Kitabı oku: «The Riddle of the Mysterious Light», sayfa 6
CHAPTER XII
A JANGLE OF PEALING BELLS
The moon was high up over the tree-tops and the river, when they reached it, was a shining silver ribbon lying between sloping banks.
Cleek, as they rushed along beside it, leaned forward with his elbow on the window-ledge and his cheek in his palm, and studied its shining surface narrowly. Of a sudden, however, he called out sharply "Stop!"
The vehicle ran on for a yard or two and then came to a halt. Cleek, despite that fact, did not alight at once. Instead, he pulled down all the leather curtains, switched on the light, and taking out his note-book, began to write. His stylo travelled rapidly, but even at that it was a good six minutes before he tore out the leaves he had covered, switched off the light, and, opening the door, said "Come!" and stepped out with Mr. Narkom.
Carefully folding the written leaves, he walked round to the front of the limousine and put the little bundle into Lennard's hand.
"Take that to the vicarage of St. Saviour's, and deliver it to the Rev. Mr. Saintly," he said. "If he asks you any questions, answer them – truthfully. After that you may return to Willowby Old Church and put up for the night. We shall not need you again until to-morrow. Move lively, lad, and the quicker you get that note into the vicar's hands and take yourself out of Valehampton, the better I shall be pleased."
"Do both inside of the next five minutes, sir; the river path has brought us round on the other side of the church – there's her spire just above those trees to the left. Good-night! I'm off."
And so he was, so swiftly that it might almost be said that at the very moment he spoke the moonlit landscape held no trace of any living thing but a silk-hatted Narkom and dapper Cleek standing in the middle of the road and looking very much out of keeping with their surroundings.
The Superintendent looked at his watch, saw that its hands pointed to twenty minutes to eleven, and then faced round on Cleek.
"And now what, old chap?" he inquired. The habit of blind obedience to the lead of his famous ally had become a fixed one with the Superintendent, who was nevertheless most alert when in charge of affairs himself. "I suppose you know what you're about, but I don't. It seems to me that, having sent Lennard off for good, you've done us out of all hope of finding a bed anywhere to-night. And I'm blest if I shall relish prowling about the neighbourhood in this sort of a get-up until morning."
"Oh, don't worry. You will get a bed, I promise you. Indeed, the matter is the one uppermost in my mind at this minute – the reason for our presence here – only it happens to be a bed of another colour from the one you're demanding. It is, in short, the bed of a river – this one beside us."
"Now what the devil can the bed of a river have to do with the matter in hand?"
"That is precisely what I am anxious to settle to my own satisfaction. It is almost the last point in the case which we have to investigate; and it is an extremely interesting one. Brush up your memory a bit, Mr. Narkom. Part of that extraordinary prophecy was that the river should become choked, and, according to the duke, choked it has become."
"Oh, ah! Yes, I remember. Shoals formed, didn't they?"
"Exactly. And I am extremely anxious to discover why. Perhaps we may, presently. You observe that we are at the point where the stream begins to narrow perceptibly. As yet, however, I perceive no sign of shoals. Still, if we follow this narrowing course for a time – Come on."
They walked on, and for the next ten or fifteen minutes they scarcely spoke a word, keeping their eyes fixed steadily on the ever-narrowing stream, but finding nothing to reward them for their diligence.
"It will be a fake, I'm afraid, Cleek."
"Possibly; but I doubt it. It is one of the essential points – a thing so absolutely necessary that, if it doesn't exist, I'm on the wrong scent, that's all."
For another two or three minutes they walked on in silence; then Cleek gave a satisfied grunt and pointed to where the hitherto placid surface of the stream was broken into a little patch of eddies and ripples that circled round a clump of trembling river grass.
"We are coming to it, you see!" he said, and moved quickly to a spot where the eddies played closer to the shore, and the water, obstructed, encroached upon the land. By the time Mr. Narkom came up with him he had laid aside his coat and was hastily turning back the cuff of his shirt sleeve.
