Cleek of Scotland Yard: Detective Stories

“Hum-m-m! Ah! Just so!” said Cleek, pinching his chin. “Now I recollect what made the name seem familiar, Mr. Narkom. I remember reading of the failure, and of the small hope that was held out of anything being saved from the wreckage. Still, the income from the Strathmere estate is enormous; and by dint of care, in the seventeen or eighteen years which must elapse before his little lordship comes of age – ”

“He will never come of age! He will be killed first – he is being killed now!” interposed Lady Essington, agitatedly. “Oh, Mr. Headland, help me! I love the boy – he is my own child’s child. I love him as I never loved anything else in all the world; and if he were to die – Dear God! what should I do? And he is dying: I tell you he is. And they won’t let me go near him: they won’t let me have him all to myself, these two! If his cries in the night wring my heart and I run to his nursery, one or the other of them is always there, and never for one moment will they let me hold him in my arms nor be with him alone.”

“Hum-m-m! Cries out in the night, does he, your ladyship? What kind of cries? Those of fright or of pain?”

“Of pain – of excruciating pain: it would wring the heart of a stone to hear him, and, though there is never a spot of blood nor a sign of violence, he declares that some one comes in the night and sticks something into his neck – something which, in his baby way, he likens to ‘a long, long needle that goes yite froo my neck and sets uvver needles prickin’ and prickin’ all down my arm.’”

“Hello! what’s that? Let’s have that again, please!” rapped out Cleek, before he thought; then recollected himself and added apologetically, “I beg your ladyship’s pardon, but I am apt to get a little excited at times. Something like a needle being run into his neck, eh? And other needles continuing the sensation down the arm? Hum-m-m! Had a doctor called in?”

“No. I wished to, but neither the uncle nor aunt would let me do so. They say it is nothing – a mere ‘growing pain’ which he will overcome in time. But it is not – I know it is not! If it were natural, why did it never manifest itself before the failure of that wretched diamond company? Why did it wait to begin until after the Honourable Felix Carruthers had lost his money? And why is it going on, night after night, ever since? Why has he begun to fail in health? – to change from a happy, laughing, healthy child into a peevish, fretful, constantly complaining one? I tell you they are killing him, those two; I tell you they are using some secret diabolical thing which is sapping his very life; and if – ”

She stopped and sucked her breath in with a little gasp of fright, and, whisking down her veil, turned and made hurriedly for the door.

“I told you he guessed; I told you I should be followed!” she said in a shaking voice. “He is coming – that man: along the road there! look through the window and you will see. Oh, come to my assistance, Mr. Headland! Find some way to do it, for God’s sake! Good-bye!”

Then the door opened and shut and she was gone, darting out from the rear of the inn into the shelter of the scattered clumps of furze bushes and the thick growth of bracken which covered the downs, and running like a hare pursued.

“Well, what do you make of it, old chap?” asked Narkom anxiously, turning to Cleek after ascertaining past all doubt that the Honourable Felix Carruthers was riding up the road toward the French Horn.

“Oh, a crime beyond doubt,” he replied. “But whose I am in no position to determine at present. A hundred things might produce that stabbing sensation in the neck, from the prick of a pin-point dipped in curare to a smear of the ‘Pope’s balm,’ that hellish ointment of the Borgias. Hum-m-m! And so that’s the Honourable Felix Carruthers, is it? Keep back from the window, my friend. When you are out gunning for birds, it never does to raise an alarm. And we should be hard put to it to explain our presence here at this particular time if he were to see you.”

“My dear chap, you don’t surely mean that you think he is really at the bottom of it?” began Narkom, in surprise; but before he could say a word further, that surprise was completely overwhelmed by another and a greater one. For the Honourable Felix had reined in and dismounted at the French Horn’s door, and, with a clear-voiced, “No, don’t put him up; I shan’t be long, Betty. Just want a word or two with some friends I’m expecting,” walked straightway into the bar parlour and advanced toward the superintendent with hand outstretched.

“Thank God, you got my letter in time, Mr. Narkom,” he said, with a breath of intense relief. “Although I sent it by express messenger, it was after three o’clock and I was afraid you wouldn’t. What a friend you are to come to my relief like this! I shall owe you a debt no money can repay. This then is the great and amazing Cleek, is it? I thank you, Mr. Cleek, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for accepting the case. Now we shall get to the bottom of the mystery, I am sure.”

