Cleek of Scotland Yard Part 24

"That would be impossible. I locked the door the instant Sir Mawson left me."

"Ah, then, of course! Another question, please. Sir Mawson has spoken of there being 'one single minute' when the necklace was not directly under your eyes. When was that?"

"When I left the room, Mr. Cleek."

"Oho! Then you did leave it, eh?"

"Yes. It was thoughtless of me, of course; but I only ran down to the foot of the staircase, when I remembered, and ran back in a perfect panic. Still I had locked the door in going out even then and the key was in my hand. It was still locked when I returned, but in that one single minute the necklace had disappeared. I was gratifying my woman's vanity by holding it up to my throat and viewing myself in the gla.s.s just an instant before, and I remember perfectly, laying it down on the velvet lining of its open case at the time I recollected the matter which caused me to leave the room."

"May I ask what that matter was?"

"Yes. A service I had promised to perform for Miss Eastman."

"Miss Eastman? Who is she?"

"My son's fiancee. She and her father are visiting us at present.

Curzon met and became engaged to Miss Eastman on the occasion of her last visit to England, and this time her father is accompanying her."

"Her last _visit?_ Then the lady and her father are not English?"

"Oh, dear, no--Americans. They came over less than a week ago.

Pardon? No, I do not at the moment recall the name of the vessel, Mr. Cleek, but whichever one it was it seems to have been a very ill-conditioned affair and gave them a very bad crossing, indeed.

That is why I had to render Miss Eastman the service of which I spoke--the sudden recollection of which caused me to lay down the necklace and hurry from the room. I had forgotten all about it until I happened to see the roll of lint on my dressing-table."

"Lint, Lady Leake? What on earth had lint to do with the matter?"

"I had bought it for Miss Eastman when I was in town this morning.

She asked me to, as she had used her last clean bandage yesterday.

She had a very bad fall on shipboard, Mr. Cleek, and injured her left hand severely!"

Narkom made a curious sort of gulping sound, whipped out his handkerchief and began to dab his bald spot, and looked round at Cleek out of the tail of his eye. But Cleek neither moved nor spoke nor made any sign--merely pushed his lower lip out over his upper one and stood frowning at the stable door.

And here--just here--a strange and even startling thing occurred.

With just one hoa.r.s.e "Toot-toot!" to give warning of its coming, a public taxi swung round the curve of the road, jerked itself up to a sudden standstill within a rope's cast of the spot where the four were standing, and immediately there rang forth a rollicking, happy youthful voice crying out, as the owner of it stood up and touched an upright forefinger to his numbered cap, in jolly mimicry of the Hanson cabman of other days: "Keb, sir? Keb, mum? Keb! Keb!" and hard on the heels of that flung out a laughing, "Hullo, mater?

Hullo, dad? you dear old Thunder Box! I say! 'How does this sort of thing get you?' as Katie Eastman says. b.u.t.tons all over me, like a blooming Bobby! What?"

And it needed no more than that to a.s.sure Cleek and Mr. Narkom that in the bright-eyed, bonny-faced, laughing young fellow who jumped down from the driver's seat at this, and stood up straight and strong, and displayed his taxicabman's livery unabashed and unashamed, they were looking upon Sir Mawson Leake's eldest son and--heir!

"Henry!" The voice was Lady Leake's, and there was pain and surprise and joy and terror all jumbled up in it curiously, as she ran to him.

"Henry! Is it really _you?_"

"'Sure thing!'--to quote Katie again. Just took a spin over to show myself off. Plenty of bra.s.s tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs! What? I thought, dad, you'd like to be sure that I really am done with the clubs at last.

Not because they blacklisted me--for they didn't--but because--oh well, _you_ know. No taxicabmen need apply--that sort of thing.

I'll be invited to resign from every blessed one of them to-morrow, and there's not a chap connected with any one of 'em who'd be seen taking a match from me to light his cigarette with after this.

All the same, though, I go out of them with a clean slate, and that's all I cared about. I did get that two hundred after all, pater. Curzon and Katie raised it for me between them--out of their own private accounts, you know--and as driving a car is the only thing I really do understand, I'm earning the money to pay them back this way."

"That's the stuff, by Jupiter! That's the stuff!" rapped out Cleek, impulsively. "You ought to have known from the first, Sir Mawson, that they don't make thieves of this sort of material?"

"Thieves? What do you mean by thieves? And who the d.i.c.kens are you, anyway? I say, dad, who's this johnnie? What's he driving at? What does he mean by talking about thieves?"

"The necklace--the Ranee's necklace! The Ladder of Light!" bleated Sir Mawson feebly. "It is gone! It is lost! It went when _you_ went.

There has been no trace of it since." Then he joined Lady Leake, and plucked at the boy's sleeve, and between them out came the whole miserable story.

