His heart pounded as he waited, for if the man were asleep his efforts would be fruitless. Suddenly, however, there came a faint sound to his straining ears, and again he whispered in that sibilant whisper:

"Lord St. Ulmer, _fire_!"

He did not have time to repeat it, for there came the sound as of an extremely agile man leaping from his bed, and another moment he heard the snick of an unfastened lock, then the door opened.

Cleek waited not a second, his foot was in the narrow aperture, and he was through the door and had switched on the light before the other man had realized what had happened. Then he gave vent to a little low laugh of triumph as with his back against the closed door he surveyed the white-faced man who had retreated to the middle of the room.

"Good evening! Citizen Paul, good brother Apache, so it is you, is it?"

he said airily. "Let us have a quiet little understanding, _mon ami_.

You need not be distressed. There is no fire. It is merely a bluff.

What! You do not know me. But wait! Look!" The serene face writhed suddenly, and it was as if another man took his place. "Ever see a chap that looked like this, friend Paul, eh?"

"G.o.d! The Cracksman!"

"The identical party!" acknowledged Cleek blandly. "Come! I want to have a few minutes' talk with you, my friend, and---- Stop! Don't back away!

Stop and face me. By G.o.d! you'll hang for last night's business if you don't!"

CHAPTER THIRTY

NEARING THE TRUTH!

It was one o'clock when Mr. Maverick Narkom, pacing uneasily up and down the narrow strip of turf just outside the boundary wall of Wuthering Grange, saw the door at the wall angle flash open and shut again, and without so much as a murmur of sound looked up to find Cleek standing within a few paces of him.

"My dear fellow! Gad, I never was so glad to see anybody in all my days," exclaimed the superintendent, swooping down on him in a little whirlwind of excitement. "Cinnamon! You'll never guess what's happened, Cleek, never! After all my instructions, those blundering idiots of local police were too late to catch Margot and her crew at Wimbledon, the house where young Raynor visited, as you wrote me. I went down myself directly Dollops brought me your note, but it was too late, the police had frightened her in some way----"

"It does not matter," said Cleek calmly. "I have come to the end of the riddle."

"The end?" gasped Mr. Narkom. "The end! Man alive, tell me who----"

"Patience, my friend; perhaps I ought not to have said that yet, some few things remain to be discovered, but the first thing to do is to carry out the murderer's message before it is too late, or the letters get into the wrong hands."

"Whose letters?" exclaimed Mr. Narkom, naturally bewildered.

"The woman who lured Count de Louvisan, though that is not his name, to his death, Lady Clavering----"

"Lady Clav---- Heavens, man, what possible motive could she have?"

"We shall see, my friend, if my ideas are right. Call up Lennard and the limousine and let us go down to the cottage. With one more thread in my hand, and then to-night will see the knot unravelled."

With this Mr. Narkom was fain to be content, and once in the car, the few minutes that elapsed before they reached Gleer Cottage were pa.s.sed in silence. At the gate, when the limousine drew up, Cleek aroused himself from his reverie.

"Mr. Narkom, get the constables stationed on duty near that room out of the way. Put them outside somewhere where they won't be able to see or hear what goes on at the back of the house. Then make an excuse of having to examine the body in reference to some new evidence that's just cropped up. I'll join you there in one minute."

Mr. Narkom gave a nod of comprehension and vanished up the path, leaving his great ally to carry out his plans in his own inimitable fashion.

That was the last the superintendent saw of him until full twenty minutes later when, with his customary soundlessness, he came up out of the gloom of the neglected garden, entered the rear door of the cottage, and joined him in the room where the body of the dead man still hung, spiked to the wall, with knees bent, head lolling, and the lantern in Narkom's hand splashing a grotesque shadow of him on the side of the chimney breast.

Cleek walked over to that ghastly human crucifix and regarded the dead man bitterly, his lips puckered, and his whole expression one of unspeakable contempt.

"So it has come to this at last, has it, De Morcerf?" he said, half audibly. "Well, was it worth the price, do you think? Peace to you, or, at least, such peace as you deserve. You've paid your scot and pa.s.sed out eternally. As for the rest---- Mr. Narkom!"

"Yes, old chap?"

"I noticed last night, when I was down on my knees following the trail of the _Huile Violette_, that there was a section of the flooring which has evidently been raised lately, as it was fastened down with new nails. Locate the place for me--it's over their somewhere--and stand there while I do a little measuring and counting."

Narkom moved over in the direction indicated, searched about for a time with a magnifying gla.s.s, and finally announced the discovery of the place he had been set to look for.

"Good heavens above, old chap, how you notice things! Fancy your remarking that when you were looking for something totally different! I say what on earth are you doing?"

