Cleek of Scotland Yard: Detective Stories

“Get it off all right, did you, Mr. Narkom?” he asked, glancing round as he heard him enter.

“Quite all right, old chap. Right as rain – in every particular.”

“Thanks very much. I’m having rather a difficult task of it, for our friend the constable here corroborates Miss Renfrew’s statement to the hair; and yet I am absolutely positive that there is a mistake.”

“There is no mistake – no, not one! The wicked one to say it still!”

“Oh, that’s all very well, madame, but I know what I know; and when you tell me that a dead man can ask questions – Pah! The fact of the matter is the constable merely fancies he heard Mr. Nosworth speak. That’s where the mistake comes in. Now, look here! I once knew of an exactly similar case and I’ll tell you just how it happened. Let us suppose” – strolling leisurely forward – “let us suppose that this space here is the covered passage, and you, madame – step here a moment, please. Thanks very much – and you are Miss Renfrew, and Gorham here is himself, and standing beside her as he did then.”

“Wasn’t beside her, sir – at least not just exactly. A bit behind her – like this.”

“Oh, very well, then, that will do. Now, then. Here’s the passage and here are you, and I’ll just show you how a mistake could occur, and how it did occur, under precisely similar circumstances. Once upon a time when I was in Paris – ”

“In Paris, monsieur?”

“Yes, madame – this little thing I’m going to tell you about happened there. You may or may not have heard that a certain Frenchy dramatist wrote a play called Chanticler– or maybe you never heard of it? Didn’t, eh? Well, it’s a play where all the characters are barnyard creatures – dogs, poultry, birds and the like – and the odd fancy of men and women dressing up like fowls took such a hold on the public that before long there were Chanticler dances and Chanticler parties in all the houses, and Chanticler ‘turns’ on at all the music halls, until wherever one went for an evening’s amusement one was pretty sure to see somebody or another dressed up like a cock or a hen, and running the thing to death. But that’s another story, and we’ll pass over it. Now, it just so happened that one night – when the craze for the thing was dying out and barnyard dresses could be bought for a song – I strolled into a little fourth-rate café at Montmarte and there saw the only Chanticler dancer that I ever thought was worth a sou. She was a pretty, dainty little thing – light as a feather and graceful as a fairy. Alone, I think she might have made her mark; but she was one of what in music-halldom they call ‘a team.’ Her partner was a man – bad dancer, an indifferent singer, but a really passable ventriloquist.”

“A ventriloquist, monsieur – er – er!”

“Cleek, madame – name’s Cleek, if you don’t mind.”

“Cleek! Oh, Lummy!” blurted out Mr. Nippers. But neither “madame” nor Constable Gorham said anything. They merely swung round and made a sudden bolt; and Cleek, making a bolt, too, pounced down on them like a leaping cat, and the sharp click-click of the handcuffs he had borrowed from Mr. Nippers told just when he linked their two wrists together.

“Game’s up, Madame Fifine, otherwise Madame Nosworth, the worthless wife of a worthless husband!” he rapped out sharply. “Game’s up, Mr. Henry Nosworth, bandit, pickpocket, and murderer! There’s a hot corner in hell waiting for the brute-beast that could kill his own father, and would, for the simple sake of money. Get at him, quick, Mr. Narkom. He’s got one free hand! Nip the paper out of his pocket before the brute destroys it! Played, sir, played! Buck up, Miss Renfrew, buck up, little girl – you’ll get your ‘Boy’ and you’ll get Mr. Septimus Nosworth’s promised fortune after all! ‘God’s in his heaven, and all’s right with the world.’”

