CHAPTER XV
It is a recognized fact in police circles that crime has a curiouspropensity for indulging in periodical outbursts of great energy,great fecundity, and then lapsing into a more or less sporadiccondition for a time--like a gorged tiger that drowses, and stirsonly to lick its chops after a hideous feast. So that following thelines of these fixed principles the recent spell of criminal activitywas succeeded by a sort of lull, and the next two weeks were idleones for Cleek.
Idle but idyllic--from his point of view; for he was back in thelittle house in the pleasant country lands now, with his walledgarden, his ferns and his flowers, and the full glory of tulip-timewas here.
And soon another "glory" would be here as well.
In twelve more days _she_ would be back in England. In twelve moredays he and Dollops would move out, and Ailsa Lorne would move in,and this little Eden in the green and fragrant meadowlands would haveanother tenant from that time forth.
But hers would not be a lonely tenancy, however; for "CaptainHoratio Burdage" had recently written to Mrs. Condiment that, as theSleeping Mermaid seemed likely to prove an unprofitable investmentafter all and to bring her little reward for her labours, he purposedrelinquishing it and recalling "Old Joseph" to him; and with thatend in view had already secured for the good lady a position ascompanion-housekeeper to one Miss Ailsa Lorne, who, in the earlypart of June, would call upon her at her present quarters andpersonally conduct her and the deaf-and-dumb maid-of-all-work totheir future ones.
Here, then, in this bower of bloom, would this dear girl of hisheart await the coming of that glorious day when the last act ofrestitution had been made, the last Vanishing Cracksman debt wipedoff the slate, and he could go to her--clean-handed at last--toask the fulfilment of her promise.
Remembering that, it was a sheer delight to be free from all Yardcalls for a time that he might give his whole attention to the workof getting the place ready for her; and day after day he was busy inthe high-walled old-world garden--digging, planting, pruning--thatwhen she came it might be brimming over with flowers.
But although he devoted himself mind and body to this task andlived each day within the limits of that confining wall, he hadnot wholly lost touch with the world at large, for each morningthe telephone--installed against the time of Ailsa's tenancy--puthim into communication with Mr. Narkom at the Yard, and each nighta newspaper carried in to him by Dollops kept him abreast of thetopics of the times.
It was over that telephone he received the first assurance that hishaste in getting out of Yorkshire had not been an unnecessaryprecaution, his suspicions regarding the probable action of theNosworths not ill grounded, for Mr. Narkom was able to informhim that carefully made inquiries had elicited the intelligencethat, within two days after the Round House affair, men who wereundoubtedly foreigners were making diligent inquiries throughoutthe West Riding regarding the whereabouts of two men and a boywho had been travelling about in a two-horsed caravan.
"That sudden bolt of ours was a jolly good move, old chap," saidthe superintendent, when he made this announcement. "It did thebeggars absolutely. Shouldn't be a bit surprised if they'd chuckedthe business as a bad job and gone back to the Continent disgusted.At any rate, none of my plain-clothes men has seen hide nor hair ofone of the lot since, either in town or out. Waldemar, too, seemsto have hooked it and can't be traced; so I reckon we've seen thelast of him."
But Cleek was not so sure of that. He had his own ideas as to whatthis disappearance of the Apaches meant, and did not allow himselfto be lulled into any sense of security by it. There were more waysthan one in which to catch a weasel, he recollected, and determinednot to relax his precautions in the smallest iota when next theYard's call for his services should come.
That it would come soon he felt convinced as the days advanced thatrounded out the end of his second week of freedom from it; and whatform it would take when it did come was a matter upon which he couldalmost have staked his life, so sure he felt of it.
For a time of great national excitement, great national indignation,had arrived, and the press had made him acquainted with all thecircumstances connected therewith. As why not, when the whole countrywas up in arms over it and every newspaper in the land headlined itin double caps and poured forth the story in full detail?
It had its genesis in something which had happened at Gosport in thepreceding week, and happened in this startling manner:
In the waterway between Barrow Island and the extreme end of theRoyal Clarence Victualling Yard there had been found floating thebody of a man of about five-and-thirty years of age, fully andfashionably clothed and having all those outward signs which betokena person of some standing.
It was evident at once that death must have been the result ofaccident, and that the victim had been unable to swim, for the handswere encased in kid gloves, the coat was tightly buttoned, and apair of field-glasses in a leather case still hung from the longshoulder-strap which supported the weight of them. The victim'sinability to swim was established by the fact that he had madeno effort to rid himself of these hampering conditions, and wasclinging tightly to a foot-long bit of driftwood, which he musthave clutched at as it floated by.
It was surmised, therefore, that the man must have fallen into thewater in the dark--either from the foreshore or from some vesselor small boat in which he was journeying at the time--and had beencarried away by the swift current and drowned without being missed,the condition of the body clearly establishing the fact that it hadbeen in the water for something more than a fortnight when found.Later it was identified by one of the deck hands of the pleasuresteamer which cruises round the Isle of Wight daily as being thatof a man he had seen aboard that vessel on one of its night trips toAlum Bay between two and three weeks previously; and still later itwas discovered that a boatman in that locality had been hired to takea gentleman from the Needles to a yacht "lying out to sea" thatselfsame night, and that the gentleman in question never turned up.