It was upon the tip of Narkom’s tongue to inquire what he meant by all this; but Cleek, rightly suspecting that the letter to which he alluded had been delivered at the Yard after the superintendent’s departure, jumped into the breach and saved the situation.

“Very good of you indeed to place such great reliance in me, Mr. Carruthers,” he said. “We had to scramble for it, Mr. Narkom and I – the letter was so late in arriving – but, thank fortune, we managed to get here, as you see. And now, please, may I have the details of the case?”

He spoke guardedly, lest it should be upon some matter other than the interest of the “Golden Boy” and to prevent the Honourable Felix from guessing that he had already been approached upon that subject by Lady Essington. It was not some other matter, however. It was again the mystery of the secret attacks upon his little lordship he was asked to dispel; and the Honourable Felix, plunging forthwith into the details connected with it, gave him exactly the same report as Lady Essington had done.

“Come to the rescue, Mr. Cleek,” he finished, rather excitedly. “Both my wife and I feel that you and you alone are the man to get at the bottom of this diabolical thing; and the boy is as dear to us as if he were our own. Help me to get proof – unimpeachable proof – of the hand which is engineering these diabolical attacks, that we may not only put an end to them before they go too far, but may avert the disgrace which publicity must inevitably bring.”

“Publicity, Mr. Carruthers? What publicity are you in dread of, please?”

“That which could only bring shame to a dear, lovable young fellow if any hint of what I believe to be the truth should get out, Mr. Cleek,” he replied. “To you I may confess it: I appeal to no medical man because I fear, for young Claude’s sake, that investigation may lead to a discovery of the truth; for both my wife and I feel – indeed, we almost know– that it is his own grandmother, Lady Essington, who is injuring the boy and that it will not be long before she attempts to direct suspicion against us.”

“Indeed? For what purpose?”

“To have us removed by the courts as not being fit to have the care of the child, and to get him transferred to her care, that she may enjoy the revenue from his estate.”

“Phew!” whistled Cleek softly. “Well done, my lady!”

“We do our best to keep her from getting at him,” went on the Honourable Felix, “but she succeeds in spite of us. His nursery was on the same floor as her rooms, but for greater safety I last night had him carried to my own bedchamber and double-locked all the windows and doors. I said to myself that nothing could get to him then; but – it did, just the same! In the middle of the night he woke up screaming and crying out that some one had come and stuck a long needle in his neck, and then for the first time – God! I nearly went off my head when I saw it – for the first time, Mr. Cleek, there was a mark upon him – three red raw little spots just over the collarbone on the left side of the neck, as if a bird had pecked him.”

“Hum-m-m! And all the windows closed, you say?”

“All but one – the window of my dressing-room – but as that is barred so that nobody could possibly get in, I thought it did not matter, and so left it partly open for the sake of air.”

“I see,” said Cleek. “I see! Hum-m-m! A fortnight without any outward sign and then of a sudden three small raw spots! Indented in the centre are they, and much inflamed about the edges? Thanks! Quite so, quite so! And the doors locked and all the windows but one closed and secured on the inside, so that no human body – What’s that? Take the case? Certainly I will, Mr. Carruthers. You are entertaining a house party at present, I hear. Now if you can make it convenient to put me up in the Priory for a night or two, and will inform your guests that an old ‘Varsity friend named – er – let’s see! Oh, ah! Deland, that will do as well as any – Lieutenant Arthur Deland, home on leave from India – if you will inform your guests that that friend will join the house party to-morrow afternoon, I’ll be with you in time for lunch, and will bring my man servant with me.”

“Thank you! thank you!” said the Honourable Felix, wringing his hand. “I’ll do exactly as you suggest, Mr. Cleek, and rooms shall be ready for you when you arrive.”

And the matter being thus arranged, the Honourable Felix took his departure; and Cleek, calling the landlady to furnish him with pen, ink, and paper, sat down then and there to write a private note to Lady Essington, telling her to look out for Mr. George Headland to put in an appearance at the Priory in three days’ time.

It was exactly half-past one o’clock when Lieutenant Arthur Deland, a big, handsome, fair-haired, fair-moustached fellow, with the stamp of the Army all over him, turned up at Boskydell Priory with an undersized Indian servant and an oversized kit and was presented to his hostess and to the several members of the house party, by all of whom he was voted a decided acquisition before he had been an hour under the Priory’s roof.

