Cleek of Scotland Yard Part 35

"There you are," he said suddenly, laying the crude drawing on the table before Cleek, and with him bending over it. "You are supposed to be looking at the houses from the main thoroughfare, don't you know, and, therefore, at the front of them. This tall building on the left marked 1 is Storminger's; the low one, number 2, adjoining, is ours; and that cagelike-looking thing, 3, on the top of it, is the gla.s.s-room. Now, along the front of it here, where I have put the long line with an X on the end, there runs a wooden part.i.tion with a door leading into the room itself, so that it's impossible for anybody on the opposite side of the main thoroughfare to see into the place at all. But that is not the case with regard to people living on the opposite side of the short pa.s.sage (this is here, that I've marked 4), because there's nothing to obstruct the view but some rubbishy old lace curtains which Loti, in his endeavour to make the place what he calls homelike, would insist upon hanging, and _they_ are so blessed thin that anybody can look right through them and see all over the place. Of course, though, there are blinds, which he can pull down on the inside if the sun gets too strong; and when they are down, n.o.body can see into the gla.s.s-room at all. Pardon? Oh, we had it constructed of gla.s.s, Mr. Narkom, because of the necessity for having all the light obtainable in doing the minute work on some of the fine tableaux we produce for execution purposes. We are doing one now--The Relief of Lucknow--for the big exhibition that's to be given next month at Olympia and----The place marked 6 at the back of our building?

Oh, that's the narrow alley of which I spoke. We've a back door opening into it, but it's practically useless, because the alley is so narrow one can't drive a vehicle through it. It's simply a right of way that can't legally be closed and runs from Croom Street on the right just along as far as Sturgiss Lane on the left. Not fifty people pa.s.s through it in a day's time.

"But to come back to the short pa.s.sage, Mr. Cleek. Observe, there are no windows at all on the side of our building, here: Number 2. There were, once upon a time, but we had them bricked up, as we use that side for a 'paint frame' with a movable bridge so that it can be used for the purpose of painting scenery and drop-curtains. But there _are_ windows in the side of the house marked 5; and directly opposite the point where I've put the arrow there is one which belongs to a room occupied by a Mrs. Sherman and her daughter--people who do 'bushel work' for wholesale costume houses. Now, it happens that at the exact time when the porter says he showed young Stan into the gla.s.s-room those two women were sitting at work by that window, and, the blinds not being drawn, could see smack into the place, and are willing to take their oath that there was no living soul in it."

"How do they fix it as being, as you say,'the exact time,' Mr. Trent?

If they couldn't see the porter come up to the gla.s.s-room with the boy, how can they be sure of that?"

"Oh, that's easily explained: There's a church not a great way distant. It has a clock in the steeple which strikes the hours, halves, and quarters. Mrs. Sherman says that when it chimed half-past four she was not only looking into the gla.s.s-room, but was calling her daughter's attention to the fact that, whereas some few minutes previously she had seen Loti go out of the place, leaving a great pile of reference plates and sc.r.a.ps of material all over the floor, and he had never, to her positive knowledge, come back into it, there was the room looking as tidy as possible, and, in the middle of it, a table with a vase of pink roses upon it, which she certainly had not seen there when he left."

"Hallo! Hallo!" interjected Cleek rather sharply. "Let's have that again, please!" and he sat listening intently while Trent repeated the statement; then, of a sudden, he gave his head an upward twitch, slapped his thigh, and, leaning back in his seat, added with a brief little laugh, "Well, of all the blithering idiots! And a simple little thing like that!"

"Like what, Mr. Cleek?" queried Trent, in amazement. "You don't surely mean to say that you can make anything important out of a table and a vase of flowers? Because, I may tell you that Loti is mad on flowers, and always has a vase of them in the room somewhere."

"Does he, indeed? Natural inclination of the artistic temperament, I dare say. But never mind, get on with the story. Mrs. Sherman fixes the hour when she noticed this as half-past four, you say? How, then, does the porter who showed the boy into the gla.s.s-room fix it, may I ask?"

"By the same means precisely--the striking of the church clock. He remembers hearing it just as he reached the part.i.tion door, and was, indeed, at particular pains to take out his watch to see if it tallied with it. Also, three of our scene painters were pa.s.sing along the hall at the foot of the short flight of steps leading up to the gla.s.s-room at the time. They were going out to tea; and one of them sang out to him laughingly, 'Hallo, Ginger, how does that two-shilling turnip of yours make it? Time for tea at Buckingham Palace?' for he had won the watch at a singing contest only the night before, and his mates had been chaffing him about it all day. In that manner the exact time of his going to the door with the boy is fixed, and with three persons to corroborate it. A second later the porter saw the boy push open the swing-door and walk into the place, and as he turned and went back downstairs he distinctly heard him say, 'Good afternoon, sir. Mr. Trent said I might come up and watch, if you don't mind.'"

