CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE OPEN WINDOW
He had scarcely taken a dozen steps down the hallway, however, before heencountered General Raynor, who had just then reentered the house by thefront door.
His rugged old face wore a look of deep anxiety, as though the excitingscene through which he had so recently passed bore heavily upon hisspirits, despite Cleek's attempt to allay his distress by brandingDollops as a possible sneak thief; but he brightened perceptibly andmade a valiant effort to appear quite at his ease when he looked up andsaw Cleek.
"Get your call over the telephone all right, Mr. Barch?" he inquiredpleasantly.
"Yes, thanks," said Cleek serenely, still keeping up his "Johnnie" air."Awfully obliged to you, I'm sure. Dickens of an important message.Should have been in no end of a hole if I hadn't received it. But I say,General, you ought to be more careful, you know, especially with sneakthieves about."
"As how, Mr. Barch?"
"Why, that blessed swing window in the library. I found the thingunfastened, don't you know."
He hadn't, of course, for he had not been near it. But his statementundeniably agitated the General, though he made a brave effort todisguise it.
"Did you?" he said. "That's peculiar. I never noticed it. I must speakto Johnston about it; it's his duty to see that it is locked, and Isupposed he had done so. Still, it's of no great consequence as ithappens. The sneak thief didn't enter by that way, I am sure."
"No, but he might easily have done so; and if he had come in there whileyou were alone you might have had a warm time of it; don't you think so,eh, what?"
"I fancy _he_ would have had a warm time of it, as you express it, Mr.Barch. I'm not so old but I know how to take care of myself, believeme."
"No, I suppose not," said Cleek. "Had a jolly lot of practice in youryoung days--with the gloves and all that. Forty-fifth Queen's Own usedto have a national reputation for the best boxers and wrestlers in theservice, I'm told. Suppose it was the same in your day; and you got alot of practice out there in Simla in your subaltern days."
"You are wrong in both particulars. I did not belong to the Forty-fifthQueen's Own, Mr. Barch, and I was not billeted to India. I passed out ofSandhurst into the Imperial Blues, and from the time I was twenty-twountil I was twenty-six I was stationed at Malta."
Cleek made a mental tally of those two statements.
"Oh, I see; mistake on my part," he said serenely. "Malta was it? Andthe Imperial Blues? Thought Harry said the other. I've got a rottenmemory. But it doesn't matter which, does it, so long as you learned thetrick, and are able to put up a stiff fight and floor a burglar still?I'll lay you could floor one in short order, too, when I come to look atyou," he went on, glancing the General up and down with apparentadmiration. "Lord! shouldn't like to run foul of you when your temper'sup. Built like a blessed gladiator. Shoulders on you like a giant; armslike--mind if I feel what they're like?"
Impudently taking hold of him before he could reply or resent thefamiliarity, Cleek moved the General's forearm up as if to see theswelling of the biceps.
"That's what I call muscle!" he exclaimed. "What a wrist! What a fist tofloor a man or---- Hullo! been flooring some one since I left you,General? Big green smudge on your cuff, as if you'd been up against amossy wall? Didn't get into a scrap with Sir Philip after I left you,did you, eh?"
There was no gainsaying it, the General's face grew absolutely white ashe looked down and saw that green smudge on the white cuff whichprotruded beyond the sleeve of his evening coat. It was evident he hadnot noticed it before.
"No, certainly I have _not_!" he rapped out sharply as he plucked awayhis arm. "Sir Philip Clavering has gone home. And if you will pardon mysaying it, Mr. Barch, I object to being handled."
"Awful sorry; did it before I thought," said Cleek vacantly. "Nooffence, eh? Because, you know, none was meant. Ought to haveremembered; ought to have remembered half a dozen things when I come tothink of it. One of 'em is that you and Sir Philip weren't likely toscrap like a couple of drunken navvies; and t'other is that you couldn'thave got wall-moss on your cuff if you had, when there wasn't any wallwhere I left you. So you couldn't have got it there, of course."
"And as that settles it, I think we can abandon the subject with profitto both, Mr. Barch," said the General stiffly. "As a matter of fact, Idon't know where nor how I did get the smudge; and it's of noconsequence anyway. And now, if you will pardon me, I'll ring forJohnston to lock up the house--we always retire to bed early at theGrange, Mr. Barch--and have a wee drappie o' whisky and turn in. Theevening has been unpleasantly eventful, and I feel the need of somethingin the way of stimulant."