It is odd how one’s fancies sometimes go. He found the Honourable Mrs. Carruthers a sweet, gentle, dovelike little woman for whom he did not care in the least degree, and he found Lady Essington’s son a rollicking, bubbling, overgrown boy of two-and-twenty, whom, in spite of frivolous upbringing and a rather pronounced brusqueness toward his mother, he fancied very much indeed. In fact, he “played right up” to Mr. Claude Essington, as our American cousins say; and Mr. Claude Essington, fancying him hugely, took him to his heart forthwith and blurted out his sentiments with almost small-boy candour.

“I say, Deland, you’re a spiffing sort – I like you!” he said bluntly, after they’d played one or two sets of tennis with the ladies and done their “social duties” generally. “If things look up a bit and I’m able to go back to Oxford for the next term (and the Lord knows how I shall, if the mater doesn’t succeed in ‘touching’ Carruthers for some money for we’re jolly near broke and up to our eyes in debt), but if I do go back and you’re in England still, I’ll have you up for the May week and give you the time of your life. Oh, Lord! here’s the mater coming now. Let’s hook it. Come round to the stables, will you, and have a look at my collection. Pippin’ lot – they’ll interest you.”

They did; for on investigation the “collection” proved to be made up of pigeons, magpies, parrakeets, white mice, monkeys, and even a tame squirrel, all of which came forth at their master’s call and swarmed or flocked all over him.

“Now then, Dolly Varden, you keep your thieving tongs away from my scarfpin, old lady!” exclaimed this enthusiast to a magpie which perched upon his shoulder and immediately made a peck at the small pearl in his necktie. “Awfullest old thief and vagrant that ever sprouted a feather, this beauty,” he explained to Cleek as he smoothed the magpie’s head. “Steal your eye teeth if she could get at them, and goes off on the loose like a blessed wandering gypsy. Lost her for three days and nights a couple of weeks ago, and the Lord knows where the old vagrant put in her time. What’s that? The white stuff on her beak? Blest if I know. Been pecking at a wall or something, I reckon, and – hullo! There’s Carruthers and his little lordship strolling about hand in hand. Let’s go and have a word with them. Strathmere’s amazingly fond of my mice and birds.”

With that he walked away with the mice and the monkeys and the squirrel clinging to him, and those of the birds that were not perched upon his shoulders or his hands circling round his head with a flurry of moving wings. Cleek followed. A word in private with the Honourable Felix was accountable for his appearance in the grounds with the boy, and Cleek was anxious to get a good look at him without exciting any possible suspicion in Lady Essington’s mind regarding the “Lieutenant’s” interest in him.

He was a bonny little chap, this last Earl of Strathmere, with a head and face that might have done duty for one of Raphael’s “Cherubim” and the big “wonder eyes” that make baby faces so alluring.

“Strathmere, this is Lieutenant Deland, come all the way from India to visit us,” said the Honourable Felix, as Cleek went down on his knees and spoke to the boy (examining him carefully the while). “Won’t you tell him you are pleased to see him?”

“Pleased to see oo,” said the boy, then broke into a shout of glee as he caught sight of young Essington with the animals and birds. “Pitty birdies! pitty mouses! Give! give!” he exclaimed eagerly, stretching forth his little hands.

“Certainly. Which will you have, old chap – magpie, parrakeet, pigeon, monkey, or mice?” said young Essington, gayly. “Here! take the lot and be happy!” Then he made as if to bundle them all into the child’s arms, and might have succeeded in doing so, but that Cleek rose up and came between them and the boy.

“Do have some sense, Essington!” he rapped out sharply. “Those things may not bite nor claw you, but one can’t be sure when they are handled by some one else. Besides, the boy is not well and he ought not to be frightened.”

“Sorry, old chap – always puttin’ my foot into it. But Strathmere likes ’em, don’t you, bonny boy? and I didn’t think.”

“Take them back to the stables and let’s have a go at billiards for an hour or two before tea,” said Cleek, turning as Essington walked away, and looking after him with narrowed eyes and lips indrawn. When man and birds were out of sight, however, he made a sharp and sudden sound, and almost in a twinkling his “Indian servant” slipped into sight from behind a nearby hedge.

