lo! as he spoke, out of the nostrils of the figure on the cross there rushed downward two streams of white vapour which beat upon the pillows and upon him, smothering both in white dust.
“Face powder, Miss Edgburn, only face powder from your own little case over there,” he said. “I removed the devil’s dust last night when I was in this room alone.”
She made him no reply—only, like a cornered wretch, screamed out and fainted.
“Mr. Narkom, you have seen the method of administering the thing which caused the death of those five men; it is now only fair that you should know what that thing was,” he said, turning to the superintendent. “It is known by two names—Devil’s Dust and Dust of Death, and both suit it well. It is the fine, feathery powder that grows on the young shoots of the bamboo tree—a favourite method of secret killing with the natives of the Malay Peninsula and those of Madagascar, the Philippines and Ceylon. When blown into the nostrils of a living creature it produces first an awful agony of suffocation, a feeling as though the brain is coming down and exuding from the nostrils, then delirium, during which the victim invariably falls on his face and bites the earth; then comes death. Death without a trace, my friend, for the hellish dust all but evaporates, and the slight sediment that remains is carried out of the system by the spasm of enteric it produces. That is the riddle’s solution. As for the rest, those men were lured here by letters—from Alvarez—telling them of the reef’s great fortune, of the necessity for coming at once and bringing their deeds with them, and impressing upon them the possibility of being defrauded if they breathed one word to a mortal soul about their leaving or why. They came, they were invited to spend the night and to sleep upon that accursed bed, and—the devil’s dust did the rest. I traced that out through poor Jim Peabody’s sock. It was one of the blue yarn kind that are given to the inmates of workhouses. I traced him through that; and the others through the photographs. Each had been known to have received a letter from London, and each had in turn vanished without a word. Poor chaps! Poor unhappy chaps! Let us hope, dear friend, that they have found ‘the Place of Sapphires’ after all.”
CHAPTER V
“How did I come to suspect the girl?” said Cleek, answering Narkom’s query, as they swung off through the darkness in the red limousine, leaving Edgburn and his confederates in the hands of the police. “Well, as a matter of fact, I did not suspect her at all, in the beginning—her saintly reputation saved her from any such thing as that. It was only when her father came in that I knew. And later, I knew even better—when I saw that pretended imbecile sitting there in that room; for the blundering fool had been ass enough to kick off his slippers and sit there in his stocking feet, and I spotted the Alvarez foot on the instant. Still, I didn’t know but what the girl herself might be an innocent victim—a sort of dove in a vulture’s nest—and it was not until I found that scrap of wood from a sharpened lead pencil that I began to doubt her. It was only when I promised that Barrington-Edwards should be trapped, that I actually knew. The light that flamed in her eyes in spite of her at that would have made an idiot understand. What’s that? What should I suspect from the finding of that scrap of pencil? My dear Mr. Narkom, carry your mind back to that moment when I found the stain on poor Jim Peabody’s thumb, and then examined the blade of his pocket knife. The marks on the latter showed clearly that the man had sharpened a pencil with it—and, of course, with the point of that pencil against the top of his thumb. By the peculiar bronze-like shine of the streaks, and the small particles of dust adhering to the knife blade, I felt persuaded that the pencil was an indelible one—in short, one of those which write a faint, blackish-lilac hue which, on the application of moisture, turns to a vivid and indelible purple. The moisture induced by the act of thrusting his forefingers up his nostrils to allay the horrible sensation of the brain descending, which that hellish powder produces, together with the perspiration which comes with intense agony, had made such a change in the smears his thumb and forefinger bore, and left no room for doubt that at the time he was smitten he had either just begun or just concluded writing something with an indelible pencil which he had but recently sharpened. Poor wretch! he of all the lot had some one belonging to him that was still living—his poor old mother. It is very fair to suppose that, finding the Alvarez place so lavishly furnished, and having hopes that great riches were yet to be his, he sat down on that bed and began to write a few lines in his illiterate way to that mother before wholly undressing and getting between the sheets. The mark on his palm is a clear proof that when the powder suddenly descended upon him he involuntarily closed his hand on that letter and the perspiration transferred to his flesh the shape of the scrawl upon which it rested. Pardon? How did I know through that scrawl that I was really on the track, and that it was the Bareva Reef that was at the bottom of the whole game? My dear Mr. Narkom, I won’t insult your intelligence by explaining that. All you have to do is to turn that tracing upside down and look through it—or at it in a mirror—and you’ll have the answer for yourself. What’s that? The parcel the girl gave Edgburn to carry out on the pretext of taking it to an orphanage? Oh, that was how they were slowly getting rid of the victims’ clothes. Cutting them up into little pieces and throwing them into the river, I suppose, or if not——”
He stopped suddenly, his ear caught by a warning sound; then turned in his seat and glanced through the little window at the back of the limousine.
“I thought as much,” he said, half aloud; then leaned forward, caught up the pipe of the speaking tube, and signalled Lennard. “Look sharp—taxi following us!” he said. “Put on a sudden spurt—that chap will increase speed to keep pace with us—then pull up sharp and let the other fellow’s impetus carry him by before he can help himself. Out with the light, Mr. Narkom—out with it quick!”
Both Lennard and his master followed instructions. Of a sudden the lights flicked out, the car leapt forward with a bound, then pulled up with a jerk that shook it from end to end. In that moment the taxi in the rear whizzed by them, and Narkom, leaning forward to look as it flashed past, saw seated within it the figure of Count Waldemar of Mauravania.
“By James! Did you see that, Cleek?” he cried, and switched round and made a grab for Cleek’s arm.
But Cleek was not there. His seat was empty, and the door beside it was swinging ajar.
“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” exclaimed the superintendent, fairly carried out of himself—for, even in his old Vanishing Cracksman’s days, when he had slipped the leash and eluded the police so often, the man had not made a more adroit, more silent, more successful getaway than this. “Of all the astonishing——! Gad, an eel’s a fool to him for slipping out of tight places. When did he go, I wonder, and where?”
Never very strong on matters of detail, here curiosity tricked him into absolute indiscretion. Sliding along the seat to the swinging door he thrust it open and leaned out into the darkness, for a purpose so evident that he who ran might read. That one who ran did, he had good reason to understand in the next instant, for, of a sudden, the taxi in advance checked its wild flight, swung round with a noisy scroo-op, and pelted back until the two vehicles stood cheek by jowl, so to speak, and the glare of its headlights was pouring full force upon Mr. Narkom and into the interior of the red limousine.
“Here! Dash your infernal impudence,” began he, blinking up at the driver through a glare which prevented him seeing that the taxicab’s leather blinds had been discreetly pulled down, and its interior rendered quite invisible; but before he could add so much as another word to his protest the chauffeur’s voice broke in with a blandness and an accent which told its own story.
“Dix mille pardons, m’sieur,” it commenced, then pulled itself up as if the owner of it had suddenly recollected himself—and added abruptly in a farcical attempt to
