

Speaking, he walked rapidly across to the long blind, pulled it down to its full length, then with a wrench tore it wholly from the roller and whirled it over, so that they who were within could now see the outer side.

It bore, painted upon it, a perfect representation of the interior of the gla.s.s-room, even to the little spindle-legged table with a vase of pink roses upon it which _now_ stood at that room's far end.

"A clever idea, Colliver, and a good piece of painting," he said.

"It took me in once--last August--just as it took in Mrs. Sherman and her daughter yesterday. The mistiness of the lace curtains falling over it lent just the effect of 'distance' that was required to perfect the illusion and to prevent anybody from detecting the paint. As for the boy----Gently, lads, gently! Don't let the beggar in his struggles make you step on that 'dead soldier.' Under the thick coating of wax a human body lies--the boy's! Hullo! Gone off his balance, eh, at the knowledge that the game is entirely up?"

This as Colliver, with a terrible cry, collapsed suddenly and fell to the floor shrieking and grovelling. "They are a cowardly lot these brute-beast men when it comes to the wall and the final corner. Mr. Trent, break this to Miss Larue as gently as you can.

She has suffered a great deal, poor girl, and it is bound to be a shock. She doesn't know that the woman he called his wife never really was his wife; she doesn't know about Loti or his threat.

If she had she'd have told me, and I might have got on the trail in the first case instead of waiting to pick it up like this."

He paused and held up his hand. Through all this Colliver had not once ceased grovelling and screaming; but it was not his cries that had drawn that gesture from Cleek. It was the sound of some one racing at top speed up the outer stairs, and with it the jar of many excited voices mingled in a babble of utter confusion.

The door of the gla.s.s-room swung inward abruptly, and the head bookkeeper looked in, with a crowd of clerks behind him.

"Mr. Trent, sir, whatever is the matter? Is anybody hurt? I never heard such screams. The whole place is ringing with them and there's a crowd gathering about the door."

Cleek left the junior partner to explain the situation, stepped to the side of the gla.s.s-room, looked down, saw that the statement was quite true, and--stepped sharply back again.

"We shall have to defer removing our prisoner until it gets dark, I fancy, Mr. Narkom," he said, serenely. "And with Mr. Trent's permission we will make use of the door leading into the alley at the back when that time comes. Bookkeeper!"