Cleek of Scotland Yard Part 40

"Now then, Dolly Varden, you keep your thieving tongs away from my scarfpin, old lady!" exclaimed this enthusiast to a magpie which perched upon his shoulder and immediately made a peck at the small pearl in his necktie. "Awfullest old thief and vagrant that ever sprouted a feather, this beauty," he explained to Cleek as he smoothed the magpie's head. "Steal your eye teeth if she could get at them, and goes off on the loose like a blessed wandering gypsy. Lost her for three days and nights a couple of weeks ago, and the Lord knows where the old vagrant put in her time. What's that? The white stuff on her beak? Blest if I know. Been pecking at a wall or something, I reckon, and--hullo! There's Carruthers and his little lordship strolling about hand in hand. Let's go and have a word with them. Strathmere's amazingly fond of my mice and birds."

With that he walked away with the mice and the monkeys and the squirrel clinging to him, and those of the birds that were not perched upon his shoulders or his hands circling round his head with a flurry of moving wings. Cleek followed. A word in private with the Honourable Felix was accountable for his appearance in the grounds with the boy, and Cleek was anxious to get a good look at him without exciting any possible suspicion in Lady Essington's mind regarding the "Lieutenant's" interest in him.

He was a bonny little chap, this last Earl of Strathmere, with a head and face that might have done duty for one of Raphael's "Cherubim"

and the big "wonder eyes" that make baby faces so alluring.

"Strathmere, this is Lieutenant Deland, come all the way from India to visit us," said the Honourable Felix, as Cleek went down on his knees and spoke to the boy (examining him carefully the while).

"Won't you tell him you are pleased to see him?"

"Pleased to see oo," said the boy, then broke into a shout of glee as he caught sight of young Essington with the animals and birds.

"Pitty birdies! pitty mouses! Give! give!" he exclaimed eagerly, stretching forth his little hands.

"Certainly. Which will you have, old chap--magpie, parrakeet, pigeon, monkey, or mice?" said young Essington, gayly. "Here! take the lot and be happy!" Then he made as if to bundle them all into the child's arms, and might have succeeded in doing so, but that Cleek rose up and came between them and the boy.

"Do have some sense, Essington!" he rapped out sharply. "Those things may not bite nor claw you, but one can't be sure when they are handled by some one else. Besides, the boy is not well and he ought not to be frightened."

"Sorry, old chap--always puttin' my foot into it. But Strathmere likes 'em, don't you, bonny boy? and I didn't think."

"Take them back to the stables and let's have a go at billiards for an hour or two before tea," said Cleek, turning as Essington walked away, and looking after him with narrowed eyes and lips indrawn. When man and birds were out of sight, however, he made a sharp and sudden sound, and almost in a twinkling his "Indian servant" slipped into sight from behind a nearby hedge.

"Get round there and examine those birds after he's left them," said Cleek, in a swift whisper. "There's one--a magpie--with something smeared on its beak. Find out what it is and bring me a sample. Look sharp!"

"Right you are, sir," answered in excellent c.o.c.kney the undersized person addressed. "I'll spread one of me famous 'Tickle Tootsies'

and nip in and ketch the bloomin' 'awk as soon as the josser's back is turned, guv'ner. I'm off, as the squib said to the match when it started blowin' of him up." Then the face disappeared again, and the child and the two men were again alone together.

"Good G.o.d, man!" exclaimed the Honourable Felix in a lowered voice of strong excitement. "You can't possibly believe that he--that dear, lovable boy----Oh, it is beyond belief!"

"Nothing is 'beyond belief' in _my_ line, my friend. Recollect that even Lucifer was an angel _once_. I know the means employed to bring about this"--touching softly the three red spots on his little lordship's neck--"but I have yet to decide how the thing is administered and by whom. Frankly I do not believe it is done with a bird's beak--though that, too, is possible, wild as it seems--but by this time to-morrow I promise you the riddle shall be solved. Sh-h! Don't speak--he's coming back. Take the boy into your own room to-night, but leave the door unfastened. I'm coming down to watch by him with you. Let him first be put into the regular nursery, however, then take him out without the knowledge of any living soul--of _any_, you hear?--and I will be with you before midnight."

