The Riddle of the Night Part 4

"You are sure of that?"

"I ought to be. I, myself, stole the bracelet from the collection of the Comte de Champdoce and presented it to her. I remember that the stopper to the capsule was carved from a single emerald that, owing to its age--it was said to have belonged in its day to Catherine de Medicis--had worn loose, and could only be prevented from dropping out and allowing the contents to drip away by wedging it into the orifice in the capsule by winding the stopper with silk."

Narkom's face positively glowed.

"My dear Cleek, you give me the brightest kind of hope," he said enthusiastically, as he stooped and investigated the tiny, perfumed grease spots on the floor, so clearly made by the dropping of some oily substance that there could be no question regarding their origin. "Then, there can be no possibility of connecting young Geoff Clavering or the girl he loves with this ghastly business if that Margot woman has been here, and it was from her bracelet that these stains were dropped?

Besides, after what you said about that fellow of her crew who was spiked to the wall as this poor wretch here is----"

"A moment, my friend--you are on the rush again," interjected Cleek.

"All that we actually _know_, at present, Mr. Narkom, is that some one, and very likely a woman, has been here and--unconsciously, of course--has spilled some drops of a very valuable and highly concentrated perfume. This naturally points to a defective stopper to the article containing that perfume, but whether or not that defective stopper was one carved from a single emerald and wound with silk----"

He stopped and let the rest of the sentence go by default. All the while he had been speaking he had been following, after the manner of a hound on the scent, the trail of that perfume's lead; now it had brought him to a litter of rat-gnawed paper and a parcel containing a peach and the remnants of a roasted fowl. As if the scent seemed stronger here than elsewhere--so strong, in fact, that it was suggestive of a goal--he began tossing the sc.r.a.ps about, till at last he gave a sort of cry and pounced upon something in a distant corner.

"Cleek!" rapped out Narkom in an excited but guarded tone, as he noted this, "Cleek, you have found something? Something that decides?"

"Yes," the detective made answer. "Something which proves that, whoever the woman who dropped the scent may be, Mr. Narkom, she was _not_ Margot!"

He unclosed his hand and stretched it out toward the superintendent, and Narkom saw lying on his palm a crushed and gleaming thing which looked like a child's gold thimble that had been trodden upon. The snapped fragment of a hairlike gold chain still clung to it, and at the end of this dangled a liliputian stopper, a wee mite of a thing that was little more than a short, thick pin of plain, unjewelled, unornamented gold.

"One of the 'capsules' of which I spoke, you see," said Cleek, "and bearing not the slightest resemblance to the one belonging to Margot.

The thing has snapped from its fastening and been trodden upon--trodden under a very heavy foot, I should say, from the condition of it. There is something engraved upon it, something that won't tend to ease your mind, Mr. Narkom. Take my gla.s.s and look at it."

Narkom did so. Engraved on the crushed and fragrant-smelling bit of gold he saw a coat-of-arms--arms which he, at least, knew to be those of the house of St. Ulmer--and under this the name "Katharine."

"Good Lord!" he said, and let the crushed bauble fall back upon the palm from which he had lifted it. "That child--that dear girl who is as much as life itself to young Geoff Clavering? But how could she--a slip of a girl like that----"

He turned and looked over at the dead figure spiked to the cottage wall.

Cleek made no reply--at least for the moment. He had gone back to the "hound's trick" of sniffing the trail and was creeping on again--_past_ the litter of papers this time--and crawling on all fours toward the very doorway by which the police had first gained access to the room.

"Wait! Cross no bridges until you come to them," he said at last in an excited whisper. "Some one who trod upon that thing pa.s.sed out this way.

I _knew_ I smelt the oil the very instant I crossed the threshold; now I can understand why. The a.s.sa.s.sin left by the very door you entered, but whether man or woman----"

By now the trail had led him to the very threshold of the room. Beyond lay the dark hall by which Narkom and his men had entered the house, and the light of his upraised electric torch s.h.i.+ning out into that black pa.s.sage showed him something that made his pulses leap. It was simply a fragment of some soft pinkish material, caught and torn off from a woman's skirt by a nail head that protruded above the level of the boarded floor. He rose and ran out to it; he caught it up and examined it; then, with a laugh, shut his hand over it and went hurriedly back to the superintendent's side.

"Mr. Narkom," he said, "tell me something! We have, presumably, found a perfume receptacle belonging to the Lady Katharine Fordham; but did you notice--can you remember what manner of frock her ladys.h.i.+p wore at Clavering Close to-night?"

"I remember it very well indeed. It was a simple white satin frock, very plain and very girlish, and she wore a bunch of purple pansies with it."

"Ah-h-h!" Cleek's voice was full of relief, his eyes full of sparkle and life. "Then she did _not_ wear a gown of some soft, gauzy pink material, eh? An airy sort of gown trimmed at the hem with scalloped embroidery of rose-coloured silk. Good! Can you remember any lady to-night that did?"

"Yes," said Narkom promptly. "Miss Ailsa Lorne did. She wore some soft, gauzy pink stuff--chiffon, I think I've heard the wife call it--with a lot of rose-coloured silk st.i.tchery on the edges of the flounces, and she had a band of pink ribbon in her hair."

Cleek made no comment, nor did his countenance betray even the slightest trace of emotion. He simply put the shut hand that held that gauzy pink fragment into his pocket and shoved it far down out of sight.

A while ago he could have sworn that Ailsa Lorne's foot had never crossed the threshold of this house of crime; now he knew that it had, and if the evidence of this sc.r.a.p of chiffon stood for anything, crossed it _after_ she had left Clavering Close--after she had heard that threat against the Count de Louvisan's life.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE RIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

Before Mr. Narkom could ask any questions, the sound of excited voices and hasty footsteps coming up the drive and making toward the lonely house drove all other thoughts from his head.

