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CHAPTER III
IN THE DARK
Cleek drove the car out into the lane with an impetus and speed that would have broken the heart of any police official.
"She is bound to sleep," muttered Cleek, as he bent his hand on the steering wheel, for his heart was sick at the thought of Lady Margaret. "She won't waken yet; not if I know anything of tired human nature. And I could – could not take Ailsa there!"
He found the village police-station, which was quite a simple matter. To convince Constable Roberts of the gravity of the situation was another thing altogether, and Cleek's story of the empty house and the murdered woman was viewed with gravest suspicion.
"Lor bless yer, sir, but 'er ladyship was down 'ere only this afternoon," said that gentleman with an air of dull finality, which made Cleek, his nerves on edge, long to shake some of the stupid self-satisfaction from his ponderous body.
"Quite possible, my friend," he said sharply, "but that doesn't prevent her from having been murdered in the meantime, and by a woman at that, does it? And I want you to come at once."
At any moment Lady Margaret might wake and find herself a prisoner. Then the fat would be in the fire with a vengeance. There was not a moment to be lost. Not a single moment, and apparently this fool of a policeman who didn't know his profession and what it entailed any more than the veriest schoolboy —
"A woman, Lord's sake, what makes you say that, sir?" gasped the constable, breaking in on his train of thought. "How does yer know?"
"Because I saw her," responded Cleek, irritably. "And if seeing isn't believing then my name's not – Lieutenant Deland."
He did not add, however, that there was something about the clinging white figure that he had seen that had given him a sudden feeling that it might be a man– or had that beard been simply a trick of his imagination? It was hard to tell.
"She wore a white, clinging robe, at least it looked like that, and a kind of turban. I had only a glimpse, but it was not the figure of a servant, of that I am sure," he went on after a pause. The constable stood gaping at him in open-mouthed amazement.
"Yes, you may well be sure of that," said he finally with a little grin. "There's precious few servants up in that house, I can tell you. Why, it would break the old lady's heart to think there was someone in that house eating anything without paying for it first."
"Hmm. Close as that, eh? And do you mean to tell me that that Miss Cheyne lived in that deserted barn without another soul to keep her company?"
The constable nodded his head with evident relish. Giving information was a great deal more in his line than receiving it.
"I do that!" he said confidentially. "She used to have old Timms and his wife, sort of combination gardener and 'ousekeeper as you might put it, but when they dies of rheumatism last year, one followin' on t'other, she just 'ad one of the village women occasionally. No, it certainly wouldn't be any servant.
"Talking of turbans, though, it might be one of them Indian chaps wots just come lately in the neighbourhood," the constable continued with a sudden spark of actual intelligence – the first, by the way, he had shown. "Can't abide niggers, myself, but there's no accounting for tastes, and – "
"What's that? Do you mean to tell me there are Hindoos here?" Cleek's voice trailed away into silence, for fresh in his memory was the recollection of the scent he had noticed when he first entered the house. He remembered what it was now. It was jasmine, of course, and jasmine was the favourite scent of the Calcutta bazaars. So that was it, was it? A shrouded woman, eh? A shrouded fiddlesticks! If the Hindoos were in the neighbourhood they were there for no good purpose.
But the constable was getting garrulous.
"Lor' bless yer 'eart, sir, the place reeks of them niggers!" said he with a little self-conscious laugh. "Come from Mr. Gunga Dall's place 'tother side of the village, they do. Not but what he isn't a pleasant sort of gent, only as I says – "
"Yes, yes," said Cleek, "we'll hear all about that later. We can talk as we go, constable, so long as we do go. I want you to see the murdered woman and identify her, and if it is Miss Cheyne – "
"You'll never make me believe anybody's killed Miss Cheyne not so long as I'm a-livin'," threw in the constable with a shake of his head. "Why, there ain't a valyble left in the place. But I'll come, o' course, sir. A matter o' dooty. So if you'll give me time to put on my coat and tell the missus to keep my bit of supper warm I'll come along and hinvestigate."