That night two curious things happened: The first was that at a quarter to seven, when Martha, the nursemaid, coming up into the nursery to put his little lordship to bed, found Lieutenant Deland--who was supposed to be dressing for dinner at the time--standing in the middle of the room looking all about the place.

"Don't be startled, Nurse," he said, as he looked round and saw her.

"Your master has asked me to design a new decoration for this room, and I'm having a peep about in quest of inspiration. Ah, Strathmere, 'Dustman's time,' I see. Pleasant dreams to you, old chap. See you in the morning when you're awake."

"Say good night to the gentleman, your lordship," said the nurse, laying both hands on his shoulders and leading him forward, whereupon he began to whine sleepily: "Want Sambo! Want Sambo!" and to rub his fists into his eyes.

"Yes, dearie, Nanny'll get Sambo for your lordship after your lordship has said good night to the gentleman," soothed the nurse; and held him gently until he had done so.

"Good night, old chap," said Cleek. "h.e.l.lo, Nurse, got a sore finger, have you, eh? How did that happen? It looks painful."

"It is, sir, though I can't for the life of me think whatever could have made a thing so bad from just scratching one's finger, unless it could have happened that there was something poisonous on the wretched magpie's claws. One never can be sure where those nasty things go nor what they dip into."

"The magpie?" repeated Cleek. "What do you mean by that, Nurse? Have you had an unpleasant experience with a magpie, then?"

"Yes, sir, that big one of Mr. Essington's: the nasty creature that's always flying about. It was a fortnight ago, sir. Mistress'

pet dog had got into the nursery and laid hold of Sambo--which is his lordship's rag doll, sir, as he never will go to sleep without--tore it well nigh to pieces did the dog; and knowing how his lordship would cry and mourn if he saw it like that, I fetched in my work-basket and started to mend it. I'd just got it pulled into something like shape and was about to sew it up when I was called out of the room for a few minutes, and when I came back there was that wretched Magpie that had been missing for several days right inside my work-basket trying to steal my reels of cotton, sir. It had come in through the open window--like it so often does, nasty thing. I loathe magpies and I believe that that one knows it. Anyway, when I caught up a towel and began to flick at it to get it out of the room, it turned on me and scratched or pecked my finger, and it's been bad ever since. Cook says she thinks I must have touched it against something poisonous after the skin was broken. Maybe I did, sir, but I can't think what."

Cleek made no comment; merely turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

The second curious thing occurred between nine o'clock and half-past, when the gentlemen of the party were lingering at the table over post-prandial liqueurs and cigars, and the ladies had adjourned to the drawing-room. A recollection of having carelessly left his kit-bag unlocked drew Cleek to invent an excuse for leaving the room for a minute or two and sent him speeding up the stairs. The gas in the upper halls had been lowered while the members of the household were below; the pa.s.sages were dim and shadowy, and the thick carpet on halls and stairs gave forth never a murmur of sound from under his feet nor from under the feet of yet another person who had gone like he, but by a different staircase, to the floors above.

It was, therefore, only by the merest chance that he looked down one of the pa.s.sages in pa.s.sing and saw a swift-moving figure--a woman's--cross it at the lower end and pa.s.s hastily into the nursery of the sleeping boy. And--whether her purpose was a good or an evil one--it was something of a shock to realize that the woman who was doing this was the Honourable Mrs. Carruthers.

He locked the kit-bag, and went back to the dining-room just as the little gathering was breaking up, and Mr. Claude Essington, who always fed his magpies and his other pets himself, was bewailing the fact that he had "forgotten the beauties until this minute" and was smoothing out an old newspaper in which to wrap the sc.r.a.ps of cheese and meat he had sent the butler to the kitchen to procure.