“Get round there and examine those birds after he’s left them,” said Cleek, in a swift whisper. “There’s one – a magpie – with something smeared on its beak. Find out what it is and bring me a sample. Look sharp!”

“Right you are, sir,” answered in excellent Cockney the undersized person addressed. “I’ll spread one of me famous ‘Tickle Tootsies’ and nip in and ketch the bloomin’ ’awk as soon as the josser’s back is turned, guv’ner. I’m off, as the squib said to the match when it started blowin’ of him up.” Then the face disappeared again, and the child and the two men were again alone together.

“Good God, man!” exclaimed the Honourable Felix in a lowered voice of strong excitement. “You can’t possibly believe that he – that dear, lovable boy – Oh, it is beyond belief!”

“Nothing is ‘beyond belief’ in my line, my friend. Recollect that even Lucifer was an angel once. I know the means employed to bring about this” – touching softly the three red spots on his little lordship’s neck – “but I have yet to decide how the thing is administered and by whom. Frankly I do not believe it is done with a bird’s beak – though that, too, is possible, wild as it seems – but by this time to-morrow I promise you the riddle shall be solved. Sh-h! Don’t speak – he’s coming back. Take the boy into your own room to-night, but leave the door unfastened. I’m coming down to watch by him with you. Let him first be put into the regular nursery, however, then take him out without the knowledge of any living soul – of any, you hear? – and I will be with you before midnight.”

That night two curious things happened: The first was that at a quarter to seven, when Martha, the nursemaid, coming up into the nursery to put his little lordship to bed, found Lieutenant Deland – who was supposed to be dressing for dinner at the time – standing in the middle of the room looking all about the place.

“Don’t be startled, Nurse,” he said, as he looked round and saw her. “Your master has asked me to design a new decoration for this room, and I’m having a peep about in quest of inspiration. Ah, Strathmere, ‘Dustman’s time,’ I see. Pleasant dreams to you, old chap. See you in the morning when you’re awake.”

“Say good night to the gentleman, your lordship,” said the nurse, laying both hands on his shoulders and leading him forward, whereupon he began to whine sleepily: “Want Sambo! Want Sambo!” and to rub his fists into his eyes.

“Yes, dearie, Nanny’ll get Sambo for your lordship after your lordship has said good night to the gentleman,” soothed the nurse; and held him gently until he had done so.

“Good night, old chap,” said Cleek. “Hello, Nurse, got a sore finger, have you, eh? How did that happen? It looks painful.”

“It is, sir, though I can’t for the life of me think whatever could have made a thing so bad from just scratching one’s finger, unless it could have happened that there was something poisonous on the wretched magpie’s claws. One never can be sure where those nasty things go nor what they dip into.”

“The magpie?” repeated Cleek. “What do you mean by that, Nurse? Have you had an unpleasant experience with a magpie, then?”

“Yes, sir, that big one of Mr. Essington’s: the nasty creature that’s always flying about. It was a fortnight ago, sir. Mistress’ pet dog had got into the nursery and laid hold of Sambo – which is his lordship’s rag doll, sir, as he never will go to sleep without – tore it well nigh to pieces did the dog; and knowing how his lordship would cry and mourn if he saw it like that, I fetched in my work-basket and started to mend it. I’d just got it pulled into something like shape and was about to sew it up when I was called out of the room for a few minutes, and when I came back there was that wretched Magpie that had been missing for several days right inside my work-basket trying to steal my reels of cotton, sir. It had come in through the open window – like it so often does, nasty thing. I loathe magpies and I believe that that one knows it. Anyway, when I caught up a towel and began to flick at it to get it out of the room, it turned on me and scratched or pecked my finger, and it’s been bad ever since. Cook says she thinks I must have touched it against something poisonous after the skin was broken. Maybe I did, sir, but I can’t think what.”

Cleek made no comment; merely turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

The second curious thing occurred between nine o’clock and half-past, when the gentlemen of the party were lingering at the table over post-prandial liqueurs and cigars, and the ladies had adjourned to the drawing-room. A recollection of having carelessly left his kit-bag unlocked drew Cleek to invent an excuse for leaving the room for a minute or two and sent him speeding up the stairs. The gas in the upper halls had been lowered while the members of the household were below; the passages were dim and shadowy, and the thick carpet on halls and stairs gave forth never a murmur of sound from under his feet nor from under the feet of yet another person who had gone like he, but by a different staircase, to the floors above.

