CHAPTER X
"Yes, a very, very clever scheme indeed, Miss Renfrew," agreedCleek. "Laid with great cunning and carried out with extremecarefulness--as witness the man's coming here and getting appointedconstable and biding his time, and the woman serving as cook for sixmonths to get the entree to the house and to be ready to assist whenthe time of action came round. I don't think I had the least inklingof the truth until I entered this house and saw that woman. She haddone her best to pad herself to an unwieldy size and to blanchportions of her hair, but she couldn't quite make her face appearold without betraying the fact that it was painted--and hers is oneof those peculiarly pretty faces that one never forgets when onehas ever seen it. I knew her the instant I entered the house;and, remembering the Chanticler dress with its fowl's-foot boots, Iguessed at once what those marks would prove to be when I came toinvestigate them. She must have stamped on the ground with allher might, to sink the marks in so deeply--but she meant to makesure of the claws and the exaggerated scales on the toes leavingtheir imprint. I was certain we should find that dress and thoseboots among her effects; and--Mr. Narkom did. What I wrote on thatpretended telegram was for him to slip away into the house properand search every trunk and cupboard for them. Pardon? No, I don'tthink they really had any idea of incriminating Sir Ralph Droger.That thought came into the fellow's mind when you stepped out andcaught him stealing away after the murder had been committed. Nodoubt he, like you, had seen Sir Ralph practising for the sports,and he simply made capital of it. The main idea was to kill hisfather and to destroy the will; and of course, when it becameapparent that the old gentleman had died intestate, even a discardedson must inherit. Where he made his blunder, however, was in hishaste to practise his ventriloquial accomplishment to prevent yourgoing into the Round House and discovering that his father wasalready dead. He ought to have waited until you had spoken, sothat it would appear natural for the old man to know, withoutturning, who it was that had opened the door. That is what put meon the track of him. Until that moment I hadn't the slightestsuspicion where he was nor under what guise he was hiding. Ofcourse I had a vague suspicion, even before I came and saw her, that'the cook' was in it. Her readiness in inventing a fictitiousgypsy with a bear's muzzle, coupled with what Nippers had told me ofthe animal marks she had pointed out, looked a bit fishy; butuntil I actually met her nothing really tangible began to takeshape in my thoughts. That's all, I think. And now, good-nightand good luck to you, Miss Renfrew. The riddle is solved; and Mr.Narkom and I must be getting back to the wilderness and to ourground-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, whiskedopen the door and passed briskly out into the hush and darkness ofthe night.
The footpath which led through the grounds to the gate and thenceto the long lonely way back to Dollops and the caravan lay beforehim. He swung into it with a curious sort of energy and forged awayfrom the house at such speed that Narkom's short, fat legs were hardput 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 SirRalph What's-his-name of whom Miss Renfrew spoke?" he wheezed whenhe finally overtook him. "You long, lean beggars are the very oldboy 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 hardshut. "Donkeys do die, you know--that little bit of tommyrot aboutthe 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 thatever walked. Gad! such an indiscretion! Such an example of purebrainlessness! And the worst of it is that it's all due to my ownwretched vanity--my own miserable weakness for the theatrical and thespectacular! It came to me suddenly--while I was standing thereexplaining things to Miss Renfrew--and I could have kicked myself formy folly."
"Folly? What folly?"
"'What folly?' What? Good heavens, man, use your wits! Isn't itenough for me to be a blockhead without you entering the listsalong with me?" said Cleek, irritably. "Or, no! Forgive that, dearfriend. My nerves were speaking, not my heart. But in moments likethis--when we had built a safe bridge, and my own stupidity hashacked it down--Faugh! I tell you I could kick myself. Didn't youhear? Didn't you see?"
"I saw that for some special reason you were suddenly obsessed witha desire to get out of the house in the midst of your talking withMiss 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 myindiscretion came to me and I realized what a dolt I had been--howcompletely I had destroyed our splendid security, wrecked whatlittle still remains of this glorious holiday--when I couldn't let'George Headland' have the centre of the stage, but needs must comein like the hero of a melodrama and announce myself as Cleek. ToNosworth and his wife! To Nippers! To all that gaping crowd! Youremember 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 doyou suppose it will remain a secret that Cleek is in Yorkshire?In the West Riding of it? In this particular locality? Travellingabout with Mr. Maverick Narkom in a caravan--a _caravan_ that can'tcover five miles of country in the time a train or a motor car isable to get over fifty!"
"Good lud! I never thought of that. But wait a bit. There's a way toovercome that difficulty, of course. Stop here a minute or two andI'll run back and pledge that Nippers fool to keep his mouth shutabout 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 foollike that fellow will refrain from increasing his own importancein the neighbourhood by swaggering about and boasting of hisintimacy with the powers at Scotland Yard and--the rest of it? Andeven if he shouldn't, what about the others? The gathering ofrustics that heard what he heard? The gamekeepers from the Drogerestate? The Nosworths, as well as they? Can their mouths, too, beshut? 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 shewill know of the 'Cracksman,' be assured. So will her husband.And they won't take their medicine lying down, believe me. Anaccused man has the right to communicate with counsel, remember;and a wire up to London will cost less than a shilling. So, asbetween 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 wasput 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--outhere--in a wild bit of country like this! Cinnamon, it makes mesweat! What do you propose to do?"
"The only thing that's left us to do," gave back Cleek. "Get out ofit as quickly as possible and draw a red herring over the scent. Inother words, put back to Dollops, abandon the caravan, make our wayto some place where it is possible to telephone for the chap we hiredit 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 dropin ourselves and tell the man when we get back to Sheffield on ourway to London?"
"Because we are not going back to Sheffield, my friend--not goingin 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 thehighway on to the dark, still moor and struck out for the placewhere they had left Dollops and the caravan. "At best, we can'tbe more than thirty miles from the boundary line of Cumberland. Anight's walking will cover that. There we can rest a while--
at somelittle out-of-the-way hostelry--then take a train over the Scottishborder and make for Dumfries. From that point on, the game is easy.There are six trains a day leaving for St. Pancras and eight forEuston. We can choose which we like, and a seven hours' ride willland us in London without having once 'doubled on our tracks' orcrossed the route by which we came out of it."
"By James! what a ripping idea," said Mr. Narkom approvingly. "Comealong then, old chap--let's get back to the boy and be about it assoon as possible." Then he threw open his coat and waistcoat to getthe full benefit of the air before facing the ordeal, and, fallinginto step with Cleek, struck out over the moor at so brisk a dogtrot that his short, fat legs seemed fairly to twinkle.