The Honourable Felix looked up at Cleek with a question in his eye.

"No," he contrived to whisper in reply. "It was not anything poisonous--merely candle wax. The bird had flown in through the store-room window, and the housekeeper caught it carrying away candles one by one."

The Honourable Felix made no response, nor would it have been heard had he done so; for just at that moment young Essington, whose eye had been caught by something in the paper, burst out into a loud guffaw.

"I say, this is rich. Listen here, you fellows! Lay you a tenner that the chap who wrote this was a Paddy Whack, for a finer bull never escaped from a Tipperary paddock:

"'Lost: Somewhere between Portsmouth and London or some other spot on the way, a small black leather bag containing a death certificate and some other things of no value to anybody but the owner. Finder will be liberally rewarded if all contents are returned intact to

"'D. J. O'M., 425 Savile Row, West.'

"There's a beautiful example of English as she is advertised for you; and if--Hullo, Deland, old chap, what's the matter with you?"

For Cleek had suddenly jumped up and, catching the Honourable Felix by the shoulder, was hurrying him out of the room.

"Just thought of something--that's all. Got to make a run; be with you again before bedtime," he answered evasively. But once on the other side of the door: "'Write me down an a.s.s,'" he quoted, turning to his host. "No, don't ask any questions. Lend me your auto and your chauffeur. Call up both as quickly as possible. Wait up for me and keep your wife and Lady Essington and her son waiting up, too. I said to-morrow I would answer the riddle, did I not? Well, then, if I'm not the blindest bat that ever flew, I'll give you that answer to-night."

Then he turned round and raced upstairs for his hat and coat, and ten minutes later was pelting off London-ward as fast as a 1,000 Panhard could carry him.

It was close to one o'clock when he came back and walked into the drawing-room of the Priory, accompanied by a sedate and bespectacled gentleman of undoubted Celtic origin whom he introduced as "Doctor James O'Malley, ladies and gentlemen, M.D., Dublin."

Lady Essington and her son acknowledged the introduction by an inclination of the head, the Honourable Felix and Mrs. Carruthers, ditto; then her ladyship's son spoke up in his usual blunt, outspoken way.

"I say, Deland, what's in the wind?" he asked. "What lark are you up to now? Felix says you've got a clinking big surprise for us all, and here we are, dear boy, all primed and ready for it. Let's have it, there's a good chap."

"Very well, so you shall," he replied. "But first of all let me lay aside a useless mask and acknowledge that I am not an Indian army officer--I am a simple police detective sometimes called George Headland, your ladyship, and sometimes----"

"George Headland!" she broke in sharply, getting up and then sitting down again, pale and shaken. "And you came--you came after all! Oh, thank you, thank you! I know you would not confess this unless you have succeeded. Oh, you may know at last--you may know!" she added, turning upon the Honourable Felix and his wife. "I sent for him--I brought him here. I want to know and I _will_ know whose hand it is that is striking at Strathmere's life--my child's child--the dearest thing to me in all the world. I don't care what I suffer, I don't care what I lose, I don't care if the courts award him to the veriest stranger, so that his dear little life is spared and he is put beyond all danger for good and all."

Real love shone in her face and eyes as she said this, and it was the certainty of that which surprised Carruthers and his wife as much as the words she spoke.

"Good heavens! is this thing true!" The Honourable Felix turned to Cleek as he spoke. "Were you in her pay, too? Was she also working for the salvation of the boy?"

"Yes," he made answer. "I entered into her service under the name of George Headland, Mr. Carruthers--the service of a good woman whom I misjudged far enough to give her a fict.i.tious name. I entered into yours by one to which I have a better right--Hamilton Cleek!"

"Cleek!" Both her ladyship and her son were on their feet like a flash; there was a breath of silence and then: "Well, I'm dashed!"

blurted out young Essington. "Cleek, eh? the great Cleek? Scotland!"

And sat down again, overcome.