A clatter of hasty footsteps came along the drive and up the steps to the veranda, and Narkom, in a state of violent excitement, stood beside him.

"All right," he said, answering Cleek's inquiring glance. "I headed the taxi off and set Dollops to work as you suggested--and a blessed good thing I did, too, otherwise we might have lost valuable clues."

"There _were_ footsteps then?"

"Footsteps? Great Scott, yes, heaps of them: the absolute continuation of those which led me and my men to this house. But the madness of the thing, the puzzle of the thing! No man on earth can run away in two directions, yet there the blessed things are, going down the road at full tilt and coming back up it again still on a dead run. Two lines of them, old chap, one going and the other returning and both pa.s.sing by the gate of this house. By it, do you hear?--_by_ it, and never once turning in; yet in the garden we have found marks that correspond with them to the fraction of a hair, and we know positively that the fellow _did_ come in here. It licks me, Cleek--it positively licks me. It's beyond all reason."

"Yes," admitted Cleek, thinking of the green satin dress. "It is, Mr.

Narkom, it certainly is."

"Dollops will bring the drawings he's making to you as soon as he has covered all the ground," resumed the superintendent almost immediately.

"Clever young dog that and no mistake. But to return to our muttons, old chap. Did you get anything out of this poor fellow? Any clue to the party who a.s.saulted him?"

"None. He doesn't know. For one thing, the mist prevented him seeing his a.s.sailant, and for another, he was first shot down by some one who was running toward him and answered his challenge with a bullet, and then pounced upon by somebody else who was behind him and floored him with the hammer. I take it that the person who was running and who fired the shot was advancing toward him from this direction--was, in fact, the actual a.s.sa.s.sin--and that having discharged the pistol and caused this poor fellow to whistle a call for a.s.sistance to the constable in Mulberry Lane, he was put to it to get out of the box in which he found himself by those two things. To escape across the Common meant to be pursued by the constable and driven across the track of one of the other keepers; so he took the bold hazard of putting on this poor chap's coat, cap, and badge and playing at joining in the hue and cry in the manner he did. Is that"--turning to the dying man--"the truth of it?"

The keeper could only nod--he was now too far gone to make any verbal response, and even the administering of another dose of brandy failed to whip up his expiring strength.

"I'm afraid we shall never get any more out of him, poor fellow," said Cleek feelingly. "He is lapsing into unconsciousness, you see. Raise him a bit, make him a little more comfortable if pos---- Quick! Catch his head, Mr. Narkom! Don't let it strike the boards. Gone!--a good true servant of the public gone! And the blackguard that killed him still at large!"

Then he gently folded the useless hands and closed down the sightless eyes, and shaking out the coat which Petrie had bundled into a pillow, spread it over the dead man and was very, very still for a little time.

"There's a widow--and some little nippers, Mr. Narkom," he said when he at length rose to his feet. "Find them out for me, will you? And if you can see your way to offer a good substantial reward for the clearing up of this case and the capture of the criminal, I'll pull it off and you may pay that reward to the mother of this man's children."

"Cleek, my dear fellow! How ridiculously quixotic. What on earth can you be thinking about?"

"A woman, Mr. Narkom--just a woman--and a few little nippers ... who might take the wrong road as--well, as somebody I know of took it once--if there wasn't a hand to help them or a friend to guide. That's all, dear friend, that's all!"

Lifting his hat to that silent, covered figure, he turned and walked away. But at the foot of the steps leading down to the mist and darkness of the drive he came to a halt; and there Narkom, following almost instantly, joined him again.

"My dear fellow, of all the impulsive, of all the amazing men," he began; but got no further, for Cleek's upthrown hand checked him.

"We won't go into that, Mr. Narkom," he said. "We'll stick to the case, please. I've got something to tell you that you haven't heard as yet.

Something that that poor dead chap did manage to tell me. A woman--a lady--was out there on the Common to-night and paid him not to disclose the fact."

"Great Scott! My dear fellow, you don't surely mean to hint that by any possibility that poor child, Lady Katharine Fordham----"

"No, I do not. The lady in question was neither Lady Katharine Fordham, who, you tell me, wore a white satin dress to-night, nor yet Miss Ailsa Lorne, whose frock you say was of gauzy pink. The lady in question wore, I understand, a gown of very pale green satin with what I take to have been several diamond ornaments upon the corsage; furthermore, a delicate but very distinct odour of violets clung about her."

"Good Lord!"

"No wonder you are surprised, Mr. Narkom. Ladies dressed in that fashion are not, as a general thing, given to wandering about Wimbledon Common either by night or by day, and the presence of this particular one is curious, to say the least of it. I am of the opinion, however, that she was no stranger to the Common keeper, otherwise he would have hurried her into the shelter the instant she offered to bribe him, whistled up the constable in Mulberry Lane, and given her in charge as a suspicious character. Then there is another side to the affair which we must not overlook. An entertainment was in progress at Clavering Close to-night, and there must have been quite a number of ladies present dressed in gala attire. But if your exclamation means that you have no recollection of seeing one who wore a gown of pale green satin----"

"It doesn't!" rapped in Narkom excitedly. "It was the absurdity, the madness, the--the utter impossibility of the thing. That she--she of all women----! What rot!"

"Oho!" said Cleek, with a strong, rising inflection. "Then there _was_ such a gown in the rooms at Clavering Close to-night, eh? And you do remember the lady that wore it?"

