Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces"Yes. He was in the neighbourhood accidentally. He called last night. I told him and he was glad that I had sent for you. He is over there, on the other side of the churchyard. Oh, please will you go to him? Captain Morford is within easy call and has agreed to come when he is wanted. Do go, do go quickly, Mr. Cleek. There's someone coming up the road and I am horribly frightened."
"But why? It is merely a farm labourer," said Cleek, glancing through the open side of the lich-gate and down the road. "You can see that for yourself."
"Yes, but-who knows? who can tell? There is no clue to the actual person and he is so cunning, so crafty-Oh, please, will you go? Afterward, if you like, we can meet here again. To-day I am too frightened to stay."
He saw that she was in a state of extreme nervous terror; that it would be cruel to subject her to any further suffering, and without one more word, walked past her into the Churchyard and made his way over the green ridge that rose immediately behind the building and down the slope beyond until he came to the extreme other side. And there in the shade of a thickly grown spinney, he found Mr. Marverick Narkom sitting with his back against a beech-tree smoking a nerve-soothing cigar and expectantly awaiting him.
"My dear fellow, I never was so glad," he said, tossing away his smoke and jumping up as Cleek appeared. "Happy coincidence my motoring down here-eh, what? Wife in these parts visiting. Rum, my turning up just after Miss Lorne had written you and at a time when we both are needed, wasn't it?"
"Very," said Cleek, pulling out a cigarette and stretching himself full length upon the ground. "Would as soon have expected to run foul of a specimen of the Great Auk endeavouring to rear a family in the neighbourhood of Trafalgar Square. Well, what's it now, Mr. Narkom?-I'm told you know the details. A match please, if you have one. Thanks very much. Now then let's have the facts. What sort of a case is it?"
"The knottiest in all my experience, the strangest that even you have ever handled," replied the Superintendent, impressively. "It's a murder-three murders, in fact, with a possible fourth and a fifth in the near future if the diabolical rascal who is at the bottom of it isn't pulled up sharp and his amazing modus operandi discovered.
"The case will interest you, my dear chap; it is so startlingly original in its methods of procedure, so complex, so weird, and so appallingly mysterious. Conceive if you can, my dear fellow, an individual so supernaturally cunning that he not only kills without a trace, but kills in the presence of watchers-kills whilst the victim is in the very arms of those watchers! And yet escapes, unseen, unknown, without a clue to tell when, where, or how he entered the room or left it; when, where, or how he struck the blow, or why; yet did strike it, despite the sleepless vigil of a man who not only sat up all night with the victim, but held him in his arms to be sure that n.o.body could get at him; n.o.body so much as approach him without his guardian's knowledge!"
Cleek twitched round sharply and sat up, leaning upon his elbow and looking at Narkom as though he doubted his sanity.
"Let me have that again!" he said in sharp, crisp tones. "A man killed whilst another man held him-held him in his arms-and watched over him, and yet the other man saw nothing of the murderer? Is that what you said?"
"That's it, precisely. Only I must tell you that, in the instance when the victim was held in the arms of the person watching him, it was not a man that was killed, but a boy. There had been a man killed, however, four weeks previously in the same house, in the same mysterious manner, and by the same unknown agency. A month earlier a woman, too, had been done to death there in the same way. The man was the brother of that boy, and the woman was the mother of both."
Cleek moved so quickly that he might fairly have been said to flash from a sitting to a standing position, and then began to feel round in his pockets for his cigarette case with a nervous sort of haste, which Narkom knew and understood.
"Ah," he said, in a tone of satisfaction, "I thought the case would interest you. You've been down in the dumps lately and needed something to buck you up a bit. I told Captain Morford that this would be sure to do it. Heard of him, haven't you? Extremely nice chap. Home on leave from Bombay. Only recently got his captaincy. Grandson and heir to that fine old sn.o.b, Sir Gilbert Morford, who's known everywhere as 'The t.i.tled Teapot.' You know, 'Morford & Morford's Unrivalled Tea.' Knighted for something or other-the Lord knows what or why-and puts on more side over his tin-plate t.i.tle than Royalty itself. The Captain is a decent sort, however. He'll give you the full particulars of this astounding case. Wait a bit. I'll call him"-pausing a moment to put the first two fingers of each hand into his mouth and blow out a shrill, ear-splitting whistle. "That'll fetch him! He'll be here before you can say Jack Robinson!"