CHAPTER X

“Yes, a very, very clever scheme indeed, Miss Renfrew,” agreed Cleek. “Laid with great cunning and carried out with extreme carefulness – as witness the man’s coming here and getting appointed constable and biding his time, and the woman serving as cook for six months to get the entrée to the house and to be ready to assist when the time of action came round. I don’t think I had the least inkling of the truth until I entered this house and saw that woman. She had done her best to pad herself to an unwieldy size and to blanch portions of her hair, but she couldn’t quite make her face appear old without betraying the fact that it was painted – and hers is one of those peculiarly pretty faces that one never forgets when one has ever seen it. I knew her the instant I entered the house; and, remembering the Chanticler dress with its fowl’s-foot boots, I guessed at once what those marks would prove to be when I came to investigate them. She must have stamped on the ground with all her might, to sink the marks in so deeply – but she meant to make sure of the claws and the exaggerated scales on the toes leaving their imprint. I was certain we should find that dress and those boots among her effects; and – Mr. Narkom did. What I wrote on that pretended telegram was for him to slip away into the house proper and search every trunk and cupboard for them. Pardon? No, I don’t think they really had any idea of incriminating Sir Ralph Droger. That thought came into the fellow’s mind when you stepped out and caught him stealing away after the murder had been committed. No doubt he, like you, had seen Sir Ralph practising for the sports, and he simply made capital of it. The main idea was to kill his father and to destroy the will; and of course, when it became apparent that the old gentleman had died intestate, even a discarded son must inherit. Where he made his blunder, however, was in his haste to practise his ventriloquial accomplishment to prevent your going into the Round House and discovering that his father was already dead. He ought to have waited until you had spoken, so that it would appear natural for the old man to know, without turning, who it was that had opened the door. That is what put me on the track of him. Until that moment I hadn’t the slightest suspicion where he was nor under what guise he was hiding. Of course I had a vague suspicion, even before I came and saw her, that ‘the cook’ was in it. Her readiness in inventing a fictitious gypsy with a bear’s muzzle, coupled with what Nippers had told me of the animal marks she had pointed out, looked a bit fishy; but until I actually met her nothing really tangible began to take shape in my thoughts. That’s all, I think. And now, good-night and good luck to you, Miss Renfrew. The riddle is solved; and Mr. Narkom and I must be getting back to the wilderness and to our ground-floor beds in the hotel of the beautiful stars!”

Here, as if some spirit of nervous unrest had suddenly beset him, he turned round on his heel, motioned the superintendent to follow, and brushing by the awed and staring Mr. Ephraim Nippers, whisked open the door and passed briskly out into the hush and darkness of the night.

The footpath which led through the grounds to the gate and thence to the long lonely way back to Dollops and the caravan lay before him. He swung into it with a curious sort of energy and forged away from the house at such speed that Narkom’s short, fat legs were hard put to it to catch up with him before he came to the path’s end.

“My dear chap, are you going into training for a match with that Sir Ralph What’s-his-name of whom Miss Renfrew spoke?” he wheezed when he finally overtook him. “You long, lean beggars are the very old boy for covering the ground. But wait until you get to be my age, by James!”

“Perhaps I shan’t. Perhaps they won’t let me!” threw back Cleek, in a voice curiously blurred, as if he spoke with his teeth hard shut. “Donkeys do die, you know – that little bit of tommyrot about the absence of their dead bodies to the contrary.”

“Meaning what, old chap?”

“That I’ve been as big an ass as any of the thistle-eating kind that ever walked. Gad! such an indiscretion! Such an example of pure brainlessness! And the worst of it is that it’s all due to my own wretched vanity – my own miserable weakness for the theatrical and the spectacular! It came to me suddenly – while I was standing there explaining things to Miss Renfrew – and I could have kicked myself for my folly.”

“Folly? What folly?”

“‘What folly?’ What? Good heavens, man, use your wits! Isn’t it enough for me to be a blockhead without you entering the lists along with me?” said Cleek, irritably. “Or, no! Forgive that, dear friend. My nerves were speaking, not my heart. But in moments like this – when we had built a safe bridge, and my own stupidity has hacked it down – Faugh! I tell you I could kick myself. Didn’t you hear? Didn’t you see?”

“I saw that for some special reason you were suddenly obsessed with a desire to get out of the house in the midst of your talking with Miss Renfrew, if that’s what you refer to – is it?”

“Not altogether. It’s part of it, however. But not the worst part, unfortunately. It was at that moment then the recollection of my indiscretion came to me and I realized what a dolt I had been – how completely I had destroyed our splendid security, wrecked what little still remains of this glorious holiday – when I couldn’t let ‘George Headland’ have the centre of the stage, but needs must come in like the hero of a melodrama and announce myself as Cleek. To Nosworth and his wife! To Nippers! To all that gaping crowd! You remember that incident, surely?”

“Yes. Of course I do. But what of it?”

