Cleek of Scotland Yard Part 33

GENTLEMEN--Please give the bearer my jewels--or such of them as are finished, if you have not done with all--that he may bring them to me immediately, as I have instant need of them.

Yours faithfully,

MARGARET LARUE.

This she pa.s.sed over to the stage manager, with a request to "Please read that, Mr. Lampson, and certify over your signature that it is authentic, and that you vouch for having seen me write it." After which she got up suddenly, and said as calmly as she could: "Mr.

Super Master, I want to borrow one of your men to go on an important errand to Trent & Son for me. This one will do," signalling out her brother. "Spare him, please. This way, my man--come quickly!"

With that she suddenly caught up the note she had written--and which the stage manager had, as requested, certified--and, beckoning her brother to follow, walked hurriedly off the stage to a deserted point in the wings.

"Why have you done this dreadful thing?" she demanded in a low, fierce tone as soon as he came up with her. "Are you a fool as well as a knave that you come here and risk losing your only support by a thing like this?"

"I wanted to see you--I had to see you--and it was the only way," he gave back in the same guarded tone. "The wife is dead. She died last night, and I've got to get money somewhere to bury her. I'd no one to send, since you've taken Ted away and sent him to school, so I had to come myself."

The knowledge that it was for no more desperate reason than this that he had forced himself into her presence came as a great relief to Miss Larue. She hastened to get rid of him by sending him to Trent & Son with the note that she had written, and to tell him to carry the parcel that would be handed to him to the rooms she was occupying in Portman Square--and which she made up her mind to vacate the very next day--and there to wait until she came home from rehearsal.

He took the note and left the theatre at once, upon which Miss Larue, considerably relieved, returned to the duties in hand, and promptly banished all thought of him from her mind.

It was not until something like two hours afterward that he was brought back to mind in a somewhat disquieting manner.

"I say, Miss Larue," said the stage manager as she came off after thrice rehearsing a particularly trying scene, and, with a weary sigh, dropped into a vacant chair at his table, "aren't you worried about that chap you sent with the note to Trent & Son? There's been time for him to go and return twice over, you know; and I observe that he's not back yet. Aren't you a bit uneasy?"

"No. Why should I be?"

"Well, for one thing, I should say it was an extremely risky business unless you knew something about the man. Suppose, for instance, he should make off with the jewels? A pretty pickle you'd be in with the parties from whom you borrowed them, by Jove!"

"Good gracious, you don't suppose I sent him for the originals, do you?" said Miss Larue with a smile. "Trent & Son _would_ think me a lunatic to do such a thing as that. What I sent him for was, of course, merely the paste replicas. The originals I shall naturally go for myself."

"G.o.d bless my soul! The paste replicas, do you say?" blurted in Mr.

Lampson excitedly. "Why, I thought--Trent & Son will be sure to think so themselves under the circ.u.mstances! They can't possibly think otherwise."

"'Under the circ.u.mstances'? 'Think otherwise'?" repeated Miss Larue, facing round upon him sharply. "What do you mean by that, Mr.

Lampson? Good heavens! not that they could possibly be mad enough to give the man the originals?"

"Yes, certainly! Good Lord! what else can they think--what else can they give him? They sent the paste duplicates here by their own messenger this morning! They are in the manager's office--in his safe--at this very minute; and I was going to bring them round to you as soon as the rehearsal is over!"

Consternation followed this announcement, of course. The rehearsal was called to an abrupt halt. Mr. Lampson and Miss Larue flew round to the front of the house in a sort of panic, got to the telephone, and rang up Trent & Son, who confirmed their worst fears. Yes, the man had arrived with the note from Miss Larue something over an hour ago, and they had promptly handed him over the original jewels. Not all of them, of course, but those which they had finished duplicating and of which they had sent the replicas to the theatre by their own messenger that morning. Surely that was what Miss Larue meant by the demand, was it not? No other explanation seemed possible after they had sent her the copies and--Good Lord! hadn't heard about it? Meant the imitations?

Heavens above, what an appalling mistake! What was that? The man?

Oh, yes; he took the things after Mr. Trent, senior, had removed them from the safe and handed them over to him, and he had left Mr. Trent's office directly he received them. Miss Larue could ascertain exactly what had been delivered to him by examining the duplicates their messenger had carried to the theatre.

Miss Larue did, discovering, to her dismay, that they represented a curious ruby necklace, of which the original had been lent her by the d.u.c.h.ess 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, n.o.body 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 circ.u.mstances 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 n.o.body 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 p.a.w.nbroker'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 circ.u.mstances 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 gla.s.s--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 x.x.xIV

"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 gla.s.s-room into which people were looking at the time? And yet n.o.body 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 gla.s.s-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!" a.s.severated 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 gla.s.s-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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sed, 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 fiancee 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 n.o.body 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?