Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces"A beautiful city, Count-an exceedingly beautiful city," said Cleek, as the carriage which had been sent to meet them at the station rolled into the broad Avenue des Arcs, which is at once the widest and most ornate thoroughfare the capital city of Mauravania boasts. "Ah, what a heritage! No wonder King Ulric is so anxious to retain his sovereignty; no wonder this-er-Madame Tcharnovetski, I think you said the name is-"
"Yes, monsieur. It is oddly spelled, but it is p.r.o.nounced a little broader than you give it-quite as though it were written Shar-no-vet-skee, in fact, with the accent on the third syllable."
"Ah, yes. Thanks very much. No wonder she is anxious to become a power here. Mauravania is a fairyland in very truth; and this beautiful avenue with its arches, its splendid trees, its sculpture, its-Ah! cocher, pull up at once. Stop, if you please, stop!"
"Oui, monsieur," replied the driver, reining in his horses and glancing round. "Dix mille pardons, M'sieur, there is something amiss?"
"Yes; very much amiss-from the dog's point of view," replied Cleek, indicating by a wave of the hand a mongrel puppy which crouched, forlorn and hungry, in the shadow of an imposing building. "He should be a Socialist among dogs, that little fellow, Count. The mere accident of birth has made him what he is, and that poodled monstrosity the lady yonder is leading the pet and pride of a thoughtless mistress. I want that little canine outcast, Count, and with your permission I will appropriate him, and give him his first carriage ride." With that, he stepped down from the vehicle, whistled the cur to him, and taking it up in his arms, returned with it to his seat.
"Monsieur, you are to me the most astonishing of men," said the Count, noticing how he patted the puppy and settled it in his lap as the carriage resumed its even rolling down the broad, beautiful avenue. "One moment upholding the rights of birth, the next rebelling against the injustice of it. Are your sympathies with the unfortunate so keen, monsieur, that even this stray cur may claim them?"
"Perhaps," replied Cleek enigmatically. "You must wait and see, Count. Just now I pity him for his forlornity; to-morrow-next day-a week hence-I may hold it a better course to put an end to his hopeless lot by chloroforming him into a painless and peaceful death."
"Monsieur, I cannot follow you-you speak in riddles."
"I deal in riddles, Count; you must wait for the solution of them, I'm afraid."
"I wish I could grasp the solution of one which puzzles me a great deal, monsieur. What is it that has happened to your countenance? You have done nothing to put on a disguise; yet, since we left the train and entered the landau, some subtle change has occurred. What is it? How has it come about? The night before last, when I saw you for the first time, your face was one that impressed me with a sense of familiarity-now, monsieur, you are like a different man."
"I am a different man, Count. Like puppy, here, I am a waif and a stray; yet, at the same time, I have my purpose and am part of a carefully-laid scheme."
The Count made no reply. He could not comprehend the man at all, and at times-but for the world-wide reputation of him-he would have believed him insane. Not a question as to the great and important case he was on, but merely incomprehensible remarks, trifling fancies, apparently aimless whims! Two nights ago a pot of beef extract; to-day a mongrel puppy; and all the time the hopes of a kingdom, the future of a monarch resting in his hands!
For twenty minutes longer the landau rolled on; then it came to a halt under the broad porte cochere of the Villa Irma, and two minutes after that Cleek and the Count stood in the presence of Madame Tcharnovetski, her purblind a.s.sociate, and her retinue of servant-guards.
A handsome woman, this madame, a woman of about two-and-thirty, with the tar-black eyes and the twilight coloured tresses of Northern Russia; bold as bra.s.s, flippant as a French cocotte, steel-nerved and calm-blooded as a professional gambler. It had been her whim that all the women of the Count's family should be banished from the house during her stay; that the great salon of the villa-a wondrous apartment, hung in blue and silver, and lit by a huge crystal chandelier-should be put at her disposal night and day; that the electric lights should be replaced with dozens of wax candles (after the manner of the ballrooms of her native Russia), and that her one-eyed companion, with his wicker cage of screeching parakeets, should come and go when and where and how he listed, and that an electric alarm bell be connected with her sleeping apartment and his.
