CHAPTER XIX
It had gone two o'clock. The morning's work was done, a hastyluncheon disposed of, and the investigators were back in thedockmaster's house discussing the curious features of the case again.
"And now, gentlemen," said Cleek, "to the unsolved part of theriddle--the mysterious manner in which the messages were sent fromthis house. For sent from here they undoubtedly were, and by SophieBorovonski; but the question of how still remains to be discovered."
"I make it that it's the devil's own work, Mr. Cleek," said MacInery,"and that there must have been some accident connected with it, thesame as with the taking off of the wire-tapping chap."
"Hardly that, I'm afraid," replied Cleek. "I think it was accidentwhich put a _stop_ to the proceedings here, not one which createdthem. We now know perfectly well that the woman was in thishouse--undiscovered and unsuspected for days; and you may safely layyour life that she wasn't idle, wasn't stopping here for nothing.The pile of papers burnt shows very clearly that considerableintelligence had been forwarded to her brother, so it is safe toinfer that she was wiring it to him constantly."
"But how was it possible for her to obtain that information?" queriedSir Charles. "I again declare to you most solemnly, Mr. Cleek,that no one entered or left the room, that no word was spoken thatcould be said to have any bearing upon secret matters, so nothingcould possibly be overheard; and how could the woman read documentswhich were never out of our sight for a minute? Granted that she hadsome means of wiring intelligence to her brother--indeed, we nowknow that to have been the case--how under God's heaven did sheobtain that intelligence?"
"Well, that's a facer, certainly, Sir Charles; but with such apast-mistress of ingenuity as she--well, you never know. Sure shecouldn't possibly have managed to get into the room and hide herselfsomewhere, you think?"
"I am positive she couldn't. The thing isn't possible. There's noplace where she _could_ have hidden. Come in and see."
He unlocked the door and, followed by the rest, led the way into theroom where the inquiry into the dockmaster's affairs had been held. Aglance about it was sufficient to corroborate Sir Charles's statement.
On one side stood a large fireproof safe, closely locked; on theother were two windows--iron-grilled and with inside shutters ofsteel; at one end was a large flat-topped table, at which Sir Charlesand MacInery had conducted their investigation of the books, etcetera, and at the other a smaller writing-table, upon which stood atypewriter set on a sound-deadening square of felt, and over whichhung a white-disked electric bulb. There were five chairs, and notanother mortal thing. No cupboard, no wardrobe, no chest--nothingunder heaven in which a creature any bigger than a cat could havehidden.
"You see," said Sir Charles, with a wave of the hand, "she couldn'thave hidden in here, neither could she have hidden outside andoverheard, for nothing was said that could have been of any useto her."
"Quite confident of that?"
"Oh, I can answer for that, Mr. Cleek," put in young Grimsdick. "Wewere so careful upon that point that Sir Charles never dictatedeven the smallest thing that he wanted recorded; merely passed overthe papers and said: 'Copy that where I have marked it'; and tosave my table from being overcrowded, I scratched down the markedparagraphs in shorthand, and prepared to transcribe them on thetypewriter later. Why, sir, look here; the diabolical part of themystery is that those two fragments of sentences flashed out at thetelegraph office at the time of that frightful peal of thunder,and at that very instant I was in the act of transcribing them onthe typewriter."
"Hello! Hello!" rapped out Cleek, twitching round sharply. "Sure ofthat, are you--absolutely sure?"
"Beyond all question, Mr. Cleek. Sir Charles will tell you thatthe thunder-clap was so violent and so sudden that both he and Mr.MacInery fairly jumped. As for me, I was so startled that I struck awrong letter by mistake and had to rub out a word and type it overagain. Come and see. The paper is still on my table, and I can showyou the erasure and the alteration. Now, nobody could have seen thatpaper, at that particular time; not a solitary word had been spokenwith regard to it, and it wasn't more than half a minute beforethat Sir Charles himself had taken it out of the safe. Look, sir,here's the paper and here's the place where I erased the word--see?"
Cleek walked over to the typewriter and looked at the paper, saw theerasure, lifted it, looked at other typed sheets lying under it, andthen knotted up his brows.
"H'm!" he said reflectively, and looked farther. "You've got adevilish hard touch for a man who does this sort of thing constantly,and ought therefore to be an adept in the art of typewriting evenly.And there are other errors and erasures. Look here, my friend, Idon't believe you're used to this machine."
"No, sir, I'm not. I'm not accustomed to a shift key. My own machinehasn't one."
"Your own! By Gad! What are you using this machine for, then, ifyou've got one of your own? And why didn't you bring your own whenyou came here on important business like this?"