“What of it? Man alive, with a chap like that Nippers, how long do you suppose it will remain a secret that Cleek is in Yorkshire? In the West Riding of it? In this particular locality? Travelling about with Mr. Maverick Narkom in a caravan – a caravan that can’t cover five miles of country in the time a train or a motor car is able to get over fifty!”

“Good lud! I never thought of that. But wait a bit. There’s a way to overcome that difficulty, of course. Stop here a minute or two and I’ll run back and pledge that Nippers fool to keep his mouth shut about it. He’ll give me his promise, I know.”

“To be sure he will. But how long do you suppose he will keep it? How long do you suppose that an empty-headed, gabbling old fool like that fellow will refrain from increasing his own importance in the neighbourhood by swaggering about and boasting of his intimacy with the powers at Scotland Yard and – the rest of it? And even if he shouldn’t, what about the others? The gathering of rustics that heard what he heard? The gamekeepers from the Droger estate? The Nosworths, as well as they? Can their mouths, too, be shut? They will not love me for this night’s business, be sure. Then, too, they have lived in Paris. The woman is French by birth. Of Montmartre – of the Apache class, the Apache kind – and she will know of the ‘Cracksman,’ be assured. So will her husband. And they won’t take their medicine lying down, believe me. An accused man has the right to communicate with counsel, remember; and a wire up to London will cost less than a shilling. So, as between Margot’s crew and our friend Count Waldemar —la, la! There you are.”

Mr. Narkom screwed up his face and said something under his breath. He could not but follow this line of reasoning when the thing was put before him so plainly.

“And we had been so free from all worry over the beggars up to this!” he said, savagely. “But to get a hint – to pick up the scent – out here – in a wild bit of country like this! Cinnamon, it makes me sweat! What do you propose to do?”

“The only thing that’s left us to do,” gave back Cleek. “Get out of it as quickly as possible and draw a red herring over the scent. In other words, put back to Dollops, abandon the caravan, make our way to some place where it is possible to telephone for the chap we hired it from to send out and get it; then, to make tracks for home.”

“Yes, but why bother about telephoning, old chap? Why can’t we drop in ourselves and tell the man when we get back to Sheffield on our way to London?”

“Because we are not going back to Sheffield, my friend – not going in for anything so silly as twice travelling over the same ground, if it’s all the same to you,” replied Cleek, as he swung off from the highway on to the dark, still moor and struck out for the place where they had left Dollops and the caravan. “At best, we can’t be more than thirty miles from the boundary line of Cumberland. A night’s walking will cover that. There we can rest a while – at some little out-of-the-way hostelry – then take a train over the Scottish border and make for Dumfries. From that point on, the game is easy. There are six trains a day leaving for St. Pancras and eight for Euston. We can choose which we like, and a seven hours’ ride will land us in London without having once ‘doubled on our tracks’ or crossed the route by which we came out of it.”

“By James! what a ripping idea,” said Mr. Narkom approvingly. “Come along then, old chap – let’s get back to the boy and be about it as soon as possible.” Then he threw open his coat and waistcoat to get the full benefit of the air before facing the ordeal, and, falling into step with Cleek, struck out over the moor at so brisk a dog trot that his short, fat legs seemed fairly to twinkle.

CHAPTER XI

By the side of the little chattering stream that flowed through the bit of woodland where Mr. Nippers and his associates had come upon them, they found Dollops, with his legs drawn up, his arms folded across his knees and his forehead resting upon them, sleeping serenely over the embers of a burnt-out fire. He was still “making music,” but of a kind which needed no assistance from a mouth harmonica to produce it.

They awoke him and told him of the sudden change in the programme and of the need for haste in carrying it out.

“Oh, so help me! Them Apaches, eh? And that foreign josser, Count What’s-his-name, too?” said he, rubbing his eyes and blinking sleepily. “Right you are, guv’ner! Gimme two seconds to get the cobwebs out of my thinking-box and I’m ready to face marching orders as soon as you like. My hat! though, but this is a startler. I can understand wot them Apache johnnies has got against you, sir, of course; but wot that Mauravanian biscuit is getting after you for beats me. Wot did you ever do to the blighter, guv’ner? Trip him up in some little bit of crooked business, sir, and ‘did him down,’ as the ’Mericans say?”

“Something like that,” returned Cleek. “Don’t waste time in talking. Simply get together such things as we shall need and let us be off about our business as soon as possible.”