"So do I, by Jove! Never drank a blessed drop to-night, didn't feel upto it, don't you know; but if you don't mind my toddling into thedining-room and helping myself----"
"By all means do so, Mr. Barch, by all means!" interposed the Generalwith something akin to eagerness. "You will find plenty there. Helpyourself."
"Thanks very much. But come to think of it, you haven't had a drinkto-night, either. Told Hawkins you didn't feel like it, I recollect."
"No, I didn't at the time, but I certainly require it now; so if----"
"Good business!" interjected Cleek airily. "Come in and let's have onetogether. Harry's asleep, so I shan't have any company; and as I neverlike to drink alone, and you are my host, and there's plenty in thedining-room----"
"Pray don't think me discourteous, Mr. Barch," interposed the Generalblandly, "but I think I will take my whisky hot this evening; and as Imake a practice of never taking a hot whisky until I am safely betweenthe sheets, will you pardon me if I do not join you, but have mineserved in my bedroom to-night?"
"Yes, certainly," said Cleek. "Only if I'm left to drink alone I'm aptto take two or three instead of one, and my doctor says I oughtn't to,don't you know."
"Doctors are not infallible, Mr. Barch; they often make errors.Good-night."
"Good-night," said Cleek. "But if I have a headache in the morning--oh,well, I can't help it. If I have one I'll have it I suppose. Here goes!"He walked back along the hall and went into the dining-room and shut thedoor, leaning heavily against it and breathing through his shut teeththe one word, "God!"
The footsteps of the General clicked off down the hall, but Cleek neverstirred, never moved a muscle, until their dwindling sound dropped offinto sudden silence and all was still. Then, as softly as any cat, hetwitched round, opened the door, closed it after him, and stood alone inthe hall.
He moved on tiptoe to the library. The door was closed. He stopped andlistened.
The faint rustling sound of papers told its own story. The General hadnot gone to his bedroom, he was in there!
With fleet, unsounding steps Cleek moved from that closed door to theopen one of the drawing-room, remembering what Ailsa had said of howMrs. Raynor had dozed over her coffee while they waited for him to come,and of how, after Hamer had carried in his note, the good lady hadrallied the girl, and then gone off to bed because, she said, she wassleepy--sleepy at half-past eight o'clock!
Taking into consideration the events of the evening, he had counted uponthe possibility of something happening; and the moment he entered thatroom and looked round him he knew that it had done so.
The butler's evening off; the excitement and distraction occasioned bythat screaming police whistle sounding from the grounds and sending allthe servants flocking out. These things had conspired to upset theroutine of things as they should be in a well-regulated house; and lo!the silver tray and the coffee service and the cups, used and unusedalike, had been overlooked, and there they still were, awaiting removal.And beside them stood a liqueur stand with Chartreuse, Benedictine,Creme de Menthe, and a half-dozen tiny Venetian glasses.
Liqueurs with coffee! He went over and looked at the glasses; so much,so very much, depended upon that. If more than one had been used; ifAilsa, too, had taken liqueur---- No, she had not! Only one glass hadbeen used, and Mrs. Raynor had gone to
bed!
He rubbed the tip of his finger round the inner side of that one usedglass, and put it to his tongue.
The wine and the spirits in the decanters on the table of thedining-room had all tasted alike. This liqueur tasted like them.
He made no comment, wasted no time. The instant he had decided thatpoint he left the room and went back to the hall and to the gardensbeyond the entrance.
Ailsa Lorne waited for him at the shrubbery; but it was not to theshrubbery he went! His way lay round the angle of the house, past thepath to the ruin, past the windows of the dining-room where a druggedman lay, and on through the darkness, until he stood in the shelter ofthe trees directly opposite a broad stone terrace, upon which theswinging French window of the library gave.
It was bright with inner light, when first he came in sight of it; buthe had barely halted before that light went out--and left it as black aspitch.
But a moment later Cleek drew farther back in the shadow of the trees.
He had warned General Raynor to be careful to lock that window, and nowhere he was not only disregarding that warning, but pushing the sasheswide apart.
"Coming again, is she, General?" said Cleek in the soundless words ofthought. "A bad move, my friend, a very bad move. One may not recognizea man's voice from a simple 'Sh-h-h!' but when he steps out of a librarywith a black mud-spot on the toe of his house shoes and a green smudgeon his cuff----"
He stopped and crouched back under the trees, and was very, very still.
Through the darkness a faint rustling sound had suddenly risen, the softfalling of a foot, the careful passage of a body between lines ofleaves.
Some one was advancing cautiously toward that darkened and openedwindow.