Kitabı oku: «Cleek of Scotland Yard: Detective Stories», sayfa 17
CHAPTER XXVIII
It was somewhere in the neighbourhood of half-past three when the opportunity to interview those three persons was finally vouchsafed him; and it may be recorded at once that the meeting did some violence to his emotions. In short, he found Mr. James Drake (far from being the frank-faced, impulsive, lovable young pepper-pot which his actions and words would seem to stand sponsor for) a rather retiring young man of the “pale and studious” order, absolutely lacking in personal magnetism, and about the last person in the world one would expect to do the “all for love” business of the average hero in the manner he had done. On the other hand, he found the Earl of Fallowfield an exceedingly frank, pleasant-mannered, rather boyish-looking gentleman, whose many attractions rendered it easy to understand why the late Mr. Jefferson P. Drake had conceived such a warm affection for him, and was at such pains to have him ever by his side. It seemed, indeed, difficult to believe that he could possibly be the father of Lady Marjorie Wynde, for his manner and appearance were so youthful as to make him appear to be nothing closer than an elder brother. The doctor – that eminent Harley Street light, Mr. John Strangeways Hague – he found to be full of Harley Street manners and Harley Street ideas, eminently polite, eminently cold, and about as pleased to meet a detective police officer as he would be to find an organ-grinder sitting on his doorstep.
“Have you come to any conclusions as to the means of death, Doctor?” asked Cleek after he had been shown into the Stone Drum, where the body of the dead man still lay and where the local coroner and the local J. P. were conducting a sort of preliminary examination prior to the regulation inquest, which must, of course, follow. “The general appearance would suggest asphyxia, if asphyxia were possible.”
“Which it is not,” volunteered Doctor Hague, with the geniality of a snowball. “You have probably observed that the many slits in the wall permit of free ventilation; and asphyxia with free ventilation is an impossibility.”
“Quite so,” agreed Cleek placidly. “But if by any chance those slits could have been closed from the outside – I observe that at some period and for some purpose Mr. Drake has made use of a charcoal furnace” – indicating it by a wave of the hand – “and apparently with no other vent to carry off the fumes than that supplied by the slits. Now if they were closed and the charcoal left burning, the result would be an atmosphere charged with carbon monoxide gas, and a little more than one per cent. of that in the air of a room deprived of ventilation would, in a short time, prove fatal to any person breathing that air.”
The doctor twitched round an inquiring eye, and looked him over from head to foot.
“Yes,” he said, remembering that, after all, there were Board Schools, and even the humblest might sometimes learn, parrot-like, to repeat the “things that are in books.” “But we happen to know that the slits were not closed and that neither carbon oxide nor carbon monoxide was the cause of death.”
“You have taken samples of the blood, of course, to establish that fact beyond question, as one could so readily do?” ventured Cleek suavely. “The test for carbon monoxide is so simple and so very certain that error is impossible. It combines so tensely, if one may put it that way, with the blood, that the colouring of the red corpuscles is utterly overcome and destroyed.”
“My good sir, those are elementary facts of which I do not stand in need of a reminder.”
“Quite so, quite so. But in my profession, Doctor, one stands in constant need of ‘reminders.’ A speck, a spot, a pin-prick – each and all are significant, and – But is this not a slight abrasion on the temple here?” bending over and, with his glass, examining a minute reddish speck upon the dead man’s face. “Hum-m-m! I see, I see! Have you investigated this thing, Doctor? It is interesting.”
“I fail to see the point of interest, then,” replied Doctor Hague, bending over and examining the spot. “The skin is scarcely more than abraded – evidently by the finger nail scratching off the head of some infinitesimal pustule.”
“Possibly,” agreed Cleek, “but on the other hand, it may be something of a totally different character – for one thing, the possible point at which contact was established between the man’s blood and something of a poisonous character. An injection of cyanide of potassium, for instance, would cause death, and account in a measure for this suggestion of asphyxia conveyed by the expression of the features.”
