The Riddle of the Night Part 15

"Very well, then; I do give it."

"Good! And I accept it; so that's the end of that, as the fellow said when he walked off the pier," said Cleek as he ceased twisting up the handkerchief and returned it to his pocket. "But why not go farther and spare us both an unnecessary amount of trouble and discomfort, Mr.

Clavering?"

"I don't know what you mean. Put it a little clearer, please. I'm not good at guessing things."

"No, you are not; otherwise you might have guessed that when Lady Katharine Fordham denied so emphatically what you knew to be true---- But no matter; we'll talk of that some other time."

"No, we won't!" flashed in Geoff hotly. "We'll leave Lady Katharine Fordham's name out of this business altogether. Understand that? I don't care whether you're a police officer or not, by George! Any man that tries to drag her into this affair will have to thrash me, or I'll thrash him, that's all. You can believe what you jolly well please about what you overheard. You've got no witness to prove that you did hear it; and as for me--I'll lie like a pickpocket and deny every word if you try to make capital out of it against her."

Cleek laughed, laughed audibly. But there was a note of gratification, even of admiration, underlying it; and he found himself liking this loyal, lovable, hot-tempered boy better and better with every pa.s.sing moment. But the laughter nettled Geoff, and he was off like a firework in a winking.

"Look here! I'll tell you what!" he flung out hotly. "If you'll set me free from this confounded chain and come outside with me and will take a sporting chance--if you thrash me I'll take my medicine and do whatever you tell me; but if I thrash you, you're to let me go about my business, and to say nothing to anybody about what you happened to hear. Now, then, speak up. Which are you--a man or a mouse?"

"I know which you are, at all events," replied Cleek, with still another laugh. "You have some most original ideas of the workings of the law, it must be admitted, if you think Scotland Yard affairs can be settled in that way."

"You won't come out and stand up to me like a man, then?"

"No, I won't; because if I did I should catch myself wanting to clap you on the back and shake hands with you, and wis.h.i.+ng to heaven that I were your father. But--wait--stop! You needn't go off like a blessed skyrocket, my lad. There's still a way to do very much what you have proposed, and that I was about to mention when you tore at me about Lady Katharine. I said, if you remember, that you might go farther than simply give me your word of honour with regard to the gagging part of the matter, and might save us both a lot of trouble and discomfort."

"Yes, I know you did. Well, what of it? What trouble and discomfort can be saved?"

"A great deal if you are wise as well as loyal, my boy. It couldn't be a very pleasant experience for you to pa.s.s the night in a place like this.

Nevertheless, it is absolutely imperative that you should not return to your home to-night, and that your stepmother should have no hint of where you had gone or what had become of you."

"Why?"

"That's my affair, and you will have to pardon me if I keep it to myself. Now, then, why not make matters easier and pleasanter for you and for me by giving me your word of honour that if I let you go free from this place, and promise not to say one word of what I overheard pa.s.s between you and Lady Katharine Fordham, you will secretly journey up to London, stop there the night, and neither by word, nor deed will let a hint of your whereabouts or of what has pa.s.sed between us this evening get to the ears or the eyes of any one at Clavering Close? Come now; that's a fair proposition, is it not?"

"I don't know; I can't think what's at the bottom of it. Good Lord!"--with a sudden flash of suspicion "you don't mean that you suspect that Lady Clavering, my stepmother--and just because I said she was out on the Common last night? If that's your game---- Look here, she's as pure as ice and as good as gold, my stepmother, and my dear old dad loves her as she deserves to be loved. If you've hatched up some crazy idea of connecting her with this affair simply because De Louvisan was an Austrian and she's an Austrian, too----"

"Oho!" interjected Cleek. "So Lady Clavering is an Austrian, eh? I see!

I see!"

"No, you don't. And don't you hint one word against her! So if it's part of your crawling spy business to get me to give my parole so that you may sneak over to Clavering Close and play another of your sneaking abduction tricks on her, just as you have played it on me----"

"Ease your mind upon that subject. I have no intention of going near Clavering Close, nor yet of sending anybody there. Another thing: I have not, thus far, unearthed even the ghost of a thing that could be said to connect Lady Clavering with the crime. Do you want me to tell you the truth? It is you against whom all suspicions point the strongest; and I want you to go away to-night simply that I may know if you have spoken the truth, or are an accomplished actor and a finished liar!"

"What's that? Good Lord! how can my disappearing for a night prove or disprove that?"

"Shall I tell you? Then listen. I meant at first to keep it to myself, but----" His voice dropped off; there was a second of silence, then a faint clicking sound, and a blob of light struck up full upon his face.

"Look here," he said suddenly, "do you know this man?"

Clavering looked up and saw in the circle of light a face he had never seen in life before--a hard, cynical face with narrowed eyes and a thin-lipped, cruel mouth.

"No," he said, "if that is what you look like. I never saw such a man before."

"Nor this one?"

In the circle of light the features of the drawn face writhed curiously, blent, softened, altered--made of themselves yet another mask. And young Clavering, pulling himself together with a start, found himself looking again into the living countenance of Monsieur Georges de Lesparre.

"Good heavens above!" he said with a catch in his voice. "Then you were that man--you? And Mr. Narkom knew all the time?"

"_Oui, m'sieur_--to both questions--_oui_. It shall again be I, _mon ami_; and I shall remember me last night vair well. And now since _m'sieur_ shall haf so good a recollection of zis party--_voila_! He may tell me what he remembers of this one also."

Then in a flash the face was gone, and another--changed utterly and completely--was there.

