Cleek of Scotland Yard Part 18

It is a recognized fact in police circles that crime has a curious propensity for indulging in periodical outbursts of great energy, great fecundity, and then lapsing into a more or less sporadic condition for a time--like a gorged tiger that drowses, and stirs only to lick its chops after a hideous feast. So that following the lines of these fixed principles the recent spell of criminal activity was succeeded by a sort of lull, and the next two weeks were idle ones for Cleek.

Idle but idyllic--from his point of view; for he was back in the little house in the pleasant country lands now, with his walled garden, his ferns and his flowers, and the full glory of tulip-time was here.

And soon another "glory" would be here as well.

In twelve more days _she_ would be back in England. In twelve more days he and Dollops would move out, and Ailsa Lorne would move in, and this little Eden in the green and fragrant meadowlands would have another tenant from that time forth.

But hers would not be a lonely tenancy, however; for "Captain Horatio Burdage" had recently written to Mrs. Condiment that, as the Sleeping Mermaid seemed likely to prove an unprofitable investment after all and to bring her little reward for her labours, he purposed relinquishing it and recalling "Old Joseph" to him; and with that end in view had already secured for the good lady a position as companion-housekeeper to one Miss Ailsa Lorne, who, in the early part of June, would call upon her at her present quarters and personally conduct her and the deaf-and-dumb maid-of-all-work to their future ones.

Here, then, in this bower of bloom, would this dear girl of his heart await the coming of that glorious day when the last act of rest.i.tution had been made, the last Vanishing Cracksman debt wiped off the slate, and he could go to her--clean-handed at last--to ask the fulfilment of her promise.

Remembering that, it was a sheer delight to be free from all Yard calls for a time that he might give his whole attention to the work of getting the place ready for her; and day after day he was busy in the high-walled old-world garden--digging, planting, pruning--that when she came it might be br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with flowers.

But although he devoted himself mind and body to this task and lived each day within the limits of that confining wall, he had not wholly lost touch with the world at large, for each morning the telephone--installed against the time of Ailsa's tenancy--put him into communication with Mr. Narkom at the Yard, and each night a newspaper carried in to him by Dollops kept him abreast of the topics of the times.

It was over that telephone he received the first a.s.surance that his haste in getting out of Yorkshire had not been an unnecessary precaution, his suspicions regarding the probable action of the Nosworths not ill grounded, for Mr. Narkom was able to inform him that carefully made inquiries had elicited the intelligence that, within two days after the Round House affair, men who were undoubtedly foreigners were making diligent inquiries throughout the West Riding regarding the whereabouts of two men and a boy who had been travelling about in a two-horsed caravan.

"That sudden bolt of ours was a jolly good move, old chap," said the superintendent, when he made this announcement. "It did the beggars absolutely. Shouldn't be a bit surprised if they'd chucked the business as a bad job and gone back to the Continent disgusted.

At any rate, none of my plain-clothes men has seen hide nor hair of one of the lot since, either in town or out. Waldemar, too, seems to have hooked it and can't be traced; so I reckon we've seen the last of him."

But Cleek was not so sure of that. He had his own ideas as to what this disappearance of the Apaches meant, and did not allow himself to be lulled into any sense of security by it. There were more ways than one in which to catch a weasel, he recollected, and determined not to relax his precautions in the smallest iota when next the Yard's call for his services should come.

That it would come soon he felt convinced as the days advanced that rounded out the end of his second week of freedom from it; and what form it would take when it did come was a matter upon which he could almost have staked his life, so sure he felt of it.

For a time of great national excitement, great national indignation, had arrived, and the press had made him acquainted with all the circ.u.mstances connected therewith. As why not, when the whole country was up in arms over it and every newspaper in the land headlined it in double caps and poured forth the story in full detail?

It had its genesis in something which had happened at Gosport in the preceding week, and happened in this startling manner:

In the waterway between Barrow Island and the extreme end of the Royal Clarence Victualling Yard there had been found floating the body of a man of about five-and-thirty years of age, fully and fashionably clothed and having all those outward signs which betoken a person of some standing.

It was evident at once that death must have been the result of accident, and that the victim had been unable to swim, for the hands were encased in kid gloves, the coat was tightly b.u.t.toned, and a pair of field-gla.s.ses in a leather case still hung from the long shoulder-strap which supported the weight of them. The victim's inability to swim was established by the fact that he had made no effort to rid himself of these hampering conditions, and was clinging tightly to a foot-long bit of driftwood, which he must have clutched at as it floated by.

It was surmised, therefore, that the man must have fallen into the water in the dark--either from the foresh.o.r.e or from some vessel or small boat in which he was journeying at the time--and had been carried away by the swift current and drowned without being missed, the condition of the body clearly establishing the fact that it had been in the water for something more than a fortnight when found.