“True, my good sir; but have the goodness to ask yourself who could get into the place to administer such hypodermic? And, if self-administered, what can have become of the syringe? If thrown from one of the bowman’s slits, it could only have fallen upon the roof of the wing, and I assure you that was searched most thoroughly long before your arrival. I don’t think you will go so far as to suggest that it was shot in, attached to some steel missile capable of making a wound; for no such missile is, as you see, embedded in the flesh nor was one lying anywhere about the floor. The cyanide of potassium theory is ingenious, but I’m afraid it won’t hold water.”
“Hold water!” The phrase brought Cleek’s thoughts harking back to what he had been told regarding the little puddle of water lying on the floor, and of a sudden his eyes narrowed, and the curious one-sided smile travelled up his cheek.
“No, I suppose not,” he said, replying to the doctor’s remark. “Besides, your test tubes would have settled that when it settled the carbon monoxide question. Had cyanide been present, the specimens of blood would have been clotted and blue.”
Of a sudden it seemed to dawn upon the doctor that this didn’t smack quite so much of Board School intelligence as he had fancied, and, facing round, he looked at Cleek with a new-born interest.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, “but I don’t think I caught your name, Mr. – er – er – ”
“Cleek, Doctor; Hamilton Cleek, at your service.”
“Good Lord! That is, I – er – er – my dear sir, my dear Mr. Cleek, if there is any intelligence I can possibly supply, pray command me.”
“With pleasure, Doctor, and thank you very much indeed for the kind offer. I have been told that there was a little puddle of water on the floor at the time the murder was discovered, also that you took a sample of it for analysis. As I don’t see any sign of that puddle now, would you mind telling me what that analysis established. I have heard, I may tell you, that you found the water to contain no poisonous substance; but I should be obliged if you can tell me if it was water drawn from a well or such as might have been taken from a river or pond.”
“As a matter of fact, my dear Mr. Cleek, I don’t think it came from any of the three.”
“Hum-m-m! A manufactured mineral water, then?”
“No, not that, either. If it had been raining and there was any hole or leak in this roof, I should have said it was rainwater that had dripped in and formed a little puddle on the floor. If it had been winter, I should have said it was the result of melted snow. As a matter of fact, I incline more to the latter theory than to any other, although it is absurd, of course, to think of snow being obtainable anywhere in England in the month of July.”
“Quite so, quite so – unless – it doesn’t matter. That’s all, thank you, Doctor, and very many thanks.”
“A word, please, Mr. Cleek,” interposed the doctor as he turned to move away and leave him. “I am afraid I was not very communicative nor very cordial when you asked me if I had any idea of the means employed to bring about the unfortunate man’s death; may I hope that you will be better mannered than I, Mr. Cleek, if I ask you if you have? Thanks, very much. Then, have you?”
“Yes,” said Cleek. “And so, too, will you, if you will make a second blood test, with the specimens you have, at a period of about forty-eight hours after the time of decease. It will take quite that before the presence of the thing manifests itself under the influence of any known process or responds to any known test. And even then it will only be detected by a faintly alcoholic odour and excessively bitter taste. The man has been murdered – done to death by that devil’s drug woorali, if I am not mistaken. But who administered it and how it was administered are things I can’t tell you yet.”
“Woorali! Woorali! That is the basis of the drug curarin, produced by Roulin and Boussingault in 1828 from a combination of the allied poisons known to the savages of South America and of the tropics by the names of corroval and vao, is it not?”
“Yes. And a fiend’s thing it is, too. A mere scratch from anything steeped in it is enough to kill an ox almost immediately. The favourite ‘native’ manner of using the hellish thing is by means of a thorn and a blowpipe. But no such method has been employed in this case. No thorn nor, indeed, any other projectile has entered the flesh, nor is there one lying anywhere about the floor. Be sure I looked, Doctor, the instant I suspected that woorali had been used. Pardon me, but that must be all for the present. I have other fish to fry.”