"Measuring," replied Cleek, stepping off the distance between the spot where the body hung and that where Narkom knelt. "Three feet, one yard; three yards---- No, that won't do. 'Nine feet from the body' doesn't work out, so it's not that. Nine paces are impossible--room's too short--and nine boards---- Hum-m-m! That's poorer than the rest--doesn't go half the way. Clearly then, if my theory is correct, it's _not_ the body that's the starting point. How about the mantelpiece then? Let's have a try. Nine feet? No go! Nine boards, then? Oh, piffle! that's worse than ever. It leads off in a totally different direction. But stop a bit! These boards run up and down the room, not across it; and as it is undoubted that the measurement goes to the left, why, two and four make six. Hum-m-m! Six feet from the corner of the mantelpiece to----Hullo! that brings me exactly opposite to where you stand, doesn't it? And counting the board between us runs to--one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine! Exactly nine boards across the room! Got it, by Jupiter! Three paces from the body bring one to the mantelpiece.

And paces are usually designated in a diagram by X's. And nine boards across the room does the trick! Letters, she said, letters! That was the first clue. Letters that might fall into Margot's hands; and as that dead wretch was Margot's ally once upon a time, and might threaten to give the things over to her if his demands were not acceded to---- Victoria! He will have hidden them there, unless I'm the biggest kind of an a.s.s, and can no longer put two and two together!"

Speaking, he moved rapidly across the room to the spot where Narkom stood, knelt, and in five minutes' time had the board up. Under it there lay something tied up in an old white silk handkerchief; and when the knots of that were unfastened three thick packets of yellow, time-discoloured letters, tied up with old neckties and frayed silken shoelaces, tumbled out upon the floor. One and all were addressed to "M.

Anatole de Villon," and were written in a woman's hand.

Cleek snapped the binding of the first bundle, looked at the signature appended to the letters, and then pa.s.sed them over to Narkom.

"There is the answer to the riddle," he said. "Poor soul--poor, poor unhappy soul! Under G.o.d, she shall suffer no more from this night on!

And he would have sold her--sold her for money had he lived."

Narkom made no reply in words. He simply glanced at the signature attached to the first letter, then sucked in his breath with a sort of shuddering sigh, and grew very, very still.

"Let's get out!" said Cleek in a sharp, biting voice. "I can't breathe in the presence of that dead beast any longer. 'Who breaks pays!' Yes, by G.o.d, he does!"

He turned and got out of the room, out of the house, and forged back through the darkness toward the spot where the limousine waited.

Halfway up the lane Narkom overtook him.

"Cleek, dear chap," he said, plucking him by the sleeve, "in the name of heaven, what is to be done now? The man is my friend. He believes in her; he loves her; and on my soul I believe that she loves him. Dear old chap, isn't there something better and n.o.bler than human justice, something higher than the laws of man?"

"Yes," said Cleek, "a great deal higher. There's G.o.d and there's humanity. The woman has paid and paid and paid, as erring women must always do; but if I can help it, she shall pay no longer. I tell you I will compound a felony that her secret may be kept."

"And I'll a.s.sist you in it, old chap; I'll compound it with you!" said Narkom with quiet impressiveness. "Not because the man is my friend, Cleek, but because--oh, well, because the woman is a _woman_!"

"And they have a hard road to travel at best," supplemented Cleek. "So let's give a sorely tried one a lift and a bit of sunlight on the long, dark way! You see how it came about, do you not? She made the appointment with him to meet her at Gleer Cottage because it was a lonely as well as a convenient spot. I dare say that when he learned the character of the place it struck him as being a safe one in which to hide the letters in case of any attempt being made to steal them from him. When he set out earlier than the appointed hour for that purpose, the--well, _the other party_ was on the watch and saw where they were put, yet didn't have an opportunity to remove them at once, so marked the clue down in that particular manner on the dead man's bosom, in order to tell Margot that she had been avenged and the letters hidden. I will tell you the story presently, but first let us get back to General Raynor."

"Raynor!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr. Narkom, "Surely it was not he who----"

"Committed the murder," finished Cleek. "No, luckily for him, he found it already committed. No, it is these letters that he wanted. Here we are at the limousine at last, thank fortune. The Grange, Lennard, as fast as you can make it, my lad."

Lennard got there in record time, depositing them at the gates in something less than a quarter of an hour later. And here Dollops, who was patiently waiting in the shadow of the wall, rose to meet them as they alighted.

"Gawd's truth, gov'ner, is it you at last? I've been nigh off my biscuit wonderin' wot 'ad become of you, sir," he began as he approached; and would probably have said more but that Cleek interrupted him.

"No time for talking now, Dollops," said he. "We are at the end of the trail and even moments count. Into the limousine with you, my lad, and let Lennard drive you over to Clavering Close. Ask for Miss Lorne when you get there, and give her this message. Say that she and Lady Katharine are to stop where they are until I come for them in person.