Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces

  CHAPTER VIII

  It was half-past eleven o'clock. Madame la Comtesse, answering a reputedcall to the bedside of a dying friend, had departed early, and was notto be expected back, she said, until to-morrow noon. The servants--givenpermission by the gentleman known in the house as Monsieur GastonMerode, and who had graciously provided a huge char-a-banc for thepurpose--had gone in a body to a fair over in the neighbourhood ofSevres, and darkness and stillness filled the long, broad corridor ofthe Chateau Larouge. Of a sudden, however, a mere thread of soundwavered through the silence, and from the direction of Miss Lorne's rooma figure in black, with feet muffled in thick, woollen stockings, paddedto an angle of the passage, lifted a trap carefully hidden beneath ahuge tiger-skin rug, and almost immediately Cleek's head rose up out ofthe gap.

  "Thank God you managed to do it. I was horribly afraid you would not,"said Ailsa in a palpitating whisper.

  "You need not have been," he answered. "I know a dozen places beside'The Inn of the Twisted Arm' from which one can get into the sewers.I've screwed a bolt and socket on the inner side of this trap in case ofan emergency, and I've carried a few things into the passage for'afterwards.' I suppose that fellow Merode, as he calls himself, is inhis room, waiting?"

  "Yes; and, although he pretends to be alone to-night, he--he has othermen with him, hideous, ruffianly looking creatures, whom I saw him admitafter the servants had gone. The countess has left the house and gone Idon't know where."

  "I do, then. Make certain she's at 'The Twisted Arm,' waiting, first,for the coming of Clodoche, and, second, for the arrival of thisprecious 'Merode' with the remaining half of the document. I've sentDollops there to carry out his part of the programme, and when once Iget the password Margot requires before she will hand over the paper,the game will be in my hands entirely. They are desperate to-night, MissLorne, and will stop at nothing--not even murder. There! the rug'sreplaced. Quick! lead me to the baron's room--there's not a minute towaste."

  She took his hand and led him tiptoe through the darkness, and inanother moment he was in the Baron de Carjorac's presence.

  "Oh, monsieur, God for ever bless you!" exclaimed the broken old man,throwing himself on his knees before Cleek.

  "Out with the light--out with the light!" exclaimed he, ducking downsuddenly. "Were you mad to keep it burning till I came, withthat"--pointing to a huge bay window opening upon abalcony--"uncurtained and the grounds, no doubt, alive with spies?"

  Miss Lorne sprang to the table where the baron's reading-lamp stood,jerked the cord of the extinguisher, and darkness enveloped the room,darkness tempered only by the faint gleams of the moon streaming overthe balcony, and through the panes of the uncurtained window.

  Cleek, on his knees beside the kneeling baron, whipped a tiny electrictorch from his pocket, and, shielding its flare with his scooped hands,flashed it upon the old man's face.

  "Simple as rolling off a log--exactly like your pictures," he commented."I'll 'do' you as easily as I 'do' Clodoche--and I could 'do' him in thedark from memory. Quick"--snicking off the light of the electric torchand rising to his feet--"into your dressing-room, baron. I want thatsuit of clothes; I want that ribbon, that cross--and I want them atonce. You're a bit thicker-set than me, but I've got my Clodoche rig onunderneath this, and it will fill out your coat admirably and make us aslike as two peas. Give me five minutes, Miss Lorne, and I promise you asurprise."

  He flashed out of sight with the baron as he ceased speaking; and Ailsa,creeping to the window and peering cautiously out, was startledpresently by a voice at her elbow saying, in a tone of extremeagitation: "Oh, mademoiselle, I fear, even yet I fear, that this Anglaismonsieur attempts too much, and that the papier he is gone for ever."

  "Oh, no, baron, no!" she soothed, as she laid a solicitous hand upon hisarm. "Do believe in him; do have faith in him. Ah, if you only knew--"

  "Thanks. I reckon I shall pass muster!" interposed Cleek's voice; and itwas only then she realised. "You'll find the baron in the other room,Miss Lorne, looking a little grotesque in that grey suit of mine. Inwith you, quickly; go with him through the other door, and get belowbefore those fellows begin to stir. Get out of the house as quietly andas expeditiously as you can. With God's help, I'll meet you at the Hoteldu Louvre in the morning, and put the missing fragment in the baron'shands."

  "And may God give you that help!" she answered fervently as she movedtowards the dressing-room door. "Ah, what a man! what a man!"

  Then, in a twinkling she was gone, and Cleek stood alone in the silentroom. Giving her and the baron time to get clear of the other one, hewent in on tiptoe, locked the door through which they had passed, putthe key in his pocket, and returned. Going to the door which led fromthe main room into the corridor, he took the key from the lock of that,too, replacing it upon the outer side, and leaving the door itselfslightly ajar.

