Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces Page 9

  CHAPTER VI

  The stillness, the balm, the soothing influences of the night workedtheir own spell; and, after a time, rubbed out the mental wrinkles andbrought a sense of restfulness and peace. It could not well do otherwisewith such a nature as his. The night was all a-musk with mignonette androses, the sky all a-glitter with stars. A gunshot distant the riverran--a silver thing ribboning along between the dark of bending trees;somewhere in the darkness a nightingale shook out the scale of Nature'sAnthem to the listening Night, and, farther afield, others took up thechorus of it and sang and sang with the sheer joy of living.

  What a world--God, what a world for parricides to exist in, and for thesons of men to forget the Fifth Commandment!

  He walked on faster, and made his way to the arbour where Dollopswaited. The boy rose to meet him.

  "Everythink all ready, sir--see!" he said, holding up a kit bag. "Wot'sit now, Gov'nor?--the railway station? Good enough. Shall I nip offahead or keep with you till we get there?"

  "Suit yourself, my lad."

  "Thanky, sir; then I'll walk at your heels, if you don't mind. I'd liketo walk at your heels all the rest of my blessed life. Did I carry itoff all right, Gov'nor? Did I do it jist as you wanted of it done?"

  "To a T, my lad," said Cleek, smiling and patting him on the shoulder."You'll do, Dollops--you'll do finely. I think I did a good job for thepair of us, my boy, when I gave you those two half-crowns."

  "Advanced, Gov'nor, advanced," corrected Dollops, with a look of sheeraffection. "Let me work 'em off, sir, like you said I might. I don'twant nothin' but wot I earns, Gov'nor; nothin' but wot I've got a rightto have; for when I sees wot wantin' money as don't belong to you leadsto; when I thinks wot that young Bawdrey chap was willin' to do for thelove of havin' it--"

  "Don't!" struck in Cleek, a trifle roughly. "Drop the man's name--Ican't trust myself to think of it. That the one world, the one self-sameworld, could hold two such widely dissimilar creations of God as thatmonster and ... No matter. Thank God, I've been able to do somethingto-night for a good woman--I owe so much to another of her kind. No;don't speak--just walk quietly and"--jerking his thumb in the directionof the fluting nightingales--"listen to that. God! the man who couldthink evil things when a nightingale sings, isn't fit to stand even inthe Devil's presence."

  Dollops looked at him--half-puzzled, half-awed. He could not understandthe character of the man: there were so many sides to it; and they cameand went so oddly. One minute, a very brute-beast in his ferocity, thenext, a woman in his tenderness and a poet in his thoughts. But if theboy was puzzled, he was, at least, discreet. He put nothing into words:merely walked on in silence, and left the man to his thoughts and thenightingales to their melody.

  And Cleek was unusually thoughtful from that period onward; speakinghardly a word through all the journey home. For now that the eventswhich had occupied his mind for the past two or three days were over anddone with, his memory harked back to those things which had to do withhis own affairs, and he caught himself wondering how matters had gonewith Ailsa Lorne; which of the two positions--the English one or theFrench--she had finally elected to apply for; and if time had as yetsoftened the shock of that disclosure made in the mist and darkness atHampstead Heath.

  He had, of course, heard nothing of her since that time; and the days hehad spent at Richmond had utterly precluded the possibility of givinghimself that small pleasure--so often indulged in--of adopting a safedisguise, prowling about the neighbourhood where she lived until sheshould come forth upon one errand or another, and then following her,unsuspected.

  That she could have taken the knowledge of what he once had been in noother way than she had done; that to such a woman, such a man must atthe first blush be an object of abhorrence--a thing to be put out of herlife as completely and as expeditiously as possible--he fully realised;yet, at bottom, he was conscious of a hope that Time--even so little ashad passed--might lend a softening influence that should lead eventuallyto Pity, and from that to a day when the word Forgiveness might bespoken.