"Your hirelings will tamper with his birds and his effects in the night-I know that, Monsieur le Comte," she had said when she demanded this. "He is a nervous fellow, this poor Clopin; I wish him to be able to ring for help if you and your men go too far."
Clopin was sitting by the window chattering to his birds when Cleek entered, and a glance at him was sufficient to decide two points: first, he was not disguised, nor was his partial blindness in any way a sham, for an idiot could have seen that the droop of the left eyelid over the staring, palpably artificial eye which glazed over the empty socket beneath was due to perfectly natural causes; and, second, that the man was indeed what the Count had said he resembled, namely, a gutter-bred outcast.
"French!" was Cleek's silent comment upon him. "One of those charlatans who infest the streets of Paris with their so-called 'fortune-telling birds,' who, for ten centimes, pick out an envelope with their beaks as a means of telling you what the future is supposed to hold. What has made a woman like this pick up a fellow of his stamp? Hum-m-m! Puppy, I think you are a good move," stroking the ears of the mongrel dog; "a very much better move than a cage of useless parakeets that are meant to throw suspicion in the wrong direction and have a seed-cup so large and so obviously overfilled that it is safe to say there is nothing hidden in it and never has been! And madame has a fancy for waxlights," his gaze travelling upward to the glittering chandelier. "Hum-m-m! How well they know, these women whose beauty is going off, that waxlights show less of Time's ravages than gas or electricity. Candles in the chandelier; candles in the sconces, candles on the mantelpieces. This room should be very charming when it is lighted at night."
It was-as he learned later. Just now things not quite so charming filled the bill, for madame was jeering at him in a manner not to be understood.
"A police spy-that is what you are, monsieur!" she said, coming up to him and impudently snapping her fingers under his nose. "Such a fool, this white-headed old dotard of a Count, to think that he can take me in with a silly yarn about going to visit a nephew and bringing him back here to stay. Monsieur, you are a police spy. Well, good luck to you. Get what the Mauravanian king wants, if-you-can!"
"Madame," replied Cleek, with a deeply deferential bow and with an accent that seemed born of Paris, "madame, that is what I mean to do, I a.s.sure you."
"Ah, do you?" she answered, with a scream of laughter. "You hear that, Clopin? You hear that, my good servitors? This silly French noodle is going to get the things in spite of us. Oho, but you have a fine opinion of yourself, monsieur. You need work fast, too, pretty boaster, I can tell you. For the royal jewellers will require the Rainbow Pearl very soon to fix it in its place in the crown for the coronation ceremony, and if that thing his Majesty holds is offered to them, how long, think you, will it be before all Mauravania knows that it is an imitation? Look you," waxing suddenly vicious, "I'll make it shorter still, the time you have to strive. Monsieur le Comte, take this message to his Majesty from me: If in three days he does not promise to accede to my demands and give me a public proof of it over his royal seal, I leave Mauravania-the pearl and letter leave with me, and they shall not come back until I return with them for the coronation."
"For the love of G.o.d, madame," said the Count, "don't make it harder still. Oh, wait, wait, I beseech you!"
"Not an hour longer than I have now said!" she flung back at him. "I have waited until I am tired of it, and my patience is worn out. Three days, Count; three days, monsieur with the puppy dog; three days, and not an instant longer, do you hear?"
"Quite enough, madame," replied Cleek, with a courtly bow, "I promise to have them in two!"
She threw back her head and fairly shook with laughter.
"Of a truth, monsieur, you are a candid boaster!" she cried. "Look you, my good fellows, and you too, my poor dumb Clopin, pretty monsieur here will have the letter and the pearl in two days' time. Look to it that he never leaves this house at any minute from this time forth that you do not search him from top to toe. If he resists-ah, well, a pistol may go off accidentally, and things that Mauravania's king would give his life to keep hidden will come to light if any charge of murder is preferred. Monsieur the police spy, I wish you joy of your task."
"Madame, I shall take joy in it," Cleek replied. "But why should we talk of unpleasant things when the future looks so bright? Come, may we not give ourselves a pleasant evening? Look, there is a piano, and-Count, hold my puppy for me, and please see that no one feeds him at any time. I am starving him so that he may devour some of Clopin's parakeets, because I hate the sight of the little beasts. Thank you. Madame, do you like music? Listen, then: I'll sing you Mauravania's national anthem: 'G.o.d guard the throne; G.o.d shield the right!'" and, dropping down upon the seat before the open instrument, he did so.
That night was ever memorable at the Villa Irma, for the detective seemed somehow to have given place to the courtier, and so merry was his mood, so infectious his good nature, that even madame came under the spell of it. She sang with him, she even danced a Russian polka with him; she sat with him at dinner, and flirted with him in the salon afterward; and when the time came for her to retire, it was he who took her bedroom candle from the shelf and put it into her hand.
"Of a truth, you are a charming fellow, monsieur," she said, when he bent and kissed her hand. "What a pity you should be a police spy and upon so hopeless a case."
"Hopeless cases are my delight, madame. Believe me, I shall not fail."
"Only three days, remember, cher ami-only three days!"
"Madame is too kind. I have said it: two will do. On the morning of the third madame's pa.s.sport will be ready and the Rainbow Pearl be in the royal jeweller's hands. A thousand pleasant dreams-bon soir!" And bowed her out and kissed his hand to her as she went up the stairs to bed.
III
Thrice during the next twenty-four hours Cleek, who seemed to have become so attached to the mongrel dog that he kept it under his arm continually, had reason to leave the house, and thrice was he seized by madame's henchmen, bundled unceremoniously into a convenient room, and searched to the very skin before he was suffered to pa.s.s beyond the threshold. And if so much as a pin had been hidden upon his person, it must have been discovered.
"You see, monsieur, how hopeless it is!" said the Count despairfully. "One dare not rebel: one dare not lift a finger, or the woman speaks and his Majesty's ruin falls. Oh, the madness of that boast of yours! Only another twenty-four hours-only another day-and then G.o.d help his Majesty!"
"G.o.d has helped him a great deal better than he deserves, Count," replied Cleek. "By to-morrow night at ten o'clock be in the square of the Aquisola, please. Bring with you the pa.s.sports of madame and her companions, also a detachment of the Royal Guard, and his Majesty's cheque for the reward I am to receive."
"Monsieur! You really hope to get the things? You really do?"
"Oh, I do more than 'hope,' Count-I have succeeded. I knew last night where both pearl and letter were. To-morrow night-ah, well, let to-morrow tell its own tale. Only be in the square at the hour I mention, and when I lift a lighted candle and pa.s.s it across the salon window, send the guard here with the pa.s.sports. Let them remain outside-within sight, but not within range of hearing what is said and done. You are alone to enter-remember that."
"To receive the jewel and the letter?" eagerly. "Or, at least, to have you point out the hiding-place of them?"
"No; we should be shot down like dogs if I undertook a mad thing like that."
"Then, monsieur, how are we to seize them? How get them into our possession, his Majesty and I?"
"From my hand, Count; this hand which held them both before I went to bed last night."
"Monsieur!" The Count fell back from him as if from some supernatural presence. "You found them? You held them? You took possession of them last night? How did you get them out of the house?"
"I have not done so yet."
"But can you? Oh, monsieur, wizard though you are, can you get them past her guards? Can you, monsieur-can you?"
"Watch for the light at the window, Count. It will not be waved unless it is safe for you to come and the pearl is already out of the house."
"And the letter, monsieur-the d.a.m.ning letter?"
Cleek smiled one of his strange, inscrutable smiles.
"Ask me that to-morrow, Count," he said. "You shall hear something, you and madame, that will surprise you both," then twisted round on his heel and walked hurriedly away.