CHAPTER ONE
A MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR
It was half-past eleven on the night of Wednesday, April 14th, when thewell-known red limousine of Mr. Maverick Narkom, superintendent ofScotland Yard, came abruptly to the head of Mulberry Lane, which, as youmay possibly know, is a narrow road skirting one of the loneliest andwildest portions of Wimbledon Common.
Lennard, the chauffeur, put on the brake with such suddenness that thecar seemed actually to rise from the earth, performed a sort of buzzingand snorting semicircle, and all but collided with the rear wall ofWuthering Grange before coming to a halt in the narrow road space whichlay between that wall and the tree-fringed edge of the great Common.
Under ordinary circumstances one might as soon have expected to run foulof a specimen of the great auk rearing a family in St. Paul'schurchyard, as to find Mr. Narkom's limousine in the neighbourhood ofMulberry Lane at any hour of the day or the night throughout the wholecycle of the year.
For a reason which will be made clear in the course of events, however,the superintendent had been persuaded to go considerably out of his waybefore returning to town after mingling duty with pleasure in takingpart in the festivities attendant upon the coming of age of his friendSir Philip Clavering's son and heir, and, incidentally, in seeing, too,that Petrie and Hammond, two of his sergeants, kept a watchful eye uponthe famous Clavering service of gold plate which had been brought out ofthe bank vault for the occasion.
All three were sitting serenely back among the cushions of the limousineat the period when Lennard brought it to this abrupt and startling halt,the result of which was to fairly jerk them out of their seats and sendthem sprawling over one another in a struggling heap.
There was a moment of something like absolute confusion, for mist anddarkness enveloped both the road and the Common, and none of the threecould see anything from the windows of the car which might decidewhether they had collided with some obstruction or were hovering uponthe brink of some dangerous and unexpected pitfall.
Nor were their fears lessened by perceiving--through the glassscreen--that Lennard had started up from his seat, and, with a hastilyproduced electric torch in one upraised hand, was leaning forward andwildly endeavouring to discern something through the all-enfolding mist.Mr. Narkom hastily unlatched the door and leaned out.
"What is it? What's gone wrong?" he inquired in the sharp staccato ofexcitement. "Anything amiss?"
"Lord, yessir! I heard a shot and a cry. A pistol shot ... and a policewhistle ... and a cry of murder, sir. Up the lane ahead of us!" beganLennard, in a quaking voice; then he uttered a cry of fright, for, of asudden, the darkness was riven by the screaming note of a policewhistle--of two police whistles in fact: shrilling appeal and answer farup the lonely lane.
Hard on this came a man's voice shouting: "Head him off there, whoeveryou are! Don't let him get by you. Look sharp! He's making for therailway arch!"
"All right, mate. I'm here!" another male voice flung back. "He won'tget past me, the blighter!"
Instantly there struck out the swift-measured sound of heavily shod feetracing at top speed up the mist-shrouded lane, and rapidly increasingthe distance between the unseen runner and the standing limousine.
No need to tell either Narkom or his men that the man whose steps theyheard was a constable, for there is a distinctive note, to ears that aretrained, rung out by the heavy, cumbersome boots which folly accords tothe British policeman.
Catching the ring of that telltale note now, Narkom shouted out at thetop of his voice: "All right, Constable! Stick to him! Help coming!"
Then with a word of command to Lennard he pulled in his head, slammedthe door, and the chauffeur, dropping back to his seat, threw open theclutch and sent the limousine bounding up the lane at a fifty-mile clip.
To-night, with the trees shadowing it and the mist crowding in, shoulderhigh, from the adjacent Common, the lane was a mere dark funnel; but toLennard, whose boyhood had been passed within hailing distance of theplace, it possessed no mysteries that the night or the vapour couldhide.
He knew that it ran on for some seven or eight hundred feet, with thehigh brick wall which marked the rear boundary of Wuthering Grange onone side of it and straggling trees and matted gorse bushes shutting itin on the other, until it dipped down a steadily increasing incline, andran straightway through an old brick-walled, brick-roofed arch of along-abandoned Wimbledon Loop line.
Some two hundred feet upon the other side of this it divided into a sortof "Y," one branch swerving to the left forming a right of way acrossthe meadows to the public highway, whilst the other struck out over theCommon to the right, crossed Beverly Brook, and merged at length intothe road which leads to Coombe Wood, and thence, through picturesqueways, to Kingston and the river.
