Kitabı oku: «Cleek of Scotland Yard: Detective Stories», sayfa 19
Miss Larue did, discovering, to her dismay, that they represented a curious ruby necklace, of which the original had been lent her by the Duchess of Oldhampton, a stomacher of sapphires and pearls borrowed from the Marquise of Chepstow, and a rare Tudor clasp of diamonds and opals which had been lent to her by the Lady Margery Thraill.
In a panic she rushed from the theatre, called a taxi, and, hoping against hope, whirled off to her rooms at Portman Square. No Mr. James Colliver had been there. Nor did he come there ever. Neither did he return to the squalid home where his dead wife lay; nor did any of his cronies nor any of his old haunts see hide or hair of him from that time. Furthermore, nobody answering to his description had been seen to board any train, steamship, or sailing-vessel leaving for foreign parts, nor could there be found any hotel, lodging-house, furnished or even unfurnished apartment into which he had entered that day or upon any day thereafter.
In despair, Miss Larue drove to Scotland Yard and put the matter into the hands of the police, offering a reward of £1,000 for the recovery of the jewels; and through the medium of the newspapers promised Mr. James Colliver that she would not prosecute, but would pay that £1,000 over to him if he would return the gems, that she might restore them to their rightful owners.
Mr. James Colliver neither accepted that offer nor gave any sign that he was aware of it. It was then that Scotland Yard, in the person of Cleek, stepped in to conduct the search for both man and jewels; and within forty-eight hours some amazing circumstances were brought to light.
First and foremost, Mr. Henry Trent, who said he had given the gems over to Colliver, and that the man had immediately left the office, was unable, through the fact of his son’s absence from town, to give any further proof of that statement than his own bare word; for there was nobody but himself in the office at the time, whereas the door porter, who distinctly remembered James Colliver’s entrance into the building, as distinctly remembered that up to the moment when evening brought “knocking-off time” James Colliver had never, to his certain knowledge, come out of it!
The next amazing fact to be unearthed was that one of the office cleaners had found tucked under the stairs leading up to the top floor a sponge, which had beyond all possible question been used to wipe blood from something and had evidently been tucked there in a great hurry. The third amazing discovery took the astonishing shape of finding in an East End pawnbroker’s shop every one of the missing articles, and positive proof that the man who had pledged them was certainly not in the smallest degree like James Colliver, but was evidently a person of a higher walk in life and more prosperous in appearance than the missing man had been since the days when he was a successful actor.
These circumstances Cleek had just brought to light when Miss Larue, having found the gems, determined to drop the case, and refused thereafter so much as to discuss it with any living soul.
That her reason for taking this unusual step had something behind it which was of more moment than the mere fact that the jewels had been recovered and returned to their respective owners there could hardly be a doubt; for from that time onward her whole nature seemed to undergo a radical change, and, from being a brilliant, vivacious, cheery-hearted woman whose spirits were always of the highest and whose laughter was frequent, she developed suddenly into a silent, smileless, mournful one, who shrank from all society but that of her lost brother’s orphaned son, and who seemed to be oppressed by the weight of some unconfessed cross and the shadow of some secret woe.
Such were the facts regarding the singular Colliver case at the time when Cleek laid it down – unprobed, unsolved, as deep a mystery in the end as it had been in the beginning – and such they still were when, on this day, at this critical time and after an interval of eleven months, Mr. Maverick Narkom came to ask him to pick it up again.
“And with an element of fresh mystery added to complicate it more than ever, dear chap,” he declared, rather excitedly. “For, as the father vanished eleven months ago, so yesterday the son, too, disappeared. In the same manner – from the same point – in the selfsame building and in the same inexplicable and almost supernatural way! Only that in this instance the mystery is even more incomprehensible, more like ‘magic’ than ever. For the boy is known to have been shown by a porter into a room almost entirely surrounded by glass – a room whose interior was clearly visible to two persons who were looking into it at the time – and then and there to have completely vanished without anybody knowing when, where, or how.”
CHAPTER XXXIV
“What’s that?” rapped out Cleek, sitting up sharply. His interest had been trapped, just as Mr. Narkom knew that it would. “Vanished from a glass-room into which people were looking at the time? And yet nobody saw the manner of his going, do you say?”
“That’s it precisely. But the most astonishing part of the business is the fact that, whereas the porter can bring at least three witnesses to prove that he showed the boy into that glass-room, and at least one to testify that he heard him speak to the occupant of it, the two watchers who were looking into the place at the time are willing to swear on oath that he not only did not enter the place, but that the room was absolutely vacant at the period, and remained so for at least an hour afterward. If that isn’t a mystery that will want a bit of doing to solve, dear chap, then you may call me a Dutchman.”
“Hum-m-m!” said Cleek reflectively. “How, then, am I to regard the people who give this cross testimony – as lunatics or liars?”
“Neither, b’gad!” asseverated Narkom, emphatically. “I’ll stake my reputation upon the sanity and the truthfulness of every mother’s son and every father’s daughter of the lot of them! The porter who says he showed the boy into the glass-room I’ve known since he was a nipper – his dad was one of my Yard men years ago – and the two people who were looking into the place at the time, and who swear that it was absolutely empty and that the lad never came into it – Look here, old chap, I’ll let you into a bit of family history. One of them is a distant relative of Mrs. Narkom – an aunt, in fact, who’s rather down in the world, and does a bit of dressmaking for a living. The other is her daughter. They are two of the straightest-living, most upright, and truly religious women that ever drew the breath of life, and they wouldn’t, either of ’em, tell a lie for all the money in England. There’s where the puzzle of the thing comes in. You simply have got to believe that that porter showed the boy into that room, for there are reliable witnesses to prove it, and he has no living reason to lie about it; and you have got to believe that those two women are speaking the truth when they say that it was empty at that period and remained empty for an hour afterward. Also – if you will take on the case and solve at the same time the mystery attending the disappearance of both father and son – you will have to find out where that boy went to, through whose agency he vanished, and for what cause.”
“A tall order that,” said Cleek with one of his curious, one-sided smiles. “Still, of course, mysteries which are humanly possible of creation are humanly possible of solution, and – there you are. Who is the client? Miss Larue? If so, how is one to be sure that she will not again call a halt, and spoil a good ‘case’ before it is halfway to completion?”
“For the best of reasons,” replied Narkom earnestly. “Hers is not the sole ‘say’ in the present case. Added to which, she is now convinced that her suspicions in the former one were not well grounded. The truth has come out at last, Cleek. She stopped all further inquiry into the mysterious disappearance of her brother because she had reason to believe that the elder Mr. Trent had killed him for the purpose of getting possession of those jewels to tide over a financial crisis consequent upon the failure of some heavy speculations upon the stock market. She held her peace and closed up the case because she loves and is engaged to be married to his son, and she would have lost everything in the world sooner than hurt his belief in the honour and integrity of his father.”
“What a ripping girl! Gad, but there are some splendid women in the world, are there not, Mr. Narkom? What has happened, dear friend, to change her opinion regarding the elder Mr. Trent’s guilt?”
“The disappearance of the son under similar circumstances to that of the father, and from the same locality. She knows now that the elder Mr. Trent can have no part in the matter, since he is at present in America, the financial crisis has been safely passed, and the son – who could have no possible reason for injuring the lad, who is, indeed, remarkably fond of him, and by whose invitation he visited the building – is solely in charge and as wildly anxious as man can be to have the abominable thing cleared up without delay. He now knows why she so abruptly closed up the other case, and he is determined that nothing under heaven shall interfere with the prosecution of this one to the very end. It is he who is the client, and both he and his fiancée will be here presently to lay the full details before you.”
“Here!” Cleek leaned forward in his chair with a sort of lunge as he flung out the word, and there was a snap in his voice that fairly stung. “Good heavens above, man! They mustn’t come here. Get word to them at once and stop them.”
“It wouldn’t be any use trying, I’m afraid, old chap; I expect they are here already. At all events, I told them to watch from the other side of the way until they saw me enter, and then to come in and go straightway to the public tearoom and wait until I brought you to them.”
“Well, of all the insane – Whatever prompted you to do a madman’s trick like that? A public character like Miss Larue, a woman whom half London knows by sight, who will be the target for every eye in the tearoom, and the news of whose presence in the hotel will be all over the place in less than no time! Were you out of your head?”