He wasn't, of course; but you couldn't have said it half a hundred times before he was; or, at least, before Cleek, startled by a rustling of the boughs, glanced round and saw a tall, fairish young man who had no more the appearance of a soldier than a currant has of a gooseberry. He looked more like a bank clerk than anything else that Cleek could think of at the minute, and a none too prepossessing bank clerk at that, for Nature had not been any too lavish of her gifts as regards personal attractiveness, seeming to prefer to make up for her miserliness in the bestowal of good looks by an absolute prodigality in the gifts of ears-ears as big as an oyster-sh.e.l.l and so prominent that they seemed even larger than they were, and that is saying a great deal.
Still, unprepossessing as the man was, there was a certain charm of manner about him and a certain attractiveness in his voice Cleek discovered when he was introduced to him and found himself being "sized up," so to speak, by a pair of keen grey eyes.
"Now let us have the details of the case, if you please, Captain," said Cleek, coming to the point of the interview with as little beating about the bush as possible. "Mr. Narkom has given me a vague idea of the nature of it, but I want something more than that, of course. I am told that three persons in one family have been done to death in a most mysterious manner, and without any clue to the a.s.sa.s.sin or his motive; indeed that the hand which strikes strikes even in the presence of others, yet remains unknown and invisible. Frankly, I never heard of but one instance which at all resembles this or-No, Mr. Narkom, it is nothing that ever came your way, no affair that has happened since you and I first met, sir. It was a long time ago-eight or ten years, to be exact-and a good many miles from England. The cases were somewhat similar, judging from the scanty outline you have given me, and-What's that? No, the criminal was never apprehended. He got away, and his methods were never generally known. Even if they had been, they were not those which any desperado might have emulated, any tyro practised. They required a certain knowledge of anatomy, chemical action-even surgery. I don't believe that ten people in the world knew about the thing at that time. I stumbled upon what I believed was the solution of the mystery whilst I was taking a course of chemistry for-well, for the purpose of demonstrating the possibility of manufacturing precious stones of a size and weight to make them a profitable-er-speculation. The science in medicine was not so advanced in those days as it is now, and when I ventured to suggest to certain doctors what I believed to have been the cause of the mysterious deaths and the modus operandi of the murderer, I simply got laughed at for my pains. I felt pretty certain of my facts, however, and pretty certain of the man who was guilty. Pardon? No, not alive now; that fellow had his brains blown out in a bar-room brawl before I left New Zealand."
"New Zealand?" struck in Captain Morford agitatedly. "I say, that's a rum go, isn't it, Mr. Narkom. New Zealand is where the Comstocks come from-or, rather, the father and mother did."
"By Jove! Cleek, that looks suspicious, old chap," chimed in Narkom.
"Don't think, do you, that there can possibly be any connection between the two cases? In other words, that that fellow you suspected in New Zealand didn't really die after all?"
"Shortly, the chemist? Not a doubt about his death, Mr. Narkom. I was in the bar-room when he was killed. Three bullets went through his head, and he was as dead as Napoleon Bonaparte by the time he struck the floor. The methods may be the same, but not the man-there is not the ghost of possibility of there being any connection between the two. But let us give the Captain a chance to explain the case. When, where, and how did these mysterious murders begin, Captain, if you please?"
"At Lilac Lodge, over Windsor way," replied the Captain, trying to answer all three questions at once. "They started about a week after the Comstocks went to live there. And the thing was so appalling, the place seemed so certainly under a curse, that although he had paid a good round sum for it, and had spent a pot of money having the house decorated and the garden laid out just as Miriam and her mother fancied it-Miriam is Miss Comstock, my fiancee, Mr. Cleek-nothing would induce Mr. Harmstead to stop in it another hour after the second murder occurred."
"Mr. Harmstead! Who is Mr. Harmstead, Captain?"
"The late Mrs. Comstock's bachelor uncle-a very rich old chap, who was once a sheep-farmer in New Zealand, and afterwards in Australia. Mrs. Comstock hadn't seen him since she was a very little girl until he came to England some few months ago to settle down and to take care of her children and her."
"How did it happen that she hadn't seen him in all that time? I take it there must have been some good reason, Captain?"
"Yes, rather. You see it was like this: The Harmsteads-Mrs. Comstock was a Harmstead by birth, and Uncle Phil was her father's only brother-the Harmsteads had never been well to-do as a family: indeed none of them but dear old Uncle Phil ever had a hundred pounds they could call their own, so when Miss Harmstead's father died, which was about eight months after his brother left New Zealand and went to Australia, she married a young joiner and cabinet-maker, George Comstock, to whom she had long been engaged, and a few weeks later, fancying there would be a better chance for advancement in his trade in England than out there, Mr. Comstock sold out what few belongings he had in the world and brought his wife over here."
"Oh, I see. Then of course she had no opportunity of seeing her uncle until he came here?"
