The Riddle of the Purple Emperor

  CHAPTER IV

  THE HOUSE OF SHADOWS

  Constable Roberts did "come on" and at a speed highly commendable,considering his portly build. Cleek, passing the long French windowsthrough which he had obtained entry but an hour before, stopped toascertain that they, too, were now bolted and barred.

  Snapping on their electric torches they tore up the short flight ofsteps leading to the front door.

  "Someone has made good use of their time," Cleek whispered, as hethought how easily he had entered with Lady Margaret such a short whilebefore. "There's no use trying to force this door and the windows arenow shuttered and barred. The only thing to do is to try knocking themup."

  A second later Mr. Roberts sent a valiant peal resounding through thehouse and both men listened tensely for any response. One, two, perhapsfive minutes passed; the echoes of their blows had died away intosilence, and the flash of their torches showed to each of them only theother's strained expectant face. Neither eye nor ear could detect anysigns of movement within.

  "How we're to get in beats me," said Constable Roberts with a frownpuckering his bushy brows. "We'll have to break in, in the name of thelaw."

  And as though that very name had in itself something of thesupernatural, there came a sound, a rustle, a step within the house, andthe nerves of both men were near to snapping point. They stood a momentlistening, while the harsh grating of bolts being withdrawn into theirsockets came to their ears, and in another second the great door swungslowly back upon its hinges. The mellow radiance of lamps streamed outand flung a circle of light round them. As it did so a little gasp ofastonishment came from both men, for in the doorway, gazing out on themin dignified reproof, stood an immaculate butler. Their hearts seemedfor a moment to cease beating and they stared in dumb amazement.

  It was Cleek who recovered his wits first. He turned to the butler witha perfectly impassive face.

  "We want to see Lady Margaret Cheyne at once," he rapped out sharply."At once please!"

  The butler moved a little aside, as if the visit were the most ordinaryone in the world.

  "Her ladyship has retired for the night, sir," was the surprisinganswer. "I will see if the mistress--Miss Cheyne--will see you."

  "Miss Cheyne!" said Cleek, sharply.

  "Heavens! man, but she is dead," shouted the outraged constable beforeCleek could stop him. "This gentleman came to fetch me to view the body.In the name of the law, I am going to search the place."

  Staggered by the announcement, with staring eyes and dough-whitecountenance the man fell back a pace, and seizing the opportunity thusoffered, Cleek stepped into the hall, closely followed by Roberts.

  "This is preposterous!" ejaculated the butler, at last, as if only justrealizing the gravity of the situation; then, raising his voice, heechoed the last words, "Miss Cheyne dead!"

  And then--a good many strange things had happened in the course of thisnight, but to Cleek it seemed as if the very earth had stopped in itscourse, the door of the room which he knew to be the dining room openedwith a little angry jerk, and in the doorway stood a figure that causedCleek's heart to leap in his mouth. It was no less than that of thewoman who had lain dead at his feet but a short time ago. It was MissCheyne herself!

  "Miss Cheyne dead! What does this impertinence mean?" she demanded in ahard, shrill voice at the sound of which the constable's ruddy facebecame purple with anger. He whipped off his helmet and he pulledsavagely at his forelock.

  "Beg yer pardon, Miss Cheyne, yer ladyship," he stuttered "fordisturbing you--but this--this-individual--," he almost choked over hiswords--"came and fetched me away from the nicest bit of supper I everwants to see, to tell me you was a-lying murdered, begging yer pardon,and that Lady Margaret, whom he'd driven over in his car, was asleepalone in the empty house. More fool me to believe him, yer ladyship, butyou'd 'ave done the same yourself in my place----"

  "But I tell you----" began Cleek.

  The Honourable Miss Cheyne wheeled round on him, her eyes sparkling withanger.

  "So," she ejaculated, one hand pressed to her side, and Cleek foundhimself unconsciously recognizing the rings which had flashed in thelamplight on the fingers of the murdered woman. "So you are theimpertinent stranger who inflicted himself on an ignorant, helplessgirl, and caused me to miss my niece at the station. I drive back withthe servants I had ordered from London to find my niece sleeping in achair. I have packed her off to bed. And as for you, sir, you are animpostor and a thief for aught I know----"

  This last assertion Cleek took no notice of, but advancing toward her hesaid firmly:

  "I want to see Lady Margaret----"

  "Indeed," was the sarcastic reply. "I am not aware that it is customaryfor strangers to intrude themselves upon people, even if they have beenof some service. As far as you are concerned, sir, my niece's reputationhas had every prospect of being blighted by your misconceived andmisdirected attentions."

