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

have requested this interview. I want you to examine me, Sir Horace, to put me through those tests you use to determine the state of mind of the mentally fit and mentally unfit; I want to know if it is my fault that I am what I am, and if it is myself I have to fight in future, or the devil that lives within me. I'm tired of wallowing in the mire. A woman's eyes have lit the way to heaven for me. I want to climb up to her, to win her, to be worthy of her, and to stand beside her in the light."

"Her? What 'her'?"

"That's my business, Mr. Narkom, and I'll take no man into my confidence regarding that."

"Yes, my friend, but 'Margot'—how about her?"

"I'm done with her! We broke last night, when I returned and she learned—never mind what she learned! I'm done with her—done with the lot of them. My life is changed forever."

"In the name of Heaven, man, who and what are you?"

"Cleek—just Cleek; let it go at that," he made reply. "Whether it's my name or not is no man's business; who I am, what I am, whence I came, is no man's business either. Cleek will do—Cleek of the Forty Faces. Never mind the past; my fight is with the future, and so—examine me, Sir Horace, and let me know if I or Fate's to blame for what I am."

Sir Horace did.

"Absolutely Fate," he said, when, after a long examination, the man put the question to him again. "It is the criminal brain fully developed, horribly pronounced. God help you, my poor fellow; but a man simply could not be other than a thief and a criminal with an organ like that. There's no hope for you to escape your natural bent except by death. You can't be honest. You can't rise—you never will rise; it's useless to fight against it!"

"I will fight against it! I will rise! I will! I will! I will!" he cried out vehemently. "There is a way to put such craft and cunning to account; a way to fight the devil with his own weapons and crush him under the weight of his own gifts, and that way I'll take!"

"Mr. Narkom"—he whirled and walked toward the superintendent, his hand outstretched, his eager face aglow—"Mr. Narkom, help me! Take me under your wing. Give me a start—give me a chance—give me a lift on the way up!"

"Good heaven, man, you—you don't mean—?"

"I do—I do! So help me heaven, I do. All my life I've fought against the law—now let me switch over and fight with it. I'm tired of being Cleek, the thief; Cleek, the burglar. Make me Cleek, the detective, and let us work together, hand in hand, for a common cause and for the public good. Will you, Mr. Narkom? Will you?"

"Will I? Won't I!" said Narkom, springing forward and gripping his hand.
"Jove! what a detective you will make. Bully boy! Bully boy!"

"It's a compact, then?"

"It's a compact—Cleek."

"Thank you," he said in a choked voice. "You've given me my chance; now watch me live up to it. The Vanishing Cracksman has vanished forever, Mr. Narkom, and it's Cleek, the detective—Cleek of the Forty Faces from this time on. Now, give me your riddles—I'll solve them one by one."

CHAPTER I

The sound came again—so unmistakably, this time, the sound of a footstep in the soft, squashy ooze on the Heath, there could be no question regarding the nature of it. Miss Lorne came to an instant standstill and clutched her belongings closer to her with a shake and a quiver; and a swift prickle of goose-flesh ran round her shoulders and up and down the backs of her hands. There was good, brave blood in her, it is true; but good, brave blood isn't much to fall back upon if you happen to be a girl without escort, carrying a hand-bag containing twenty-odd pounds in money, several bits of valuable jewellery—your whole earthly possessions, in fact—and have lost your way on Hampstead Heath at half-past eight o'clock at night, with a spring fog shutting you in like a wall and shutting out everything else but a "mackerel" collection of clouds that looked like grey smudges on the greasy-silver of a twilit sky.

She looked round, but she could see nothing and nobody. The Heath was a white waste that might have been part of the scenery in Lapland for all there was to tell that it lay within reach of the heart and pulse of the sluggish leviathan London. Over it the vapours of night crowded, an almost palpable wall of thick, wet mist, stirred now and again by some atmospheric movement which could scarcely be called a wind, although, at times, it drew long, lacey filaments above the level of the denser mass of fog and melted away with them into the calm, still upper air.

Miss Lorne hesitated between two very natural impulses—to gather up her skirts and run, or to stand her ground and demand an explanation from the person who was undoubtedly following her. She chose the latter.

"Who is there? Why are you following me? What do you want?" she flung out, keeping her voice as steady as the hard, sharp hammering of her heart would permit.

The question was answered at once—rather startlingly, since the footsteps which caused her alarm, had all the while proceeded from behind, and slightly to the left of her. Now there came a hurried rush and scramble on the right; there was the sound of a match being scratched, a blob of light in the grey of the mist, and she saw standing in front of her, a ragged, weedy, red-headed youth, with the blazing match in his scooped hands.

He was thin to the point of ghastliness. Hunger was in his pinched face, his high cheekbones, his gouged jaws; staring like a starved wolf, through the unnatural brightness of his pale eyes, from every gaunt feature of him.

"'Ullo!" he said with a strong Cockney accent, as he came up out of the fog, and the flare of the match gave him a full view of her, standing there with her lips shut hard, and, the hand-bag clutched up close to her with both hands. "You wot called, was it? Wot price me for arnswerin' of you, eh?"