  He wanted that forgiveness--the soul of the man needed it, as parchedplants need water. He had not climbed up out of himself without somestruggle, some moments when he wavered between what he had become, andwhat Nature had written that he was meant to be; for no Soul is purgedall in a moment, no man may conquer himself with just one solitaryfight. He needed her forgiveness, the thought of her, the hope of her,to rivet his armour for the long, brave fight. He needed herFriendship--if he might never have her love he needed _that_. And if shewere to pass like this from his life.... If the Light were to go out ...and all the long, dark way of the Future still to be faced.... Somethingwithin him seemed to writhe. He took his lower lip between his thumb andforefinger and squeezed it hard.

  That he had hoped for some token, some word--forwarded through Mr.Narkom--he did not quite realise until he got back to Clarges Street andfound that there was none.

  Followed a sense of despair, a moment of deep dejection, that passed inturn and gave place to a feeling of personal injury, of savageresentment, and of the ferocity which comes when the half-tamed wolfwakes to the realisation that here is nothing before it evermore, butthe bars of the cage and the goad of the keeper; and that far and awayin the world there are still the free woods, the naked body of Nature,and the savage company of its kind.

  Under the stress of that gust of passion, he sent Dollops flying fromthe room. He wrenched open the drawer of his writing-table, and scoopedup in his hands some trifles of faded ribbon and trinkets ofgold--things that he treasured, none knew why or for what--and holdingthem thus, looked down on them and laughed, bitterly and savagely, asthough a devil were within him.

  "Me! She scorns me!" he said, and laughed again, and flung them all backand shut the drawer upon them. And presently he knew that he held herall the higher because she did scorn him; because her life was such thatshe _could_ scorn him; and the bitterness dropped out of him, his eyessoftened, and though he still laughed, it was for an utterly differentreason, and in a wholly different way.

  Some pots of tulips and mignonette stood on the ledge of his window. Hewalked over to see that they were watered before he went to bed. Andbetween the time when he got down on his knees to fish out hisbath-slippers from beneath the bed-stead and the creak of the springswhen he lay down for the night, he was so long and so still that onemight have believed he was doing something else.

  He slept long, and rose in the morning soothed and subdued inspirit--better and brighter in every way; for now no affair, for TheYard hampered his movements and claimed his time. He was free; he wasback in the Town--beautiful because it contained her--and he might harkback to the old trick of watching and following and being close to herwithout her knowledge.

  It was a vain hope that, however. For, although he dressed and went outand haunted the neighbourhood of Sir Horace Wyvern's house for hours onend, he saw nothing of her that day. Nor did he see her the next, northe next, nor yet the next again. At first, he began to think that shemust come out and return during the times when he was obliged to go offguard and get his meal--for he could not bring himself to play the partof the spy or the common policeman, and filch news from theservants--but when a week had gone by in this manner, he set allquestion upon that point at rest by remaining at his post from sunriseto ten o'clock at night. She did not appear. He wondered what thatmeant--whether it indicated that she had already accepted one of the twopositions, or had gone to stop with her friend on the other side ofHampstead Heath.

  The result of that wondering was that, for the next five days, thegentleman who was known in Clarges Street as "Captain Horatio Burbage,"became a regular visitor to the neighbourhood of the house in BardonRoad. The issue was exactly the same. Miss Lorne did not appear.

  He could no longer doubt that she had accepted one or other of the twopositions; but steadfastly refrained from making any personal inquiry.She would hear of it if anybody called to inquire her whereabouts; andshe would guess wh
o had done it. He would not have her feel that he wasthrusting himself upon her, inquiring about her as one might inquireabout a common servant. If it was her will that he should know, thenthat knowledge should come from her, not be picked up as one picks upclues to missing people of the criminal class.

  So then, it was good-bye to Bardon Road, just as it had been good-bye toMayfair. He turned his back upon it in the very moment he came to thatconclusion, and had just set his face in the direction of the heath whenhe was brought to a standstill by the sound of someone calling outsharply: "Burbage--I say, Captain Burbage: stop a moment, please." And,screwing round instantly, he saw a red limousine pelting toward him, andan excited chauffeur waving a gloved hand.