It was, therefore, only by the merest chance that he looked down one of the passages in passing and saw a swift-moving figure – a woman’s – cross it at the lower end and pass hastily into the nursery of the sleeping boy. And – whether her purpose was a good or an evil one – it was something of a shock to realize that the woman who was doing this was the Honourable Mrs. Carruthers.

He locked the kit-bag, and went back to the dining-room just as the little gathering was breaking up, and Mr. Claude Essington, who always fed his magpies and his other pets himself, was bewailing the fact that he had “forgotten the beauties until this minute” and was smoothing out an old newspaper in which to wrap the scraps of cheese and meat he had sent the butler to the kitchen to procure.

The Honourable Felix looked up at Cleek with a question in his eye.

“No,” he contrived to whisper in reply. “It was not anything poisonous – merely candle wax. The bird had flown in through the store-room window, and the housekeeper caught it carrying away candles one by one.”

The Honourable Felix made no response, nor would it have been heard had he done so; for just at that moment young Essington, whose eye had been caught by something in the paper, burst out into a loud guffaw.

“I say, this is rich. Listen here, you fellows! Lay you a tenner that the chap who wrote this was a Paddy Whack, for a finer bull never escaped from a Tipperary paddock:

“‘Lost: Somewhere between Portsmouth and London or some other spot on the way, a small black leather bag containing a death certificate and some other things of no value to anybody but the owner. Finder will be liberally rewarded if all contents are returned intact to

“‘D. J. O’M., 425 Savile Row, West.’

“There’s a beautiful example of English as she is advertised for you; and if – Hullo, Deland, old chap, what’s the matter with you?”

For Cleek had suddenly jumped up and, catching the Honourable Felix by the shoulder, was hurrying him out of the room.

“Just thought of something – that’s all. Got to make a run; be with you again before bedtime,” he answered evasively. But once on the other side of the door: “‘Write me down an ass,’” he quoted, turning to his host. “No, don’t ask any questions. Lend me your auto and your chauffeur. Call up both as quickly as possible. Wait up for me and keep your wife and Lady Essington and her son waiting up, too. I said to-morrow I would answer the riddle, did I not? Well, then, if I’m not the blindest bat that ever flew, I’ll give you that answer to-night.”

Then he turned round and raced upstairs for his hat and coat, and ten minutes later was pelting off London-ward as fast as a £1,000 Panhard could carry him.

It was close to one o’clock when he came back and walked into the drawing-room of the Priory, accompanied by a sedate and bespectacled gentleman of undoubted Celtic origin whom he introduced as “Doctor James O’Malley, ladies and gentlemen, M.D., Dublin.”

Lady Essington and her son acknowledged the introduction by an inclination of the head, the Honourable Felix and Mrs. Carruthers, ditto; then her ladyship’s son spoke up in his usual blunt, outspoken way.

“I say, Deland, what’s in the wind?” he asked. “What lark are you up to now? Felix says you’ve got a clinking big surprise for us all, and here we are, dear boy, all primed and ready for it. Let’s have it, there’s a good chap.”

“Very well, so you shall,” he replied. “But first of all let me lay aside a useless mask and acknowledge that I am not an Indian army officer – I am a simple police detective sometimes called George Headland, your ladyship, and sometimes – ”

“George Headland!” she broke in sharply, getting up and then sitting down again, pale and shaken. “And you came – you came after all! Oh, thank you, thank you! I know you would not confess this unless you have succeeded. Oh, you may know at last – you may know!” she added, turning upon the Honourable Felix and his wife. “I sent for him – I brought him here. I want to know and I will know whose hand it is that is striking at Strathmere’s life – my child’s child – the dearest thing to me in all the world. I don’t care what I suffer, I don’t care what I lose, I don’t care if the courts award him to the veriest stranger, so that his dear little life is spared and he is put beyond all danger for good and all.”

Real love shone in her face and eyes as she said this, and it was the certainty of that which surprised Carruthers and his wife as much as the words she spoke.

“Good heavens! is this thing true!” The Honourable Felix turned to Cleek as he spoke. “Were you in her pay, too? Was she also working for the salvation of the boy?”