CHAPTER XXIX
The “frying” of them took the shape of first going outside and walking round the Stone Drum, and then of stepping back to the door and beckoning Narkom and Lord Fallowfield and young James Drake out to him.
“Anybody in the habit of sitting out here to read or paint or anything of that sort?” he asked abruptly.
“Good gracious, no!” replied Lord Fallowfield. “Whatever makes you ask such a thing as that, Mr. Cleek?”
“Nothing, only that I have found four little marks disposed of at such regular distances that they seem to have been made by the four legs of a chair resting, with a rather heavy weight upon it, on the leads of the roof and immediately under one of the bowman’s slits in the Stone Drum. A chair with casters, I should imagine, from the character of the marks. We are on a level with the sleeping quarters of the servants in the house proper, I believe, and chairs with casters are not usual in servants’ bedrooms in most houses. Are they so here?”
“Certainly not,” put in young Drake. “Why, I don’t believe there is a chair with casters on the whole blessed floor. Is there, Lord Fallowfield? You ought to know.”
“Yes, there is, Jim. There are three in fact; they all are in the old armoury. Been there a dog’s age; and they so matched the old place your poor father never had them taken out.”
“The ‘old armoury’? What’s that, your lordship, may I ask?”
“Oh, a relic of the old feudal times, Mr. Cleek. You see, on account of the position of the Stone Drum, the weapon room, or arming-room, had to be up here on a level with the wing roof, instead of below stairs, as in the case of other ‘towers.’ That’s the place over there – the window just to the left of the door leading into the building proper. It is full of the old battle flags, knights’ pennants, shields, cross-bows, and the Lord knows what of those old days of primitive warfare. We Fallowfields always preserved it, just as it was in the days of its usefulness, for its historical interest and its old association with the name. Like to have a look at it?”
“Very much indeed,” replied Cleek, and two minutes later he was standing in the place and revelling in its air of antiquity.
As Lord Fallowfield had declared, the three old chairs which supplied seating accommodation were equipped with casters, but although these were the prime reason for Cleek’s visit to the place, he gave them little more than a passing glance, bestowing all his attention upon the ancient shields and the quaint old cross-bows with which the walls were heavily hung in tier after tier almost to the groined ceiling.
“Primitive times, Mr. Narkom, when men used to go out with these jimcrack things and bang away at each other with skewers!” he said, taking one of them down and examining it in a somewhat casual manner, turning it over, testing its weight, looking at its catch, and running his fingers up and down the propelling string. “Fancy a chap with one of these things running up against a modern battery or sailing out into a storm of shrapnel! Back to your hook, grandfather” – hanging it up again – “times change and we with time. By the way, your lordship, I hope you will be better able to give an account of your whereabouts last night than I hear that Mr. Drake here is able to do regarding his.”
“I? Good heavens, man, what do you mean?” flung out his lordship, so taken aback by the abruptness of the remark that the very breath seemed to be knocked out of him. “Upon my soul, Mr. Cleek – ”
“Gently, gently, your lordship. You must certainly realize that in the circumstances the same necessity must exist for you to explain your movements as exists for Mr. Drake. I am told that in the event of the elder Mr. Drake’s death this property was to come to you wholly unencumbered by any charge or any restrictions whatsoever.”
“Good God! So it was. Upon my soul, I’d forgotten all about that!” exclaimed his lordship with such an air that he was either speaking the absolute truth or was a very good actor indeed.
“Jim! My boy! Oh, good heavens! I never gave the thing a thought – never one! No, Mr. Cleek, I can give no account of my movements other than to say that I went to bed directly I left the Stone Drum. Or – yes. I can prove that much, by George! I can, indeed. Ojeebi was with me, or, at least, close at my heels at the time, and he saw me go into my room, and must have heard me lock the door.”
“Ojeebi? Who is he?”
“My father’s Japanese valet,” put in young Drake. “Been with him for the past five years. If he tells you that he saw Lord Fallowfield go into his room and lock the door after him, you can rely upon that as an absolute and irrefutable truth. ‘Whitest’ little yellow man that ever walked on two feet; faithful as a dog, and as truthful as they make ’em.”
“And they don’t make ’em any too truthful, as a rule, in his country, by Jove!” said Cleek. “Still, of course, as he could not possibly have anything to gain – Call him up, will you, and let us hear what he has to say with regard to Lord Fallowfield’s statement.”
Young Drake rang for a servant, issued the necessary order, and some five or six minutes later a timid little yellow man with the kindest face and the most gentle step a man could possess came into the room, his soft eyes reddened with much weeping, and tear-stains marking his sallow cheeks.
“Oh, Mr. Jim! Oh, Mr. Jim! the dear, kind old ‘boss’! He gone! he gone!” he broke out disconsolately as he caught sight of his late master’s son, and made as if to prostrate himself before him.
“That’s all right, Ojeebi – that’s all right, old man!” interrupted young Drake, with a smothered “blub” in his voice and a twitching movement of his mouth. “Cut it out! I’m not iron. Say, this gentleman wants to ask you a few questions, Ojeebi; deliver the goods just as straight as you know how.”
“Me, Mr. Jim? Gentleman want question me?” The small figure turned, the kindly face lifted, and the sorrowful eyes looked up into Cleek’s unemotional ones.
“Yes,” said he placidly; and forthwith told him what Lord Fallowfield claimed.
“That very true,” declared Ojeebi. “The lord gentleman he right ahead of me. I see him go into his room and hear him lock door. That very true indeed.”
“H’m! Any idea of the time?”
“Yes – much idea. Two minutes a-past twelve. I see clock as I go past Lady Marj’ie’s room.”
“What were you doing knocking about that part of the house at that hour of the night? Your room’s up here in the servant’s quarters, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. But I go take ice-water to the boss’s room. Boss never go to bed nights without ice-water handy, sir. ’Merican boss never do.”
“Yes! Quite so, quite so! Where did you get the ice from – and how? Chop it from a big cake?”
“No, sir. It always froze to fit bottle. I get him from the ice-make room downstairs.”
“He means the refrigerating room, Mr. Cleek,” explained young Drake. “You know, I take it, what a necessary commodity we Americans hold ice to be. Indeed, the dear old dad wouldn’t think a dinner was a dinner without ice-water on the table, and ice-cream for the final course. And as there was no possibility of procuring a regular and adequate supply in an out-of-the-way spot like this, he had a complete artificial ice-making plant added to the place, and overcame the difficulty in that way. That is what Ojeebi means by the ‘ice-make room.’ What he means about its being frozen to fit the bottles is this: The ice which is to be used for drinking purposes is manufactured in forms or vessels which turn it out in cubes, so that whenever it is wanted all that a servant has to do is to go to the plant, and the man in charge supplies him with all the cubes required.”
“Ah, I see,” said Cleek, and stroked his chin. “Well, that’s all, I reckon, for the time being. Ojeebi has certainly backed up your statement to the fullest, your lordship, so we can dispense with him entirely. And now, if I have your permission, gentlemen, I should like to feel myself privileged to go poking about the house and grounds for the next hour or so in quest of possible clues. At the end of that time I will rejoin you here, and shall hope to have something definite to report. So if you don’t mind my going – Thanks very much. Come along, Mr. Narkom. I’ve a little something for you to do, and – an hour will do it, or I’m a dogberry.”
With that he took his departure from the armoury and, with the superintendent following, went down through the house to the grounds and out into the screen of close crowding, view-defying trees.
Here he paused a minute to pull out his notebook and scribble something on a leaf, and then to tear out that leaf and put it into Mr. Narkom’s hand.
“Rush Lennard off to the post-office with that, will you? and have it wired up to town as soon as possible,” he said. “Prepay the reply, and get that reply back to me as soon as telegraph and motor can get it here.”
Then he swung off out of the screen of the trees and round the angle of the building, and set about hunting for the refrigerating plant.