"I did; but as we found this one already here I started in on it;and when I found it difficult to work, I went out to get my own,which I'd left in the outer room, just as I'd taken it from thecarrier who brought it over. But the careless beggar must havehandled it as if it were a trunk, for the spring was broken, thecarriage wouldn't work, and two of the type bars were snapped off."
"By _Jupiter!_" Cleek's voice struck in so suddenly and with suchvehemence that it was almost a bark, like that of a startled terrier,and Mr. Narkom, knowing the signs, fairly jumped at him.
"You've found out something, _I_ know!" he cried. "What is it, oldchap--eh?"
"Let me alone, let me alone!" flung back Cleek, irritably. "I wantthe dockmaster! I want him at once! Where is the man? Oh, there youare, Mr. Beachman. Speak up--quickly. Was that 'Hilmann' woman everallowed to enter this room? Did she ever make use of this typewriterat any time?"
"Yes, sir--often," he replied. "She was one of the best and mostcareful typists I ever saw. Used to attend to all my correspondencefor me and----Good God, man, what are you doing? Don't you know thatthat thing's Government property?"
For Cleek, not waiting for him to finish what he was saying, hadsuddenly laid hands on the machine, found it screwed fast to thetable and, catching up the nearest chair, was now smashing andbanging away at it with all his force.
"Government destruction, you mean!" he gave back sharply. "Didn'tI tell you she was a very demon of ingenuity, stupid? Didn't Isay----Victory! Now then, look here--all of you! Here's a prettylittle contrivance, if you like."
He had battered the typewriter from its fastenings and sent itcrashing to the floor, a wreck, not ten seconds before; now, hishand, which, immediately thereafter, had been moving rapidly over thesurface of the sound-deadening square of felt beneath, whiskedthat, too, from the table, and let them all see the discovery hehad made.
Protruding from the surface of that table and set at regularintervals there were forty-two needle points of steel--one for eachkey of the typewriter--which a moment before had pierced the felt'ssurface just sufficient to meet the bottom of the "key" above it,and to be driven downward when that key was depressed.
Spectacular as ever in these times, he faced about and gave his handan outward fling.
"Gentlemen, the answer to the riddle," he said. "You have beensupplying her with the needed information yourselves. A ducat toa door knob, every time a letter was struck on this machine its exactduplicate was recorded somewhere else. Get a saw, Mr. Beachman,and let us see to what these steel points lead."
They led to a most ingenious contrivance, as it turned out. A highlysensitive spiral spring attached to an "arm" of thin, tough steelbeneath the surface of the table communicated with a rigid wirerunning down the wall behind one of that table's back legs and,passing thence through a small gimlet-hole in the floor, descendedand disappeared.
Following that wire's course, they, too, descended until, in thefulness of time, the end was reached in a far corner of the cellarunderneath the building
.
There, behind an upturned empty cask, they came upon yet anotherwire, which wound upward, and was found afterward to travel out andup beside the "leader" until it joined the private wire of thedockyard just outside the dormer window of what had once been MissGreta Hilmann's bedroom. And to these wires--the one descending andthe other ascending from behind that empty cask in the cellar--therewas a singular contrivance attached. To one, a plain, everydayinstrument for dispatching telegrams by the Morse system; to theother, a curious little keyboard which was an exact counterpartof the keyboard to the typewriter upstairs; and besides this therelay some remnants of food from the store cupboard of the house,and a sheaf of paper leaves covered with typewritten characters.
"Gentlemen, the absolute end of the riddle at last," said Cleekas he took up one of those leaves. "Look at them--Governmentsecrets every one. And I, like an ass, forgot to remember that NicoloFerrand was one of the cleverest mechanicians and one of thecraftiest 'wire workers' that the underworld boasts. Look, SirCharles; look, Mr. Narkom. Every touch of a letter on the keyboardof the typewriter upstairs registered its exact duplicate on thisinfernal contrivance down here, and fast as it was recorded, thatvixen wired it on to Boris Borovonski. Can't you understand nowwhy she left her post and flew to him? The shock which killed himand travelled with lessened force down the wire to the telegraphoperator was felt here, and the instrument she used was, in allprobability, disabled. She knew then, of course, that somethinghad happened to her brother, and in a panic flew to find out what.
"But even the shrewdest slip up sometimes and overlook things. Herfoolish slip lay in this: that she forgot to take with her theseoriginal drafts of the intelligence she had wired to the dead man."
"Ah, weel," said Mr. Alexander MacInery, who, like a true Scotsman,never liked to be found at the small end of the horn upon anyoccasion, "after all, 'tis no more than I expected. I said it wasaccident that was at the bottom of it, and accident it's turned outto be."
