Cleek of Scotland Yard: Detective Stories. Hanshew Thomas W.

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      He turned it up and down, he held it to the light and studied it for a moment or two in perplexed silence, then of a sudden he faced round, and Narkom could see that his eyes were shining and that the curious one-sided smile, peculiar unto him, was looping up his cheek.

      “My friend,” he said, answering the eager query in the superintendent’s look, “this is yet another vindication of Poe’s theory that things least hidden are best hidden, and that the most complex mysteries are those which are based on the simplest principles. With your permission, I’ll keep this” – tucking the tracing into his pocket – “and afterward I will go to the mortuary and inspect the original. Meantime, I will go so far as to tell you that I know the motive for these murders, I know the means, and if you will give me forty-eight hours to solve the riddle, at the end of that time I’ll know the man. I will even go farther and tell you the names of the victims; and all on the evidence of your neat little tracing. The web-footed man was one, James Peabody, a farrier, at one time attached to the Blue Cavalry at Trincomalee, Ceylon. Another was Joseph Miles, an Irishman, bitten early with the ‘wanderlust’ which takes men everywhere, and in making rolling stones of them, suffers them to gather no moss. Still another – and probably, from the tattoo mark on his arm, the first victim found – was Thomas Hart, ablebodied seaman, formerly in service on the P & O line; the remaining two were Alexander McCurdy, a Scotchman, and T. Jenkins Quegg, a Yankee. The latter, however, was a naturalized Englishman, and both were privates in her late Majesty’s army and honourably discharged.”

      “Cleek, my dear fellow, are you a magician?” said Narkom, sinking into a chair, overcome.

      “Oh, no, my friend, merely a man with a memory, that’s all; and I happen to remember a curious little ‘pool’ that was made up of eight men. Five of them are dead. The other three are Juan Alvarez, a Spaniard, that Lieutenant Edgburn who married and beggared the girl Captain Barrington-Edwards lost when he was disgraced, and last of all the ex-Captain Barrington-Edwards himself. Gently, gently, my friend. Don’t excite yourself. All these murders have been committed with a definite purpose in view, with a devil’s instrument, and for the devil’s own stake – riches. Those riches, Mr. Narkom, were to come in the shape of precious stones, the glorious sapphires of Ceylon. And five of the eight men who were to reap the harvest of them died mysteriously in the vicinity of Lemmingham House.”

      “Cleek! My hat!” Narkom sprang up as he spoke, and then sat down again in a sort of panic. “And he – Barrington-Edwards, the man that lives there —deals in precious stones. Then that man – ”

      “Gently, my friend, gently – don’t bang away at the first rabbit that bolts out of the hole – it may be a wee one and you’ll lose the buck that follows. Two men live in that house, remember; Mr. Archer Blaine is Mr. Barrington-Edwards’ heir as well as his nephew and – who knows?”

      CHAPTER III

      “Cinnamon! what a corroboration – what a horrible corroboration! Cleek, you knock the last prop from under me; you make certain a thing that I thought was only a woman’s wild imaginings,” said Narkom, getting up suddenly, all a-tremble with excitement. “Good heavens! to have Miss Valmond’s story corroborated in this dreadful way.”

      “Miss Valmond? Who’s she? Any relation to that Miss Rose Valmond whose name one sees in the papers so frequently in connection with gifts to Catholic Orphanages and Foundling Homes?”

      “The same lady,” replied Narkom. “Her charities are numberless, her life a psalm. I think she has done more good in her simple, undemonstrative way than half the guilds and missions in London. She has an independent fortune, and lives, in company with an invalid and almost imbecile mother, and a brother who is, I am told, studying for the priesthood, in a beautiful home surrounded by splendid grounds, the walls of which separate her garden from that of Lemmingham House.”

      “Ah, I see. Then she is a neighbour of Barrington-Edwards?”

      “Yes. From the back windows of her residence one can look into the grounds of his. That is how – Cleek!” Mr. Narkom’s voice shook with agitation – “You will remember I said, a little time back, that I would have something startling to tell you in connection with Barrington-Edwards – something that was not connected with that old army scandal? If it had not been for the high character of my informant; if it had been any other woman in all England I should have thought she was suffering from nerves – fancying things as the result of an overwrought mind sent into a state of hysteria through all those abominable crimes in the neighbourhood; but when it was she, when it was Miss Valmond – ”

      “Oho!” said Cleek, screwing round suddenly. “Then Miss Valmond told you something with regard to Barrington-Edwards?”

      “Yes – a horrible something. She came to me this morning looking as I hope I shall never see a good woman look again – as if she had been tortured to the last limit of human endurance. She had been fighting a silent battle for weeks and weeks she said, but her conscience would not let her keep the appalling secret any longer, neither would her duty to Heaven. Wakened in the dead of night by a sense of oppression, she had gone to her window to open it for air, and, looking down by chance into the garden of Lemmingham House, she had seen a man come rushing out of the rear door of Barrington-Edwards’ place in his pajamas, closely followed by another, whom she believed to be Barrington-Edwards himself, and she had seen that man unlock the door in the side wall and push the poor wretch out into the road where he was afterward found by the constable.”

      “By Jupiter!”

      “Ah, you may be moved when you connect that circumstance with what you have yourself unearthed. But there is worse to come. Unable to overcome a frightful fascination which drew her night after night to that window, she saw that same thing happen again to the fourth, and finally, the fifth man – the web-footed one – and that last time she saw the face of the pursuer quite plainly. It was Barrington-Edwards!”

      “Sure of that, was she?”

      “Absolutely. It was the positive certainty it was he that drove her at last to speak!”

      Cleek made no reply, no comment; merely screwed round on his heel and took to pacing the floor again. After a minute however:

      “Mr. Narkom,” he said halting abruptly. “I suppose all my old duds are still in the locker of the limousine, aren’t they? Good! I thought so. Give Lennard the signal, will you? I must risk the old car in an emergency like this. Take me first to the cable office, please; then to the mortuary, СКАЧАТЬ