The Riddle of the Frozen Flame Part 13

Borkins nodded. He did not like this cross-examination, and his nervousness was apparent in voice and look and action.

"Yes, sir."

"H'm. And if we put that to one side altogether can you give me any reason why I should believe this unlikely story in place of the equally unlikely one that your master has told me-knowing what I do?"

Borkins twitched up his head suddenly, his eyes fear-filled, his face turned suddenly gray.

"I-I-What can you know about me, but that I 'ave been in the employment of this family nearly all my life?" he returned, taken off his guard by Cleek's remark. "I'm only a poor, honest workin' man, sir, been in the same place nigh on to twenty years and-"

"And hoping you can hang on another twenty, I dare say!" threw in Cleek, sarcastically. "Oh, I know more about you, my man, than I care to tell. But at the moment that doesn't enter into the matter. We'll take that up later. Now then, there's the revolver. Doctor, you should be useful here; if you will use your professional skill in the service of the law that seems trying to embroil your friend. I want you to examine the head wound, please-the head wound of the man called Dacre Wynne, and, if you can, remove the bullet that is lodged in the brain. Then we shall have a chance to compare it with those remaining in Sir Nigel's revolver."

"I-can't do it, Mr. Headland," returned Doctor Bartholomew, firmly. "I won't lend myself to a plot to inveigle this poor boy, to ruin his life-"

"And I demand it-in the name of the Law." He motioned to Petrie and Hammond, who through the whole length of the inquiry had stood with Dollops, beside the doorway. They came forward swiftly. "Arrest Doctor Bartholomew for treating the Law with contempt-"

"But, I say, Mr. Headland, this is a d.a.m.ned outrage!"

Cleek held up a hand.

"Yes," he said, "I agree with you. But a very necessary one. Besides"-he smiled suddenly into the seamed, anxious face of the man-"who knows but that bullet may prove Sir Nigel's innocence? Who knows but that it is not the same kind as lie now in this deadly little thing here in my hand? It lies with you, Doctor. Must I arrest him now, and take him off to the public jail to await trial, or will you give him a sporting chance?"

The doctor looked up into the keen eyes bent upon him, his own equally keen. He did not know whether he liked this man of the law or not. Something of the man's personality, unfortunate as had been its revelation during this past trying hour, had caught him in its thrall. He measured him, eye for eye, but Cleek's never wavered.

"I've no instruments," he said at last, hedging for time.

"I have plenty-upstairs. I have dabbled a little in surgery myself, when occasion has arisen. I'll fetch them in a minute. You will?"

The doctor stood up between the two tall policemen who had a hand upon either shoulder. His face was set like a mask.

"It's a d.a.m.ned outrage, but I will," he said.

Dollops was gone like a flash. In the meantime Cleek cleared the room. He sent Merriton off to the smoking room in charge of Petrie and Hammond, and Borkins with them-though Borkins was to be kept in the hallway, away from his master's touch and voice.

Cleek, Mr. Narkom, and the doctor remained alone in the room of death, where the doctor set to his gruesome task. Outside, Constable Roberts's burly voice could be heard holding forth in the hall upon the fact that he'd been after a poacher on Mr. Jimmeson's estate over to Saltfleet, and wasn't in when they came for him.

And the operation went quietly on....

... In the smoking room, with Hammond and Petrie seated like deaf mutes upon either side of him, Merriton reviewed the whole awful affair from start to finish, and felt his heart sink like lead in his breast. Oh, what a fool he had been to have these men down here! What a fool! To see them wilfully trumping up a charge of murder against himself was-well, it was enough to make any sane man lose hold on his reason. And 'Toinette! His little 'Toinette! If he should be convicted and sent to prison, what would become of her? It would break her heart. And he might never see her again! A sudden moisture p.r.i.c.ked at the corners of his eyes. G.o.d!-never to call her wife!... How long were those beasts going to brood in there over the dead? And was there not a chance that the bullet might be different? After all, wasn't it almost impossible that the bullet should be the same? His was an unusual little revolver made by a firm in French Africa, having a different sort of cartridge. Every Tom, d.i.c.k, and Harry didn't have one-couldn't afford it, in the first place.... There was a chance-yes, certainly there was a chance.

... His blood began to hammer in his veins again, and his heart beat rapidly. Hope went through him like wine, drowning all the fears and terrors that had stalked before him like demons from another world. He heard, with throbbing pulses, approaching footsteps in the hall. His head was swimming, his feet seemed loaded with lead so that he could not rise. Then, across the s.p.a.ce from where Cleek stood, the revolver in one hand and the tiny black object that had nested in a dead man's brain in the other, came the sound of his voice, speaking in clear, concise sentences. He could see the doctor's grave face over the curve of Mr. Narkom's fat shoulder. For a moment the world swam. Then he caught the import of what Cleek was saying.