In another moment he had gone down the shelving bank and jumped out to where a half-submerged rock offered a footing and his arm was elbow deep in the eddying water. For a time his hand remained invisible, groping and tugging at something, then it came into view again, and Narkom could see that it held a heavy, sodden lump of something from which the water trickled in yellowish streams.
"Have a look at that," said Cleek, with an exultant laugh as he threw it over onto the bank and, dipping in his hand again, fished up another lump and sent that flying across in the wake of the other. "And there's a second to show that it isn't merely an isolated specimen."
He whirled his hand round in the water to wash it, then rose, and jumping back to the shore, began to pull down his sleeve while Mr. Narkom was inspecting the two slimy lumps.
"Don't trust the moonlight – get out your electric torch and have a good look at them. They are worth it, Mr. Narkom – the beauties. They are a rich find all right."
"Rich? Are you off your head, old man? They're nothing but lumps of common clay."
"Certainly – that is what makes them so valuable."
"Valuable?"
"To be sure," replied Cleek, serenely. "There is a lot more where they came from, and it's worth in the aggregate something like one hundred and fifty thousand pounds in gold! If you doubt that – "
Here he stopped, and, reaching round, made a grab for his hat and coat. Of a sudden the stillness of the night was broken into by a tuneless and discordant jangle of pealing bells.
The chimes of St. Saviour's had begun their nightly ringing.
"Come!" exclaimed Cleek, excitedly, and started off up the slope and across the intervening fields and spinneys in the direction of the churchyard, putting on his coat as he ran.
His pace was so swift that he was already a good twenty yards on his way before Mr. Narkom could grasp his intention and start after him.
CHAPTER XIII
THE MYSTERIOUS LIGHT
A good sprinter at all times, to-night it seemed to the Superintendent that the man was fairly outdoing himself, in this wild "cross-country" race; and, although Mr. Narkom put forth all the energy and all the speed that was in him, never once could he lessen the space which lay between him and that flying figure in front of him. And all the time the jangling bells went on, flinging their harsh discord out upon the night.
As yet Cleek could get no sight of the church tower, for the centuries-old luxuriance of a group of fir trees screened tower and bells alike from view on this side of the church, and the upward slope of the land from the river's edge to the graveyard wall rendered their screen doubly effective. But presently he came abreast of that wall, vaulted over it, zigzagged his way through a wilderness of crowded tombstones, came out into the open, and looking upward – saw!
It was the first moment since the beginning of the sound that he had checked his speed or halted for so much as a second. That he did so now was only natural. For here was a thing totally unexpected. Here was corroboration of James Overton's story. Here was, indeed, a suggestion of the supernatural.
High up in the open space where the bells – themselves unseen – were swinging and clashing out their jarring discords, a globe of light, its radiance intensified by the black shadow of the tower's roof, was careering about as if it hung in mid-air, and was dancing a ghostly tarantella to the time of the clanging bells.
He stood stock still and looked at it, conscious of a swift, prickling sensation travelling up his spine to his very hair; then catching a gasping sort of sound and a low exclamation from somewhere behind him, he knew that Mr. Narkom, too, had come within sight of the thing, and, pulling himself together, took up the lead again and ran toward the tower.
Racing behind in a state of mind bordering closely upon panic, Mr. Narkom saw Cleek run to the tower's foot, whip out his electric torch, and splash the light of it about its base – a square now spread inches deep with fullers' earth – and then, almost immediately, he saw him throw up both hands as if to recover an equilibrium disturbed by a violent blow, and stagger backward.
"My God! What is it?" Mr. Narkom called in a shaking voice, as he made a mad rush toward him. And indeed there was sufficient cause for the horror in his voice.
For Cleek, crying out that he was burning up, had suddenly faced about, dashed through the lich-gate, and lurched out into the road, and when, presently, the Superintendent dodged out of the churchyard after him, it was in time to see him stagger to the Hurdons' cottage, fall so heavily against the door of it that it flew inward with a bang, and drop, a crumpled heap, upon the threshold – limp and inert as a man shot dead.
