CHAPTER IX
The suggestion was acted upon immediately--even Mrs. Armroyd joiningin the descent upon the portable lamps and filing out with the restinto the gloom and loneliness of the grounds; and Miss Renfrew,finding that she was likely to be left alone in this house ofhorrors, rose quickly and hurried out with them.
One step beyond the threshold brought them within sight of thefamous Round House. Bulked against the pale silver of the moonlitsky, there it stood--a grim, unlovely thing of stone and steelwith a trampled flower bed encircling the base of it, and a man onguard--Constable Gorham.
"Lummy! I'd clean forgot _him_!" exclaimed Mr. Nippers as he caughtsight of him. "And theer un be keepin' guard, like I told un, outhere in the grounds whiles weem ben talkin' comfortable inside. 'Edo be a chap for doin' as heem tole, that Gorham--indeed, yes!"
Nobody replied to him. All were busily engaged in following the leadof Scotland Yard, as represented by Cleek and Superintendent Narkom,and bearing down on that huge stone tube within whose circular wallsa dead man sat alone.
"Dreary post this, Constable," said Cleek, coming abreast of thesilent guard.
"Yes, sir, very. But dooty's dooty--and there you be!" repliedGorham, touching his helmet with his finger; then, as the lightfrom the lamps fell full upon Cleek's face and let him see that itwas no face he had ever seen in this district before, his eyeswidened with a puzzled stare which never quite left them even whenthe entire group had passed on and turned the curve of the RoundHouse wall.
And beyond that curve Cleek came to a sudden halt. Here, acurtainless window cut a square of light in the wall's dark faceand struck a glare on the trunk and the boughs of a lime treedirectly opposite, and under that window a trampled flower bed lay,with curious marks deep sunk in the soft, moist surface of it.
Cleek took the lamp from Mrs. Armroyd's hand, and, bending, lookedat them closely. Mr. Nippers had not exaggerated when he saidthat they were all of twelve inches in length. Nor was he farout when he declared that they looked like the footprints of somecreature that was part animal and part bird; for there they were,with three huge clawlike projections in front and a solitary onebehind, and so like to the mark which a gigantic bird could havemade that one might have said such a creature _had_ made them, onlythat it was impossible for anything to fly that was possessed ofweight sufficient to drive those huge footprints so deeply into theearth as they had been driven, by the mere walking of the Thing.Claws and the marks of scales, Mr. Nippers had asserted; and clawsand the marks of scales the prints in the soft earth showed.
"La! la! the horror of them," exclaimed Mrs. Armroyd, putting up herlittle hands and averting her face. "It could kill and kill andkill--horses, oxen, anything--an abominable creature like that!What do you figure it to have been, monsieur?--souls of the saints,_what_?"
"Blest if I know," said Cleek. "Only, of course, it couldn't possiblybe anything human; so we may put the idea of the old chap havingbeen killed by anything of his kind out of our minds altogether. Itis perfectly clear that the creature, whatever it might be, gotin through the window there (you see it is open) and killed himbefore he could call out for help or strike a blow in his owndefence."
"Eh, but window's six foot up, Mr. Headland, sir," put in Nippersexcitedly; "and howm a thing the weight o' that goin' to fly in?"
"Didn't fly in, my friend," replied Cleek with an air of loftysuperiority. "Use your wits, man. It _jumped_ in--from the treethere. Look here--see!" going to it and tapping certain abrasionsupon the trunk. "Here's where it peeled off the bark in climbingup. Lord, man! why, it's plain as the nose on your face. Ten toone we shall find the same sort of footprints when we go into thelaboratory--damp ones, you know, from the moisture of the earth; andto make sure, in case we do find 'em let's take the length of thethings and see. Got a tape measure with you? No? Oh, well, lendme your handcuffs, if you've got a pair with you, and we can managea measurement with those. Thanks very much. Now, then, let's see.One, two, three, by Jupiter--three fingers longer than these things,chain and all. That'll do. Now, then, let's go in and see about theothers. Lead the way, Miss Renfrew, if you will."
She would, and did. Leading the way back to the covered passage,she opened a door in the side of it--a door designed to let theinventor out into the grounds without going through the house, if heso desired--and conducted them to the laboratory, leaving ConstableGorham to continue his dreary sentry duty outside.