"The bullet is the same as those in your revolver, Sir Nigel," he said, concisely. "I am sorry, but I must do my duty. Constable Roberts, here is your prisoner. I arrest this man for the murder of Dacre Wynne!"

CHAPTER XVII

IN THE CELL

What followed was like a sort of nightmare to Merriton. That he should be arrested for the murder of Dacre Wynne reeled drunkenly in his brain. Murderer! They were calling him a murderer! The liars! The fools! Calling him a murderer, were they? And taking the word of a crawling worm like Borkins, a man without honour and utterly devoid of decency, who could stand up before them and tell them a story that was a tissue of lies. It was appalling! What a fiend incarnate this man Cleek was! Coming here at Nigel's own bidding, and then suddenly manipulating the evidence, until it caught him up in its writhing coils like a well-thrown la.s.so. Oh, if he had only let well enough alone and not brought a detective to the house. Yet how was he to know that the man would try to fix a murder on him, himself? Useless for him to speak, to deny. The revolver-shot and the cruel little bullet (which showed there were others who possessed that sort of fire-arm besides himself) proved too easily, upon the circ.u.mstantial evidence theory at all events, that his word was naught.

He went through the next hour or two like a man who has been tortured. Silent, but bearing the mark of it upon his white face and in his haggard eyes. And indeed his situation was a terrible and strange one. He had set the wheels of the law in motion; he himself had brought the relentless Hamilton Cleek into the affair and now he was called a murderer!

In the little cell where they placed him, away from the gaping, murmuring, gesticulating knot of villagers that had marked his progress to the police-station-for news flies fast in the country, especially when there is a viper-tongue like Borkins's to wing it on its way-he was thankful for the momentary peace and quiet that the place afforded. At least he could think-think and pace up and down the narrow room with its tiny barred window too high for a man to reach, and its hard camp bedstead with the straw mattress, and go through the whole miserable fabrication that had landed him there.

The second day of confinement brought him a visitor. It was 'Toinette. His jailer-a rough-haired village-hand who had taken up with the "Force" and wore the uniform as though it belonged to someone else (which indeed it had)-brought him news of her arrival. It cut him like a lash to see her thus, and yet the longing for her was so great that it superseded all else. So he faced the man with a grim smile.

"I suppose, Bennett, that I shall be allowed to see Miss Brellier? You have made enquiries?"

"Yes, sir." Bennett was crestfallen and rather ashamed of his duty.

"Any restrictions?"

Bennett hedged.

"Well-if you please-Sir Nigel-that is-"

"What the devil are they, then?"

"Constable Roberts give orders that I was to stay 'ere with you-but I can turn me back," returned Bennett, with flus.h.i.+ng countenance. "Shall I show the lady in?"

"Yes."

She came. Her frock was of some clinging gray material that made her look more fairy-like than ever. A drooping veil of gray gauze fell like a mist before her face, screening from him the anguished mirrors of her eyes.

"Nigel! My poor, poor Nigel!"

"Little 'Toinette!"

"Oh, Nigel-it seems impossible-utterly! That you should be thought to have killed Dacre. You of all people! Poor, peace-loving Nigel! Something must be done, dearest; something shall be done! You shall not suffer so, for someone else's sin-you shall not!"

He smiled at her wanly, and told her how beautiful she was. It was useless to explain to her the utter futility of it all. There was the revolver and there the bullet. The weapon was his-of the bullet he could say nothing. He had only told the truth-and they had not believed him.

"Yes see, dear," he said, patiently, "they do not believe me. They say I killed him, and Borkins-lying devil that he is-has told them a story of how the thing was done; sworn, in fact, that he saw it all from the kitchen window, saw Wynne lying in the garden path, dying, after I fired at him. Of course the thing's an outrageous lie, but-they're acting upon it."

"Nigel! How dared he?"

"Who? Borkins? That kind of a devil dares anything.... How's your uncle, dear? He has heard, of course?"

Her face brightened, her eyes were suddenly moist. She put her hands upon his shoulders and tilted her chin so that she could see his eyes.

"Uncle Gustave told me to tell you that he does not believe a word of it, dearest!" she said, softly. "And he is going to make investigations himself. He is so unhappy, so terribly unhappy over it all. Such a tangled web as it is, such a wicked, wicked plot they have woven about you! Oh, Nigel dearest-why did you not tell me that they were detectives, these friends of yours who were coming to visit? If you had only said-"

He held her a moment, and then, leaning forward, kissed her gently upon the forehead.

"What then, p't.i.te?"

"I would have made you send them away-I would! I would!" she cried, vehemently. "They should not have come-not if I had wired to them myself! Something told me that day, after you were gone, that a dreadful thing would happen. I was frightened for you-frightened! And I could not tell why! I kept laughing at myself, trying to tease myself out of it, as though it were simply-what you call it?-the 'blues'. And now-this!"

He nodded.