Narkom, a picture of terror too real to admit of any doubt, was across that road and kneeling beside him before you could have counted twenty, and to the astonished eyes of Mrs. Hurdon, drawn to the window by the uproar, and well-nigh carried off her feet by the bursting in of the door, there appeared a man's hat rolling across her floor and a fashionably dressed gentleman sprawling over her threshold in a fainting condition, while another was bending over him trying to revive him as well as terror would permit.
"Old man, wake up, pull yourself together, speak to me!" exclaimed the Superintendent with the utmost concern and then, becoming aware of the woman's presence, appealed to her.
"Help me!" he cried. "Don't stand there like a stone! Can't you see the man's ill? Get some sort of a stimulant, quick!"
Here the woman's wits came back to her.
"We haven't any," she replied, tartly. "And what's more, you can't bring him in here. There's no room for him – none at all. Besides, I never saw either of you before. Take him outside – take him where he belongs. I can't have him here, I tell you. I've got a sick husband, and – and I'm going to shut the door."
She caught hold of it as she spoke, intending to carry her words into execution, and Narkom, fairly bursting with indignation, had just begun to call her everything his concerned mind was capable of, when there came the sound of a voice and the rush of footsteps up the red-tiled path behind him. In another moment the vicar of St. Saviour's put in an unexpected appearance.
"God bless me, it will be Mr. Barch, will it not, Mr. Williams?" he said, as he met Mr. Narkom's upturned glance. "I guessed as much when I heard the noise. I told you – I told you, you foolish men! What madness to let a weak-nerved, weak-minded fellow like that go prowling about country roads in the night. Mrs. Hurdon, these are two London gentlemen, Mr. John Williams and Mr. Philip Barch, who have just come down to spend the week-end with me at the vicarage, and Mr. Barch is unhappily addicted to fainting fits."
"Deary me! That is it?" said Mrs. Hurdon with suddenly awakened sympathy. "Oh, the poor, dear gentleman. But he did scare the wits half out of me, sir, bursting into a body's house like that."
"No doubt, no doubt. Hand me his hat, please. Thank you. Now, my dear Mr. Williams, you get hold of his head, and I'll take his feet, and we'll carry him back to the vicarage between us."
Mr. Narkom, his head in a whirl with an overwhelming sense of having been taken in, acted upon the suggestion without a word, and two minutes later he and the vicar were trudging down the dark road with Cleek lying a dead weight between them.
"I'd let you put me down, only one never knows what may happen," he took the opportunity of saying in a low voice when they were some twenty or thirty yards down the road. "Mr. Saintly, you were excellent; but I had some groggy moments lying there, and not being sure if you would understand the note or not. And your worried expression, Narkom, couldn't be beaten."
"I should say not. It was perfectly genuine, and I was pretty well off my head with fright. I think you might have given me a hint."
"It wouldn't have been anything like so natural. You were positively superb. Sorry to be such a burden, gentlemen, but we shall soon be at the vicarage, and after that – Mr. Saintly!"
"Yes, Mr. Cleek?"
"We are close to the end. If you will write and invite the duke and a few other gentlemen at the Castle to honour you with a call at St. Saviour's vicarage to-morrow night at half-past ten o'clock, I will give them the riddle's answer as soon as the bells begin to ring!"
CHAPTER XIV
"GEORGE HEADLAND" KEEPS AN APPOINTMENT
On the morrow the village of Valehampton knew that the vicar of St. Saviour's was entertaining two gentlemen, Mr. John Williams and Mr. Philip Barch, who had come down from town by the last train the preceding night and were to stop with him over the week-end; and, being informed that Mr. Barch was a gentleman of poor health, it was not at all surprised that he should make an early call on Doctor Forsyth.
It did not, however, know that at the time that call was made the doctor was entertaining Mr. Justice of the Peace Howard and Mr. Chief Constable Naylor, and that Mr. Barch remained in close council with all three for upward of an hour, afterward making a personal call upon His Grace the Duke of Essex and spending yet another hour at the Castle.
When that hour was over he went back to the vicarage, every link was fitted into its place, and the chain complete at last.