"Yes, it was I that called," she replied, making a brave front of it. "But I do not think it was you that I called to. Keep away, please. Don't come any nearer. What do you want?" "Well, I'll take that blessed 'and-bag to go on with; and if there aren't no money in it—tumble it out—let's see—lively now! I'll feed for the rest of this week—Gawd, yuss!"

She made no reply, no attempt to obey him, no movement of any sort. Fear had absolutely stricken every atom of strength from her. She could do nothing but look at him with big, frightened eyes, and shake.

"Look 'ere, aren't you a-goin' to do it quiet, or are you a-goin' to mike me tike the blessed thing from you?" he asked.

"I'll do it if you put me to it—my hat! yuss! It aren't my gime—I'm wot you might call a hammer-chewer at it, but when there's summink inside you, wot tears and tears and tears, any gime's worth tryin' that pulls out the claws of it."

She did not move even yet. He flung the spent match from him, and made a sharp step toward her, and he had just reached out his hand to lay hold of her, when another hand—strong, sinewy, hard-shutting as an iron clamp—reached out from the mist, and laid hold of him; plucking him by the neckband and intruding a bunch of knuckles and shut fingers between that and his up-slanted chin.

"Now, then, drop that little game at once, you young monkey!" struck in the sharp staccato of a semi-excited voice. "Interfering with young ladies, eh? Let's have a look at you. Don't be afraid, Miss Lorne—nobody's going to hurt you."

Then a pocket torch spat out a sudden ray of light; and by it both the half-throttled boy and the wholly frightened girl could see the man who had thus intruded himself upon their notice.

"Oh, it is you—it is you again, Mr. Cleek?" said Ailsa with something between a laugh and a sigh of relief as she recognized him.

"Yes, it is I. I have been behind you ever since you left the house in Bardon Road. It was rash of you to cross the heath at this time and in this weather. I rather fancied that something of this kind would be likely to happen, and so took the liberty of following you."

"Then it was you I heard behind me?"

"It was I—yes. I shouldn't have intruded myself upon your notice if you hadn't called out. A moment, please. Let's have a look at this young highwayman, who so freely advertises himself as an amateur."

The light spat full into the gaunt, starved face of the young man and made it stare forth doubly ghastly. He had made no effort to get away from the very first. Perhaps he understood the uselessness of it, with that strong hand gripped on his ragged neckband. Perhaps he was, in his way, something of a fatalist—London breeds so many among such as he: starved things that find every boat chained, every effort thrust back upon them unrewarded. At any rate, from the moment he had heard the girl give to this man a name which every soul in England had heard at one time or another during the past two years, he had gone into a sort of mild collapse, as though realising the utter uselessness of battling against fate, and had given himself up to what was to be.

"Hello," said Cleek, as he looked the youth over. "Yours is a face I don't remember running foul of before, my young beauty. Where did you come from?"

"Where I seem like to be goin' now you've got your currant-pickers on me—Hell," answered the boy, with something like a sigh of despair. "Leastways, I been in Hell ever since I can remember anyfink, so I reckon I must have come from there."

"What's your name?"

"Dollops. S'pose I must a had another sometime, but I never heard of it. Wot's that? Yuss—most nineteen. Wot? Oh, go throw summink at yourself! I aren't too young to be 'ungry, am I? And where's a cove goin' to find this 'ere 'honest work' you're a-talkin' of? I'm fair sick of the gime of lookin' for it. Besides, you don't see parties as goes in for the other thing walkin' round with ribs on 'em like bed-slats, and not even the price of a cup of corfy in their pockets, do you? No fear! I wouldn't've 'urt the young lydie; but I tell you strite, I'd a took every blessed farthin' she 'ad on her if you 'adn't've dropped on me like this."

"Got down to the last ditch—down to the point of desperation, eh?"

"Yuss. So would you if you 'ad a fing inside you tearin' and tearin' like I 'ave. Aren't et a bloomin' crumb since the day before yusterday at four in the mawnin' when a gent in an 'ansom—drunk as a lord, he was—treated me and a parcel of others to a bun and a cup of corfy at a corfy stall over 'Ighgate way. Stood out agin bein' a crook as long as ever I could—as long as ever I'm goin' to, I reckon, now you've got your maulers on me. I'll be on the list after this. The cops 'ull know me; and when you've got the nime—well, wot's the odds? You might as well 'ave the gime as well, and git over goin' empty. All right, run me in, sir. Any'ow, I'll 'ave a bit to eat and a bed to sleep in to-night, and that's one comfort—"

Cleek had been watching the boy closely, narrowly, with an ever-deepening interest; now he loosened the grip of his fingers and let his hand drop to his side.

"Suppose I don't 'run you in,' as you put it? Suppose I take a chance and lend you five shillings, will you do some work and pay it back to me in time?" he asked.

The boy looked up at him and laughed in his face.

"Look 'ere, Gov'nor, it's playin' it low down to lark wiv a chap jist before you're goin' to 'ang 'im," he said. "You come off your blessed perch."

"Right," said