Cleek of Scotland Yard: Detective Stories

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  They that climb the highest have the farthest to fall.

  It was after five o'clock when the limousine arrived at the premisesof Trent & Son, and Cleek, guided by the junior member of the firmand accompanied by Superintendent Narkom, climbed the steep stairs tothe housetop and was shown into the glass-room.

  His first impression, as the door swung inward, was of a scentof flowers so heavy as to be oppressive; his second, of enteringinto a light so brilliant that it seemed a very glare of gold,for the low-dropped sun, which yellowed all the sky, flooded theplace with a radiance which made him blink, and it was some littletime before his eyes could accustom themselves to it sufficientto let him discover that the old Italian waxworker was there, busyon his latest tableau.

  Cleek blinked and looked at the old man, serenely at first, thenblinked and looked again, conscious of an overwhelming sense ofamazement and defeat for just one fraction of a minute, and thatsome of his cocksure theories regarding the case had suddenly beenknocked into a cocked hat.

  No wonder Mr. Harrison Trent had spoken of deterioration in the artof this once celebrated modeller. No wonder!

  The man was not Giuseppe Loti at all!--not that world-famed workerin wax who had sworn in those bitter other days to have the life ofthe vanished James Colliver.