Later it was identified by one of the deck hands of the pleasure steamer which cruises round the Isle of Wight daily as being that of a man he had seen aboard that vessel on one of its night trips to Alum Bay between two and three weeks previously; and still later it was discovered that a boatman in that locality had been hired to take a gentleman from the Needles to a yacht "lying out to sea" that selfsame night, and that the gentleman in question never turned up.

What followed gave these two circ.u.mstances an appalling significance.

For when the body was carried to the mortuary, and its clothing searched for possible clues to identification, there was found upon it a sealed packet addressed simply "A. Steinmuller, Konigstra.s.se 8," and inside that packet there were two unmounted photographs of the exterior of Blockhouse Fort and the Southsea Fort, a more or less accurate ground-plan drawing of the interior of the Portsmouth Dockyard, together with certain secret information relative to supplies and to the proposed armament of cruisers now undergoing alteration and reequipment.

The wrath and amazement engendered by that discovery, however, were as nothing compared with the one which so swiftly followed.

Brought up before the Admiral Superintendent and the Board, John Beachman, the dock master--who alone knew these things outside of the Admiralty--was obliged to admit that one person, and one only--his eldest son--was in a position to obtain admission to the safe in which he kept his private papers, and that son was engaged to a young lady whom he had met during a holiday tour on the Continent.

"English or foreign?" he was asked; to which he replied that she was English--or, at least, English by birth, although her late father was a German. He had become naturalized before his death, and was wholly in sympathy with the country of his adoption. He did not die in it, however. Circ.u.mstances had caused him to visit the United States, and he had been killed in one of the horrible railway disasters for which that country was famous. It was because the daughter was thus left orphaned, and was so soon to become the wife of their son, that he and Mrs. Beachman had taken her into their home in advance of the marriage. They did not think it right that she should be left to live alone and unprotected, considering what she was so soon to become to them; so they had taken her into the home, and their son had arranged to sleep at an hotel in Portsmouth pending the date of the wedding. The lady's name was Hilmann--Miss Greta Hilmann. She was of extremely good family, and quite well-to-do in her own right. She had never been to Germany since the date of the engagement. She had relatives there, however; one in particular--a Baron von Ziegelmundt and his son Axel. The son had visited England twice--once many months back, and the last time some seven or eight weeks ago. They liked him very much--the bridegroom-elect especially so. They had become very great friends indeed. No, Axel von Ziegelmundt was no longer in England. He had left it something like a month ago. He was on a pleasure trip round the world, he had heard, but had no idea where he had gone when he left Portsmouth.

Two hours after this statement was made, if the populace could have got hold of young Harry Beachman it would have torn him to pieces; for it was then discovered that the drowned man was no less a person than this Herr Axel von Ziegelmundt, and that they had not only spent the greater part of that particular day shut up in the former's room in the Portsmouth hotel, but had been together up to the very moment when the excursion steamer had started on its moonlight trip to Alum Bay and to the bringing about of that providential accident which had prevented the State affairs of an unsuspecting nation from being betrayed to a secret foe.

What followed was, in the face of this, of course, but natural. John Beachman was suspended immediately, and his son's arrest ordered.

It served no purpose that he denied indignantly the charge of being a traitor, and swore by every sacred thing that the hours spent in his room at the hotel were pa.s.sed in endeavouring to master the intricacies of the difficult German card game, Skaat, and that never in all their acquaintance had one word touching upon the country or the country's affairs pa.s.sed between Axel von Ziegelmundt and himself, so help him G.o.d! It was in vain, also, that Greta Hilmann--shouting hysterically her belief in him and begging wildly that if he must be put into prison she might be taken with him "and murdered when you murder him if he is to be court-martialled and shot, you wretched blunderers!"--it was in vain that Greta Hilmann clung to him and fought with all her woman's strength to keep the guard from laying hands upon him or to tear her from his side; the outraged country demanded him, and took him in spite of all. Nor did it turn the current of sympathy in his direction that, crazed when they tore him from her, this frantic creature had gone from swoon to swoon until her senses left her entirely, and the end was--tragedy.

The full details were never forthcoming. The bare facts were that she was carried back to Beachman's house in a state of hysteria bordering close upon insanity, and that when, under orders from the Admiralty, that house and all its contents were impounded pending the fullest inquiry into the dock master's books and accounts, the Admiral Superintendent and the appointed auditor entered into possession, her condition was found to be so serious that it was decided not to insist upon her removal for a day or two at least.

A nurse was procured from the naval hospital and put in charge of her; but at some period during the fourth night of that nurse's attendance--and when she, worn out by constant watching, slept in her chair--the half-delirious patient arose, and, leaving a note to say that life had lost all its brightness for her, and if they cared to find her they might look for her in the sea, vanished entirely. She could scarcely have hit upon a worse thing for the evil repute of her lover's name or her own. For those who had never known her personally were quick to a.s.sert that this was proof enough of how the thing had been managed. In short, that she, too, was a spy, and that she had adopted this subterfuge to get back to Germany before the scent grew hot and the law could lay a hand upon her. Those who had known her took a more merciful view so far as she was concerned, but one which made things look all the blacker for her lover. What could her desperation and her utter giving up all hope even before the man was put on trial mean if it was not that she knew he was guilty, knew he would never get off with his life, and that her suicide was a tacit admission of this?