“Good lud! Why, I thought I’d be doing the very thing that would please you, dear chap,” bleated the superintendent, despairingly. “It seemed to me such a natural thing for an actress to take tea at a hotel – that it would look so innocent and open that nobody would suspect there was anything behind it. And you always say that things least hidden are hidden the most of all.”
Cleek struck his tongue against his teeth with a sharp, clicking sound indicative of mild despair. There were times when Mr. Narkom seemed utterly hopeless.
“Well, if it’s done, it’s done, of course; and there seems only one way out of it,” he said. “Nip down to the tearoom as quickly as possible, and if they are there bring them up here. It’s only four o’clock and there’s a chance that Waldemar may not have returned to the hotel yet. Heaven knows, I hope not! He’d spot you in a tick, in a weak disguise like that.”
“Then why don’t you go down yourself and fetch them up, old chap? He’d never spot you. Lord! your own mother wouldn’t know you from Adam in this spiffing get-up. And it wouldn’t matter a tinker’s curse then if Waldemar was back or not.”
“It would matter a great deal, my friend – don’t deceive yourself upon that point. For one thing, Captain Maltravers is registered at the office as having just arrived from India after a ten years’ absence, and ten years ago Miss Margaret Larue was not only unknown to fame, but must have been still in pinafores, so how was he to have made her acquaintance? Then, too, she doesn’t expect to see me without you, so I should have to introduce myself and stop to explain matters – yes, and even risk her companion getting excited and saying something indiscreet, and those are rather dangerous affairs in a public tearoom, with everybody’s eyes no doubt fixed upon the lady. No, you must attend to the matter yourself, my friend; so nip off and be about it. If the lady and her companion are there, just whisper them to say nothing, but follow you immediately. If they are not there, slip out and warn them not to come. Look sharp – the situation is ticklish!”
And just how ticklish Mr. Narkom realized when he descended and made his way to the public tearoom. For the usual four o’clock gathering of shoppers and sightseers was there in full force, the well-filled room was like a hive full of buzzing bees who were engaged in imparting confidences to one another, the name of “Margaret Larue” was being whispered here, there and everywhere, and all eyes were directed toward a far corner where at a little round table Margaret Larue herself sat in company with Mr. Harrison Trent engaged in making a feeble pretence of enjoying a tea which neither of them wanted and upon which neither was bestowing a single thought.
Narkom spotted them at once, made his way across the crowded room, said something to them in a swift, low whisper, and immediately became at once the most envied and most unpopular person in the whole assembly; for Miss Larue and her companion arose instantly and, leaving some pieces of silver on the table, walked out with him and robbed the room of its chief attraction.
All present had been deeply interested in the entire proceeding, but none more so than the tall, distinguished looking foreign gentleman seated all alone at the exactly opposite end of the room from the table where Miss Larue and her companion had been located; for his had been the tensest kind of interest from the very instant Mr. Narkom had made his appearance, and remained so to the last.
Even after the three persons had vanished from the room, he continued to stare at the doorway through which they had passed, and the rather elaborate tea he had ordered remained wholly untouched. A soft step sounded near him and a soft voice broke in upon his unspoken thoughts.
“Is not the tea to Monsieur’s liking?” it inquired with all the deference of the Continental waiter. And that awoke him from his abstraction.
“Yes – quite, thank you. By the way, that was Miss Larue who just left the room, was it not, Philippe?”
“Yes, Monsieur – the great Miss Larue: the most famous of all English actresses.”
“So I understand. And the lame man who came in and spoke to her – who is he? Not a guest of the hotel, I am sure, since I have never seen him here before.”
“I do not know, Monsieur, who the gentleman is. It shall be the first I shall see of him ever. It may be, however, that he is a new arrival. They would know at the office, if Monsieur le Baron desires me to inquire.”
“Yes – do. I fancy I have seen him before. Find out for me who he is.”
Philippe disappeared like a fleet shadow. After an absence of about two minutes, he came back with the desired intelligence.
“No, Monsieur le Baron, the gentleman is not a guest,” he announced. “But he is visiting a guest. The name is Yard. He arrived about a quarter of an hour ago and sent his card in to Captain Maltravers, who at once took him up to his room.”