Cleek made no further comment. He merely went back to the waiting limousine and took his seat in it, full of a nervous impatience. Again and yet again his mind went back to that shadowy figure that had crossed the lawn, and to the sweet, insidious scent of jasmine that had assailed his nostrils. Hindoos were certainly at the bottom of this murder; and he had left that helpless young girl at their mercy! What a fool he had been! They would come back, that was certain, to finish their hellish work of revenge – a revenge that had taken two hundred years to consummate.
It was little wonder that his impatience had grown almost unbearable when Constable Roberts booted, belted, and helmetted in all the majesty of the law issued from his house and clambered into the car beside him. The constable's air was more civil and obsequious as he took in the luxury of his surroundings, and as they whisked onward into the darkness he gave forth all the knowledge he possessed of the Cheyne family for Cleek's especial benefit.
"A bit touched, if yer asks me, sir," said Mr. Roberts as he puffed away contentedly at the cigar Cleek had offered him. "Never the same, so I've heard tell, since she was jilted thirty years ago by old Squire Brenton – Sir Edgar's father, that is – fine proper man he were, too, and when he found Miss Marion had a temper of her own, he up and cleared out. Next thing any one knows he comes back with his wife, a pretty slip of a thing, and our Sir Edgar a crowing baby. Miss Marion shut herself up then, and wouldn't 'ave a servant in the place except old Timms and his wife, as I said just now. There's no one to go near her, and I don't think Mr. Gunga Dall would visit her again in a hurry after the way she treated him. Nice old scene he had with 'er."
"Hello, what's that?" said Cleek, suddenly. "A 'scene'? How and where? – or perhaps you don't know?"
"As it happens, I do," said Constable Roberts, pompously. "My young Jim, the little varmint, chose that day to play truant, and at the identical moment that the old girl – lady, I mean, beggin' yer pardon, sir – pitched him into the water – "
"Into the water?" echoed Cleek incredulously. "A lady pitched a gentleman into the water, Constable – "
"Well, she did, anyway, and Jim said the way the gent cussed was a reg'lar lesson to 'im."
"Fluent English, eh?" said Cleek.
"Re-markable sir, for a pore benighted 'eathen. It's wonderful, that's wot I calls it, but it all came of 'im a wanting to go a fishing – "
"Fishing – a Hindoo go fishing?" Cleek's brows came together in a heavy frown and his eyes narrowed down to pin points at this remarkable statement.
"Yes, sir, you know the grounds of Cheyne Court slope right down to the river, and there is a fine bit of water there. According to my Jim, he went to ask the old lady's permission first, but getting no answer to all his knocks at the front door, he takes kind of French leave, as yer might say, and goes down to the spot, and starts in to fish. Well, sir, as I takes it, the old lady saw 'im from a hupper window and down she comes and abuses 'im like a pickpocket. Gunga he tried to pacify her, but she up and pushed him in, and as I said before, Jim's been a 'oly terror at language ever since! Not but it's any wonder, sir, cold water's not up to much at the best of times, and when you're an Indian and chucked in, so to speak, it's enough to make anybody's gorge rise. But I don't say but what the gent isn't as nice a man as you'd want to meet in a day's walk."
Cleek made no reply, but his brows twitched now and again and his mouth tightened, as he faced this startling problem. Here was a motive for revenge sure enough and something more, too. Why on earth would a Hindoo, presumably a Brahmin of high caste, to whom the taking of life in any form, however lowly, is an unforgivable sin, why would he pretend to want to fish, unless it were to spy on the land, and he be on the track of that ill-fated jewel the "Purple Emperor"? That the Indians would go so far as to kill Miss Cheyne Cleek did not believe, and yet – his mind harked back to that dark, bearded face in its white shroud.
"Hm," he said, casually. "Fine, bearded man I suppose?" They were fast approaching the gates of Cheyne Court once more as he spoke, and the constable swung round in his seat and looked at him.