It was about twenty minutes past ten that evening that Mr. James Overton, answering a hand-delivered note, was shown into the vicarage drawing-room, and found himself in the presence of a most distinguished company, made up of the Duke of Essex, the Marquis of Uppingham, Captain Weatherley, and two gentlemen who were alluded to as Mr. John Williams and Mr. Philip Barch.
Mr. Overton, who had been over at Braintree ever since noon on business for the duke, and was, of course, still wearing his ordinary riding clothes, apologized for his appearance on the score that he had not had time to change.
"I found Your Grace's man waiting for me with your note when I arrived at the Lodge," he said; "and, of course, came on immediately, as requested. But surely there must be some error – the thing seems so impossible. You said in the note that the man, George Headland, would be here by eleven o'clock to offer a solution of the mystery, and that simply can't be. I saw him myself over at Earl's Colne as I rode through this afternoon, he and his deaf companion. They were sitting outside an inn drinking stout and smoking their pipes as contentedly as you please; and when I stopped and asked them what on earth they were doing there, Headland told me that their effects had not come down from London as they expected, and they were taking a holiday until they did. As I came back I learned that they were strolling about Pebmarsh as late as seven o'clock this evening, and had been over in that section of this county pretty much all day. How can it be possible for them to have discovered anything here?"
"That I can't tell you, I'm sure, Overton," replied the duke. "I merely know that he sent word to me through the vicar that if I would be here at eleven o'clock to-night he would give me a full and clear explanation of the diabolical affair. It occurred to me at the last moment that you, probably, would like to hear that explanation with the rest of us, so I left Roberts to deliver that note as soon as you returned."
"Thank you – it was very kind. Naturally I am very deeply interested; but I am more mystified than ever when Your Grace tells me that Headland sent the message through the vicar. Have you then seen the man to-day, Mr. Saintly?"
"Oh, dear, no. The message came to me through Mr. Philip Barch here."
"Meaning the gentleman who is your guest, sir?"
"Meaning me – yes, Mr. Overton," remarked Cleek. "We met quite accidentally while I was out this morning. Personally, I must admit that I haven't very much faith in our actually seeing the man to-night."
"You couldn't be blamed for not having much faith in the man's ability, I am sure, Mr. Barch. To tell you the truth, sir, I have very little myself. I never even heard of him until yesterday. He seemed a stupid sort of fellow."
Here Captain Weatherley chimed in:
"Judging from his appearance when he was pointed out to me, I should say that he was nothing less than an idiot!" was his contribution.
"With the odds on the idiot," supplemented Cleek. "Still, let's give him his chance. We shall know the best or the worst in half an hour, Captain Weatherley. Eleven o'clock will tell the tale."
And eleven o'clock did tell it.
Cleek, to pass away the tedium of waiting, had taken his seat before the vicarage organ and was deep in a selection from Handel when, all of a sudden, a clanging noise broke through the outer stillness and all the night echoed to the clash of the discordant bells.
"Hallo! There's our friend the ghost starting in with his nightly jamboree," he said, screwing round on the organ stool and rising, as the sound of hasty feet coming up the vicarage steps and along the vicarage hall followed on the peal of bells. "He's a prompt beggar to-night, that spook – a very prompt beggar indeed."
"But no prompter than that Headland fellow," exclaimed Captain Weatherley, catching the sound of the running footsteps and jumping to his feet. "Here he comes now, by Jove! – and it's two minutes short of the hour."
In his excitement, he jumped to the door and whirled it open, and almost in the same instant there entered the room, in a state of breathless excitement, no less a person than Mr. Justice of the Peace Howard, with Chief Constable Naylor close upon his heels.
"They've started – don't you hear them?" he cried, looking up at Cleek. "That was to be the signal, wasn't it? Shall Naylor give the word?"
"By all means," replied Cleek, calmly. "Start them going, Mr. Naylor, and start them going hard!"
Mr. Naylor's response was not given in words. Facing about instantly, he ran down the hall and out into the forecourt of the vicarage, blowing a police whistle, and shouting at the top of his voice: "In with you, my boys! Get 'em."