"Did he hear anybody reply?"

"No, he did not. He heard no one speak but the boy."

"I see. So, then, there is no actual proof that Loti _was_ in there at the time, which, of course, makes the testimony of Mrs. Sherman and her daughter appear reliable when they say that the room was empty."

"Still the boy was there if Loti wasn't, Mr. Cleek. There's proof enough that he did go into the place even though those two women declare that the room was empty."

"Quite so, quite so. And when two and two don't make four, 'there's something rotten in the state of Denmark.' What does Loti himself say with regard to the circ.u.mstance? Or hasn't he been spoken to about it?"

"My hat, yes! I went to him about it the very first thing. He says the boy never put in an appearance, to _his_ knowledge; that he never saw him. In fact, that just before half-past four he was taken with a violent attack of sick headache, the result of the fumes rising from the wax he was melting to model figures for the tableau, together with the smell of the chemicals used in preparing the background, and that he went down to his room to lie down for a time and dropped off to sleep. As a matter of fact, he was there in his room sleeping when, at half-past six, I went for the boy, and, finding the gla.s.s-room vacated, naturally set out to hunt up Loti and question him about the matter."

"When you called up to the gla.s.s-room through the speaking-tube, to say that the boy was about to go up, who answered you--Loti?"

"Yes."

"At what time was that? Or can't you say positively?"

"Not to the fraction of a moment. But I should say that it was about four or five minutes before the boy got there--say about five-and-twenty minutes past four. It wouldn't take him longer to get up to the top of the house, I fancy, and he certainly did not stop at any of the other departments on the way."

"Queer, isn't it, that the man should not have stopped to so much as welcome the boy after you had been at such pains to tell him to be nice to him? Does he offer any explanation on that score?"

"Yes. He says that, as his head was so bad, he knew that he would probably be cross and crotchety; so as I had asked him to be kind, he thought the best thing he could do was to leave a note on the table for the boy, telling him to make himself at home and to examine anything he pleased, but to be sure not to touch the cauldron in which the wax was simmering, as it tilted readily and he might get scalded. He was sorry to have to go, but his head ached so badly that he really had to lie down for a while.

"That note, I may tell you, was lying on the table when I went up to the gla.s.s-room and failed to find the boy. It was that which told me where to go in order to find Loti and question him. I'll do him the credit of stating that when he heard of the boy's mysterious disappearance he flung his headache and his creature comforts to the winds and joined in the eager hunt for him as excitedly and as strenuously as anybody. He went through the building from top to bottom; he lifted every trapdoor, crept into every nook and corner and hole and box into which it might be possible for the poor little chap to have fallen. But it was all useless, Mr. Cleek--every bit of it! The boy had vanished, utterly and completely; from the minute the porter saw him pa.s.s the swing-door and go into the gla.s.s-room we never discovered even the slightest trace of him, nor have we been able to do so since. He has gone, he has vanished, as completely as if he had melted into thin air, and if there is any ghost of a clue to his whereabouts existing----"

"Let us go and see if we can unearth it," interrupted Cleek, rising.

"Mr. Narkom, is the limousine within easy reach?"

"Yes, waiting in Tavistock Street, dear chap. I told Lennard to be on the lookout for us."

"Good! Then if Miss Larue will allow Mr. Trent to escort her as far as the pavement, and he will then go on alone to his place of business and await us there, you and I will leave the hotel by the back way and join him as soon as possible. Leave by the front entrance if you be so kind; and--pardon, one last word, Mr. Trent, before you go. At the time when this boy's father vanished in much the same way, eleven months ago, you had, I believe, a door porter at your establishment name Felix Murchison. Is that man still in your employ?"

"No, Mr. Cleek. He left about a week or so after James Colliver's disappearance."

"Know where he is?"

"Not the slightest idea. As a matter of fact, he suddenly inherited some money, and said he was going to emigrate to America. But I don't know if he did or not. Why?"

"Oh, nothing in particular--only that I shouldn't be surprised if the person who supplied that money was the p.a.w.nbroker who received in pledge the jewels which your father handed over to James Colliver, and that the sum which Felix Murchison 'inherited' so suddenly was the 150 advanced upon those gems."

