"Certainly, Geoff. Dollops, take yourself off--hot shot!"

"Me, sir? My hat! Where'll I go? Wot'll I do, sir?"

"Go and continue what you were told to do in the first place. Gather up your traps, and be off about it."

"Oh, yuss--of course--nuthink easier than _that_ after the way as the gent 'ere has went gallopin' all over 'em with his muddy boots!" said Dollops with apparent disgust. "Look at that for a sample of drorin', will yer?"

He slyly twitched the corner of his eye round in Cleek's direction, turned the mud-stained paper so that he should see the footprint, and mumbling and muttering shambled away in the direction of the cottage and disappeared in the mist and darkness.

"I'm afraid, Geoff," went on Narkom as soon as Dollops had gone, "that I can't humour you to the extent of requesting this gentleman, too, to leave us; but let me have the pleasure of introducing him--Monsieur Georges de Lesparre, the famous French criminologist. We are engaged together upon a very serious matter to-night. In short, an exceptionally ghastly murder has been committed since I left Clavering Close, Geoff, and you will be horrified to hear----"

"Gently, gently, monsieur," softly interposed Cleek, who, while appearing to be absorbed in acknowledging the introduction, had been quietly taking in every detail relative to the young man's appearance and had decided offhand that he liked him; that he was simply a handsome, straight-looking, frank-faced, clear-eyed young fellow who, in the general order of things, ought not to have one evil impulse in him.

"Shall one go into details that may, possibly, be unnecessary?" he went on. "Perhaps Mr. Clavering has already heard of the crime, and it is that which is accountable for his presence in this neighbourhood."

In his heart he knew that there was no such possibility, that there was not even the ghost of a chance that news of the murder could so soon have gotten abroad when even the local police had not yet learned of it, and he threw out this "feeler" hoping that young Clavering would rid himself of any shadow of complicity by at once rejecting it. To his disappointment, however, Geoff rose to it as a trout to a fly; and his face, which had betrayed a strong effort to repress an overwhelming agitation from the instant Narkom made mention of the crime, now lit with something like relief and thankfulness.

"Yes, that's the case. You have guessed it, monsieur," he said gratefully, a sound that seemed a curious blend of a sigh and a sob getting into his voice despite an effort to keep it level and emotionless. "I had gone to bed--that is, I mean to say I was getting ready to go to bed--but I knew I shouldn't be able to sleep, so I came down into the grounds for a walk and a smoke. The open air always does me good. All at once a motor came along with Mellish, the police constable, in it. I stopped him, and he told me of this awful thing. I nearly went mad. To think what it means to my dear girl! She hasn't heard yet, of course----"

"No," said Mr. Narkom. "She will have to be told in the morning. Poor girl, it will be a shock to her, but it means a great obstacle removed from your path."

"Yes," agreed the young man uneasily. "That's what made me so anxious to come here and find out for myself if the murderer had been traced. You see I lost my head a bit to-night," he added half apologetically, "and you never know what people will say, so I was just coming cautiously along when that cheeky young chap threw himself on me, mistaking me, I suppose, for the a.s.sa.s.sin."

He made an attempt to laugh, but even to Mr. Narkom it was palpable that the young fellow was making a desperate effort to cover up his agitation.

"You can't, in the circ.u.mstances, blame him for that, Geoff," replied Narkom. "Besides, it was a most indiscreet thing for you--you of all men--to come here to-night, especially after what happened at the Close."

"You mean about my threatening De Louvisan?"

"Yes. At least twenty or thirty persons heard that; and although after you were calmer and the Austrian had left the house, you excused yourself to your guests and were said to have gone to your room for the night----"

"I did go to it!" rapped in Geoff excitedly. "Purviss, my valet, will prove that if there's any question regarding it. Simply because I didn't have the heart to indulge in any more dancing or tomfoolery of that sort when my dear girl had been dragged away from me as though I were a leper. Good G.o.d, Mr. Narkom! _you_ don't believe I had anything to do with this awful thing, do you?"

Cleek took the reins before Narkom could utter so much as a single word.

"Of a certainty he does not, monsieur. Who could on so slight a thing as the mere hot-headed outburst of an excited young man?" he said suavely, making, as was his way, a cunning hazard that should at once prove or disprove a suspicion that lay at the back of his head. "And to base it upon no stronger circ.u.mstance than that you afterward left the drawing-room and did not return! Ridiculous! One might as well suspect Lady Clavering herself when she, too, was obliged to retire and leave her guests for the time, if merely absenting one's self is to be regarded as suspicious. It is what you Anglais shall call 'tommyrot,'

that, eh?"

"Of course it is, monsieur--er--what's-your-name--of course!" a.s.sented Geoff gratefully, rather liking this suave and gentle Frenchman who seemed bent upon coming to his rescue and showing him the way out whenever matters took an awkward turn. "You're a jolly, sharp-sighted chap, you are, and you spot the weak points in these affairs like a shot. My stepmother doesn't often suffer from headaches, but just as it happens, she was so queer that she had to lie down for about an hour; but her maid can prove that she stopped in her room, just as Purviss can vouch for it that I remained in mine."

The curious one-sided smile moved up Cleek's left cheek, then vanished again.

"Quite so, quite so," he said blandly. "Besides, it is not with Lady Clavering that we are concerned, but with the owner of a jewel that we found on the spot--a little gold scent bangle that smelt of violets----"

"My G.o.d! Kathie's! She said she lost it!" cried Geoffrey through his clenched teeth; then realizing what his words meant, he turned on the two men fiercely.