Dollops obeyed instructions upon both points – obeyed them, indeed, with such alacrity that he shut up like an oyster forthwith, dived into the caravan and bounced out again, and within five minutes of the time he had been told of the necessity for starting, had started, and was forging away with the others over the dark, still moor and facing cheerily the prospect of a thirty-mile walk to Cumberlandshire.

All through the night they pressed onward thus – the two men walking shoulder to shoulder and the boy at their heels – over vast stretches of moorland where bracken and grass hung heavy and glittering under their weight of dew; down the craggy sides of steep gullies where the spring freshets had quickened mere trickles into noisy water-splashes that spewed over the rocks, to fall into chuckling, froth-filled pools below; along twisting paths; through the dark, still woodland stretches, and thence out upon the wild, wet moor again, with the wind in their faces and the sky all a-prickle with steadily dimming stars. And by and by the mist-wrapped moon dropped down out of sight, the worn-out night dwindled and died, and steadily brightening Glory went blushing up the east to flower the pathway for the footfalls of the Morning.

But as yet the farthermost outposts of Cumberland were miles beyond the range of vision, so that the long tramp was by no means ended, and, feeling the necessity for covering as much ground as possible while the world at large was still in what Dollops was wont to allude to as “the arms of Murphy’s house,” the little party continued to press onward persistently.

By four o’clock they were again off the moors and in the depths of craggy gorges; by five they were on the borders of a deep, still tarn, and had called a halt to light a fire and get things out of the bag which Dollops carried – things to eat and to drink and to wear – and were enjoying a plunge in the ice-cold water the while the coffee was boiling; and by six – gorged with food and soothed by tobacco – they were lying sprawled out on the fragrant earth and blinking drowsily while their boots were drying before the fire. And after that there was a long hiatus until Cleek’s voice rapped out saying sharply, “Well, I’ll be dashed! Rouse up there, you lazy beggars. Do you know that it’s half-past twelve and we’ve been sleeping for hours?”

They knew it then, be assured, and were up and on their way again with as little delay as possible. Rested and refreshed, they made such good time that two o’clock found them in the Morcam Abbey district, just over the borders of Cumberland, and, with appetites sharpened for luncheon, bearing down on a quaint little hostlery whose signboard announced it as the Rose and Thistle.

“Well, there’s hospitality if you like,” said Cleek, as, at their approach, a cheery-faced landlady bobbed up at an open window and, seeing them, bobbed away again and ran round to welcome them with smiles and curtseys delivered from the arch of a vine-bowered door.

“Welcome, gentlemen, welcome,” beamed she as they came up and joined her. “But however in the world did you manage to get over here so soon? – the train not being due at Shepperton Old Cross until five-and-twenty past one, and that a good mile and a quarter away as the crow flies. However, better too early than too late – Major Norcross and Lady Mary being already here and most anxious to meet you.”

As it happened that neither Cleek nor Mr. Narkom had any personal acquaintance with the lady and gentleman mentioned, it was so clearly a case of mistaken identity that the superintendent had it on the tip of his tongue to announce the fact, when there clashed out the sound of a door opening and shutting rapidly, a clatter of hasty footsteps along the passage, and presently there came into view the figure of a bluff, hearty, florid-faced man of about five-and-forty, who thrust the landlady aside and threw a metaphorical bombshell by exclaiming excitedly:

“My dear sir, I never was so delighted. Talk about English slowness. Why, this is prompt enough to satisfy a Yankee. I never dispatched my letter to you until late yesterday afternoon, Mr. Narkom, and – by the way, which is Mr. Narkom, and which that amazing Mr. Cleek? Or, never mind – perhaps that clever johnnie will be coming later; you can tell me all about that afterward. For the present, come along. Let’s not keep Lady Mary waiting – she’s anxious. This way, please.”

Here – as Mr. Narkom had lost no time in acknowledging his identity, it being clear that no mistake had been made after all – here he caught the superintendent by the arm, whisked him down the passage, and throwing open the door at the end of it, announced excitedly, “All right, Mary. The Yard’s answered – the big reward’s caught ’em, as I knew it would – and here’s Narkom. That chap Cleek will come by a later train, no doubt.”