"How utterly absurd! My dear Mr. Cleek, you must surely remember that the p.a.w.nbroker said the chap who p.a.w.ned the jewels was a gentlemanly appearing person, of good manners and speech, and Murchison is the last man in the world to answer to that description.

A great hulking, bull-necked, illiterate _animal_ of that sort, without an H in his vocabulary and with no more manners than a pig!"

"Precisely why I feel so certain _now_ that the p.a.w.nbroker's 'advance' was paid over to _him_," said Cleek, with a twitch of the shoulder. "Live and learn, my friend, live and learn. Eleven months ago I couldn't for the life of me understand why those jewels had been p.a.w.ned at all; to-day I realize that it was the only possible course. Miss Larue, my compliments. Au revoir." And he bowed her out of the room with the grace of a courtier, standing well out of sight from the hallway until the door had closed behind her and her companion and he was again alone with the superintendent.

"Now for it! as they used to say in the old melodramas," he laughed, stepping sharply to a wardrobe and producing, first, a broad-brimmed cavalry hat, which he immediately put on, and then a pair of bright steel handcuffs. "We may have use for this very effective type of wristlets, Mr. Narkom; so it's well to go prepared for emergencies. Now then, off with you while I lock the door. That's the way to the staircase. Nip down it to the American bar. There's a pa.s.sage from that leading out to the Embankment Gardens. A taxi from there will whisk us along Savoy Street, across the Strand and up Wellington Street to Tavistock in less than no time; so we may look to be with Lennard inside of another ten minutes."

"Righto!" gave back the superintendent. "And I can get rid of this dashed rig as soon as we're in the limousine. But, I say; any ideas, old chap--eh?"

"Yes, two or three. One of them is that this is going to be one of the simplest cases I ever tackled. Lay you a sovereign to a sixpence, Mr. Narkom, that I solve the riddle of that gla.s.s-room before they ring up the curtain of any theatre in London to-night.

What's that? Lying? No, certainly not. There's been no lying in the matter at all; it isn't a case of that sort. The p.a.w.nbroker did not lie; the porter who says he showed the boy into the room did not lie; and the two women who looked into it and saw nothing but an empty room did not lie either. The only thing that _did_ lie was a vase of pink roses--a bunch of natural Ananiases that tried to make people believe that they had been blooming and keeping fresh ever since last August!"

"Good Lord! you don't surely think that that Loti chap----"

"Gently, gently, my friend; don't let yourself get excited. Besides, I _may_ be all at sea, for all my c.o.c.ksureness. I don't think I am, but--one never knows. I'll tell you one thing, however: The man with whom Madame Loti eloped had, for the purpose of carrying on the intrigue, enlisted as a student under her husband, and gulled the poor fool by pretending that he wished to learn waxwork making, when his one desire was to make love to the man's worthless wife. When they eloped, and Loti knew for the first time what a dupe he had been, he publicly swore, in the open room of the Cafe Royal, that he would never rest until he had run that man down and had exterminated him and every living creature in whose veins his blood flowed. The man was an English actor, Mr. Narkom. He posed under the _nom de theatre_ of Jason Monteith--his real name was James Colliver! Step livelier, please--we're dawdling!"

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

They that climb the highest have the farthest to fall.

It was after five o'clock when the limousine arrived at the premises of Trent & Son, and Cleek, guided by the junior member of the firm and accompanied by Superintendent Narkom, climbed the steep stairs to the housetop and was shown into the gla.s.s-room.

His first impression, as the door swung inward, was of a scent of flowers so heavy as to be oppressive; his second, of entering into a light so brilliant that it seemed a very glare of gold, for the low-dropped sun, which yellowed all the sky, flooded the place with a radiance which made him blink, and it was some little time before his eyes could accustom themselves to it sufficient to let him discover that the old Italian waxworker was there, busy on his latest tableau.

Cleek blinked and looked at the old man, serenely at first, then blinked and looked again, conscious of an overwhelming sense of amazement and defeat for just one fraction of a minute, and that some of his c.o.c.ksure theories regarding the case had suddenly been knocked into a c.o.c.ked hat.

No wonder Mr. Harrison Trent had spoken of deterioration in the art of this once celebrated modeller. No wonder!

The man was not Giuseppe Loti at all!--not that world-famed worker in wax who had sworn in those bitter other days to have the life of the vanished James Colliver.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII