Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces by Thomas W. Hanshew (early readers .TXT) 📗

to you, my friend, we'll talk about in private, and after I have assisted Miss Comstock to lead her uncle out of the room."

With that he swung away from the Captain's side and went over to that of the old man.

"Come, Mr. Harmstead, let me help you to rise," he began; then stopped as the old man put up a knotted and twisted hand in supplication and protested agitatedly: "But—but, sir, I do not want to go. Good Heaven! What can you be hinting against that poor, dear boy? Surely you do not mean—you cannot mean—"

"That the little game of 'Bluff' has worked, Dr. Finch, and you'll never draw a revolver on me," rapped in Cleek, giving him a backward push that carried him to the floor, and in the twinkling of an eye he had pounced upon him like a cat and was saying, as he snapped the handcuffs upon his wrists: "Got you, you brute-beast; got you tight and fast! Do you remember Hamilton, the medical student, in New Zealand, eight years ago? Do you? Well, that's the man you're dealing with now!"

The man, struggling and kicking, biting and clawing like any other cornered wild cat, flung out a cry of utter despair at this, and collapsed suddenly; and in the winking of an eye Cleek's hands had flashed into the two pockets of the dressing-gown the fellow was wearing, and flashed out again with a revolver in one and a shining nickel thing in the other.

"Got your 'bark,' doctor, and got your 'bite' as well!" he said, as he rose to his feet. "You'd have put a bullet through me at the first word, wouldn't you, but for that little 'bluff' of suspecting and arresting another man? Captain, look to Miss Comstock—I think she has fainted. You wanted the murderer of Mrs. Comstock and her children, didn't you? Well, here he is, the rascal!"

"Good God! Then it—it's not a mistake? You mean it—mean it? And Uncle
Phil! You accuse Uncle Phil?"

"Uncle Nothing!" flung back Cleek with a sort of laugh—and, hazarding a guess which afterwards was proved to be the truth—"I'll lay my life, Captain, that when you apply to the Australian authorities you will find that old Mr. Philip Harmstead is in his grave; that he was attended in his last illness by one Dr. Frederick Finch, to whom his fortune would revert in the event of Mrs. Comstock and her children dying. Finch is the fellow's name—isn't it, doctor, eh?"

"Finch?" repeated the Captain. "Good Heaven! Why that was the name of the woman who was old Mr. Harmstead's housekeeper—you know, the widow I told you about to-night."

"Oho!" said Cleek. "That's possibly where the threads join and this little game begins. Or perhaps it may really be said to begin again where Shorty, the chemist, died, and the celebrated Spofford mystery ended—eh, doctor? Look here, Captain, look here, Mr. Narkom, you remember what I told you this morning about that case in New Zealand which so strongly resembled this one? That was the Spofford mystery. Do you remember what I said about hitting upon a theory and offering it to the medical fraternity, only to get laughed at for my pains? Well, it was to this man, Dr. Frederick Finch, I advanced that theory, and it was Dr. Frederick Finch who jeered at it, but has now made deadly use of it, the hound. Do you want to know how he killed his victims, and what he used? Look at this thing that you saw me take from the pocket of his dressing-gown. It is a hypodermic syringe, but there is nothing in it—there never has been anything in it. Air was his poison—air his shaft of death; and he killed by injecting it into the veins of his victims. The result of air coming into contact with the circulating blood of a human being is the formation of a blood-clot, and death is instantaneous the instant the clot reaches either the brain or the heart! That was his method. But thank God it's done with for ever now, and the next tenth day of the month will pass over this stricken family and leave it unscathed!"

* * * * *

"How did I know the man?" said Cleek, answering Narkom's query, as they came down the Tor-side afoot and forged on in the direction of Lyntonhurst Old Church—whither Captain Morford and the limousine had long ago preceded them—with the low-dropped sun behind them and lengthening shadows streaming on before. "Well, as a matter of fact, I never did know him until I actually touched him. I was certain of the method, of course; but the man—no. I got my first suspicion of 'Uncle Phil' when I heard him speak. I knew I had heard that voice somewhere, and I realised that it was much too young a voice for a man who appeared—and must be, if he were the real 'Uncle Phil'—extremely old; but it was only when I saw his hand, and the peculiar knotted and twisted little finger that I really knew who he was. What's that? The soap? Well, of course I knew that if, as I suspected, someone in the house was the real culprit, an attempt would be made to make it look as though the criminal entered from without, so naturally the window would be opened, and something of some sort would be smeared on the sill—something that wouldn't blow away and wouldn't wash off in the event of a sudden rainstorm coming up. Soap would do—and soap is always handy in a bedroom. I knew whose hand had made the smear as soon as I looked at the cake of soap in 'Uncle Phil's' room—it was badly rubbed on one side where it had been scraped over the stone coping and along the outer edge of the sill where—Pardon me: this is the turning—I leave you here. Pick me up at the inn of the Three Desires in an hour's time, please, and we'll motor back to town together. So long!"