"What, Gunga Dall, sir?" said he, a note of surprise in his tones. "Not 'e sir, not a blessed 'air on his face. Comes down often to the village for a drink, too, regular pleasant gent as wouldn't 'urt a fly. No, sir, 'e wouldn't do a baby no 'arm Mr. Gunga Dall wouldn't, an' if you're a thinking that 'e's 'ad any part in it – Oh, no, sir! I'd stake my life on it I would. Nearly there, ain't we? I pity that pore young thing fast asleep in the house with the corpse. Bit of a risk to leave 'er, sir, wasn't it?"
"I couldn't help myself," flung back Cleek irritably, for had not the same thought been torturing him ever since he had sped down the drive? "I should have had to tell her if I woke her up, poor child, and she was too dead-beat to stir for the next couple of hours."
"Not too dead-beat not to get a light, anyway," said Constable Roberts, pointing in the direction of the house, and as Cleek raised his eyes from the steering wheel he saw a sight that caused the machine to swerve wildly in consequence. For the dark deserted house over which he had wandered barely half an hour before, leaving it tenanted by a sleeping girl and the body of the only relative she had possessed in the world, was now gaily lit from top to bottom and from behind the blinds of one of the rooms could be seen the be-capped head of a maid.
"The devils have come back!" Cleek cried as he put on greater speed than ever. "There's not a moment to be lost. Lord send she's safe. Hurry, man, for God's sake, hurry!"
But there was no need to tell Constable Roberts to "hurry," for fully alive now to the urgency of the case he was already panting his way up the front steps.
"Locked," snapped Cleek as his fingers felt for the handle. "Get back to the rear. You go to the right. I'll try the ball room window."
Switching on his heel, he was gone before the ponderous body of Constable Roberts had recovered its breath. It was pitch dark now, and once out of range of the brilliant motor-lamps, the house was shrouded in a mantle of blackness. But Cleek had his electric torch and as he sped swiftly on his course he swung its light against shrubs and windows.
Turning the corner of the wall, he came within sight of the ball room window once more and reached it in the twinkling of an eyelash. To his dismay he found it not only locked, but what was even more terrifying by reason of its significance, shuttered and barred from within!
Cleek gave vent to a little cry indicative of mild despair and brought out his torch, letting its tiny searchlight fall upon the smooth lawn in front of him. It could do little more than throw a weak circle of light a few feet into the depths of the trees leaving all beyond and upon either side doubly dark in contrast. But for this Cleek cared nothing, for even as the light streamed out and flung that circle into the impinging mist, there moved across it the figure of a woman with a scarf of gold lace thrown over her head, from beneath which fell a shower of dark, unbound hair. It effectively concealed her face, and almost covered her shoulders wrapped in scarlet satin.
Satin in March! And a woman! She was the second woman he had seen cross the lawn that night, the one an hour or so ago, in white, and now this one in scarlet. The thing was so uncanny, so totally unexpected, that Cleek's brain positively reeled. In a flash she was gone.
He turned to follow in pursuit, but as he switched on his heel, it was to come face to face with the panting, breathless figure of Mr. Roberts.
"Ev – every door – fastened, sir," he said, his breath coming in great gasps. "What on earth's the matter, I dunno. But that's the gospel truth, and I'll swear to it!"
"Nothing else to do but to attack the front then," said Cleek. "Come on, Constable. No time to be wasted."
CHAPTER IV
THE HOUSE OF SHADOWS
Constable Roberts did "come on" and at a speed highly commendable, considering his portly build. Cleek, passing the long French windows through which he had obtained entry but an hour before, stopped to ascertain that they, too, were now bolted and barred.
Snapping on their electric torches they tore up the short flight of steps leading to the front door.
"Someone has made good use of their time," Cleek whispered, as he thought how easily he had entered with Lady Margaret such a short while before. "There's no use trying to force this door and the windows are now shuttered and barred. The only thing to do is to try knocking them up."
A second later Mr. Roberts sent a valiant peal resounding through the house and both men listened tensely for any response. One, two, perhaps five minutes passed; the echoes of their blows had died away into silence, and the flash of their torches showed to each of them only the other's strained expectant face. Neither eye nor ear could detect any signs of movement within.
"How we're to get in beats me," said Constable Roberts with a frown puckering his bushy brows. "We'll have to break in, in the name of the law."