  "Now then for you, Mr. 'The Red Crawl,'" he said, as he walked to thebaron's table, and, sinking down into a deep chair beside it, leanedback with his eyes closed as if in sleep, and the faint light of themoon half-revealing his face. "I want that password, and I'll get it, ifI have to choke it out of your devil's throat! And she said that shewould be grateful to me all the rest of her life! Only 'grateful,' Iwonder? Is nothing else possible? What a good, good thing a real womanis!"

  * * * * *

  How long was it that he had been reclining there waiting before hisstrained ears caught the sound of something like the rustling of silkshivering through the stillness, and he knew that at last it was coming?It might have been ten minutes, it might have been twenty--he had nomeans of determining--when he caught that first movement, and, peeringthrough the slit of a partly opened eye, saw the appalling thing dragits huge bulk along the balcony, and, with squirming tentacles writhing,slide over the low sill of the window, and settle down in a glowing redheap upon the floor; and--fake though he knew it to be--he could notrepress a swift rush and prickle of "goose-flesh" at sight of it.

  For a few seconds it lay dormant; then one red feeler shot out, thenanother, and another, and it began to edge its way across the carpet tothe chair. Cleek lay still and waited, his heavy breathing soundingregularly, his head thrown back, his limp hands lying loosely, palmsupward, beside him; and nearer and nearer crept the loathsome, red,glowing thing.

  It crawled to his feet, and still he was quiet; it slid first onetentacle, and then another, over his knees and up toward his breast, andstill he made no movement; then, as it rose higher--rose until itshideous beaked countenance was close to his own, his hands flashedupward and clamped together like a vice--clamped on a palpitating humanthroat--and in the twinkling of an eye the tentacles were wrapped abouthim, and he and "The Red Crawl" were rolling over and over on the floorand battling together.

  "Serpice, you low-bred hound, I know you!" he whispered, as theystruggled. "You can't utter a cry--you shan't utter a cry--to bringhelp. I'll throttle you, you beastly renegade, that's willing to sellhis own country--throttle you, do you hear?--before you shall bring anyof your mates to the rescue. Oh, you've not got a weak old man to fightwith this time! Do you know me? It's the 'cracksman'--the 'cracksman'who went over to the police. If you doubt it, now that we're in themoonlight, look up and see my face. Oho! you recognise me, I see. Well,you will die looking at me, you dog, if you deny me what I'm after. I'llloosen my grip enough for you to whisper, and no more. Now what's thepassword that Clodoche must give to Margot to-night at 'The TwistedArm'? Tell me what it is; if you want your life, tell me what it is."

  "I'll see you dead first!" came in a whisper from beneath the hideousmask. Then, as Cleek's fingers clamped tight again and the battle begananew, one long, thin arm shot out from amongst the writhing tentacles,one clutching hand gripped the leg of the table, and, with a wrench anda twist, brought it crashing to the ground with a sound that a deaf manmight have heard.

  And in an instant there was pandemonium.

  A door flung open, and clashing heavil
y against the wall, sent an echoreeling along the corridor; then came a clatter of rushing feet, a voicecried out excitedly: "Come on! come on! He's had to kill the old fool toget it!" and Cleek had just time to tear loose from the shape with whichhe was battling, and dodge out of the way when the man Merode lurchedinto the room, with half a dozen Apaches tumbling in at his heels.

  "Serpice!" he cried, rushing forward, as he saw the gasping red shapeupon the floor; "Serpice! Mon Dieu! what is it?"

  "The cracksman!" he gulped. "Cleek!--the cracksman who went against us!Catch him! stop him!"

  "The cracksman!" howled out Merode, twisting round in the darkness andreaching blindly for the haft of his dirk. "Nom de Dieu! Where?"

  And almost before the last word was uttered a fist like a sledge-hammershot out, caught him full in the face, and he went down with a wholesmithy of sparks flashing and hissing before his eyes.

  "There!" answered Cleek, as he bowled him over. "Gentlemen of thesewers, my compliments. You'll make no short cut to 'The Twisted Arm'to-night!"

  Then, like something shot from a catapult, he sprang to the door,whisked through it, banged it behind him, turned the key, and wentracing down the corridor like a hare.

  "It must be sheer luck now!" he panted, as he reached the angle and,kicking aside the rug, pulled up the trap. "They'll have that door downin a brace of shakes, and be after me like a pack of ravening wolves.The race is to the swift this time, gentlemen, and you'll have to take along way round if you mean to head me off."

  Then he passed down into the darkness, closed the trap-door after him,shot into its socket the bolt he had screwed there, flashed up the lightof his electric torch, and, _without_ the password, turned toward thesewers, and ran, and ran, and ran!