And swung round into the branching lane and down the green slope, and round under the shadow of Lyntonhurst Old Church to the quiet country road and the lich-gate where Ailsa Lorne was waiting.

CHAPTER XXXV

She was sitting in the very same place she had occupied when first he saw her this morning, with the cypress tree and the roof making shadows above and about her; and now, as then, she rose when she heard the latch click and came toward him with hands outstretched and eyes aglow and little gusts of colour sweeping in rose waves over throat and cheeks.

"Oh, to think that you have solved it! To think that it is the end! And to think that it was he—that dear, kind 'uncle' of whom they all were so fond!" she said. "I could scarcely believe it when Captain Morford brought the news. It made me quite faint for the moment—it was so unexpected, so horrible!"

"And after all, there was nothing to fear from that farm labourer who frightened you so this morning, you see," he smiled, holding her two hands in his and looking down at her from his greater height. "Yet I find your crouching back in the shadow as if you were still frightened to be seen. Are you?"

"A little," she admitted. "You see, the road is a public one. People are always passing, and—How good it was of you to come all this long distance out of your way. Indeed, I am very, very grateful, Mr. Cleek."

"Thank you," he said gravely. "But you need not be. Indeed, the gratitude should be all on my side. I said I would come if ever you wanted me, and you gave me an opportunity to keep my word. As for it being out of my way to come here, it is but a little distance to the Three Desires and a long one to Lady Chepstow's place, so it is you, not I, that have 'gone out of the way!' It was good of you to give me this grace—I should have been sorry to go back to town without saying good-bye."

"But need you go so soon?" she asked. "Lady Chepstow will feel slighted, I know, if she hears that you have been in the neighbourhood and have not called. She is a friend, you know, a warm, true friend—always grateful for what you did, always glad to see you. Why not stop on a day or two and call and see her?"

A robin flicked down out of the cypress tree and perched on the gate top, looked up at Cleek with bright, sharp eyes, flung out a wee little trill, and was off again.

"I'm afraid it is out of the question—I'm afraid I'm not so deeply interested in Lady Chepstow as, perhaps, I ought to be," said Cleek, noticing in a dim subconscious way that the robin had flown on to the church door and perched there, and was in full song now. "Besides, she does not know of me what you do. Perhaps, if she did…. Oh, well, it doesn't matter. Thank you for coming to say good-bye, Miss Lorne. It was kind of you. Now I must emulate Poor Jo, and 'move on' again."

"And without any reward!" said Ailsa with a smile and a sigh. "Without expecting any; without asking any; without wanting any!"

He stood a moment, twisting his heel round and round in the gravel of the pathway, and breathing hard, his eyes on the ground, and his lips indrawn. Then, of a sudden—"Perhaps I did want one. Perhaps I've always wanted one. And hoped to get it some day perhaps from—you!" he said. And looked up at her as a man looks but once at one woman ever.

She had come a step nearer; she was standing there with the shadows behind her and the light on her face, warm colour in her cheeks, and a smile on her lips and in her eyes. She spoke no word, made no sound; merely stood there and smiled and, somehow, he seemed to know what the smile of her meant and what the bird's note said.

"Miss Lorne—Ailsa," he said, very, very gently, "if some day … when all the wrongs I did in those other days are righted, and all that a man can do on this earth to atone for such a past as mine has been done … if then, in that time, I come to you and ask for that reward, do you think, oh, do you think that you can find it in your heart to give it?"

"When that day dawns, come and see," she said, "if you wish to wait so long!"

EPILOGUE THE AFFAIR OF THE MAN WHO HAD BEEN CALLED HAMILTON CLEEK

"Note for you, sir—messenger just fetched it. Addressed to 'Captain Burbage,' so it'll be from The Yard," said Dollops, coming into the room with a doughnut in one hand and a square envelope in the other.

Cleek, who had been sitting at his writing-table, with a litter of folded documents, bits of antique jewellery, and what looked like odds and ends of faded ribbon lying before him, swept the whole collection into the table drawer as Dollops spoke and stretched forth his hand for the letter.

It was one of Narkom's characteristic communications, albeit somewhat shorter than those communications usually were—a fact which told Cleek at once that the matter was one of immense importance.

"My dear Cleek," it ran. "For the love of goodness don't let anything tempt you into going out to-night. I shall call about ten. Foreign government affair—reward simply enormous. Look out for me. Yours, in hot haste—MAVERICK NARKOM."

"Be on the lookout for the red limousine," said Cleek, glancing over at
Dollops, who stood waiting for orders. "It will be along about ten.
That's all. You may go."

"Right you are, Gov'nor. I'll keep my eyes peeled, sir. Lor'! I do hope it's summink to do with a restaurant or a cookshop this time. I could do with a job of that sort—my word, yes! I'm fair famishin'. And, beggin' pardon, but you don't look none too healthy yourself this evening, Gov'nor. Ain't et summink wot's disagreed with you, have you, sir?"

"I? What nonsense! I'm as fit as a fiddle. What could make you think otherwise?"

"Oh, I dunno, sir—only—Well, if you don't mind my sayin' of