me.”
“La! la!” exclaimed Mrs. Armroyd approvingly. “There’s the brave heart, to come to mademoiselle’s rescue so gallantly. But, yes, I make you the cake of plums for that, mon cher. Monsieur of the yard of Scotland, he can no more torture the poor stricken child after that—not he.”
But Cleek appeared to be less easy to convince than she had hoped, for he pursued the subject still; questioning Gorham to needless length it seemed; trying his best to trip him up, to shake his statement, but always failing; and, indeed, going over the same ground to such length that one might have thought he was endeavouring to gain time. If he was, he certainly succeeded; for it was quite fifteen minutes later when Mr. Narkom returned to the Round House, and he was at it still. Indeed, he did not conclude to give it up as a bad job until the superintendent came.
“Get it off all right, did you, Mr. Narkom?” he asked, glancing round as he heard him enter.
“Quite all right, old chap. Right as rain—in every particular.”
“Thanks very much. I’m having rather a difficult task of it, for our friend the constable here corroborates Miss Renfrew’s statement to the hair; and yet I am absolutely positive that there is a mistake.”
“There is no mistake—no, not one! The wicked one to say it still!”
“Oh, that’s all very well, madame, but I know what I know; and when you tell me that a dead man can ask questions—Pah! The fact of the matter is the constable merely fancies he heard Mr. Nosworth speak. That’s where the mistake comes in. Now, look here! I once knew of an exactly similar case and I’ll tell you just how it happened. Let us suppose”—strolling leisurely forward—“let us suppose that this space here is the covered passage, and you, madame—step here a moment, please. Thanks very much—and you are Miss Renfrew, and Gorham here is himself, and standing beside her as he did then.”
“Wasn’t beside her, sir—at least not just exactly. A bit behind her—like this.”
“Oh, very well, then, that will do. Now, then. Here’s the passage and here are you, and I’ll just show you how a mistake could occur, and how it did occur, under precisely similar circumstances. Once upon a time when I was in Paris——”
“In Paris, monsieur?”
“Yes, madame—this little thing I’m going to tell you about happened there. You may or may not have heard that a certain Frenchy dramatist wrote a play called Chanticler—or maybe you never heard of it? Didn’t, eh? Well, it’s a play where all the characters are barnyard creatures—dogs, poultry, birds and the like—and the odd fancy of men and women dressing up like fowls took such a hold on the public that before long there were Chanticler dances and Chanticler parties in all the houses, and Chanticler ‘turns’ on at all the music halls, until wherever one went for an evening’s amusement one was pretty sure to see somebody or another dressed up like a cock or a hen, and running the thing to death. But that’s another story, and we’ll pass over it. Now, it just so happened that one night—when the craze for the thing was dying out and barnyard dresses could be bought for a song—I strolled into a little fourth-rate café at Montmarte and there saw the only Chanticler dancer that I ever thought was worth a sou. She was a pretty, dainty little thing—light as a feather and graceful as a fairy. Alone, I think she might have made her mark; but she was one of what in music-halldom they call ‘a team.’ Her partner was a man—bad dancer, an indifferent singer, but a really passable ventriloquist.”
“A ventriloquist, monsieur—er—er!”
“Cleek, madame—name’s Cleek, if you don’t mind.”
“Cleek! Oh, Lummy!” blurted out Mr. Nippers. But neither “madame” nor Constable Gorham said anything. They merely swung round and made a sudden bolt; and Cleek, making a bolt, too, pounced down on them like a leaping cat, and the sharp click-click of the handcuffs he had borrowed from Mr. Nippers told just when he linked their two wrists together.
“Game’s up, Madame Fifine, otherwise Madame Nosworth, the worthless wife of a worthless husband!” he rapped out sharply. “Game’s up, Mr. Henry Nosworth, bandit, pickpocket, and murderer! There’s a hot corner in hell waiting for the brute-beast that could kill his own father, and would, for the simple sake of money. Get at him, quick, Mr. Narkom. He’s got one free hand! Nip the paper out of his pocket before the brute destroys it! Played, sir, played! Buck up, Miss Renfrew, buck up, little girl—you’ll get your ‘Boy’ and you’ll get Mr. Septimus Nosworth’s promised fortune after all! ‘God’s in his heaven, and all’s right with the world.’”
CHAPTER X
“Yes, a very, very clever scheme indeed, Miss Renfrew,” agreed Cleek. “Laid with great cunning and carried out with extreme carefulness—as witness the man’s coming here and getting appointed constable and biding his time, and the woman serving as cook for six months to get the entrée to the house and to be ready to assist when the time of action came round. I don’t think I had the least inkling of the truth until I entered this house and saw that woman. She had done her best to pad herself to an unwieldy size and to blanch portions of her hair, but she couldn’t quite make her face appear old without betraying the fact that it was painted—and hers is one of those peculiarly pretty faces that one never forgets when one has ever seen it. I knew her the instant I entered the house; and, remembering the Chanticler dress with its fowl’s-foot boots, I guessed at once what those marks would prove to be when I came to investigate them. She must have stamped on the ground with all her might, to sink the marks in so deeply—but she meant to make sure of the claws and the exaggerated scales on the toes leaving their imprint. I was certain we should find that dress and those boots among her effects; and—Mr. Narkom did. What I wrote on that pretended telegram was for him to slip away into the house proper and search every trunk and cupboard for them. Pardon? No, I don’t think they really had any idea of incriminating Sir Ralph Droger. That thought came into the fellow’s mind when you stepped out and caught him stealing away after the murder had been committed. No doubt he, like you, had seen Sir Ralph practising for the sports, and he simply made capital of it. The main idea was to kill his father and to destroy the will; and of course, when it became apparent that the old gentleman had died intestate, even a discarded son must inherit. Where he made his blunder, however, was in his haste to practise his ventriloquial accomplishment to prevent your going into the Round House and discovering that his father was already dead. He ought to have waited until you had spoken, so that it would appear natural for the old man to know, without turning, who it was that had opened the door. That is what put me on the track of him. Until that moment I hadn’t the slightest suspicion where he was nor under what guise he was hiding. Of course I had a vague suspicion, even before I came and saw her, that ‘the cook’ was in it. Her readiness in inventing a fictitious gypsy with a bear’s muzzle, coupled with what Nippers had told me of the animal marks she had pointed out, looked a bit fishy; but until I actually met her nothing really tangible began to take shape in my thoughts. That’s all, I think. And now, good-night and good luck to you, Miss Renfrew. The riddle is solved; and Mr. Narkom and I must be getting back to the wilderness and to our ground-floor beds in the hotel of the beautiful stars!”
Here, as if some spirit of nervous unrest had suddenly beset him, he turned round on his heel, motioned the superintendent to follow, and brushing by the awed and staring Mr. Ephraim Nippers, whisked open the door and passed briskly out into the hush and darkness of the night.
The footpath which led through the grounds to the gate and thence to the long lonely