  "I have no wish to intrude or to make much of the trifling aid I wasable to give your niece, Madam," responded Cleek seriously. "My name isDeland, and you can make what enquiries you like from my friend Mr.Maverick Narkom, Superintendent of Scotland Yard as to--er--my generalcharacter if you are at all doubtful about it."

  A still angrier gleam shone in Miss Cheyne's eyes, and even as the wordsleft his mouth, Cleek, with that queer sixth sense of intuition, feltthat he had said the wrong thing. If there were anything wrong, then thevery name of the law would set them on their guard.

  Miss Cheyne, however, seemed disposed to push her momentary advantage toits utmost.

  "I don't care for fifty Superintendents," she declared, angrily, lookingback into Cleek's face with flaming eyes. "You have no right to forceyour way into my house on any pretext whatsoever. Indeed, I am not surethat I can't have the law on you for breaking in my windows thisevening. It will cost me a pretty penny. But I should like you tounderstand that I won't have my niece disturbed by anybody, so if youcan't explain your visit to me, I'll say good-night and good riddance.As for you, Policeman, you ought to be ashamed of yourself to come hereand rouse me on such a nonsensical errand."

  She cut short Mr. Roberts's excuses and practically drove the two menback until they found themselves once more on the steps. Then the doorslammed in their faces.

  Constable Roberts turned swiftly upon his companion, and commenced apent-up tirade against him for having fetched him out on this wild-goosechase.

  Cleek stood still, pinching his chin with a thumb and forefinger, hiseyes narrowed down to slits. Review the facts however calmly, he couldstill find no fitting solution. Sure he was that a dead woman had staredat him from the floor of that house, but he was also just as sure thatthe same woman had driven him out from it. And what of Lady Margaretherself? He had not a shadow of right to insist on seeing her. She wasin the hands of her natural guardian, and yet, and yet----! The shadowof doubt hung over him.

  He stopped short suddenly and sniffed in the air, much to theopen-mouthed astonishment of Constable Roberts, whose grumblingremonstrances died away.

  "Good Lord man, sir, I mean," he exclaimed, agitatedly, "but what's inthe wind now?"

  "Scent and sense, my good fellow," said Cleek. "There is a distinctodour of jasmine in the air and an artificial scent, _Huile de jasmin_at that. It is a woman's scent, too, and some woman has been hereto-night. She's been on these very stone steps."

  "Well, what if she has? That don't excuse you a-saying that Miss Cheyneis dead, when she's no more dead than you or me----" retorted theconstable, heatedly. "I shall be the laughing-stock of the country,fetched out like a fool----"

  Hardly listening to the stream of grumbling expostulation issuing fromthe mouth of Constable Roberts, Cleek bent down and sniffed againvigorously. He tested each step till he reached the gravelled path. Allat once he gave vent to a sharp cry of triumph for there, indented inthe path before him and revealed by the light of his torch, was the markof a slender shoe--a woman's shoe unmistakably.

  In a seco
nd they had passed the lodge gates and were out in the narrowlane, which was black as a beggar's pocket, and as empty. A placid moonshone over silent fields, and only the soft whirr of the motor broke thesilence as they sped along.

  Nevertheless Cleek, as ever, was on the look-out. The sixth sense ofimpending danger which was in him strangely developed hung over him.

  Suddenly, with a little cry of surprise and a grinding of brakes, hepulled the car up with such a jerk that Roberts, who had subsided into asomnolent silence, was nearly thrown off the seat at his side.

  "A dollar for a ducat but I'm right!" he exclaimed sharply. "There'ssomeone on that side of the hedge."

  Without stopping a second he leaped down, cleared the low hedge aslightly as any schoolboy, and pounced on a crouching, running, pantingfigure.

  "One minute, sir," he began. Then his fingers almost lost their hold, asthe face of a man in deadly terror gazed up at him, and from him to themajesty of the law as embodied in the person of Constable Roberts. Thatworthy, having descended from the car, was now looking over the hedge.

  "Lawks, sir, if it bain't Sir Edgar himself!" he ejaculated, and thesound of the evidently familiar voice seemed to pull the distraughtyoung man together.

  "Hello, Roberts," he said with a brave attempt at the debonairnonchalance which was his usual manner, an attempt that did not blindCleek to the fact that his lips were trembling and beads of perspirationstanding on his pale forehead.

  "What are you doing gadding around at this time of night?"

  "Me, sir?" replied Roberts, bitterly. "I've bin fetched out to seemurdered women and----"

  "Not--not Miss Cheyne!" gasped the young man.

  A queer little smile looped up one corner of Cleek's mouth.