“Captain Maltravers? So! That will be the military officer from India, will it not?”
“Yes, Monsieur; the one with the fair hair and moustache who lunched to-day at the table adjoining Monsieur le Baron’s own.”
“Ah, to be sure. And ‘passed the time of day’ with me, as they say in this peculiar language. I remember the gentleman perfectly. Thank you very much. There’s something to pay you for your trouble.”
“Monsieur le Baron is too generous! Is there any other service – ”
“No, no – nothing, thank you. I have all that I require,” interposed the “Baron” with a gesture of dismissal.
And evidently he had; for five minutes later he walked into the office of the hotel, and said to the clerk, “Make out my bill, please – I shall be leaving England at once,” and immediately thereafter walked into a telephone booth, consulted his notebook, and rang up 253480 Soho, and, on getting it, began to talk rapidly and softly to some one who understood French.
Meantime Mr. Narkom, unaware of the little powder train he had unconsciously lighted, had gone on up the stairs with his two companions – purposely avoiding the lift that he might explain matters as they went – piloted them safely to the suite occupied by “Captain Maltravers,” and at the precise moment when “Baron Rodolf de Montravanne” walked into the telephone booth, Cleek was meeting Miss Larue for the first time since those distressing days of eleven months ago, and meeting Mr. Harrison Trent for the first time ever.
Chapter XXXV
Cleek found young Trent an extremely handsome man of about three-and-thirty; of a highly strung, nervous temperament, and with an irritating habit of running his fingers through his hair when excited. Also, it seemed impossible for him to sit still for half a minute at a stretch; he must be constantly hopping up only to sit down again, and moving restlessly about as if he were doing his best to retain his composure and found it difficult with Cleek’s calm eyes fixed constantly upon him.
“I want to tell you something about that bloodstained sponge business, Mr. Cleek,” he said in his abrupt, jerky, uneasy manner. “I never heard a word about it until last night, when Miss Larue confessed her former suspicions of my dear old dad, and gave me all the details of the matter. That sponge had nothing to do with the affair at all. It was I that tucked it under the staircase where it was found, and I did so on the day before James Colliver’s disappearance. The blood that had been on it was mine, not his.”
“I see,” said Cleek, serenely. “The explanation, of course, is the good, old tried-and-true refuge of the story-writers – namely, a case of nose-bleeding, is it not?”
“Yes,” admitted Trent. “But with this difference: mine wasn’t an accidental affair at all – it was the result of getting a jolly good hiding; and I made an excuse to get away and hop out of town, so that the dad wouldn’t know about it nor see how I’d been battered. The fact is, I met one of our carmen in the upper hall. He was as drunk as a lord, and when I took him to task about it and threatened him with discharge, he said something to me that I thought needed a jolly sight more than words by way of chastisement, so I nipped off my coat and sailed into him. It turned out that he was the better man, and gave me all that I’d asked for in less than a minute’s time; so I shook hands with him, told him to bundle off home and sleep himself sober, and that if he wouldn’t say anything about the matter I wouldn’t either, and he could turn up for work in the morning as usual. Then I washed up, shoved the sponge under the staircase, and nipped off out of town; because, you know, it would make a deuced bad impression if any of the other workmen should find out that a member of the firm had been thrashed by one of the employees – and Draycott had done me up so beautifully that I was a sight for the gods.”
The thing had been so frankly confessed that, in spite of the fact of having in the beginning been rather repelled by him, Cleek could not but experience a feeling of liking for the man. “So that’s how it happened, is it?” he said, with a laugh. “It is a brave man, Mr. Trent, that will resist the opportunity to make himself a hero in the presence of the lady he loves; and I hope I may be permitted to congratulate Miss Larue on the wisdom of her choice. But now, if you please, let us get down at once to the details of the melancholy business we have in hand. Mr. Narkom has been telling me the amazing story of the boy’s visit to the building and of his strange disappearance therein, but I should like to have a few further facts, if you will be so kind. What took the boy to the building, in the first place? I am told he went there upon your invitation, but I confess that that seems rather odd to me. Why should a man of business want a boy to visit him during business hours?”
“Good Lord, man! I couldn’t have let him see what he wanted to see if he didn’t come during business hours, could I? But that’s rather ambiguous, so I’ll make haste to put it plainer. Young Stan – his Christian name is Stanley, as I suppose you know – young Stan is mad to learn the business of theatrical property making, and particularly that of the manufacture of those wax effigies, et cetera, which we supply for the use of drapers in their show windows; and as he is now sixteen and of an age to begin thinking of some trade or profession for the future, I thought it would save Miss Larue putting up a jolly big premium to have him taught outside if we took him into our business free, so I invited him to come and look round and see if he thought he’d like it when he came to look into the messy details.
“Well, he came rather late yesterday afternoon, and I’d taken him round for just about ten or a dozen minutes when word was suddenly brought to me that the representative of one of the biggest managers in the country had just called with reference to an important order, so, of course, I put back to the office as quickly as I could foot it, young Stan quite naturally following me, as he didn’t know his way about the place alone, and, being a modest, retiring sort of boy, didn’t like facing the possibility of blundering into what might prove to be private quarters, and things of that sort. He said as much to me at the time.
“Well, when I got back to the office, I soon found that the business with my visitor was a matter that would take some time to settle – you can’t give a man an estimate all on a jump, and without doing a bit of figuring, you know – so I told young Stan that he might cut off and go over the place on his own, if he liked, as it had been arranged that, when knocking-off time came, I was to go back with him to Miss Larue’s flat, where we all were to have supper together. When I told him that, he asked eagerly if he might go up to the wax-figure department, as he was particularly anxious to see Loti at work, and so – ”
“Loti!” Cleek flung in the word so sharply that Trent gave a nervous start. “Just a moment, please, before you go any further, Mr. Trent. Sorry to interrupt, but, tell me, please: is the man who models your show-window effigies named Loti, then? Is, eh? Hum-m! Any connection by chance with that once famous Italian worker in wax, Giuseppe Loti – chap that used to make those splendid wax tableaux for the Eden Musée in Paris some eighteen or twenty years ago?”
“Same chap. Went all to pieces all of a sudden – clear off his head for a time, I’ve heard – in the very height of his career, because his wife left him. Handsome French woman – years younger than he – ran off with another chap and took every blessed thing of value she could lay her hands upon when – but maybe you’ve heard the story?”
“I have,” said Cleek. “It is one that is all too common on the Continent. Also, it happened that I was in Paris at the time of the occurrence. And so you have that great Giuseppe Loti at the head of your waxwork department, eh? What a come-down in the world for him! Poor devil! I thought he was dead ages ago. He dropped out suddenly and disappeared from France entirely after that affair with his unfaithful wife. The rumour was that he had committed suicide; although that seemed as improbable as it now turns out to be, in the face of the fact that on the night after his wife left him he turned up at the Café Royal and publicly – No matter! Go on with the case, please. What about the boy?”
“Let’s see, now, where was I?” said Trent, knotting up his brow. “Oh, ah! I recollect – just where he asked me if he could go up and see Loti at work. Of course, I said that he could; there wasn’t any reason why I shouldn’t, as the place is open to inspection always, so I opened the door and showed him the way to the staircase leading up to the glass-room, and then went to the speaking-tube and called up to Loti to expect him, and to treat him nicely, as he was the nephew of the great Miss Larue and would, in time, be mine also.”
“Was there any necessity for taking that precaution, Mr. Trent?”
“Yes. Loti has developed a dashed bad temper since last autumn and is very eccentric, very irritable – not a bit like the solemn, sedate old johnnie he used to be. Even his work has deteriorated, I think, but one daren’t criticise it or he flies into a temper and threatens to leave.”
“And you don’t wish him to, of course – his name must stand for something.”
“It stands for a great deal. It’s one of our biggest cards. We can command twice as much for a Loti figure as for one made by any other waxworker. So we humour him in his little eccentricities and defer to him a great deal. Also, as he prefers to live on the premises, he saves us money in other ways. Serves for a watchman as well, you understand.”
“Oh, he lives on the premises, does he? Where? In the glass-room?”
“Oh, no; that would not be possible. The character as well as the position of that renders it impossible as a place of habitation. He uses it after hours as a sort of sitting-room, to be sure, and has partly fitted it up as one, but he sleeps, eats, and dresses in a room on the floor below.”