And as though that very name had in itself something of the supernatural, there came a sound, a rustle, a step within the house, and the nerves of both men were near to snapping point. They stood a moment listening, while the harsh grating of bolts being withdrawn into their sockets came to their ears, and in another second the great door swung slowly back upon its hinges. The mellow radiance of lamps streamed out and flung a circle of light round them. As it did so a little gasp of astonishment came from both men, for in the doorway, gazing out on them in dignified reproof, stood an immaculate butler. Their hearts seemed for a moment to cease beating and they stared in dumb amazement.
It was Cleek who recovered his wits first. He turned to the butler with a perfectly impassive face.
"We want to see Lady Margaret Cheyne at once," he rapped out sharply. "At once please!"
The butler moved a little aside, as if the visit were the most ordinary one in the world.
"Her ladyship has retired for the night, sir," was the surprising answer. "I will see if the mistress – Miss Cheyne – will see you."
"Miss Cheyne!" said Cleek, sharply.
"Heavens! man, but she is dead," shouted the outraged constable before Cleek could stop him. "This gentleman came to fetch me to view the body. In the name of the law, I am going to search the place."
Staggered by the announcement, with staring eyes and dough-white countenance the man fell back a pace, and seizing the opportunity thus offered, Cleek stepped into the hall, closely followed by Roberts.
"This is preposterous!" ejaculated the butler, at last, as if only just realizing the gravity of the situation; then, raising his voice, he echoed the last words, "Miss Cheyne dead!"
And then – a good many strange things had happened in the course of this night, but to Cleek it seemed as if the very earth had stopped in its course, the door of the room which he knew to be the dining room opened with a little angry jerk, and in the doorway stood a figure that caused Cleek's heart to leap in his mouth. It was no less than that of the woman who had lain dead at his feet but a short time ago. It was Miss Cheyne herself!
"Miss Cheyne dead! What does this impertinence mean?" she demanded in a hard, shrill voice at the sound of which the constable's ruddy face became purple with anger. He whipped off his helmet and he pulled savagely at his forelock.
"Beg yer pardon, Miss Cheyne, yer ladyship," he stuttered "for disturbing you – but this – this-individual – ," he almost choked over his words – "came and fetched me away from the nicest bit of supper I ever wants to see, to tell me you was a-lying murdered, begging yer pardon, and that Lady Margaret, whom he'd driven over in his car, was asleep alone in the empty house. More fool me to believe him, yer ladyship, but you'd 'ave done the same yourself in my place – "
"But I tell you – " began Cleek.
The Honourable Miss Cheyne wheeled round on him, her eyes sparkling with anger.
"So," she ejaculated, one hand pressed to her side, and Cleek found himself unconsciously recognizing the rings which had flashed in the lamplight on the fingers of the murdered woman. "So you are the impertinent stranger who inflicted himself on an ignorant, helpless girl, and caused me to miss my niece at the station. I drive back with the servants I had ordered from London to find my niece sleeping in a chair. I have packed her off to bed. And as for you, sir, you are an impostor and a thief for aught I know – "
This last assertion Cleek took no notice of, but advancing toward her he said firmly:
"I want to see Lady Margaret – "
"Indeed," was the sarcastic reply. "I am not aware that it is customary for strangers to intrude themselves upon people, even if they have been of some service. As far as you are concerned, sir, my niece's reputation has had every prospect of being blighted by your misconceived and misdirected attentions."
"I have no wish to intrude or to make much of the trifling aid I was able to give your niece, Madam," responded Cleek seriously. "My name is Deland, and you can make what enquiries you like from my friend Mr. Maverick Narkom, Superintendent of Scotland Yard as to – er – my general character if you are at all doubtful about it."
A still angrier gleam shone in Miss Cheyne's eyes, and even as the words left his mouth, Cleek, with that queer sixth sense of intuition, felt that he had said the wrong thing. If there were anything wrong, then the very name of the law would set them on their guard.
Miss Cheyne, however, seemed disposed to push her momentary advantage to its utmost.