At any time the interior of that huge, stone-walled, steel-linedtube must have been unlovely and depressing to all but the man wholaboured in it. But to-night, with that man sitting dead in it,with his face to the open window, a lamp beside him, and stiff handsresting on the pages of a book that lay open on the desk's flat top,it was doubly so; for, added to its other unpleasant qualities,there was now a disagreeable odour and a curious, eye-smarting,throat-roughening heaviness in the atmosphere which was like tonothing so much as the fumes thrown off by burnt chemicals.
Cleek gave one or two sniffs at the air as he entered, glanced at Mr.Narkom, then walked straightway to the desk and looked into the deadman's face. Under the marks of the scratches and cuts upon it--markswhich would seem to carry out the idea of an animal's attack--thefeatures were distorted and discoloured, and the hair of beard andmoustache was curiously crinkled and discoloured.
Cleek stopped dead short as he saw that face, and his swaggering,flippant, cocksure air of a minute before dropped from him like adiscarded mantle.
"Hullo! this doesn't look quite so promising for the animal theoryas it did!" he flung out sharply. "This man has been shot--shotwith a shell filled with his own soundless and annihilating devil'sinvention, lithamite--and bomb throwing is _not_ a trick of beasts ofa lower order than the animal tribe! Look here, Mr. Narkom--see! Thelock of the desk has been broken. Shut the door there, Nippers.Let nobody leave the room. There has been murder and robbery here;and the thing that climbed that tree was not an animal nor yet abird. It was a cut-throat and a thief!"
Naturally enough, this statement produced something in the natureof a panic; Miss Renfrew, indeed, appearing to be on the verge offainting, and it is not at all unlikely that she would have slippedto the floor but for the close proximity of Mrs. Armroyd.
"That's right, madame. Get a chair; put her into it. She will needall her strength presently, I promise you. Wait a bit! Better have adoctor, I fancy, and an inquiry into the whereabouts of Mr. CharlesDrummond. Mr. Narkom, cut out, will you, and wire this message tothat young man's employer."
Pens and papers were on the dead man's desk. Cleek bent over,scratched off some hurried lines, and passed them to thesuperintendent.
"Sharp's the word, please; we've got ugly business on hand and wemust know about that Drummond chap without delay. Miss Renfrew hasnot been telling the truth to-night! Look at this man. _Rigor mortis_pronounced. Feel him--muscles like iron, flesh like ice! _She_ saysthat he spoke to her at a quarter to eight o'clock. _I_ tell youthat at a quarter to eight this man had been dead upward of an hour!"
"Good God!" exclaimed Mr. Narkom; but his cry was cut into by awilder one from Miss Renfrew.
"Oh, no! Oh, no!" she protested, starting up from her seat, only todrop back into it, strengthless, shaking, ghastly pale. "It could notbe--it could not. I have told the truth--nothing but the truth. Hedid speak to me at a quarter to eight--he did, he did! ConstableGorham was there--he heard him; he will tell you the same."
"Yes, yes, I know you said so, but--will he? He looks a sturdy,straightgoing, honest sort of chap who couldn't be coaxed or bribedinto backing up a lie; so send him in as you go out, Mr. Narkom;we'll see what he has to say."
What he had to say when he came in a few moments later was whatMiss Renfrew had declared--an exact corroboration of her statement.He _had_ seen a man whom he fancied was Sir Ralph Droger run outof the grounds, and he had suggested to Miss Renfrew that they hadbetter look into the Round House and see if all was right withMr. Nosworth. They had looked in as she had said; and Mr. Noswor
thhad called out and asked her what the devil she was coming in anddisturbing him for, and it was a quarter to eight o'clock exactly.
"Sure about that, are you?" questioned Cleek.
"Yes, sir, sure as that I'm telling you so this minute."
"How do you fix the exact time?"
"As we came out of the covered passage Miss Renfrew looked at herwrist-watch and says, impatient like, 'There, I've lost another twominutes and am that much later for nothing. See! It's a quarter toeight. Good night.' Then she cut off over the grounds and leaves me."
"La! la!" exclaimed Mrs. Armroyd approvingly. "There's the braveheart, to come to mademoiselle's rescue so gallantly. But, yes, Imake you the cake of plums for that, _mon cher_. Monsieur of theyard of Scotland, he can no more torture the poor stricken childafter that--not he."
But Cleek appeared to be less easy to convince than she had hoped,for he pursued the subject still; questioning Gorham to needlesslength it seemed; trying his best to trip him up, to shake hisstatement, but always failing; and, indeed, going over the sameground to such length that one might have thought he was endeavouringto gain time. If he was, he certainly succeeded; for it was quitefifteen minutes later when Mr. Narkom returned to the Round House,and he was at it still. Indeed, he did not conclude to give it upas a bad job until the superintendent came.
"Get it off all right, did you, Mr. Narkom?" he asked, glancing roundas he heard him enter.
"Quite all right, old chap. Right as rain--in every particular."
"Thanks very much. I'm having rather a difficult task of it, for ourfriend the constable here corroborates Miss Renfrew's statement tothe hair; and yet I am absolutely positive that there is a mistake."
"There is no mistake--no, not one! The wicked one to say it still!"
"Oh, that's all very well, madame, but I know what I know; and whenyou tell me that a dead man can ask questions--Pah! The fact of thematter is the constable merely fancies he heard Mr. Nosworth speak.That's where the mistake comes in. Now, look here! I once knew ofan exactly similar case and I'll tell you just how it happened. Letus suppose"--strolling leisurely forward--"let us suppose thatthis space here is the covered passage, and you, madame--step herea moment, please. Thanks very much--and you are Miss Renfrew, andGorham here is himself, and standing beside her as he did then."
"Wasn't beside her, sir--at least not just exactly. A bit behindher--like this."
"Oh, very well, then, that will do. Now, then. Here's the passage andhere are you, and I'll just show you how a mistake could occur, andhow it did occur, under precisely similar circumstances. Once upona time when I was in Paris----"
"In Paris, monsieur?"
"Yes, madame--this little thing I'm going to tell you about happenedthere. You may or may not have heard that a certain Frenchydramatist wrote a play called _Chanticler_--or maybe you never heardof it? Didn't, eh? Well, it's a play where all the characters arebarnyard creatures--dogs, poultry, birds and the like--and the oddfancy of men and women dressing up like fowls took such a hold onthe public that before long there were Chanticler dances andChanticler parties in all the houses, and Chanticler 'turns' onat all the music halls, until wherever one went for an evening'samusement one was pretty sure to see somebody or another dressedup like a cock or a hen, and running the thing to death. Butthat's another story, and we'll pass over it. Now, it just sohappened that one night--when the craze for the thing was dying outand barnyard dresses could be bought for a song--I strolled intoa little fourth-rate cafe at Montmarte and there saw the onlyChanticler dancer that I ever thought was worth a sou. She was apretty, dainty little thing--light as a feather and graceful as afairy. Alone, I think she might have made her mark; but she wasone of what in music-halldom they call 'a team.' Her partner was aman--bad dancer, an indifferent singer, but a really passableventriloquist."
"A ventriloquist, monsieur--er--er!"
"Cleek, madame--name's Cleek, if you don't mind."
"Cleek! Oh, Lummy!" blurted out Mr. Nippers. But neither "madame"nor Constable Gorham said anything. They merely swung round and madea sudden bolt; and Cleek, making a bolt, too, pounced down on themlike a leaping cat, and the sharp click-click of the handcuffs hehad borrowed from Mr. Nippers told just when he linked their twowrists together.
"Game's up, Madame Fifine, otherwise Madame Nosworth, the worthlesswife of a worthless husband!" he rapped out sharply. "Game's up, Mr.Henry Nosworth, bandit, pickpocket, and murderer! There's a hotcorner in hell waiting for the brute-beast that could kill his ownfather, and would, for the simple sake of money. Get at him, quick,Mr. Narkom. He's got one free hand! Nip the paper out of his pocketbefore the brute destroys it! Played, sir, played! Buck up, MissRenfrew, buck up, little girl--you'll get your 'Boy' and you'll getMr. Septimus Nosworth's promised fortune after all! 'God's in hisheaven, and all's right with the world.'"