"And you think that I stole it? You dare to think that?" flung out his son, jerking back from him and brushing aside Lady Leake's solicitous hand. "Very well, then, think what you jolly well please!

I'm done with the lot of you!"

And after that--the Deluge! Speaking, he turned on his heel and rushed back to his taxi, wrenched open its door, revealing what none of them had suspected before, because of the drawn curtains: that the vehicle was occupied--and sang out in a fine fury, "Pull up the blinds, Curz. Come out, old chap. Come out, Major! Come out, Katie--all of you--at once! There isn't going to be any 'jolly lark,'

any 'pleasant surprise,' any 'killing of the fatted calf.' This isn't a comedy--it's a tragedy! Hop out lively--the lot of you! I'm done with my father, and I've got to get back to my place in the ranks as fast as I can fly. I'll pay you back, Katie. I'll pay you back, Curz, old chap! Yes, by G.o.d! I will if I drive this thing night and day without sleeping!"

Then came a sudden banging of the taxi's door, a hoot from the horn as he jumped back to his seat and sounded a warning note, and in the winking of an eye he was off and away, and there in the road stood a stout, pleasant-faced old gentleman, a youth with a budding moustache, and a bright-faced, fairylike little lady of about eighteen, all three of whom were standing stock still and staring after the vanishing taxi in the blankest of blank amazement.

Of a sudden, however:

"My goodness, popper, I guess Curzon and I have sort of m.u.f.fed it somehow!" the little lady said, forlornly.

"I guess you have, honey--I guess you have. Anyhow, something's gone bust, that's a sure thing! Let's go and ask Sir Mawson what it's all about."

"Yes, let us by all means," put in the younger man. "Come on!"

Mr. Narkom, who heard these things, drew closer to Cleek, looked up at him anxiously, and contrived to whisper an inquiry which fell only upon his ally's ears.

"Found out anything, old chap?"

"Yes. From their words it is clear that Sir Mawson has taken n.o.body in the house--even his son, Curzon--into his confidence regarding the lost necklace."

"I don't mean that--I'm alluding to the others. Found out anything about _them_?"

"Yes, and a very important thing, too: They are _not_ Diamond Nick and Dutch Ella. Not in the least like them, neither are they disguised. Also, Miss Eastman's injury is only a sprained wrist, it appears. You observe she does not even attempt to cover the back of her hand. I'm afraid, Mr. Narkom, you've been barking up the wrong tree."

CHAPTER XXII

By this time the major, his daughter, and young Curzon Leake, full of deep and earnest solicitude for the long-erring Henry, and fairly bristling with questions and entreaties, had crossed the intervening s.p.a.ce and were at Sir Mawson's side; but as the details of what was said and done for the next ten minutes have no bearing upon the case in hand, they may well be omitted from these records.

Suffice it then, that, on the plea of "having some very important business with these gentlemen, which will not permit of another moment's delay," and promising to "discuss the other matter later on," Sir Mawson managed to get rid of them, with the story of the lost necklace still unconfessed, and was again free to return to the subject in hand.

"Of course, I can understand your reluctance, with those Indian chaps about, to take anybody into your confidence regarding the loss of the jewel, Sir Mawson," said Cleek, as soon as the others were well out of hearing; "but sometimes a policy of silence is wise, and sometimes it is a mistake. For instance: if any of a man's servants should know of a circ.u.mstance which might have a bearing upon a robbery they are not likely to mention it if they don't even know that a robbery has been committed. However, we shall know more about that after I've been over the ground and poked about a bit. So, if you and her ladyship will be so kind, I should like to have a look indoors, particularly in Lady Leake's boudoir, as soon as possible."

Upon what trivial circ.u.mstances do great events sometimes hinge!

Speaking, he turned toward the curve of the road to go back to the guarded gates of the house which he had so recently pa.s.sed, when Lady Leake's hand plucked nervously at his sleeve.

"Not that way! Not for worlds, with those Hindus on the watch!" she exclaimed agitatedly. "Heaven knows what they might suspect, what word they might send to the Ranee's steward, if they saw us returning to the house without having seen us leave it. Come! there is another and a safer way. Through the grounds and round to the door of the music room, at the back of the building. Follow me."

They followed forthwith, and in another moment were taking that "other way" with her, pushing through a thick plantation, crossing a kitchen garden, cutting through an orchard, and walking rapidly along an arboured path, until they came at last to the final obstacle of all--a large rock garden--which barred their progress to the smooth, close-clipped lawn at whose far end the house itself stood.

This rock garden, it was plain from the course she was taking, it was Lady Leake's intention to skirt, but Cleek, noting that there was a path running through the middle of it, pointed out that fact.

"One moment!" he said. "As time is of importance, would not this be the shorter and the quicker way?"