CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A BLUNDER AND A DISCOVERY
Cleek's knuckles had no more than touched the panel before he becameaware of a singular and most significant circumstance. A faint "snick"sounded upon the other side of the door, a quick, metallic "snick,"which his trained ears identified at once as the switching off of anelectric light; and quick as he was in opening the door, it was anutterly black room he looked into. Still, that did not dismay him. Heknew full well that the button controlling the switch must be near thebed for it to be so quickly reached; and Lord St. Ulmer was mostcertainly _in_ bed, as the creaking springs told him, and it was alwayswithin his power to make an awkward slip and, with every appearance ofan accident, to switch the light on again.
But for the present--as he had thoughtfully stepped in and closed thedoor behind him that he might not stand there in the full glow of thelights in the outer passage, seen, but himself unseeing--for the presenthe was in blackness as dark as ink and as thick as tar, as far as theeye was concerned; and through that blackness the sharp staccato of anexcited man's voice was flinging a challenge at him.
"Who are you? What do you want? What the devil do you mean by coming inhere, unasked?" that voice rapped out with an unmistakable note of alarmin it.
"Master sent me up, your lordship," replied Cleek in the bland, deeplydeferential tones of the well-trained manservant. "He is anxious to knowif your lordship would prefer some especial dish prepared for yourlordship's dinner, or if----"
He got no further than that, for the rasping, excited voice brokesharply in, and the violent jangling of the bed springs told that thespeaker had as sharply turned over in bed.
"Your master sent you up about my dinner?" the voice trumpeted out in asort of panic. "Sent you about my _dinner_--and by that door?"
Then came yet another sound--the jingle of a spoon or a fork against aplate or a cup--and hard after it a noise of rustling paper, and Cleekhad just time to realize that he had blundered, that there must beanother staircase and another door by which the servants came and went,and that, in all probability, judging from that telltale clink of metaland china, his lordship's dinner had already _been_ served, when he madeanother and a yet more embarrassing discovery: his lordship was notalone in the room. Some one was there with him, some one who simply gavean amazed exclamation without putting it into words, then moved swiftly,snicked on the light, and scattered all the darkness with one dazzlingelectric glare.
In that sudden outburst of light Cleek saw a bed and a man on it, a manwho had turned over, so that his face was to the opposite wall, while anopen newspaper--one of many--almost covered his head. Beside that bedthere was a table and a salver loaded with many dishes, and beyond thatan open door, and beyond that again a gaping passage and the head of astaircase that led up from below.
And between the table and the door he saw something more startling anddismaying than all the rest.
With his hand on the switch that controlled the electric light, his headbent forward, and his small, ferret eyes brightly gleaming, Mr. HarryRaynor stood looking him in the face.
"Hullo! I say, who the devil are you?" snarled that startled and amazedyoung man. "What's your game? What are you up to? You're no servant inthis house, dash you! You can't fool _me_ on that point, b'gad! What areyou doing here? What are you up to? What's your little dodge, eh?"
For the present Cleek's "little dodge" was to get out of that room asexpeditiously as possible. For here was an emergency which could not beadequately met by mental finesse; a situation which could result only inexposure and the complete undoing of all his plans if he made anyattempt to bolster up his claim to being one of the servants in thishouse, or stopped to be "interviewed" by young Raynor; and being neverslow to make up his mind or to act, he did both now with amazingcelerity.
Without one word of reply to young Raynor's challenge, indeed withoutone second's hesitation, he backed out of the door by which he had justentered, shut it sharply after him, snicked out the electric light inthe passage, and dodged back into his own room with the fleetsoundlessness of a hunted hare, shutting and bolting himself in with nomore noise than a cat would have made in getting over a garden wall.
In a twinkling, young Raynor, although taken somewhat aback by thisunexpected action, was out after him, being obliged, of course, to stopfor a second and turn on the extinguished light before he could see inwhich direction this pseudoservant had gone, much less follow him; butby the time he had done this Cleek was safely out of sight, and wasengaged in tearing off his evening clothes and bundling them back intothe kit bag as fast as his hands could fly.
The turning on of the light had resulted in the discovery that thepassage was empty, and in a moment there was an uproar. For no soonerhad Raynor voiced one astonished "Good Lord! why, the fellow'sgone--gone as clean as a whistle, blow him!" than Lord St. Ulmer beganto rattle out an absolute fusillade of excited cries and frightenedqueries and suggestions, all snarled up in one hopeless tangle ofjumbled words, and to tug with all his force at the bell rope hangingbeside his bed.