"Come along," he whispered to Cleek. "It's Hammond and Petrie returning from the keeper's shelter on the Common. I know their voices. And they have unearthed something startling or they wouldn't be talking so excitedly."

They had, indeed, as he learned when he hurried out and intercepted them at the cottage steps; for between them they were supporting a man stripped of coat, waistcoat, and hat, and wearing bound round his head a bloodstained handkerchief. His bearded face was bruised and battered, his s.h.i.+rt and trousers were covered with mud, and he was so weak from loss of blood that it was next to impossible for him to stand alone.

"Sir," broke out Hammond, as they came up with Mr. Narkom and paused with this unexpected newcomer before him, "I don't know whether that French mounseer is a wizard or not, but he copped the lay at the first guess, Mr. Narkom, and foreigner or not I take off my blessed hat to him. Here's what we found when we got to the shelter, sir--this here party, knocked senseless, tied up like a trussed fowl, and tucked out of sight under the gorse bushes nigh the shelter. Coat, cap, badge, and truncheon all gone, sir--nicked by that dare-devil who took us in so nicely down there at the old railway arch. The murderer himself he were, I'll lay my life; for look here, sir, here's what he most brained this poor chap with--a hammer, sir--look! And a hammer was used, wasn't it, to spike that dead man to the wall? Had him, Mr. Narkom, had the rascal in our very hands, that's what we did, sir, and then like a parcel of chuckleheads we went and let him go."

"It is a trick that has succeeded with others besides yourselves," said Cleek, who had been bending over the injured man. He looked up at Narkom significantly. "Monsieur, I expect my a.s.sistant here any minute now.

Would it not be as well to report this shocking affair to the local authorities?"

"Certainly, monsieur!" agreed Narkom, who had forgotten that Dollops might arrive now at any moment.

"What about this poor chap here, sir?" interposed Petrie. "He's in a desperately bad way. Oughtn't we to take him with us, and turn him over to the hospital folk?"

"Non--that is, not yet, my friend," softly interposed Cleek. "Your good superintendent and I will look after him for a little time. There is a question or two to ask. He will bear the strain of talking now better than he might be able to do later. Notify the hospital officials as you pa.s.s through the town proper, and have an ambulance sent out. That's all. You may go."

"Well, so help me," began the indignant Petrie, then discreetly shut up and went. A moment later the limousine had whizzed away into the mist and darkness with the three men, and Cleek and Narkom were alone with the injured keeper.

"I expect that is Dollops in his taxi," whispered Cleek. "I thought I heard the sound of a motor. That will obliterate every track if you don't stop him. Head him off if you can, dear chap, and set him to work directly you have dismissed the taxi. Tell Dollops to measure and make a drawing of every footmark in and about the place. Quickly, please, before it is too late."

Mr. Narkom hurried off and vanished in the mist, leaving his ally alone with the dying man, for that he was dying there could be no question.

A bullet had gone through his body; a hammer had battered in the back of his head; he was but partly conscious--with frequent lapses into complete insensibility--and the marvel was not that he occasionally uttered some wandering, half-coherent sentences, but that he was able to speak at all.

"My poor chap," Cleek said feelingly, as he administered a stimulant by which the keeper's flagging energies were whipped up. "Try to speak--try to answer a question or two--try--for a woman's sake."

"A woman's?" he mumbled feebly. "Aye, my poor wife-- Gawd 'elp her--her and the kiddies! And me a-goin' 'ome, sir--me a-gettin' of my death like this for jist a-doin' of my duty--doin' of it honest and true, sir, for king and country!"

"And both letting you face the nightly peril of it unarmed!" said Cleek bitterly; then, pa.s.sionately: "Will you wake up, England? Will you wake up and do justice by these men who give their lives that you may sleep in peace, and who, with a badge and a truncheon and two willing hands, must fight your criminal cla.s.ses and keep law and order for you?"

"Aye--some day, may like--some day, sir," mumbled the dwindling voice; then it trailed off and sank sobbingly away, and Cleek had to administer more brandy to bolster up his fading strength.

"A word," he said eagerly, the hammering of his heart getting into his voice and making it unsteady. "Just one word, but much depends upon it.

Tell me--now--before anybody comes: Who did it? Man or woman?"

"I dunno, sir-- I didn't see. The mist was thick. Whoever it was, come at me from behind. But there was two--there must have been two--one as I heard a-runnin' toward me when I challenged, sir, and--and got shot down like a dog; and 'tother as come at me in the back when I sang out 'Murder' and blew my whistle for help. But men or women, whichever it may a-been, I never see, sir, never. But one woman _was_ on the Common to-night. A lady, sir--oh, yes, a lady indeed."

"A lady? Speak to me--quickly--my friend is returning. What did that lady wear? Was it a pink dress? Or couldn't you see?"

"Oh, yes, I could see--she came near me--she spoke in pa.s.sing. She gave me a bit of money, sir, and asked me not to mention about her bein' out there to-night and me havin' met her. But it wasn't a pink dress, sir; it was green--all s.h.i.+ny pale green satin with sparklin' things on the bosom and smellin' like a field o' voylits on a mornin' in May!"

The sense of unspeakable thankfulness that Cleek experienced upon hearing that the dress of this unknown "lady" was not pink, was lost in a twinkling in one of utter and overwhelming surprise at learning that it was _green_! Pink, white, and green, here were three evening dresses called into the snare of this night's mystery; and yet a _third_ woman now involved. White satin, that had been Lady Katharine Fordham's gown to-night; pink chiffon, that had been Ailsa Lorne's. Who then was the wearer of the pale green satin gown? Here was the riddle of the night taking yet another perplexing turn.