The limousine took those seven or eight hundred feet between the head ofthe lane and the old railway arch at such a stupendous pace that itseemed to have no more than started before the distance was eaten upand it came to halt again; but this time, in such a din and babel ofstruggling and shouting that Lennard seemed to have reached the verygateway of Sheol.
Narkom and his men were out of the vehicle almost as the brake fell intoplace, and clicking their electric pocket torches into sudden flame,rushed headlong into the black opening of the arch, into which they hadtaken but half a dozen steps, when they came upon a startling sight.
Snarling and yapping like a couple of fighting dogs and crying out inconcert: "Got you, you blighter! Got you fast!" were two men, lockedtight in each other's arms, reeling and swaying--one wearing theofficial badge of an appointed Common keeper, the other in the helmetand tunic of an ordinary constable.
"Lend a hand, gov'ner, for Gawd's sake!" rapped out the former. "Name'sMawson, sir--keeper on the Common-- Number four, sir. Got theblackguard! Murder, sir--got him red handed!"
"Good Lord!" little more than gulped the man he held.
The two pairs of gripping hands dropped, the struggling figures fellapart, and the two men who but an instant before had been locked in anangry embrace stood staring at each other in open-mouthed amazement.
"What kind of a game is this?" demanded Narkom, as with his allies hecrowded forward. "You two people are paid to keep the peace, not tobreak it, dash you!"
"My word!" exclaimed the Common keeper, finding his voice suddenly. "Acopper, is it?--a copper! when I thought.... Gawd's truth, Constable,wot have you done with him? He run in here with me on his blessed heels.You didn't let him get past you, did you?"
"No fear!" snapped out the constable indignantly. "I stood herewaiting--waiting and shouting to you--until you ran smack into myblessed arms; and if anybody but you come in _your_ side of the arch, henever come out o' mine, I'll take my solemn oath!"
"Then where's he gone? Wot's become of him?" shouted the Common keeperexcitedly. "I tell you I was on the very heels of him from the moment Ifirst whistled and called out to you to head him off. I could a-mosthave touched him when he dashed in here; and--and his footsteps neverstopped soundin' for one second the whole blessed time. Murder is wothe's done--murder!--and I've been on his heels from the very moment hefired the shot."
Narkom and his allies lost not an instant in revealing their identityand displaying their insignia of office to the two men.
"Murder is it, Keeper?" exclaimed the superintendent, remembering all atonce what Lennard had said about hearing the cry and the shot. "When andhow? Lead me to the body."
"Lor' bless you, sir, I aren't 'ad no time nor chanct to look after anybody," replied the keeper. "All's I can tell you is that I was out therein my shelter on the Common when I heard the first cry--like as some onewas callin' for help whiles some one else had 'em by the windpipe, sir;so I dashes out and cuts through the mist and gorse as fast as myblessed legs could carry me. Jist as I gets to the edge of the lane,sir, 'Bang!' goes a revolver shot jist 'arf a dozen feet in front of me,and a man, wot I couldn't see 'ide nor 'air of on account of the mist,nicks out o' somewheres, and cuts off
down the lane like a blessed race'orse. I outs with me whistle and blows it as 'ard as I could, and cutsoff after him. He never stopped runnin' for a blessed instant. He neverdoubled on me, never turned to the right nor to the left, gov'ner, butjist dashes into this arch--straight in front of me, sir, and me runningon almost within reachin' distance, until I runs smack into the arms ofthis constable here, and grabs _him_, thinkin' I'd got my man for sure.Wherever he's got to since, I tell you he come in here, sir--smack_in_!--and me after him; and if he didn't get past the constable----"
"He didn't-- I've told you so once, and I'll stick to it!" interruptedthe constable himself, with some show of heat. "What do you take mefor--an old woman? Look here, Mr. Narkom, sir, my name's Mellish. It'strue I've only been on the force a little over a week, sir, but mysergeant will tell you I've got my wits about me and aren't in the leastlikely to let a man slip past me in the manner that this chap thinks._Nothing_ went past me--nothing the size of a cat, let alone a man,sir--and if the party in question really _did_ come in here----"
"I'll soon settle that question!" rapped in Narkom sharply.
He flung a hurried command to Lennard, waved Petrie and Hammond aside,and an instant later the limousine moved swiftly up out of the mistuntil its bulk filled the entrance of the arch and its blazing acetylenelamps were sweeping it with light from end to end. Smooth as a riflebore, its damp walls and curving roof shone out in the sudden glare--nota brick displaced, not a crevice big enough to shelter a rat much less ahuman being--and of the man the Common keeper had been chasing, not asign nor a trace anywhere!