"Remember her? There's n.o.body I should be likely to remember better. It was Lady Clavering herself!"

"Whew-w! The hostess?"

"Yes. Sir Philip's wife--young Geoff's stepmother; one of the sweetest, gentlest, most womanly women that ever lived. And to suggest that she ... either the fellow must have deliberately lied or his statement was the delusion of a dying man. It couldn't have happened--it simply couldn't, Cleek. Why, man, her ladyship was there--at the Close--when I left. It was she who put that jewel into my hand and asked me to leave it at Wuthering Grange when----"

He stopped, biting his words off short and laying a nervous grip on Cleek's arm; and Cleek, facing about abruptly, leaned forward into the mist and darkness, listening.

For of a sudden, a babble of angry voices, mingled with the sounds of a scuffle, had risen from the road beyond the gates, and hard on the heels of it there now rang forth sharply the shrill tones of Dollops crying out at the top of his voice:

"None o' yer larks, now! Got yer! Gov'ner! Mr. Narkom! This way! Come quick, will yer? I've copped the bounder. Out here in the bushes under this blessed wall!"

CHAPTER SIX

A LITTLE DISCREPANCY

The distance between the gates of Gleer Cottage and the porch wherein lay the body of the dead keeper was by no means a short one, but at the first sound of Dollops's voice the two men sped down the centre of the dark, mist-wrapped drive and out into the lane, their electric pocket torches sending two brilliant streams of light in front of them. The sounds of scuffling feet and of wrangling voices guided them along the broken, irregular line of the crumbling brick wall which encircled the grounds of the cottage, and following the lead of them, they came presently upon an amazing picture.

Close to that identical spot where, earlier in the night, Hammond had found the gap in the wall, two figures struggled together: the one, in a vain endeavour to free himself from the clutches of his captor; the other intent on bringing him to the ground, on which lay scattered all the drawings and paraphernalia with which Dollops had evidently been carrying out his master's instructions. The light of the torches revealed his prisoner to be a st.u.r.dy, fair-haired young man, and a first glance showed Cleek that he was arrayed in a fashionable light-weight overcoat which, torn open in the struggle, showed him also to be in immaculate evening dress. It hardly needed Mr. Narkom's startled exclamation, "Geoff!" to tell the detective that this was indeed the son and heir of Sir Philip Clavering, the young man whose bitter threats against the dead man in the cottage had been so swiftly carried out.

But the exclamation had a far-reaching effect upon Dollops's prisoner, for he ceased struggling at once and faced round upon the superintendent so that the full glare of the torches could fall upon his features and leave not a shadow of doubt regarding his ident.i.ty.

"Hullo! Mr. Narkom!" he exclaimed. "This _is_ a stroke of good luck and no mistake! Who and what is this enterprising individual upon my back? I can't see his interesting face, for he pounced upon me in the dark; but if I had known that his yells and cries were likely to bring _you_ upon the scene, I certainly shouldn't have gone to the length of struggling and getting my clothes in this awful mess."

Cleek made a mental tally of that remark, and set alongside of it the circ.u.mstance that Dollops, when he first called out, had most distinctly mentioned Mr. Narkom by name. He said nothing, however; merely removed the pressure of his thumb from the controlling b.u.t.ton of his torch, slipped that useful article into his pocket, and busied himself with picking up Dollops's effects from the ground.

"Here you, whoever you are! You keep your blessed thievin' irons off them things!" snapped Dollops, with a wink at the superintendent. "I say, Mr. Narkom, sir, don't let that josser go carryin' off my drorin's--them's for my gov'ner, _you_ know that. And, sir," he went on earnestly, "don't you be took in by none of the gammon of this 'ere person. Actin' suspicious and creepin' along in the dark he was when I 'opped up and copped him, sir, and no matter if he _is_ a party as you're acquainted with, sir----"

"He is," interrupted the superintendent curtly, not, however, without some slight show of agitation at finding this particular young man in the neighbourhood at this particular time. "The gentleman is Mr.

Geoffrey Clavering, my friend Sir Philip Clavering's son and heir."

"Well, sir, I can't 'elp that," began Dollops, but his words were interrupted by the captive himself.

"I shouldn't have blamed you if you had failed to recognize me from the state I'm in through the mistaken ardour of this enterprising youth, Mr.

Narkom," he said. "He appears not to have left one inch of my person unmarked with his hands; and if you would oblige me by requesting him to detach himself from me as expeditiously as possible, I shall be unspeakably obliged."

"Certainly, Geoff. Dollops, let the gentleman go."

"But, sir-- Mr. Narkom----"

"Stand back, I tell you!"

"But upon my sacred word of honour, sir----"

"You have heard what I said, haven't you? That's enough," interrupted Narkom, sharply.

Dollops gave a swift glance at Monsieur Georges de Lesparre's face, then sullenly relinquished his hold on his prisoner, and with a knowing wink over his shoulder, busied himself with picking up his scattered and muddied papers.

"A jolly cheeky young beggar that, Mr. Narkom; I wonder you take his impertinences so lightly," said young Clavering, who seemed, somehow, to have lost a little of his self-possession now that it became evident the matter of his presence must inevitably be the topic of conversation. "I say, send him away, won't you? And if you would--er--send your friend away, too, I'd be obliged. I'd like to have a little conversation with you in private, if you don't mind."