"Head him off! Have him stopped! Find out who he is and what he's upto!" he shrilled out in an excited treble, which was audible to Cleek,even through the thickness of the dividing wall. "Send for your father.Call up the servants. I want to know who that man is and what he wasdoing here."
If that were possible, he had certainly gone the surest and the shortestway about accomplishing what he desired, for the wild pulling of thebell rope had brought the servants flocking up by one staircase and theGeneral and a couple of footmen dashing up by another; and for the nexttwenty seconds, what with young Raynor trying to give his version of theaffair and his lordship excitedly flinging out his, there was confusionand hubbub enough in all conscience. Nobody had any light to shed on themysterious occurrence, however; nobody had seen any man coming down anystaircase, and nobody had the very slightest idea who that particularone could be, whence or why he had come, nor whither and how he couldhave gone.
It was in the midst of this confusion that suddenly the door of the roomimmediately adjoining his lordship's bedchamber was drawn sharplyinward, and then as sharply reclosed until it left but a half foot or sobetween itself and the casing, and through that half foot of space thehead of Mr. Philip Barch was thrust; not, however, before the Generaland his son and the two footmen had had a chance to see that the ownerof that head was arrayed simply in his underclothing, and to understandwhy he had partly reclosed the door when he found people in theimmediate neighbourhood of it.
Apparently Mr. Barch was in a state of violent excitement and did not atonce notice the presence of the General or his son.
"I say, dash it all! what's up? What are you bounders kicking up allthis noise about? And why on earth hasn't one of you answered my ring?"he blurted out, addressing the nearer of the two footmen. "I've pulledthat dashed bell rope until I'm tired. I say, nip downstairs, one ofyou, and tell that valet chap to bring back my clothes, and not tobother about brushing them until after I go to bed. Mr. Harry promisedto lend me a suit of evenin' togs, but went off without doing so, blowhim! And I haven't a blessed livin' stitch to put on!"
"Good Lud, Barch! I do beg a thousand pardons, old chap!" exclaimed theGeneral's hopeful. "Sorry I forgot about the evenin' togs, dear boy.What a beast of a hole you'd have been in if I hadn't come back. Eh,what?"
"Well, if it could be any worse than the one I've been in for the pastfive minutes it would be a marvel, dear boy," responded Cleek, withlamblike innocence. "Always was a thoughtless beggar, don't you know.Took off my blessed clothes, and let your valet toddle off with 'em tobrush 'em, as he suggested, before I once thought about the evenin' onesyou'd promised to lend me."
"Harry's valet?" It was the General who spoke. "Do I understand you tosay, Mr. Barch, that you gave your clothes to somebody whom you took formy son's valet? In the name of reason, where did you get that impressionof the man? I ask, because Harry has no special valet. Hawkins,here"--indicating the second f
ootman--"valets both my son and myself;but having only me to look after this evening, as we did not expectHarry to return in time for dinner, he has been in attendance upon me upto the present moment, so it most certainly could not have been he."
"Oh, no; chap wasn't a bit like him, General. Wasn't like the otherfootman, either. Tallish chap, fair-haired, little turned-up 'ginger'moustache. Was dressed in evening clothes and wore a black-and-yellowstriped waistcoat."
"That's the man! That's the man!" trumpeted forth Harry Raynor and LordSt. Ulmer in concert, the latter's excited voice ringing out from theroom into which, unfortunately, Cleek could not, of course, see. "That'sthe identical fellow, pater; Barch has described him to a hair," went onyoung Raynor, addressing his father. "Sneak thief--that was his littlegame, St. Ulmer. Nicked my friend Barch's clothes and would have nickedyours, too, if he hadn't come a cropper. Got down the staircase there,and dodged into one of the empty rooms, I'll lay my life, pater, and assoon as you came up and left the coast clear, slipped out of the houseand got away."
In the game of life chance is an important factor; and chance, as muchas anything else, favoured Cleek in this particular instance, for it washis especial aim to lull Lord St. Ulmer's suspicions of the mysterious"man" and to quiet any fear he might possess of that man's possibleconnection with the police. It need scarcely be recorded, therefore,that he hastened to second Harry Raynor's suggestion relative to theintruder being nothing more nor less than a sneak thief, who had takenprecisely the mode mentioned of making his escape, and backed it up witha panicky sort of appeal to the General to "have the house searched andall the empty rooms below stairs looked into on the off-chance that thefellow hadn't really got away as yet."