"No, not a ghost of one. She corresponded with him for a time, however-wrote him after the first child was born-and christened 'Philip' in honour of him. In those days it used to take six months to get a letter to Australia, and another six to get word back, so the baby was more than a year old when Uncle Phil wrote that if he didn't marry in the meantime and have a son of his own-which was very unlikely-he would make young Phil his heir and come out after him, too, one of these fine days."
"One moment. Was the person you allude to as 'Young Phil' one of the sons that was murdered?"
"Yes. He was the first victim, poor, chap!"
"Oh, I see!" said Cleek. "I see! So there is money in the background, eh? Well go on. What next? Hear any more from Uncle Phil after that?"
"Oh, yes-for a long time. Miriam and Flora were born, and word of their arrival in the world was sent out to him before the final letter for years and years reached them. In that letter he wrote that he was doing better and better every year, and getting so rich that he didn't have time to do anything but just stop where he was and 'gather in the shekels.' There'd be enough for all when he did come, however, and he was altering his will so that in case anything should happen to young Phil-'which G.o.d forbid,' he wrote-the girls would come next, and so on to all the heirs of his niece. After that letter years went by, and never another one. They, thinking that he had married after all-for in his last letter he had spoken of a young widow who had lately been engaged to fill the post of housekeeper at his ranch-gave up all hope when after three times writing no reply came, and finally desisted entirely. He says, however, that it was just the other way about. That he did write-wrote six or seven times-but could get no reply; and as he afterwards found the housekeeper in question a designing and deceitful person, and shipped her off about her business, he makes no doubt that she received and destroyed Mrs. Comstock's letter to him and burnt his to her, hoping, no doubt, to inveigle him into marrying her."
"Quite likely, if she were a designing woman," commented Cleek. "But go on, please. What next?"
"Oh, years of hardship, during which Mr. Comstock died and his widow had to earn their own living unaided. Young Phil got a post as bookkeeper, Flora taught music and painting, Mrs. Comstock did needlework, and Miriam became a governess in the family of a distant connection of my grandfather, Sir Gilbert Morford. That's where and how I met her, Mr. Cleek, and-Well, that's another story!" his cheeks reddening and a flash of fire coming into his eyes. "My grandfather says he will 'chuck me out neck and crop' if I marry her; but it does not matter-I will!"
"Yes, you will-if the cut of that chin stands for anything," commented Cleek. "Well, to get on: the Comstocks were down in the deeps, and no hope of hearing any more from Australia and Uncle Phil, eh? What next?"
"Why, all of a sudden he dropped in on them, bless his bully old heart!-and then good-bye to hard times and any more struggling for them. He'd been in England searching for them for seven months before he found them; but when he did find them there was a time! Inside of ten hours, the whole world was changed for them. Made the boys and the girls give up their positions and come home to live with him and their mother, poured money out by the handful, bought Lilac Lodge and fitted it up like a little palace, dressed his niece and her daughters like queens, and settled down with them to what seemed about to be a life of glorious and luxurious ease, and in the midst of all this peace and plenty, brightness and hope, the first blow fell. Mrs. Comstock, going to bed at night in perfect health, was found in the morning stone-dead! Of course, as no doctor could give a death certificate when none had been in attendance upon her, the Law stepped in, the coroner held an inquest, an autopsy was decided upon, and the result of it was a deeper and more amazing mystery than ever. She had died-but from what? Every organ was found to be in a thoroughly healthy condition. The heart was sound, the lungs betrayed no sign of an anesthetic, the blood and kidneys not the faintest trace of poison-everything about her was perfectly normal. She had not died through drugs, she had not died through strangulation, suffocation, electrical shock, or failure of the heart. She had not been stabbed, she had not been shot, she had not succ.u.mbed to any mortal disease-yet there she was, stone-dead, slain by something which no one could trace and for which Science could find no name."
Narkom opened his lips to speak, but Cleek signalled him to silence, and stood studying the Captain from under down-drawn brows, looking and listening and thoughtfully rubbing his thumb and forefinger up and down his chin.
CHAPTER x.x.xII
"Of course the family was horribly shocked and upset by this sudden and mysterious interruption to the dream of peace," went on the Captain; "but nothing was left but to accept the verdict of 'Death from unknown causes,' and to believe it the will of G.o.d. The body was buried a few days later, and, comforting each other as best they could, the sorrowing uncle and heart-broken nieces and nephews settled down to living their lives without the one who had been the sunshine of the home, and whose loss seemed the greatest blow that could have been dealt them. A month pa.s.sed and they were just beginning to forget details of the tragedy when a second and equally mysterious and horrifying one occurred, and the eldest son of the dead woman-Philip-was stricken down precisely as his mother had been, and, as his horrified brother, sisters, and uncle now recalled, like her, on the tenth day of the month!"