"I don't care for fifty Superintendents," she declared, angrily, looking back into Cleek's face with flaming eyes. "You have no right to force your way into my house on any pretext whatsoever. Indeed, I am not sure that I can't have the law on you for breaking in my windows this evening. It will cost me a pretty penny. But I should like you to understand that I won't have my niece disturbed by anybody, so if you can't explain your visit to me, I'll say good-night and good riddance. As for you, Policeman, you ought to be ashamed of yourself to come here and rouse me on such a nonsensical errand."
She cut short Mr. Roberts's excuses and practically drove the two men back until they found themselves once more on the steps. Then the door slammed in their faces.
Constable Roberts turned swiftly upon his companion, and commenced a pent-up tirade against him for having fetched him out on this wild-goose chase.
Cleek stood still, pinching his chin with a thumb and forefinger, his eyes narrowed down to slits. Review the facts however calmly, he could still find no fitting solution. Sure he was that a dead woman had stared at him from the floor of that house, but he was also just as sure that the same woman had driven him out from it. And what of Lady Margaret herself? He had not a shadow of right to insist on seeing her. She was in the hands of her natural guardian, and yet, and yet – ! The shadow of doubt hung over him.
He stopped short suddenly and sniffed in the air, much to the open-mouthed astonishment of Constable Roberts, whose grumbling remonstrances died away.
"Good Lord man, sir, I mean," he exclaimed, agitatedly, "but what's in the wind now?"
"Scent and sense, my good fellow," said Cleek. "There is a distinct odour of jasmine in the air and an artificial scent, Huile de jasmin at that. It is a woman's scent, too, and some woman has been here to-night. She's been on these very stone steps."
"Well, what if she has? That don't excuse you a-saying that Miss Cheyne is dead, when she's no more dead than you or me – " retorted the constable, heatedly. "I shall be the laughing-stock of the country, fetched out like a fool – "
Hardly listening to the stream of grumbling expostulation issuing from the mouth of Constable Roberts, Cleek bent down and sniffed again vigorously. He tested each step till he reached the gravelled path. All at once he gave vent to a sharp cry of triumph for there, indented in the path before him and revealed by the light of his torch, was the mark of a slender shoe – a woman's shoe unmistakably.
In a second they had passed the lodge gates and were out in the narrow lane, which was black as a beggar's pocket, and as empty. A placid moon shone over silent fields, and only the soft whirr of the motor broke the silence as they sped along.
Nevertheless Cleek, as ever, was on the look-out. The sixth sense of impending danger which was in him strangely developed hung over him.
Suddenly, with a little cry of surprise and a grinding of brakes, he pulled the car up with such a jerk that Roberts, who had subsided into a somnolent silence, was nearly thrown off the seat at his side.
"A dollar for a ducat but I'm right!" he exclaimed sharply. "There's someone on that side of the hedge."
Without stopping a second he leaped down, cleared the low hedge as lightly as any schoolboy, and pounced on a crouching, running, panting figure.
"One minute, sir," he began. Then his fingers almost lost their hold, as the face of a man in deadly terror gazed up at him, and from him to the majesty of the law as embodied in the person of Constable Roberts. That worthy, having descended from the car, was now looking over the hedge.
"Lawks, sir, if it bain't Sir Edgar himself!" he ejaculated, and the sound of the evidently familiar voice seemed to pull the distraught young man together.
"Hello, Roberts," he said with a brave attempt at the debonair nonchalance which was his usual manner, an attempt that did not blind Cleek to the fact that his lips were trembling and beads of perspiration standing on his pale forehead.
"What are you doing gadding around at this time of night?"
"Me, sir?" replied Roberts, bitterly. "I've bin fetched out to see murdered women and – "
"Not – not Miss Cheyne!" gasped the young man.
A queer little smile looped up one corner of Cleek's mouth.
"Hello, hello!" he said, mentally, "someone else knows of it, eh?" Here was somebody who, to his way of thinking, jumped to right conclusions too quickly. Why should Sir Edgar Brenton, as he knew this man to be, know that it should be Miss Cheyne, unless – and here Cleek's mind raced on wings of doubt again – unless he himself had killed Miss Cheyne? And if so, who was this woman – ?