The suggestion was acted upon forthwith. Every vacant room was searched,and it was in this matter that chance favoured Cleek so signally, for itwas found that a window in one of the lower rooms had been left wideopen, and as that window communicated with a veranda, from which a shortflight of steps led down to the garden at a point where the walk wasasphalted and could not be expected to retain a footprint, there wouldseem to be no question of where and how the man had made his escape.
Dinner, owing to this interruption, together with the unexpected returnof Mr. Harry and the awkward position in which Philip Barch had beenplaced, was put back for half an hour; and Cleek, left to himself,proceeded to dress himself in the clothes with which young Raynor hadsupplied him. But for all his cleverness in turning suspicion intoanother channel, he was not best pleased with the result of theadventure, for he was faced with the fact that he had failed toaccomplish what he had set out to do, and that his efforts concerningLord St. Ulmer had been absolutely barren of results. He had _not_succeeded in seeing his lordship's face, he had _not_ succeeded indiscovering how this man, of all men, should have come into possessionof the Jetanola labels, or, indeed, _anything_ that had belonged toFerdinand Lovetski. Ferdinand Lovetski had been done to death in Parisonly seven years ago, and his lordship had been--or was said to havebeen--more than twice that number of years in Argentina.
Then there was another point: What had called Harry Raynor away sounexpectedly, and what had so unexpectedly called him back? What was hedoing in Lord St. Ulmer's room this evening? Was his being there merelya commonplace thing, or was there something between them? More thanthat, what was the connection between young Raynor and Margot? How cameshe to be writing letters to him, sending her photograph to him? Andwhat was the explanation of the scrap of pink gauze that was hidden withthe other things in the filled tobacco jar? The scrap of gauze which hadbeen caught by the nail head in the passage at Gleer Cottage was pink,the same shade of pink he believed as Raynor's fragment, and neither wasanything like Ailsa Lorne's frock. True, there was no stitchery ofrose-coloured silk upon that fragment Raynor had kept hidden in thetobacco jar, but that didn't prove that there was none upon the frockfrom which it came. It might have been torn from a part that was devoidof stitchery; and, again, it might not be part of the frock at all. Itmight be part of a gauze scarf that was worn with the dress. Women dowear things like that with evening gowns.
Hum-m-m! Now if the dress which Margot wore was found in time to haverose-coloured stitchery, and the pattern of that stitchery matched thepattern on the piece found in Gleer Cottage---- Yes, but what would takeMargot to Gleer Cottage? Certainly it would be to meet a man; but whatman? De Louvisan? But if he had been an Apache and a traitor, he wouldhave been on his guard, and would make no appointment with her or withany of her followers.
Then what other man? Lord St. Ulmer, who, on the evidence of his muddyboots, had been out _somewhere_ last night, or the fellow--whoever hemight prove to be--who had killed the Common keeper and had hidden theclothing in the General's famous ruin? For, according to thatunfortunate Common keeper, there had been two persons implicated in theattack upon him. What two? Margot would not fit in with any theory thatimplicated Sir Philip Clavering--it would be preposterous to suggestsuch a thing--nor did it really seem feasible to connect her with St.Ulmer either but for the fact of those labels and his own knowledgethat Lovetski had once been a member of the Apaches.
Perplexed with these thoughts, Cleek was almost startled at the sound ofthe second dinner gong, and he walked swiftly to the glass to note theeffect of his borrowed plumes. They were certainly not a good fit, andhe passed his hand over the wrinkled breast; then--his fingers stoppedsuddenly at the touch of something hard in the pocket. Slowly, his lipsdrawn to a soundless whistle, he pulled out a round metal object andlooked at it with startled eyes, his thoughts in a sudden conflictingwhirl.
Last night, when he had found the golden capsule with the name ofKatharine upon it, and had given Mr. Narkom a brief history of thefamous _Huile Violette_ and the methods of the _grande dames_ of old, hehad declared that he knew of but one woman who ever had worn one ofthose antique scent bracelets, and knew of _her_ wearing it simplybecause he himself had stolen it from a famous collection and given itto her. To-night that identical bracelet, with the scent globe and thestopper cut from an emerald, was in his hand again! Margot's bracelet inthe pocket of Harry Raynor's coat! And only a moment or two ago he hadasked himself, "Which man?"