  "Hello, hello!" he said, mentally, "someone else knows of it, eh?" Herewas somebody who, to his way of thinking, jumped to right conclusionstoo quickly. Why should Sir Edgar Brenton, as he knew this man to be,know that it should be Miss Cheyne, unless--and here Cleek's mind racedon wings of doubt again--unless he himself had killed Miss Cheyne? Andif so, who was this woman----?

  As if from some distance he could hear Roberts's grumbling bellow:

  "Miss Cheyne? Lor', don't you go for to say you've got that bee in yourbonnet, too, Sir Edgar. It is quite enough with this gent, LieutenantDeland, a-coming and fetching me away from my bit of supper. What mymissis will say remains to be 'eard, as they says. 'Deed, no, MissCheyne's as live as you, and in a thunderin' bad temper----"

  "Thank the Lord!" ejaculated the young squire in a low, ferventundertone.

  "An' what made _you_ think, if I might be so bold, Sir Edgar, that itwas Miss Cheyne?" asked the constable curiously, voicing Cleek'sunspoken thought.

  That gentleman cleared his throat before answering.

  "It was just a chance hit, Roberts," said he, but his voice held an oddlittle crabbed note in it. "You see, you were coming straight fromCheyne Court, so it couldn't have been any one else."

  "No, sir, come to think, it couldn't be," assented Roberts, and Cleek,who had stepped back into the shadow of the hedge, twitched up hiseyebrows as he sensed the relief that stole over Sir Edgar's face.

  "A nice fright you gave me, too," continued the young man, speaking moreeasily. "I'm supposed to be at a political dinner-fight in London, youknow, Roberts. Only just got back, in fact, and I didn't feel up to it,so when I heard that precious motor of yours I was afraid it might besome dashed good-natured friend, don't you know, and so I cut acrossthe hedge."

  "Quite right, too," assented Constable Roberts approvingly, in whoseeyes Sir Edgar could do no wrong. Then to Cleek, "Well, sir, I thinkwe'll be moving, if you don't mind."

  "Indeed I don't," Cleek replied, and then he addressed Sir Edgar. "SorryI startled you, sir--took you for a poacher, don't you know. Perhapsyou'll let me drive you through the village if you are going this way."He smiled with a well-feigned air of stupidity, put up his eyeglass intohis eye, and lurched up against the young man as he spoke.

  "Pleased," mumbled Sir Edgar, and got into the limousine.

  Another two or three minutes' run brought them into the village, andhere Sir Edgar insisted on alighting, and continuing his journey onfoot.

  Cleek watched him go with brows on which deep furrows were marked.

  "Wonder what made the young gentleman lie so futilely?" he said atlength as his shadow gradually merged in with the darkness ahead.

  "Lie?" echoed the astonished constable, as he fumbled with the latch ofhis garden gate.

  "Yes, lie, my friend," flung back Cleek, his foot on the step of thecar. "He was running _to_ the station not _from_ it; his clothes smeltstrongly of the scent which pervaded the house this afternoon, namelyjasmine; and thirdly, there was a revolver in his pocket. A revolver isa thing no gentleman takes to a dinner with him, even a political one."

  And, leaving Mr. Roberts to digest this piece of mental food with hislong-delayed supper, the car whizzed away in the moonlight. Cleek'sfirst duty was to Ailsa, and he found her waiting for him pale andexpectant at the little gate.

  "Oh," she cried, as the motor panted its way into silence. "I thoughtyou were never coming back. Where is she, dear? Where is that helplesschild?"

  She hurried out, but Cleek flung up an arresting hand.

  "I am either going mad, Ailsa, or else there is a greater mystery herethan I can fathom," he said quickly. "Miss Cheyne herself was there toreceive us and----"

  "_Miss Cheyne!_" echoed Ailsa, her eyes dilating, and apparently she wasalmost as shocked at this news of her evident existence as she had beena short while back by her demise. "But you said----" her voice trailedaway into silence, and Cleek took the words out of her mouth.

  "She was dead! Yes, I certainly thought so, and I cannot understand it.Nevertheless, Miss Cheyne is there all right, Constable Roberts willvouch for that; and Lady Margaret is presumably tucked up safe and soundin her bed, but it is incomprehensible to me. Here's the story if youcare to hear it."

  He gave a rough outline of his various discoveries and at the end of itAilsa nodded her head gravely.

  "I cannot understand it, either," she said. "I suppose nothing can bedone, but I will go up to Cheyne Court early in the morning and see thechild for myself."

  Cleek smiled his approval.

  "I wish you would," he said. "I must run up and see Mr. Narkom, andto-morrow perhaps--well, who knows----"