As if from some distance he could hear Roberts's grumbling bellow:
"Miss Cheyne? Lor', don't you go for to say you've got that bee in your bonnet, too, Sir Edgar. It is quite enough with this gent, Lieutenant Deland, a-coming and fetching me away from my bit of supper. What my missis will say remains to be 'eard, as they says. 'Deed, no, Miss Cheyne's as live as you, and in a thunderin' bad temper – "
"Thank the Lord!" ejaculated the young squire in a low, fervent undertone.
"An' what made you think, if I might be so bold, Sir Edgar, that it was Miss Cheyne?" asked the constable curiously, voicing Cleek's unspoken thought.
That gentleman cleared his throat before answering.
"It was just a chance hit, Roberts," said he, but his voice held an odd little crabbed note in it. "You see, you were coming straight from Cheyne Court, so it couldn't have been any one else."
"No, sir, come to think, it couldn't be," assented Roberts, and Cleek, who had stepped back into the shadow of the hedge, twitched up his eyebrows as he sensed the relief that stole over Sir Edgar's face.
"A nice fright you gave me, too," continued the young man, speaking more easily. "I'm supposed to be at a political dinner-fight in London, you know, Roberts. Only just got back, in fact, and I didn't feel up to it, so when I heard that precious motor of yours I was afraid it might be some dashed good-natured friend, don't you know, and so I cut across the hedge."
"Quite right, too," assented Constable Roberts approvingly, in whose eyes Sir Edgar could do no wrong. Then to Cleek, "Well, sir, I think we'll be moving, if you don't mind."
"Indeed I don't," Cleek replied, and then he addressed Sir Edgar. "Sorry I startled you, sir – took you for a poacher, don't you know. Perhaps you'll let me drive you through the village if you are going this way." He smiled with a well-feigned air of stupidity, put up his eyeglass into his eye, and lurched up against the young man as he spoke.
"Pleased," mumbled Sir Edgar, and got into the limousine.
Another two or three minutes' run brought them into the village, and here Sir Edgar insisted on alighting, and continuing his journey on foot.
Cleek watched him go with brows on which deep furrows were marked.
"Wonder what made the young gentleman lie so futilely?" he said at length as his shadow gradually merged in with the darkness ahead.
"Lie?" echoed the astonished constable, as he fumbled with the latch of his garden gate.
"Yes, lie, my friend," flung back Cleek, his foot on the step of the car. "He was running to the station not from it; his clothes smelt strongly of the scent which pervaded the house this afternoon, namely jasmine; and thirdly, there was a revolver in his pocket. A revolver is a thing no gentleman takes to a dinner with him, even a political one."
And, leaving Mr. Roberts to digest this piece of mental food with his long-delayed supper, the car whizzed away in the moonlight. Cleek's first duty was to Ailsa, and he found her waiting for him pale and expectant at the little gate.
"Oh," she cried, as the motor panted its way into silence. "I thought you were never coming back. Where is she, dear? Where is that helpless child?"
She hurried out, but Cleek flung up an arresting hand.
"I am either going mad, Ailsa, or else there is a greater mystery here than I can fathom," he said quickly. "Miss Cheyne herself was there to receive us and – "
"Miss Cheyne!" echoed Ailsa, her eyes dilating, and apparently she was almost as shocked at this news of her evident existence as she had been a short while back by her demise. "But you said – " her voice trailed away into silence, and Cleek took the words out of her mouth.
"She was dead! Yes, I certainly thought so, and I cannot understand it. Nevertheless, Miss Cheyne is there all right, Constable Roberts will vouch for that; and Lady Margaret is presumably tucked up safe and sound in her bed, but it is incomprehensible to me. Here's the story if you care to hear it."
He gave a rough outline of his various discoveries and at the end of it Ailsa nodded her head gravely.
"I cannot understand it, either," she said. "I suppose nothing can be done, but I will go up to Cheyne Court early in the morning and see the child for myself."
Cleek smiled his approval.
"I wish you would," he said. "I must run up and see Mr. Narkom, and to-morrow perhaps – well, who knows – "