"What do you mean? What are you trying to infer? That she--my dear girl---- Good heavens! but if you dare to bring her name into this horrible business, I'll throttle the pair of you! You shan't connect her with the abominable affair! By G.o.d, you shan't!"

"M'sieur is too quick with his threats," put in Cleek suavely. "Would it not be as well to wait? Unfortunately, we have only too much proof that a woman was concerned in the murder, and----"

"But it was not Lady Katharine. That I swear!" The young man's voice shook with emotion, and his strained eyes gazed from one face to the other in heartbreaking intensity.

"You are absolutely sure that you have no suspicion of the murderer's ident.i.ty?" Cleek asked with a sharpness unusual to him. "No reason to doubt any living soul?"

For just the merest fraction of a second young Clavering appeared to hesitate.

"No," he said curtly. "No, I have not. I know no more about it than a child. Mellish told me about the murder, and it was only natural that I should come up here to make inquiries."

"But, yes, monsieur, of course," agreed Cleek softly. "There is, then, no more to be said save good-bye. I fear me I shall not have the pleasure of meeting you again, as I return to Paris to-morrow. The case is one of the most mysterious, and I leave it to your English detective, Mr. George Headland. So it is adieu, monsieur, and not au revoir."

He held out his hand to the young man, who grasped it in his own trembling one, and then, with a sharp "good-night," Geoff Clavering turned and strode back in the direction whence he had come.

"Hum-m-m!" said Cleek, taking his chin between his thumb and forefinger and rubbing it up and down. "A total denial! And with enough decency to blush! Quite so! Quite so!"

Mr. Narkom, knowing the signs and being torn with eagerness for the father of that rash boy, moved forward and laid a shaking hand upon his sleeve.

"Cleek," he said in a whisper full of anxiety and excitement, "don't keep it back, dear chap. You've come to some conclusion. Speak up, do, and tell me what you make of it?"

"Make of it, Mr. Narkom? Well, for one thing, I make of it that that young man lied like a pickpocket and deliberately attempted to throw dust in our eyes. He not only _does_ suspect some one--and with good grounds, too--but he has been here before and in that house to-night. In other words, his was the foot that crushed that golden capsule. The scent of the _Huile Violette_ was upon the drawing paper, the measure, the m.u.f.fler, the cap--every blessed thing he trod on in his scuffle with Dollops!"

"Good G.o.d! Oh, his poor father! Surely, surely, Cleek, you do not believe----"

"My dear Mr. Narkom, I never suffer myself to 'believe' anything until I have absolute proof of it. What I may _think_ is a different matter."

"And you think of that boy--what?"

"That he is either a hot-headed, quixotic, loyal, lovable young a.s.s, Mr.

Narkom, or he's a remarkably dangerous and crafty criminal! I'm put to it for the moment to decide which. One thing is pretty certain, and that is that young Geoffrey Clavering knows more of this crime than he will admit, and that the woman he is shielding is Lady Katharine Fordham, who was not only on the Common but in Gleer Cottage itself with Master Geoffrey."

"Good heavens! Cleek, how do you know that?" cried Mr. Narkom, his voice hoa.r.s.e and shaken.

"Firstly, because his clothes are all scented with that peculiar scent of violets, and although I know from the dead keeper that another woman, probably Lady Clavering, was on the Common, he is certainly not shielding her; otherwise he would not have admitted that she had absented herself from her guests. No, I think you will find that both the young people were out here to-night. Let's hear now what Dollops has to say."

A minute later there sounded the familiar cry of a night owl, which brought the boy himself running up at full speed.

"Lor' lumme, sir!" he cried disgustedly, as a quick glance revealed the absence of his former prisoner. "You never went and let 'im go after me a-showin' of you the footprint wot he'd left on my drorin' paper! It's just the same as one of 'em in the lane wot you told me to measure, sir; measure 'em off yourself and see. And him a-playin' off innercent and actin' like he was a respectable gent as was comin' here unsuspectin'

and got copped by mistake! He wasn't, the bounder! He was tryin' to sneak away, that's wot _he_ was a-doin' of--trying to do a bunk before anybody dropped to where he was a-hidin'."

"What's that? Hiding? Did you say hiding?"

"Yes, I did, Mr. Narkom, and I'd a-told you of it at the time, only you wouldn't let me open me blessed mouth, but jist shuts me up and orders me off prompt. Hidin' in that blessed 'oller tree there--look!" He flashed the light of his torch upon a tree which stood about three or four yards distant. "In that he was," he went on, "and jist as soon as the motor had went and the way was clear, I sees him sneak out and make toward the Common; so I ups and does a tiptoe run along this strip o'

gra.s.s, sir, so's me feet wouldn't make no noise, and jist as he starts to do a bunk I does a spring, and comes down on his blessed back like a 'awk on a guinea 'en."

Narkom twitched up his chin and looked at Cleek; and for a moment there was silence, a deep significant silence, then Cleek spoke.

"How shall we sum him up by the measure of these things, Mr. Narkom, as a hero or as a scoundrel?" he said. "If he is innocent, why was he hiding? And if not for a criminal purpose, why did he come to this place at all?"

"Heavens above, man, don't ask _me_!" returned Narkom irritably. "It's the most infernal riddle I ever encountered. My head's in a positive whirl. But look here, old chap. Supposing he did have a hand in the murder, how on earth could he have coaxed De Louvisan to this house--a man who had cause to dread him, a man whose life he had threatened?"