CHAPTER XXX
It was five and after when the superintendent, pale and shaking with excitement, came up the long drive from the Hall gates and found Cleek lounging in the doorway of the house, placidly smoking a cigarette and twirling a little ball of crumpled newspaper in his hand.
“Right was I, Mr. Narkom?” he queried smilingly.
“Good God, yes! Right as rain, old chap. Been carrying it for upward of a twelvemonth, and no doubt waiting for an opportunity to strike.”
“Good! And while you have been attending to your little part of the business I’ve been looking out for mine, dear friend. Look!” said Cleek, and opened up the little ball of paper sufficiently to show what looked like a cut-glass scent bottle belonging to a lady’s dressing-bag close stoppered with a metal plug sealed round with candle wax. “Woorali, my friend; and enough in it to kill an army. Come along – we’ve got to the bottom of the thing, let us go up and ‘report.’ The gentlemen will be getting anxious.”
They were; for on reaching the armoury they found young Drake and Lord Fallowfield showing strong traces of the mental strain under which they were labouring and talking agitatedly with Lady Marjorie Wynde, who had, in the interim, come up and joined them, and was herself apparently in need of something to sustain and to strengthen her; for Ojeebi was standing by with an extended salver, from which she had just lifted to her lips a glass of port.
“Good God! I never was so glad to see anybody in my life, gentlemen,” broke out young Drake as they appeared. “It’s beyond the hour you asked for – ages beyond – and my nerves are almost pricking their way through my skin. Mr. Cleek – Mr. Narkom – speak up, for heaven’s sake. Have you succeeded in finding out anything?”
“We’ve done better than that, Mr. Drake,” replied Cleek, “for we have succeeded in finding out everything. Look sharp there, Mr. Narkom, and shut that door. Lady Marjorie looks as if she were going to faint, and we don’t want a whole houseful of servants piling in here. That’s it. Back against the door, please; her ladyship seems on the point of crumpling up.”
“No, no, I’m not; indeed, I’m not!” protested Lady Marjorie with a forced smile and a feeble effort to hold her galloping nerves in check. “I am excited and very much upset, of course, but I am really much stronger than you would think. Still, if you would rather I should leave the room, Mr. Cleek – ”
“Oh, by no means, your ladyship. I know how anxious you are to learn the result of my investigations. And, by that token, somebody else is anxious, too – the doctor. Call him in, will you, Mr. Drake? He is still with the others in the Stone Drum, I assume.”
He was; and he came out of it with them at young Drake’s call, and joined the party in the armoury.
“Doctor,” said Cleek, looking up as he came in, “we’ve got to the puzzle’s unpicking, and I thought you’d be interested to hear the result. I was right about the substance employed, for I’ve found the stuff and I’ve nailed the guilty party. It was woorali, and the reason why there was no trace of a weapon was because the blessed thing melted. It was an icicle, my friend, an icicle with its point steeped in woorali, and if you want to know how it did its work – why, it was shot in there from the cross-bow hanging on the wall immediately behind me, and the person who shot it in was so short that a chair was necessary to get up to the bowman’s slit when – No, you don’t, my beauty! There’s a gentleman with a noose waiting to pay his respects to all such beasts as you!”
Speaking, he sprang with a sharp, flashing movement that was like to nothing so much as the leap of a pouncing cat, and immediately there was a yap and a screech, a yell and a struggle, a click of clamping handcuffs, and a scuffle of writhing limbs, and a moment later they that were watching saw him rise with a laugh, and stand, with his hands on his hips, looking down at Ojeebi lying crumpled up in a heap, with gyves on his wrists and panic in his eyes, at the foot of the guarded door.
