to have belonged in its day to Catherine de Medicis—had worn loose, and could only be prevented from dropping out and allowing the contents to drip away by wedging it into the orifice in the capsule by winding the stopper with silk."
Narkom's face positively glowed.
"My dear Cleek, you give me the brightest kind of hope," he said enthusiastically, as he stooped and investigated the tiny, perfumed grease spots on the floor, so clearly made by the dropping of some oily substance that there could be no question regarding their origin. "Then, there can be no possibility of connecting young Geoff Clavering or the girl he loves with this ghastly business if that Margot woman has been here, and it was from her bracelet that these stains were dropped? Besides, after what you said about that fellow of her crew who was spiked to the wall as this poor wretch here is——"
"A moment, my friend—you are on the rush again," interjected Cleek. "All that we actually know, at present, Mr. Narkom, is that some one, and very likely a woman, has been here and—unconsciously, of course—has spilled some drops of a very valuable and highly concentrated perfume. This naturally points to a defective stopper to the article containing that perfume, but whether or not that defective stopper was one carved from a single emerald and wound with silk——"
He stopped and let the rest of the sentence go by default. All the while he had been speaking he had been following, after the manner of a hound on the scent, the trail of that perfume's lead; now it had brought him to a litter of rat-gnawed paper and a parcel containing a peach and the remnants of a roasted fowl. As if the scent seemed stronger here than elsewhere—so strong, in fact, that it was suggestive of a goal—he began tossing the scraps about, till at last he gave a sort of cry and pounced upon something in a distant corner.
"Cleek!" rapped out Narkom in an excited but guarded tone, as he noted this, "Cleek, you have found something? Something that decides?"
"Yes," the detective made answer. "Something which proves that, whoever the woman who dropped the scent may be, Mr. Narkom, she was not Margot!"
He unclosed his hand and stretched it out toward the superintendent, and Narkom saw lying on his palm a crushed and gleaming thing which looked like a child's gold thimble that had been trodden upon. The snapped fragment of a hairlike gold chain still clung to it, and at the end of this dangled a liliputian stopper, a wee mite of a thing that was little more than a short, thick pin of plain, unjewelled, unornamented gold.
"One of the 'capsules' of which I spoke, you see," said Cleek, "and bearing not the slightest resemblance to the one belonging to Margot. The thing has snapped from its fastening and been trodden upon—trodden under a very heavy foot, I should say, from the condition of it. There is something engraved upon it, something that won't tend to ease your mind, Mr. Narkom. Take my glass and look at it."
Narkom did so. Engraved on the crushed and fragrant-smelling bit of gold he saw a coat-of-arms—arms which he, at least, knew to be those of the house of St. Ulmer—and under this the name "Katharine."
"Good Lord!" he said, and let the crushed bauble fall back upon the palm from which he had lifted it. "That child—that dear girl who is as much as life itself to young Geoff Clavering? But how could she—a slip of a girl like that——"
He turned and looked over at the dead figure spiked to the cottage wall.
Cleek made no reply—at least for the moment. He had gone back to the "hound's trick" of sniffing the trail and was creeping on again—past the litter of papers this time—and crawling on all fours toward the very doorway by which the police had first gained access to the room.
"Wait! Cross no bridges until you come to them," he said at last in an excited whisper. "Some one who trod upon that thing passed out this way. I knew I smelt the oil the very instant I crossed the threshold; now I can understand why. The assassin left by the very door you entered, but whether man or woman——"
By now the trail had led him to the very threshold of the room. Beyond lay the dark hall by which Narkom and his men had entered the house, and the light of his upraised electric torch shining out into that black passage showed him something that made his pulses leap. It was simply a fragment of some soft pinkish material, caught and torn off from a woman's skirt by a nail head that protruded above the level of the boarded floor. He rose and ran out to it; he caught it up and examined it; then, with a laugh, shut his hand over it and went hurriedly back to the superintendent's side.
"Mr. Narkom," he said, "tell me something! We have, presumably, found a perfume receptacle belonging to the Lady Katharine Fordham; but did you notice—can you remember what manner of frock her ladyship wore at Clavering Close to-night?"
"I remember it very well indeed. It was a simple white satin frock, very plain and very girlish, and she wore a bunch of purple pansies with it."
"Ah-h-h!" Cleek's voice was full of relief, his eyes full of sparkle and life. "Then she did not wear a gown of some soft, gauzy pink material, eh? An airy sort of gown trimmed at the hem with scalloped embroidery of rose-coloured silk. Good! Can you remember any lady to-night that did?"
"Yes," said Narkom promptly. "Miss Ailsa Lorne did. She wore some soft, gauzy pink stuff—chiffon, I think I've heard the wife call it—with a lot of rose-coloured silk stitchery on the edges of the flounces, and she had a band of pink ribbon in her hair."
Cleek made no comment, nor did his countenance betray even the slightest trace of emotion. He simply put the shut hand that held that gauzy pink fragment into his pocket and shoved it far down out of sight.
A while ago he could have sworn that Ailsa Lorne's foot had never crossed the threshold of this house of crime; now he knew that it had, and if the evidence of this scrap of chiffon stood for anything, crossed it after she had left Clavering Close—after she had heard that threat against the Count de Louvisan's life.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE RIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
Before Mr. Narkom could ask any questions, the sound of excited voices and hasty footsteps coming up the drive and making toward the lonely house drove all other thoughts from his head.
"Come along," he whispered to Cleek. "It's Hammond and Petrie returning from the keeper's shelter on the Common. I know their voices. And they have unearthed something startling or they wouldn't be talking so excitedly."
They had, indeed, as he learned when he hurried out and intercepted them at the cottage steps; for between them they were supporting a man stripped of coat, waistcoat, and hat, and wearing bound round his head a bloodstained handkerchief. His bearded face was bruised and battered, his shirt and trousers were covered with mud, and he was so weak from loss of blood that it was next to impossible for him to stand alone.
"Sir," broke out Hammond, as they came up with Mr. Narkom and paused with this unexpected newcomer before him, "I don't know whether that French mounseer is a wizard or not, but he copped the lay at the first guess, Mr. Narkom, and foreigner or not I take off my blessed hat to him. Here's what we found when we got to the shelter, sir—this here party, knocked senseless, tied up like a trussed fowl, and tucked out of sight under the gorse bushes nigh the shelter. Coat, cap, badge, and truncheon all gone, sir—nicked by that dare-devil who took us in so nicely down there at the old railway arch. The murderer himself he were, I'll lay my life; for look here, sir, here's what he most brained this poor chap with—a hammer, sir—look!