The response to this came from an unexpected quarter. Of a sudden the man he had left standing at the outer door, under the impression that he was in no way connected with the superintendent, but merely a gentleman who had reached the inn at the same time, came down the passage to the open door, brushed past him into the room, and announced gravely, “Permit me to correct an error, please, Major. The ‘man Cleek’ is not coming later – he is here, and very much at your and Lady Mary Norcross’ service, believe me. I have long known the name of Major Seton Norcross as one which stands high in the racing world – as that, indeed, of the gentleman who owns the finest stud in the kingdom and whose filly, Highland Lassie, is first favourite for the forthcoming Derby – and I now have the honour of meeting the gentleman himself, it seems.”

The effect of this was somewhat disconcerting. For, as he concluded it, he put out his hand and rested it upon Mr. Narkom’s shoulder, whereat Lady Mary half rose from her seat, only to sit down again suddenly and look round at her liege lord with uplifted eyebrows and lips slightly parted. Afterward she declared of the two men standing side by side in that familiar manner: “One reminded me of an actor trying to play the part of a person of distinction, and the other of a person of distinction trying to play the part of an ordinary actor and not quite able to keep what he really was from showing through the veneer of what he was trying to be.”

The major, however, was too blunt to bottle up his sentiments at any time, and being completely bowled over in the present instance put them into bluff, outspoken, characteristic words.

“Oh, gum games!” he blurted out. “If you really are Cleek – ”

“I really am. Mr. Narkom will stand sponsor for that.”

“But, good lud, man! Oh, look here, you know, this is all tommyrot! What under God’s heaven has brought a chap like you down to this sort of thing?”

“Opinions differ upon that score, Major,” said Cleek quietly. “So far from being ‘brought down,’ it is my good friend, Mr. Narkom here, who has brought me up to it – and made me his debtor for life.”

“Debtor nothing! Don’t talk rubbish. As if it were possible for a gentleman not to recognize a gentleman!”

“It would not be so easy, I fear, if he were a good actor – and you have just done me the compliment of indirectly telling me that I must be one. It is very nice of you but – may we not let it go at that? I fancy from what I hear that I, too, shall soon be in the position to pay compliments, Major. I hear on every side that Highland Lassie is sure to carry off the Derby – in fact that, unless a miracle occurs, there’ll be no horse ‘in it’ but her.”

Here both the major and his wife grew visibly excited.

“Gad, sir!” exclaimed he, in a voice of deep despair. “I’m afraid you will have to amend that statement so that it may read, ‘unless a miracle occurs there will be every horse in it but her’ – every blessed one from Dawson-Blake’s Tarantula, the second favourite, down to the last ‘also ran’ of the lot.”

“Good heavens! The filly hasn’t ‘gone wrong’ suddenly, has she?”

“She’s done more than ‘gone wrong’ – she’s gone altogether! Some beastly, low-lived cur of a horse thief broke into the stables the night before last and stole her – stole her, sir, body and bones – and there’s not so much as a hoofprint to tell what became of her.”

“Well, I’m blest!”

“Are you? B’gad, then, you’re about the only one who knows about it that is! For as if that wasn’t bad enough, I’ve not only lost the best filly in England but the best trainer as well: and the brute that carried off the one got at the other at the same time, dash him!”

“What do you mean by ‘got at’ the trainer, Major? Did the man take a bribe and ‘sell’ you that way?”

“What, Tom Farrow? Never in God’s world! Not that kind of a chap, by George! The man that offered Tom Farrow a bribe would spend the rest of the week in bed – gad, yes! A more faithful chap never drew the breath of life. God only knows when or how the thing happened, but Farrow was found on the moor yesterday morning – quite unconscious and at death’s door. He had been bludgeoned in the most brutal manner imaginable. Not only was his right arm broken, but his skull was all but crushed in. There was concussion of the brain, of course. Poor fellow, he can’t speak a word, and the chances are that he never will be able to do so again.”

“Bad business, that,” declared Cleek, looking grave. “Any idea of who may possibly have been the assailant? Local police picked up anything in the nature of a clue?”

“The local police know nothing whatsoever about it. I have not reported the case to them.”

“Not reported – H’m! rather unusual course, that, to pursue, isn’t it? When a man has his place broken into, a valuable horse stolen, and his trainer all but murdered, one would naturally suppose that his first act would be to set the machinery of the law in motion without an instant’s delay. That is, unless – H’m! Yes! Just so.”