"Hum-m-m!" said Cleek, reflectively. "Rather significant, that. It was, I a.s.sume, that circ.u.mstance which first suggested the idea of something more than mere chance being at the back of these sudden and mysterious deaths?"
"That and one other circ.u.mstance. The condition of the bedclothing, Mr. Cleek, showed that in Philip's case there had been something in the nature of a struggle before he had succ.u.mbed to the Power which had a.s.sailed him. In other words, he had not been, as doubtless the poor mother had, so infinitely inferior in point of strength to the murderer as to be absolutely powerless in the wretch's grip from the very first instant of the attack. He had fought for his life, poor fellow, but it must have been a brief fight and death itself almost instantaneous; for although the bedclothing was tangled round his feet in a manner which could only have occurred in a struggle, he did not live long enough to get off the bed itself or slide so much as one foot to the floor. He died as his mother had died, and the verdict of the doctors and of the coroner's jury was the same: 'Death from unknown causes'!"
"Hm-m-m!" said Cleek again. "And were all the symptoms-or, rather, the absence of symptoms-the same?"
"Precisely. All the organs were discovered to be in a normal condition, the blood was untainted by any suggestion of either mineral or animal poison, the heart was sound, the lungs healthy-there was neither an internal disturbance nor an external wound, unless one could call a 'wound' a slight, a very slight, swelling upon the left side of the neck; a small thing, not so big as a sixpence."
"And appearing very much like the inflammation resulting from the bite of a gnat or a spider, Captain?"
"Exactly like it, Mr. Cleek. In fact, the doctors fancied at first that it was the result of his having been bitten by some poisonous insect, and were for accounting for his death that way. But, of course, the entire absence of poison in the blood soon put an end to that idea, so it was certain that whatever he died from, it was not from a bite or a sting of any sort."
"Clever chaps, those doctors," commented Cleek with a curious one-sided smile. "However, they were quite correct in that, I imagine, poison, either animal, vegetable, or mineral, was not the means of destruction. Still, I should have thought that at this second post-mortem the likeness of the son's case to that of the mother's would have impelled them to extra vigilance, and resulted in a much more careful searching, and minute examination of the viscera. If my theory is correct, I do not suppose they would have found anything in the contents of the thorax or the abdomen, but it is just possible that a.n.a.lysis of the matter removed from the cranial cavity might have revealed a small blood-clot in the brain."
The Captain twitched up his eyebrows and stared at him in open-mouthed amazement.
"Of all the-By Jove! you know, this beats me! To think of your guessing that!" he said. "As a matter of fact, that's precisely what they did do, Mr. Cleek. But as they couldn't arrive at any conclusion nor trace a probable cause of its origin they were more in the dark than ever. Selwin, the local pract.i.tioner, was for putting it down as a case of apoplexy on the strength of that small blood-clot, but as there was an entire absence of every other symptom of apoplectic conditions the other doctors scouted the suggestion as preposterous-pointed out the generally healthy state of the brain and of the heart, lungs, arterial walls, et cetera, as utterly refuting such a theory-and in the end the verdict on the son was the verdict given on the mother: 'Death from unknown causes'; and he was buried as she had been buried, with the secret of the murder undiscovered."
"And then what, Captain?"
"What I have already told you, Mr. Cleek. Nothing under G.o.d's heaven would or could persuade Mr. Harmstead to let his nieces and their two surviving brothers remain another hour in that house of disaster. He removed them from it instantly-fled the very neighbourhood, hired a house down here-at Dalehampton; a dozen miles or so on the other side of the Tor, yonder-and carried them there to live. The family now consisted of Miriam and Flora, the two girls, Paul, a boy of thirteen-old Mr. Harmstead's special pride and pet-and Ronald, a little chap of eleven. In this new home they hoped and prayed to be free from the horrible visitant who had made the memory of the old one a nightmare to them, but-they couldn't forget, Mr. Cleek, what the Tenth of each month had taken from them, and grew sick with dread at the steady approach of the Tenth of this one."
"And as this is the Twelfth," said Cleek, "the day before yesterday was the Tenth. Did anything happen?"
"Yes," replied the Captain, his voice dropping until it was little more than a whisper. "I tried to cheer them; Miss Lorne tried to cheer them. We sat with them, tried to make them think that our presence there would act as a shield and a guard-and tried to think so ourselves. But old Mr. Harmstead took even stronger measures. 'Nothing shall touch Paul-nothing that lives and breathes,' he said, desperately. 'I'll take him into my room; I'll sit up with him in my arms all night!'"