"Barch!" exclaimed young Clavering, shrinking back from the man as though he were uncanny. "And you are that man--Philip Barch, Ailsa Lorne's friend? You are that man, too?"

"Yes, I am that man, too," replied Cleek. "I have made these silent confessions that you may know--that you may understand before I make another and equally candid one. If I had chosen not to let you know the real ident.i.ty of Philip Barch, you have seen how easily I could have kept that secret. Now that you know me you will understand how honestly and straightforwardly I intend to deal with you. You asked me why I wanted you to disappear for a night, and I have told you that I may prove to my own satisfaction whether you are what I hope you are, or are merely a clever actor and an accomplished liar. If what you said about your stepmother's reason for following you out upon the Common last night is as true as you would have had Lady Katharine Fordham believe, her interest in you must be an abnormal one; and if it is as great as you represent--ah, well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Not all the powers on this earth will be able to keep her indoors should you be mysteriously missing. But if it is not so great, if you have lied about that as about other things, Lady Clavering will not come out in quest of you herself, but will leave that to her husband and her servants; and I shall know then that you have simply been playing a part--that you have something to hide and some desperate reason for hiding it. Now, then, knowing what threatens, knowing what I am up to, knowing what trap has been set for you, will you give me your parole and go up to London to-night and face the issue of that act like a man?"

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A CLEW FROM THE AIR

Cleek did not have to wait for his answer.

"Yes, certainly I will," said Geoff instantly. "If there's nothing more than that behind it, I'll give you my word of honour and go this moment if you want me to do so."

"And you will say nothing, absolutely nothing, to any living soul about this--about me--about anything that has happened here?"

Young Clavering gave his promise promptly; and, with equal promptness, Cleek walked forward, unlocked the handcuff, and set him free, leading him back along the pa.s.sage to the stone steps, and being careful as they pa.s.sed through the cell where the murdered Common keeper's clothing lay that no ray from the torch should disclose his ghastly find. At the foot of the stone staircase he came to a halt.

"Now go," he said, "and remember that I trust you. Come back when you like to-morrow and make what explanation you please regarding your absence. I've trusted you with one or two secrets, and I will trust you with another: there's good proof, my lad, that what you said about Lady Katharine Fordham being at Gleer Cottage last night is the truth in spite of her denial. She dropped the scent capsule from her bracelet there, and I found it a few minutes before my boy Dollops found you hiding in the hollow tree. No, no, no! Don't get excited. There's nothing in that discovery to prove the lady guilty of any part in this abominable crime. Last night I was inclined to think that that little golden globe pointed toward her having been at least a confederate; to-day I have changed my mind, and since I overheard that conversation between you two, I have come to the conclusion that it proves her absolutely innocent of any complicity whatsoever."

"But how, Mr. Barch?-- I mean Cleek. You know that she was there; you know that I, too, was there. It's no use denying that since you're 'Monsieur de Lesparre' as well as what you are. You heard her deny her presence. You heard her say that she did not show me into the room where De Louvisan's body was. But she did; as G.o.d hears me, she did, though I'll never believe her guilty"--this in a last wild effort to divert suspicion from her--"whatever I might have said, whatever you may have discovered against her."

"I have just said there is nothing against her," said Cleek, with one of his curious smiles. "I have come to the conclusion that she is not a criminal, but a martyr. I don't believe she has any more idea of who murdered De Louvisan, or why, than has a child in its cradle. I know you say that she showed you into the room where the dead man's body was; but I don't believe, my friend, that she was there. I don't believe she ever saw him again after she left Clavering Close, and I do not believe that she had the slightest idea that the man--either living or dead--was in Gleer Cottage when she led you into it."

"Then why did she lead me into it? Why did she run away and leave me there with his dead body? Where did she go? What did she mean by saying what she did about showing me something that would light the way back to the land of happiness?"

"I hope to be able to tell you all that to-morrow, my friend," replied Cleek. "Indeed, I may be able to tell it this very night; for if there is anything in the Loisette theory of recurring events acting upon a weary brain and producing similar results when----No matter, we shall know all about that later. In spite of the fact that that scent capsule was dropped in the room where the murder was committed, and dropped before you were shown in there, as proved by the fact that you crushed it beneath your feet and carried the odour of it from the house with you, I do not believe that Lady Katharine knew one word of De Louvisan's death until the news of it was carried to her this morning. There!

That's the last 'secret' I am going to let you into for the present.

Now, then, off with you; and not a word to anybody before to-morrow. But one last thing"--this as Geoffrey began to run up the steps toward the open trapdoor--"if you should happen by any chance to catch a glimpse of Mr. Harry Raynor while you are in town to-night, keep an eye on him--see whom he meets, see where he goes, and mind that he does not see you."

"Harry Raynor? I say"--eagerly--"do you think it possible that that bounder----"

"No, I don't! A worm and a snake are two entirely different things. That young gentleman never killed anything but time and the respect of decent men in all the days of his worthless life. He hasn't the necessary grit.

But watch him if you run foul of him. He may know something that is worth while finding out; and, besides that, somebody or something called him away very suddenly this afternoon before I could get a chance to sound him on a most important subject. He knows a person who is very likely to be somewhere at the bottom of this case, that's all. Good-bye.

And--oh, stop a bit! Just one more word: Happen to know anybody besides Mr. Harry Raynor who is addicted to the use of black cosmetic for the moustache?"

"Yes," said Geoffrey, pausing halfway up the staircase, and caught by the artfulness of this apparently artless question. "Know two other men.

Why?"