open window, but dimming again when they sagged back into position without anything coming of their disturbance.
"Waiting, you see," said Cleek in a whisper as he and Narkom emerged from the screen of the trees, and saw the chink of light made by the wind-blown curtains, and the shadow which moved back and forth and momentarily blotted it. "Poor old chap! He must be suffering torments. Come on! Step lightly! Make no noise until we are at the window's ledge. This is the end of his waiting at last!"
Evidently the General was of that opinion, also, when, a few moments later, he heard a footstep on the gravel, and, halting to listen and to make sure, heard that footstep come on and up the terrace steps. With a quick intaking of the breath and a whispered, "Is it you? Is it you at last?" he moved fleetly to the window, twitched aside the curtains, and let the guarded light streak outward into the night.
It fell full upon two men—Cleek and Narkom—standing within an arm's reach of the indrawn sashes and the divided drapery.
A flash of sudden pallor, followed quickly by an angry flush, passed over the General's face as he saw and recognized Cleek.
"Really, Mr. Barch, this is carrying your little pleasantries too far," he rapped out in a voice that had a little tremble in it. "Will you allow me to say that we are not accustomed to guests who get up and prowl about the place at all hours of the night, and turn up suddenly at half-past one in the morning with uninvited acquaintances."
"Quite so," said Cleek, "but the law is no respecter of any man's convenience, General."
"The law? The law?" The General's sudden fright was pitiful. He dropped back a step under the shock of the thing, and all the colour drained out of his lips and cheeks. "What utter absurdity! What have I to do with the law? What have you, Mr. Barch?"
"Cleek, if you want the truth of it, General—Cleek of the Forty Faces, Cleek of Scotland Yard. It's time to lay aside the mask of 'Philip Barch' forever."
"Cleek? Cleek?" The General's cry was scarcely more than a shrill whisper. "God! You that man? You? And all the time you have been here in my house. Oh, my God! is this the end?"
"Yes, I fear it is, General," said Cleek in reply, as he stepped past him and moved into the room. "If you dance to the devil's music in your youth, my friend, be sure he will come round with the hat in the days of your age! Last night one of the follies of your youth came to its inevitable end: last night a man was murdered who—— Stop! Doors won't lead a man out of his retribution. Come away from that one. The gentleman who is with me, General, is Mr. Maverick Narkom, superintendent of Scotland Yard. Isn't that enough to show you how impossible it is to evade what is to be? Besides, why should you want to get out of the room? It's not your life that's in danger, it's your honour; and there's no need to make any attempt to prevent either your wife or your son learning that when both are deep in the drugged sleep to which you sent them."
"My God!" The General collapsed into a chair.
"That's right," said Cleek. "Sit down to it, General, for it is likely to be a strength-sapping time. I've something to say to you; and Mr. Narkom has still something to hear. But first, for the sake of emergencies, and to have things handy if required, allow me to take a certain precaution."
As he spoke he moved over to the window, and switched the curtains over them.
"General," he said, facing about again, "the laws of society, the laws which prevail in civilized communities, are pretty rotten things. If a woman errs in her youth she pays for it all her whole life long—in sorrow, in tears, in never-ceasing disgrace. If the same law prevailed for both sexes, and men had to pay for the sins of their youth as women must for theirs, how many of them think you would be out of sackcloth to-day? Atonement is for the man, never for the woman. For Eve, youth must stand always as a time of purity, unspotted by a single sin. For Adam, it stands only as a time of folly that may be brushed aside and of sin that may be outlived. Probably you were no worse in the days of your youth, General, than ninety-nine men out of every hundred, but——" He gave his shoulders a shrug, and broke off.
But of a sudden he reached round and took a packet of letters from the tail pockets of his evening coat, and threw them to the stricken man.
"Carry those things to Lady Clavering and let her burn them with her own hands," he said. "They are letters which caused last night's crime—the letters of Mademoiselle Marise de Morcerf, a pretty school-girl, who wrote them in all innocence to Lieutenant Raynor out there in Malta, all those years ago. They were stolen by the man who was christened under the name of Anatole de Vellon, and died under that of Count Franz de Louvisan."
The General plucked up the letters with a wild sort of eagerness and sat forward in his chair, breathing hard.
"You know then, you know?" he said, in a shaking voice, the pallor on his face deepening until he was absolutely ghastly. "Is there, then, no keeping anything from you, that you are able to unearth secrets such as this—things that no one but our two wretched selves knew in all the world? And you know how that man, that De Louvisan, had blackmailed her?"
"Yes, General, I know. But the source of my knowledge is by no means so miraculous as you seem to fancy. It came in part from those letters and in part from your guest, Lord St. Ulmer."
"St. Ulmer? St. Ulmer? What can he know of this? He is in no way concerned. He is little better than a stranger to me, despite his relationship to my wife."
"Nevertheless, he knows more than you fancy, General. He, too, was a visitor to Gleer Cottage last night. And he went, as you went, my friend, determined to be rid of the danger of Count Franz de Louvisan's tongue, even if he had to descend to crime to do it."
"St. Ulmer! St. Ulmer!" repeated the General with an air of bewilderment. "Why should he? What reason could he have for dreading the man?"
"A very good one, as you will see when I explain to you that St. Ulmer, as you call him, has no more right to the title than I myself!"
"An impostor!" gasped both the General and Mr. Narkom with one voice.
"Yes, an impostor," said Cleek quietly. "I recognized him directly I was able to get face to face with him. He was known as Paul the Panther, though Paul Berton is his name, an Apache, a boon companion of Margot, the queen of the Apaches, and of Anatole de Villon, a cousin of the greatest scoundrel in Paris. This man Paul had been valet to the real Lord St. Ulmer, probably engaged in Paris, and went with him to the Argentine. With him also Paul took the effects and credentials of another Apache, Ferdinand Lovetski, the maker of that special blacking, 'Jetanola.' He had been killed for refusing to give up to the Apaches his little fortune, and accordingly, Anatole annexed it without the permission of Margot, and hence brought down on him her wrath. He managed to slip away with his master, and whether he had any hand in killing him in the Argentine, heaven alone knows. What is certain is that he decided to return to Europe and finally to England as Lord St. Ulmer, and in this he succeeded. The old solicitor had died. Both you and your wife had seen but little of St. Ulmer in later years, so that, armed with all the papers and his own quick wits, it was not so difficult as you would have imagined. Had it not been for the stray meeting with Anatole de Villon, who was himself masquerading here as the Count de Louvisan, all would have gone well. As it was, one rogue threatened the other, and De Louvisan held the trump cards. It was his plan to marry Lady Katharine, and St. Ulmer had to submit, for fear not only that he should be betrayed to the police as an impostor, but in case Anatole should give him up to Margot. He played on Lady Katharine's feelings, therefore, so as to make her give up young Clavering and marry the count. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, at the last minute De Louvisan quarrelled with him; he had some other plans, he said, connected with letters——"
"Good