  He knew that red limousine, and he knew that chauffeur. Both belonged toMr. Maverick Narkom.

  He stood waiting until the motor was abreast of him--had, in fact, cometo a standstill--then spoke in a guarded tone:

  "What is it, Lennard?" he asked. "The Yard?"

  "Yessir. Young Dollops told us where to look for you. Hop in quickly,sir. Superintendent inside."

  Cleek opened the door of the vehicle at once, stepped in, shut it afterhim, and sat down beside Mr. Narkom with the utmost composure.

  "My dear fellow, I _have_ had a chase!" said the superintendent, with along deep breath of relief, as the limousine swung out into the roadway,and pelted off westward at a pace that brushed the very fringes of thespeed limit. "I made certain I should find you at home. Fairly flooredwhen I discovered that you weren't. If it hadn't been for that boy,Dollops--bright young button, that Dollops, Cleek; exceedingly bright,b'gad."

  "Yes," agreed Cleek, quietly. "Bright, faithful, and--inventive."

  "Really? What has the young beggar invented, then?"

  "An original appliance which may possibly be of a good deal of serviceone of these days. But, never mind that at present. It is fair tosuppose, from your rushing out here in quest of me, that you've gotsomething on hand, isn't it?"

  "Yes--rather! An amazing 'something,' old chap. It's a letter. Arrivedat headquarters about an hour and a half ago. Not an affair for The Yardthis time, Cleek, but a thing you must take up on your own, if you takeit up at all; and I tell you frankly, I don't like it."

  "Why?"

  "For one thing, it's from Paris; and--well, you know what dangers Pariswould have for _you_. There's that she-devil you broke with--that womanMargot. You know what she swore, what she wrote when you sent her thatletter telling her that you were done with her and her lot, and warningher never to set foot on English soil again? If you were to run foul ofher--if she were ever to get any hint of your real identity--"

  "She can't. She knows no more of my real history than you do; no morethan I actually know of hers. Our knowledge of each other began when westarted to 'pal' together--it ended when we split, eighteen months ago.But about that letter? What is it? Why do you say that you don't likeit?"

  "Well, to begin with, I'm afraid it is some trap of hers to decoy youover there--get you into some unknown place--"

  "There are no 'unknown places' in Paris so far as I am concerned. I knowevery hole and corner of it, from the sewers on. I know it as well as Iknow London, as well as I know Berlin--NewYork--Vienna--Edinburgh--Rome. You couldn't lose me or trap me in anyone of them. Is that the letter in your hand? Good--then read it,please."

  "To the Superintendent of Police, Scotland Yard," read Narkom, obeyingthe request.

  "'DISTINGUISHED MONSIEUR:

  "'Of your grace and pity, I implore you to listen to the prayer of anunhappy man whose honour, whose reason, whose very life are in deadlyperil, not alone of "The Red Crawl," but of things he may not even name,dare not commit to writing, lest this letter should go astray. It shallhappen, monsieur, that the whole world shall hear with amazement of thatmost marvellous "Cleek"--that great reader of riddles and unmasker ofevil-doers who, in the past year, has made the police department ofEngland the envy of all nations; and it shall happen also that I whodare not appeal to the police of France appeal to the mercy, thehumanity, of this great man, as it is my only hope. Monsieur, you havehis ear, you have his confidence, you have the means at your command.Ah! ask him, pray him, implore him for the love of God, and the sake ofa fellow-man, to come alone to the top floor of the house number 7 ofthe Rue Toison d'Or, Paris, at nine hours of the night of Friday, the26th inst., to enter into the darkness and say but the one word "Cleek"as a signal it is he, and I may come forward and throw myself upon hismercy. Oh, save me, Monsieur Cleek--save me! save me!'

  "There, that's the lot, and there's no signature," said Narkom, layingdown the letter. "What do you make of it, Cleek?"