“Well, my pleasant-faced, agreeable little demon, it’ll be many a long day before the spirits of your ancestors welcome you back to Nippon!” Cleek said as the panic-stricken Jap, realizing what was before him, began to shriek and shriek until his brain and nerves sank into a collapse and he fainted where he lay. “I’ve got you and I’ve got the woorali. I went through your trunk and found it – as I knew I should from the moment I clapped eyes upon you. If the laws of the country are so lax that they make it possible for you to do what you have done, they also are stringent enough to make you pay the price of it with your yellow little neck!”
“In the name of heaven, Mr. Cleek,” spoke up young Drake, breaking silence suddenly, “what can the boy have done? You speak as if it were he that murdered my father; but, man, why should he? What had he to gain? What motive could a harmless little chap like this have for killing the man he served?”
“The strongest in the world, my friend – the greed of gain!” said Cleek. “What he could not do in your father’s land it is possible for him to do in this one, which foolishly allows its subjects to insure even the life of its ruler without his will, knowledge, or consent. For nearly a twelvemonth this little brute has been carrying a heavy insurance upon the life of Jefferson P. Drake; but, thank God, he’ll never live to collect it. What’s that, Doctor? How did I find that out? By the simplest means possible, my dear sir.
“For a reason which concerns nobody but myself, I dropped in at the Guildford office of the Royal British Life Assurance Society in the latter part of last May, and upon that occasion I marked the singular circumstance that a Japanese was then paying the premium of an already existing policy. Why I speak of it as a singular circumstance, and why I let myself be impressed by it, lie in the fact that, as the Japanese regard their dead ancestors with absolute veneration and the privilege of being united with them a boon which makes death glorious, life assurance is not popular with them, since it seems to be insulting their ancestors and makes joining them tainted with the odour of baser things. Consequently, I felt pretty certain that it was some other life than his own he was there to pay the regularly recurring premium upon. The chances are, Doctor, that in the ordinary run of things I should never have thought of that man or that circumstance again. But it so happens that I have a very good memory for faces and events, so when I came down here to investigate this case, and in the late Mr. Drake’s valet saw that Japanese man again – voila! I should have been an idiot not to put two and two together.
“The remainder, a telegram inquiring if an insurance upon the life of Jefferson P. Drake, the famous inventor, had been effected by anybody but the man himself, settled the thing beyond question. As for the rest, it is easy enough to explain. Your remark that the little puddle found upon the floor of the Stone Drum appeared to you to bear a distinct resemblance to the water resulting from melted snow, added to what I already knew regarding the refrigerating plant installed here, put me on the track of the ice; and as the small spot on the temple was of so minute a character, I knew that the weapon must have been pointed. A pointed weapon of ice leaves but one conclusion possible, Doctor. I have since learned from the man in charge of the refrigerating plant that this yellow blob of iniquity here was much taken by the icicles which the process of refrigeration caused to accumulate in the place and upon the machine itself during rotation, and that last night shortly after twelve o’clock he came down and broke off and carried away three of them. How I came to know what motive power he employed to launch the poisoned shaft can be explained in a word. Most of the weapons – indeed, all but one – hanging on the wall of this armoury are lightly coated with dust, showing that it must be a week or more since any housemaid’s work was attended to in this particular quarter. One of them is not dusty. Furthermore, when I took it down for the purpose of examining it I discovered that, although smeared with ink or paint to make it look as old as the others, the bowstring was of fresh catgut, and there was a suspicious dampness about the ‘catch,’ which suggested either wet hands or the partial melting, under the heat of living flesh, of the ‘shaft,’ which had been an icicle. That’s all, Doctor; that’s all, Mr. Drake; that’s quite all, Lord Fallowfield. A good, true-hearted young chap will get both the girl he wants and the inheritance which should be his by right; a good, true friend will get back the ancestral home he lost through misfortune and has regained through chance, and a patient and faithful lady will, in all probability, get the man she loves without now having to wait until he comes into a dead man’s shoes. Lady Marjorie, my compliments. Doctor, my best respects, and gentlemen all – good afternoon.”
And here with that weakness for the theatrical which was his besetting sin, he bowed to them with his hat laid over his heart, and walked out of the room.