"No doubt," agreed Cleek, with one of his peculiar smiles. "But,personally, I always like to think that there's a Power above, andwhen men--_and_ nations--have played the game squarely----Shan't webe going upstairs, Sir Charles? Mr. Narkom and I have a long rideback to town, and the afternoon is on the decline."
It was still farther on that road, however, before he was able toactually tear himself away from the dockyard and be off home; forthere were those little legal necessities which are the penaltyof dealing with Government affairs to be attended to; there wasthe boring business of meeting high officials, and listening tocompliments and congratulations, and he was really glad when thelimousine, answering to orders, rolled up, the final good-byes weresaid, and he and Mr. Narkom swung off townward together.
But despite the fact that he had just carried to a successfulconclusion a case which would go far to enhance his reputation andto hasten the day for which he had so long and so earnestly worked,Cleek was singularly uncommunicative, markedly abstracted, as theyrode back through the streets of Portsmouth Town on their way tothe highroad; and had the superintendent been more observant andless wrapped up in the glory that was to be theirs as the result ofthe day's adventure, he might have discovered that, while hisally seemed to be dozing stupidly when he was not leaning backin a corner and smoking, he was all the time keeping a close watch ofthe crowded streets through which they were speeding as if lookingfor some one or something he expected to see. Nor did he relaxthis peculiar system of vigilance even after the town itself haddropped away into the far distance, and the car was scudding alongover the broad stretches and the less-frequented thoroughfares ofthe open country.
"I shall not go all the way back with you, if you don't mind, Mr.Narkom," he said, breaking silence abruptly, as they raced along."Just set me down at the place where you picked me up this morning,please, and I will do the rest of the journey by train."
"Cinnamon! Why?"
"Oh, just a mere whim of mine, that's all. No--don't press me for anexplanation, please. 'Where ignorance is bliss,' et cetera. Besides,I'm a whimsical beggar at best, you know--and who bothers to inquirewhy a donkey prefers thistles to hay? So just drop me down when wereach the outskirts of Guildford, if you will be so kind."
Mr. Narkom was discreet enough to drop the subject at that and tomake no further allusion to the matter until they came, in thefulness of time, to the place in question. Here he called Lennardto a halt, and Cleek alighted--not furtively, nor yet in haste--and,standing beside the car, reached in and shook hands with him.
"Until you want me again," he smiled in his easy, offhand way. "Andif that turns out to be a long time off I shan't be sorry. Meanwhile,if you wish to do me a favour, look about for a limousine of anothermake and a quite different colour. I've an odd idea that this one isfast coming to the end of its career of usefulness. Good-bye. Allright, Lennard--let her go."
Then the door of the car closed with a smack, and he was off andaway--so openly and at such a leisurely pace that it was clear hehad neither need nor desire to effect a getaway unobserved.
"Well, I'll be dashed!" was Mr. Narkom's unspoken comment upon theproceeding--for, under his hat, he had come to the conclusion thatCleek had, in some way, by some unconfessed means, learned thatWaldemar or the Apache had come back into the game and were againon his heels, but had said nothing for fear of worrying him. "Walkingoff as cool as you please and never the first attempt to come anyof his old Vanishing Cracksman's dodges. Amazing beggar! What's he upto now, I wonder?"
It is just possible that could he have followed he would havewondered still more, for Cleek was bearing straight down upon thepopulous portions of the town, and about ten minutes after the twohad parted, struck into the High Street, walked along it for ashort distance, studying the signs over the various buildings until,sighting one which announced that it was the Guildford Office of theRoyal British Life Assurance Society, he crossed the street, andwith great deliberation passed in under it, and disappeared fromsight.
It was one of the contradictory points of his singularlycontradictory character, that whereas he had chafed under the delayin getting away from the Royal dockyard at Portsea because he waseager to get back to his work in the little old walled garden, andall his thoughts were with the flowers he was preparing for _her_,in the end he did not see the place until after the moon was up,and all hope of gardening for that day had to be abandonedentirely, yet--he came back to Dollops whistling and as happy as asandboy.
He was up with the first cock crow next morning, and dawn found himplying fork and rake and trowel among the flowers, and positivelybubbling over with enthusiasm; for the budding roses were justbeginning to show colour and to give promise of full bloom for theday of days--and more than that he did not ask of heaven.
Indeed, it was written that he might not, for the balance had againswung over, the call of Nature again sounded, and the Great Mother,taking him to her bosom, had again merged the Man in the Idealistand cradled him into forgetfulness of all spells but hers. So thatall through the day he went in and out among his flowers whistlingand singing and living in a sort of ecstasy that ran on like adream without end.
On the morrow the little garden was all finished and ready, andnothing now remained but to sit in idleness and wait.