Cleek of Scotland Yard Part 11

"Hum-m-m! Yes! Just so. Did you act on Constable Gorham's suggestion, then?"

"Yes. I led the way in here and then up the covered pa.s.sage to the laboratory and opened the door. My uncle was sitting exactly as he had been when I looked in before--his back to me and his face to the window--but although he did not turn, it was evident that he was annoyed by my disturbing him, for he growled angrily, 'What the devil are you coming in here and disturbing me like this for, Jane?

Get out and leave me alone.'"

"Hum-m-m!" said Cleek, drawing down his brows and pinching his chin.

"Any mirrors in the Round House?"

"Mirrors? No, certainly not, Mr. Headland. Why?"

"Nothing--only that I was wondering, if as you say, he never turned and you never spoke, how in the world he knew that it really _was_ you, that's all."

"Oh, I see what you mean," said Miss Renfrew, knotting up her brows.

"It does seem a little peculiar when one looks at it in that way. I never thought of it before. Neither can I explain it, Mr. Headland, any more than to say that I suppose he took it for granted. And, as it happened, he was right. Besides, as you will remember, I had intruded upon him only a short time before."

"Quite so," said Cleek. "That's what makes it appear stranger than ever. Under the circ.u.mstances one might have expected him to say _not_ 'What are you coming in here for,' but, 'What are you coming in for _again_.' Still, of course, there's no accounting for little lapses like that. Go on, please--what next?"

"Why, of course I immediately explained what Constable Gorham had said, and why I had looked in. To which he replied, 'The man's an a.s.s. Get out!' Upon which I closed the door, and the constable and I went away at once."

"Constable there with you during it all, then?"

"Yes, certainly--in the covered pa.s.sage, just behind me. He saw and heard everything; though, of course, neither of us actually entered the laboratory itself. There was really no necessity when we knew that my uncle was safe and sound, you see."

"Quite so," agreed Cleek. "So you shut the door and went away--and then what?"

"Constable Gorham went back to his beat, and I flew as fast as I could to meet Mr. Drummond. It is only a short way to the old bridge at best, and by taking that short cut through the grounds, I was there in less than ten minutes. And by half-past eight I was back here in a greater state of terror than before."

"And why? Were you so much alarmed that Mr. Drummond did not keep the appointment?"

"No. That did not worry me at all. He is often unable to keep his appointments with me. He is filling the post of private secretary to a large company promoter, and his time is not his own. What terrified me was that, after waiting a few minutes for him, I heard somebody running along the road, and a few moments later Sir Ralph Droger flew by me as if he were being pursued. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances I should have thought that he was getting into training for the autumn sports (he is, you may know, very keen on athletics, and holds the County Club's cup for running and jumping), but when I remembered what Constable Gorham had said, and saw that Sir Ralph was coming from the direction of this house, all my wits flew; I got into a sort of panic and almost collapsed with fright."

"And all because the man was coming from the direction of this house?"

"Not that alone," she answered with a shudder. "I have said that I should under ordinary circ.u.mstances have thought he was merely training for the autumn sports--for, you see, he was in a running costume of white cotton stuff and his legs were bare from the knee down--but as he shot past me in the moonlight I caught sight of something like a huge splash of blood on his clothes, and coupling that with the rest I nearly went out of my senses. It wasn't until long afterward I recollected that the badge of the County Club is the winged foot of Mercury wrought in brilliant scarlet embroidery. To me, just then, that thing of red was blood--my uncle's blood--and I ran and ran and ran until I got back here to the house and flew up the covered pa.s.sage and burst into the Round House. He was sitting there still--just as he had been sitting before. But he didn't call out to me this time; he didn't reprove me for disturbing him; didn't make one single movement, utter one single sound. And when I went to him I knew why. He was dead--stone dead!

The face and throat of him were torn and rent as if some furious animal had mauled him, and there were curious yellow stains upon his clothes. That's all, Mr. Headland. I don't know what I did nor where I went from the moment I rushed shrieking from that room until I came to my senses and found myself in this one with dear, kind Mrs. Armroyd here bending over me and doing all in her power to soothe and to comfort me."

"There, there, cherie, you shall not more distress yourself. It is of a hardness too great for the poor mind to bear," put in Mrs.

Armroyd herself at this, bending over the sofa as she spoke and softly smoothing the girl's hair. "It is better she should be at peace for a little, is it not, monsieur?"

"Very much better, madame," replied Cleek, noting how softly her hand fell, and how gracefully it moved over the soft hair and across the white forehead. "No doubt the major part of what still remains to be told, you in the goodness of your heart, will supply----"

"Of a certainty, monsieur, of a certainty."

"--But for the present," continued Cleek, finis.h.i.+ng the interrupted sentence, "there still remains a question or two which must be asked, and which only Miss Renfrew herself can answer. As those are of a private and purely personal nature, madame, would it be asking too much----" He gave his shoulders an eloquent Frenchified shrug, looked up at her after the manner of her own countrymen, and let the rest of the sentence go by default.

"Madame" looked at him and gave her little hands an airy and a graceful flirt.

"Of a certainty, monsieur," she said, with charming grace. "_Cela m'est egal_," and walked away with a step remarkably light and remarkably graceful for one of such weight and generous dimensions.