What followed gave these two circumstances an appalling significance.For when the body was carried to the mortuary, and its clothingsearched for possible clues to identification, there was found uponit a sealed packet addressed simply "A. Steinmueller, Koenigstrasse8," and inside that packet there were two unmounted photographs ofthe exterior of Blockhouse Fort and the Southsea Fort, a more or lessaccurate ground-plan drawing of the interior of the PortsmouthDockyard, together with certain secret information relative tosupplies and to the proposed armament of cruisers now undergoingalteration and reequipment.
The wrath and amazement engendered by that discovery, however, wereas nothing compared with the one which so swiftly followed.
Brought up before the Admiral Superintendent and the Board, JohnBeachman, the dock master--who alone knew these things outside of theAdmiralty--was obliged to admit that one person, and one only--hiseldest son--was in a position to obtain admission to the safe inwhich he kept his private papers, and that son was engaged to a younglady whom he had met during a holiday tour on the Continent.
"English or foreign?" he was asked; to which he replied that shewas English--or, at least, English by birth, although her latefather was a German. He had become naturalized before his death,and was wholly in sympathy with the country of his adoption. Hedid not die in it, however. Circumstances had caused him to visitthe United States, and he had been killed in one of the horriblerailway disasters for which that country was famous. It was becausethe daughter was thus left orphaned, and was so soon to becomethe wife of their son, that he and Mrs. Beachman had taken herinto their home in advance of the marriage. They did not thinkit right that she should be left to live alone and unprotected,considering what she was so soon to become to them; so they hadtaken her into the home, and their son had arranged to sleep at anhotel in Portsmouth pending the date of the wedding. The lady'sname was Hilmann--Miss Greta Hilmann. She was of extremely goodfamily, and quite well-to-do in her own right. She had never beento Germany since the date of the engagemen
t. She had relativesthere, however; one in particular--a Baron von Ziegelmundt andhis son Axel. The son had visited England twice--once many monthsback, and the last time some seven or eight weeks ago. They likedhim very much--the bridegroom-elect especially so. They had becomevery great friends indeed. No, Axel von Ziegelmundt was no longer inEngland. He had left it something like a month ago. He was on apleasure trip round the world, he had heard, but had no idea wherehe had gone when he left Portsmouth.
Two hours after this statement was made, if the populace could havegot hold of young Harry Beachman it would have torn him to pieces;for it was then discovered that the drowned man was no less a personthan this Herr Axel von Ziegelmundt, and that they had not onlyspent the greater part of that particular day shut up in the former'sroom in the Portsmouth hotel, but had been together up to the verymoment when the excursion steamer had started on its moonlight tripto Alum Bay and to the bringing about of that providential accidentwhich had prevented the State affairs of an unsuspecting nationfrom being betrayed to a secret foe.
What followed was, in the face of this, of course, but natural. JohnBeachman was suspended immediately, and his son's arrest ordered.It served no purpose that he denied indignantly the charge ofbeing a traitor, and swore by every sacred thing that the hoursspent in his room at the hotel were passed in endeavouring tomaster the intricacies of the difficult German card game, Skaat,and that never in all their acquaintance had one word touchingupon the country or the country's affairs passed between Axel vonZiegelmundt and himself, so help him God! It was in vain, also, thatGreta Hilmann--shouting hysterically her belief in him and beggingwildly that if he must be put into prison she might be taken with him"and murdered when you murder him if he is to be court-martialledand shot, you wretched blunderers!"--it was in vain that GretaHilmann clung to him and fought with all her woman's strength tokeep the guard from laying hands upon him or to tear her from hisside; the outraged country demanded him, and took him in spite ofall. Nor did it turn the current of sympathy in his direction that,crazed when they tore him from her, this frantic creature had gonefrom swoon to swoon until her senses left her entirely, and the endwas--tragedy.
The full details were never forthcoming. The bare facts were thatshe was carried back to Beachman's house in a state of hysteriabordering close upon insanity, and that when, under orders from theAdmiralty, that house and all its contents were impounded pendingthe fullest inquiry into the dock master's books and accounts,the Admiral Superintendent and the appointed auditor entered intopossession, her condition was found to be so serious that it wasdecided not to insist upon her removal for a day or two at least.A nurse was procured from the naval hospital and put in charge ofher; but at some period during the fourth night of that nurse'sattendance--and when she, worn out by constant watching, slept inher chair--the half-delirious patient arose, and, leaving a noteto say that life had lost all its brightness for her, and if theycared to find her they might look for her in the sea, vanishedentirely. She could scarcely have hit upon a worse thing for theevil repute of her lover's name or her own. For those who had neverknown her personally were quick to assert that this was proofenough of how the thing had been managed. In short, that she,too, was a spy, and that she had adopted this subterfuge to getback to Germany before the scent grew hot and the law could lay ahand upon her. Those who had known her took a more merciful view sofar as she was concerned, but one which made things look all theblacker for her lover. What could her desperation and her uttergiving up all hope even before the man was put on trial mean ifit was not that she knew he was guilty, knew he would never get offwith his life, and that her suicide was a tacit admission of this?