“Not an adjoining one?”
“Oh, no; an adjoining room would be an impossibility. Our building is an end one, standing on the corner of a short passage which leads to nothing but a narrow alley running along parallel with the back of our premises, and the glass-room covers nearly the entire roof of it. As a matter of fact, Mr. Cleek, although we call it that at the works, the term Glass Room is a misnomer. In reality, it’s nothing more nor less than a good sized ‘lean-to’ greenhouse that the dad bought and had taken up there in sections, and its rear elevation rests against the side wall of a still higher building than ours, next door – the premises of Storminger the carriage builder, to be exact. But look here: perhaps I can make the situation clearer by a rough sketch. Got a lead pencil and a bit of paper, anybody? Oh, thanks very much, dear. One can always rely upon you. Now, look here, Mr. Cleek – this is the way of it. You mustn’t mind if it’s a crude thing, because, you know, I’m a rotten bad draughtsman and can’t draw for nuts. But all the same, this will do at a pinch.”
Here he leaned over the table in the centre of the room and, taking the pencil and the blank back of the letter which Miss Larue had supplied, made a crude outline sketch thus:
“There you are,” he said suddenly, laying the crude drawing on the table before Cleek, and with him bending over it. “You are supposed to be looking at the houses from the main thoroughfare, don’t you know, and, therefore, at the front of them. This tall building on the left marked 1 is Storminger’s; the low one, number 2, adjoining, is ours; and that cagelike-looking thing, 3, on the top of it, is the glass-room. Now, along the front of it here, where I have put the long line with an X on the end, there runs a wooden partition with a door leading into the room itself, so that it’s impossible for anybody on the opposite side of the main thoroughfare to see into the place at all. But that is not the case with regard to people living on the opposite side of the short passage (this is here, that I’ve marked 4), because there’s nothing to obstruct the view but some rubbishy old lace curtains which Loti, in his endeavour to make the place what he calls homelike, would insist upon hanging, and they are so blessed thin that anybody can look right through them and see all over the place. Of course, though, there are blinds, which he can pull down on the inside if the sun gets too strong; and when they are down, nobody can see into the glass-room at all. Pardon? Oh, we had it constructed of glass, Mr. Narkom, because of the necessity for having all the light obtainable in doing the minute work on some of the fine tableaux we produce for execution purposes. We are doing one now – The Relief of Lucknow – for the big exhibition that’s to be given next month at Olympia and – The place marked 6 at the back of our building? Oh, that’s the narrow alley of which I spoke. We’ve a back door opening into it, but it’s practically useless, because the alley is so narrow one can’t drive a vehicle through it. It’s simply a right of way that can’t legally be closed and runs from Croom Street on the right just along as far as Sturgiss Lane on the left. Not fifty people pass through it in a day’s time.
“But to come back to the short passage, Mr. Cleek. Observe, there are no windows at all on the side of our building, here: Number 2. There were, once upon a time, but we had them bricked up, as we use that side for a ‘paint frame’ with a movable bridge so that it can be used for the purpose of painting scenery and drop-curtains. But there are windows in the side of the house marked 5; and directly opposite the point where I’ve put the arrow there is one which belongs to a room occupied by a Mrs. Sherman and her daughter – people who do ‘bushel work’ for wholesale costume houses. Now, it happens that at the exact time when the porter says he showed young Stan into the glass-room those two women were sitting at work by that window, and, the blinds not being drawn, could see smack into the place, and are willing to take their oath that there was no living soul in it.”
“How do they fix it as being, as you say,‘the exact time,’ Mr. Trent? If they couldn’t see the porter come up to the glass-room with the boy, how can they be sure of that?”
“Oh, that’s easily explained: There’s a church not a great way distant. It has a clock in the steeple which strikes the hours, halves, and quarters. Mrs. Sherman says that when it chimed half-past four she was not only looking into the glass-room, but was calling her daughter’s attention to the fact that, whereas some few minutes previously she had seen Loti go out of the place, leaving a great pile of reference plates and scraps of material all over the floor, and he had never, to her positive knowledge, come back into it, there was the room looking as tidy as possible, and, in the middle of it, a table with a vase of pink roses upon it, which she certainly had not seen there when he left.”