CHAPTER XVI

Meanwhile public indignation ran high, the investigation of the dock master's books, papers, and accounts proceeded _in camera_, and all England waited breathlessly for the result to be made known.

Thus matters stood when on Thursday night at half-past seven o'clock--exactly one week after the discovery of that packet on the body of the drowned man--an amazing thing happened, a thing which smacked almost of magic, and put to shame all that had gone before in the way of mystery, surprise, and terror.

The wildest storm that had been known on that coast for years had been raging steadily ever since daybreak and was raging still. A howling wind, coming straight over the Channel from France, was piling ink-black seas against an ink-black sh.o.r.e, and all the devils of the pit seemed to be loose in the noisy darkness.

In the suspended dock master's house the Admiral Superintendent, Sir Charles Fordeck, together with his private secretary, Mr. Paul Grimsd.i.c.k, and the auditor, Mr. Alexander MacInery, who had been continuing their investigations since morning, were now coming within sight of the work's end--the only occupants of a locked and guarded room, outside of which a sentry was posted, while round about the house in the stormy outer darkness other guards patrolled ceaselessly. Over the books Sir Charles and the auditor bent at one end of the room; at the other Paul Grimsd.i.c.k tapped on his typewriter and made transcripts from the shorthand notes beside him. It was at this instant, just when the clock on the mantel was beginning to chime the half-hour after seven, that such a crash of thunder ripped out of the heavens that the very earth seemed to tremble with the force of it, and the three men fairly jumped in their seats.

"Gad! that was a stunner, if you like!" exclaimed Sir Charles with a laugh. "Something went down that time, or I miss my guess."

Something had "gone down"--gone down in black and white, too, at that--and before another half-hour had pa.s.sed the mystery and the appalling nature of that something was made known to him and to his two companions.

The operator at the central telegraph office, sitting beside a silent instrument with the key open deciphering a message which a moment before had come through, jumped as they had jumped when that crash of thunder sounded; then without hint or warning up spoke the open instrument, beginning a sentence in the middle and chopping it off before it was half done.

"Hullo! that deflected something--crossed communication or I'm a Dutchman!" he said, and bent over to "take it." In another moment he got more of a shock than twenty thunderbolts could possibly have given him. For, translated, that interrupted communication ran thus:

"... and eight-inch guns. The floating conning tower's lateral plates of ..."

And there, as abruptly as it began, the communication left off.

"Good G.o.d! There's another d.a.m.ned German spy at it!" exclaimed the operator, jumping from his seat and grabbing for his hat.

"Gawdermity, Hawkins, take this instrument and watch for more.

Somebody's telegraphin' naval secrets from the dockyard, and the storm's 'tapped' a wire somewhere and sent the message to us!"

Then he flung himself out into the storm and darkness and ran and ran and ran.

But the mystery of the thing was all the greater when the facts came to be examined. For those two parts of sentences were found to be verbatim copies of the shorthand notes which Mr. Paul Grimsd.i.c.k had just taken down. These notes had never left the sight of the three men in the guarded room of that guarded house for so much as one second since they were made. No one but they had pa.s.sed either in or out of that room during the whole seven days of the inquiry. There was no telegraph instrument in the room--in the house--or within any possible reach from it. Yet somebody in that building--somebody who could only know the things by standing in that room and copying them, for never once had they been spoken of by word of mouth--some invisible, impalpable, superhuman body was wiring State secrets from it. How? And to whom?

Naturally, this state of affairs set the whole country by the ears and evoked a panicky condition which was not lessened by the Press'

frothing and screaming.

Thus matters stood on the evening of Wednesday, the twenty-second of May, and thus they still stood on the morning of the twenty-third, when the telephone rang and Dollops rushed into Cleek's bedroom crying excitedly and disjointedly:

"Mr. Narkom, sir. Ringing up from his own house. Wants you in a hurry. National case, he says, and not a minute to lose."

Cleek was out of bed and at the instrument in a winking; but he had no more than spoken the customary "h.e.l.lo!" into the receiver, when the superintendent's voice cut in cyclonically and swept everything before it in a small tornado of excited words.

"Call of the Country, dear chap!" he cried. "That infernal dockyard business at Portsmouth. Sir Charles Fordeck just sent through a call for you. Rush like h.e.l.l! Don't stop for anything! Train it over to Guildford if you have to charter a special. Meet you there--in the Portsmouth Road--with the limousine--at seven-thirty. We'll show 'em--by G.o.d, yes! Good-bye!"

Then "click!" went the instrument as the communication was cut off, and away went Cleek, like a gunshot, on a wild rush for his clothes.