"Whatever the fellow did or wherever he went, he can't have gone far, solook sharp, my lads!" commanded Narkom. "If we're quick we're sure tonab him. Come along, Constable, come along, Keeper. Lennard, you stopwhere you are and guard the exit from the arch, so if he doubles on ushe can't get by _you_!"
"Right you are, sir!" responded Lennard, as the superintendent and thefour men made a dash toward that end of the arch through which thekeeper was so positive the fugitive had come.
"I say, Mr. Narkom!" he added, raising his voice and shouting afterthem. "Eyes sharp to the left, all of you, when you get outside thisarch. Know the neighbourhood like a book, sir. Lane forks out into a 'Y'after you get about fifty yards on. Branches off on the left wherethere's an old house called Gleer Cottage, sir, that hasn't beentenanted for years and years. Walled garden--tool house--stable. Greatplace for man to hide, sir!"
"Good boy! Thanks!" flung back Narkom. "Come on, my lads! Lively!"
Then they swung out of the arch with a rush, and the last that Lennardsaw of them before the shrouding mist took them and blotted them fromhis view, they were pelting up the lane at top speed and making headlongfor the branching "Y" to which he had directed them, their footstepssounding on the moist surface of the road and their electric torchesemitting every now and again a spark like a glowworm flashing.
Five minutes passed--the click of their flying steps had dropped offinto silence; the flash of their torches had vanished in the distanceand the mist; even the blurred sound of their excited voices wasstilled; and neither ear nor eye could now detect anything but the softdrip of the moisture from the roof of the arch and the white oblivion ofthe close-pressing, ever-thickening mist.
Still he sat there, waiting--alert, watchful, keen--looking straightbefore him and keeping a close watch on the unobstructed end of theminiature tunnel whose entire length was still flooded with the glarefrom the motor's lamps. If a mouse had crawled down its damp walls hemust have seen it; if even so much as a shadow had come up out of thatwilderness of mist and crept into the place, he must have detected, it.But there was nothing; neither man nor beast, neither shade nor shadow;only the loneliness and the mist and the soft "plick-plick!" of thedropping moisture.
The five minutes became eight, ten, a dozen, without the slightestchange in anything. Then, all of a sudden, Lennard's tense nerves gave asort of jump and a swift prickle flashed up his spine and through hishair. A sound had come--a rustle--a step--a movement. Not from thedirection in which he was looking, however, but from the lane beyond thearch and _behind_ the limousine.
He jumped to his feet and rising on tiptoe on his driver's seat flashedthe light of his electric torch back over the top of the vehicle; whathe saw took all the breath out of him and set his heart and pulseshammering furiously.
Against that thick blanket of mist the penetrating power of the torch'sgleam was so effectually blunted that it could do nothing more thanthrow a pale, weak circle of light a few feet into the depths of acrowding vapour, leaving all beyond and upon either side doubly dark incontrast.
Yet as the light streamed out and flung that circle into the impingingmist, there moved across it the figure of a woman, young and fair, witha scarf of lace thrown over her head, from beneath which fell a gloryof unbound hair, thick and lustrous, over shoulders that were wrapped inermine--ermine in mid-April!
A woman! Here! At this hour! In this time of violence and evil doing!The thing was so uncanny, so unnatural, so startlingly unexpected, thatLennard's head swam.
She was gone so soon--just glimmering across the circle of light andthen vanishing into the mist as suddenly as she had appeared--that for amoment or two he lost his nerve and his wits, and ducked down under thescreen of the motor's top, remembering all the tales he had ever heardof ghosts and apparitions, and, in a moment of folly, half believing hehad looked upon one. But of a sudden his better sense asserted itself,and realizing that for a woman--_any_ woman, no matter how dressed, nomatter how young and fair and good to look upon--to be moving stealthilyabout this place, at this hour, when there was talk of murder, was atleast suspicious, he laid hands upon the wheel, and being unable to turnthe vehicle in the arch and go after _her_, put on full power and wentafter Narkom and his men. A swift whizz carried him through the arch andup the lane, and, once in the open, he laid hand upon the bulb of themotor horn and sent blast after blast hooting through the stillness,shouting at the top of his voice as he scorched over the ground:
"Mr. Narkom! Mr. Narkom! This way, sir, this way! This way!"