"Miss Renfrew," said Cleek, sinking his voice and looking her straight in the eyes, as soon as Mrs. Armroyd had left them, "Miss Renfrew, tell me something please: Have you any suspicion regarding the ident.i.ty or the purpose of the person who murdered your uncle?"

"Not in the slightest, Mr. Headland. Of course, in the beginning, my thoughts flew at once to Sir Ralph Droger, but I now see how absurd it is to think that such as he----"

"I am not even hinting at Sir Ralph Droger," interposed Cleek. "Two other people in the world have a 'motive' quite as strong as any that might be a.s.signed to him. You, of course, feel every confidence in the honour and integrity of Mr. Charles Drummond?"

"Mr. Headland!"

"Gently, gently, please! I merely wished to know if in your heart you had any secret doubt; and your flaring up like that has answered me.

You see, one has to remember that the late Mr. Nosworth is said to have made a will in your favour. The statement is correct, is it not?"

"To the best of my belief--yes."

"Filed it with his solicitors, did he?"

"That I can't say. I think not, however. He was always sufficient unto himself, and had a rooted objection to trusting anything of value to the care of any man living. Even his most important doc.u.ments--plans and formulas of his various inventions, even the very lease of this property--have always been kept in the desk in the laboratory."

"Hum-m-m!" said Cleek, and pinched his chin hard. Then, after a moment. "One last question," he went on suddenly. "What do you know, Miss Renfrew, of the recent movements of Mr. Harry Nosworth--the son who was kicked out?"

"Nothing, absolutely nothing!" she answered, with a look of something akin to horror. "I know what you are thinking of, but although he is as bad as man can be, it is abominable to suppose that he would lift his hand against his own father."

"Hum-m-m! Yes, of course! But still, it has been known to happen; and, as you say, he was a bad lot. I ran foul of the young gentleman once when----No matter; it doesn't signify. So you don't know anything about him, eh?"

"Nothing, thank G.o.d. The last I did hear, he had gone on the stage and taken up with some horrible creature, and the pair of them were subsequently sent to prison for enticing people to dreadful places and then drugging and robbing them. But even that I heard from an outside source; for my uncle never so much as mentioned him. No, I know nothing of him--nothing at all. In fact, I've never seen him since he was a boy. He never lived here, you know; and until I came here, I knew next to nothing of my uncle himself. We were poor and lived in a quite different town, my mother and I. Uncle Septimus never came to see us while my mother lived. He came for the first time when she was dead and his son had gone away: and I was so poor and so friendless I was glad to accept the home he offered. No, Mr. Headland, I know nothing of Harry Nosworth. I hope, for his own sake, he is dead."

Cleek made no reply. He sat for a minute pinching his chin and staring at the carpet, then he got up suddenly and faced round in the direction of the little group at the far end of the room.

"That's all for the present," he said. "Mr. Narkom, Mr. Nippers--get a light of some sort, please, and let's go out and have a look at those footprints."

CHAPTER IX

The suggestion was acted upon immediately--even Mrs. Armroyd joining in the descent upon the portable lamps and filing out with the rest into the gloom and loneliness of the grounds; and Miss Renfrew, finding that she was likely to be left alone in this house of horrors, rose quickly and hurried out with them.

One step beyond the threshold brought them within sight of the famous Round House. Bulked against the pale silver of the moonlit sky, there it stood--a grim, unlovely thing of stone and steel with a trampled flower bed encircling the base of it, and a man on guard--Constable Gorham.

"Lummy! I'd clean forgot _him_!" exclaimed Mr. Nippers as he caught sight of him. "And theer un be keepin' guard, like I told un, out here in the grounds whiles weem ben talkin' comfortable inside. 'E do be a chap for doin' as heem tole, that Gorham--indeed, yes!"

n.o.body replied to him. All were busily engaged in following the lead of Scotland Yard, as represented by Cleek and Superintendent Narkom, and bearing down on that huge stone tube within whose circular walls a dead man sat alone.

"Dreary post this, Constable," said Cleek, coming abreast of the silent guard.

"Yes, sir, very. But dooty's dooty--and there you be!" replied Gorham, touching his helmet with his finger; then, as the light from the lamps fell full upon Cleek's face and let him see that it was no face he had ever seen in this district before, his eyes widened with a puzzled stare which never quite left them even when the entire group had pa.s.sed on and turned the curve of the Round House wall.

And beyond that curve Cleek came to a sudden halt. Here, a curtainless window cut a square of light in the wall's dark face and struck a glare on the trunk and the boughs of a lime tree directly opposite, and under that window a trampled flower bed lay, with curious marks deep sunk in the soft, moist surface of it.

Cleek took the lamp from Mrs. Armroyd's hand, and, bending, looked at them closely. Mr. Nippers had not exaggerated when he said that they were all of twelve inches in length. Nor was he far out when he declared that they looked like the footprints of some creature that was part animal and part bird; for there they were, with three huge clawlike projections in front and a solitary one behind, and so like to the mark which a gigantic bird could have made that one might have said such a creature _had_ made them, only that it was impossible for anything to fly that was possessed of weight sufficient to drive those huge footprints so deeply into the earth as they had been driven, by the mere walking of the Thing.