Almost instantly there was a sound of rushing feet, a banging and a smashing of hammers on wood, the crash of a door going down, and the sound of a dozen voices crying lustily, "Come out of it! Come out of it!" voices which soon dwindled off in the distance.
The duke and Mr. Overton were on their feet at once. There could be no mistake about the direction whence these sounds came. A force of men, acting upon a given signal, had made an attack upon the Castle cottages.
"Oh, don't be alarmed, Duke. Don't be alarmed, Mr. Overton," said Cleek, coming up with them as master and man, realizing the state of affairs, moved hastily to the nearest window and tried vainly to peer through the intervening trees. "It is nothing very serious – only a small detachment of police, aided by some of your own gamekeepers, paying their respects to Mr. and Mrs. John Hurdon. It will be over soon, and the interesting party will take a turn at oakum-picking with this gentleman – dear, clever man!"
Here his hands reached over quickly toward those of the land-steward; there was a jingle and a click, and by the time Overton became aware that something cold had touched his wrists, the handcuffs were locked and the thing was done.
He gave a queer sort of cry – half gasp, half howl – and lurched backward in a panic.
"In the name of God – " he began, but got no farther, for Cleek's hand was on his shoulder and Cleek's voice was saying soothingly:
"Oh, fie, my friend! So tender a heart should be mated with a reverent tongue. And if you must cry out, surely there is another name more fitting to the occasion? But why cry at all? You cannot alter matters. It is fated, you see, that none of you is ever to go up that underground tunnel or touch one article of that splendid gold service, even though Captain Paul Sandringham is dead and, as Carstairs said, 'It makes one the less to reckon with!' Sit down, Mr. Overton, and make yourself comfortable until Mr. Naylor comes back to take care of you. And let me take this opportunity to thank you for our very pleasant walk up from the station yesterday. Do you know, I always did like that ghost story from the time when I first read it in a fiction magazine, and it lost none of its charm through your telling. Oh, yes – I'm the same person – I'm the George Headland you told it to. The one your sister and the gypsy woman have been following all day is a fake. I expect he and his mate have rounded on them by this time and have taken them into custody, and – Fainted, by jupiter! Ah, they are a weak-nerved lot, this sneaking kind, when it comes to the final corner, and it's the wall behind them and the law in front. Pardon? Oh, yes, Marquis! Oh, yes, Captain Weatherley. That was the game: tunnelling from the Hurdons' cottage to the Castle to get at the Essex gold service which they knew would be brought down from the bank for Lady Adela's wedding; and they have been at it for eleven months. Captain Paul Sandringham's was the mind that conceived the thing – how I know this I'll tell you in due time – and he planned the scheme with this fellow a year ago in Ostend when first the duke made public his intention to marry again. He has been over, too, off and on, and taken an actual hand in the work, has the late captain, and I dare say he would have been over again to-morrow night to take part in the final act of the little drama if the curtain had not been rung down on all the dramas for him the day before yesterday. Oh! he was a clever schemer, was Captain Paul Sandringham, and he neglected nothing. That is the strongest point in the whole armour of the educated criminal: the brains to reason and the wit to provide for all contingencies. You cannot tunnel the earth for a distance of ninety-six yards without having a deal of refuse to dispose of, you know; therefore, the prophecy had to take in the question of a choked river, and there had to be phantom wheels to account for the vehicle which conveyed it to the stream by night; there had to be those bells which are ringing now to account for the supernatural agency, and there had to be a curse on the adjoining cottage to prevent – "
Here he stopped – his ear caught by a confused murmur of voices rising above the clashing of the bells.
"Let us go and see the rest of the interesting collection," he said. "I think the raid is over, and Mr. Naylor's fishers are pulling in the nets."
He turned and walked briskly out of the vicarage and, taking a short cut across the churchyard, made his way to the curve of the road, the bells still clashing out discordantly as he passed through the lich-gate and turned to the Castle cottages – and the duke and the marquis, the captain and the vicar, and Mr. Maverick Narkom, too, followed close upon his heels.
