Cleek, the Master Detective Part 10

"Serpice! Ah, _le bon Dieu!_ it is Serpice at last!" cried out Margot in joyous excitement as she and the others crowded round him. "Soul of a sluggard, don't waste time in laughing and capering like this! Speak up, speak up, you hear? Are we to fly at once to the mill and join him? Has he succeeded? Is it done?"

"Yes, yes, yes!" shouted back Serpice, throwing up his cap and capering.

"It is done! It is done! Under the very nose of the Cracksman, too!

Merode's got them both! The little lordship and the Mademoiselle Lorne, too! They took the bait like gudgeons; they stepped into the automobile without a fear, and--whizz! it was off to the mill like that! La, la, la! We win, we win, we win!"

The shock of the thing was too much for Cleek. Carried out of himself by the knowledge that the woman he loved was now in peril of her life, discretion forsook him, blind rage mastered him, and he did one of the few foolish things of his life.

"You lie, you brute, you lie!" he shouted, jumping up into full view.

"G.o.d help the man who lays a hand on her! Let him keep his life from me if he can!"

"The Cracksman!" yelled out Serpice. "The Cracksman! The Cracksman!"

echoed Margot and the rest. Then a pistol barked and spat, the light was swept out, a bullet sang past Cleek's ear, and he realized how foolish he had been. For part of the crowd came surging to the window, part went in one blind rush for the door to head him off and hem him in, and, through the din and hubbub rang viciously the voice of Margot shrilling out: "Kill him! Kill him!" as though nothing but the sight of his blood would glut her malice.

It was neck or nothing now, and the race was to the swift. He dropped through a gap in the ragged roof, sheer down, like a shot, into the rubble and refuse below; he lurched through the shed to the door, and through that to the black pa.s.sage leading to the street--the clatter on the higher staircase giving warning of the crowd coming after him--and flew like a hare hard pressed toward the outer door, and then, just then, when every little moment counted, there was a scrambling sound, a chorus of oaths, a slipping, a sliding, a bang on one step and a b.u.mp on another; and, as he darted by and sprang out into the street the hall was filled with a writhing, scuffling, swearing ma.s.s of glue-covered men struggling in a whirling waste of loose brown paper.

"This way! come quickly, for your life!" he shouted to Dollops as he came plunging out into the street. "They've got them, got the little boy! Got Miss Lorne--in spite of me. Come on! come on! come on!" He flew like an arrow from crossing to crossing and street to street with Dollops, like a shadow, at his heels.

A sudden swerve to the right brought them into a lighted and populous thoroughfare. Italian restaurants, German delicatessen shops, eating places of a dozen other nationalities lined the pavement on both sides of the street, and in front of one of these a high-power motor stood, protected by the watchful eye of an accommodating policeman while the chauffeur sampled Chianti in a wine-shop close by. With a rush and a leap Cleek was upon it, and with another rush and a leap the constable was upon him, only to be greeted with the swift flicking open of a coat and the gleam of badge that every man in the force knew.

"Cleek?"

"Yes! In the name of the Yard; in the name of the king! get out of the way! In with you, Dollops! We'll get the brutes yet!"

Then he bent over, threw in the clutch, and discarding all speed laws, sent the car humming and tearing away.

"Hold tight!" he said through his teeth. "Whatever comes, we've got to get to Burnt Acre Mill inside of an hour. If you know any prayers, Dollops, say them."

"The Lord fetch us home in time for supper!" gulped the boy obediently.

"S'help me, guv'ner, the wind's goin' through my teeth like I was a mouth organ, and I'm hollow enough for a flute!"

IV

It is strange how, in moments of stress and trial, even in times of tragedy, the most commonplace thoughts will intrude themselves and the mind separate itself from the immediate events. As Merode put the cold muzzle of the revolver to Ailsa's temple and she ought, one would have supposed, to have been deaf and blind to all things but the horror of her position, one of these strange mental lapses occurred, and her mind, travelling back over the years to her early schooldays, dwelt on a punishment task set her by her preceptress--the task of copying three hundred times the phrase "Discretion is the better part of valour."

As the recollection of that time rose before her mental vision, the value of the phase itself forced its worth upon her and, huddling back in the corner of the limousine, she clutched the frightened child to her and gave implicit obedience to Merode's command to make no effort to attract attention either by word or deed. And he, fancying that he had thoroughly cowed her, withdrew the touch of the weapon from her temple, but held it ready for possible use in the grip of his thin, strong hand.

For a time the limousine kept straight on in its headlong course, then, of a sudden, it swerved to the left. The gleam of a river--all silver with moonlight--struck up through a line of trees on one side of the car, the blank, unbroken dreariness of a stretch of waste land spread out upon the other, and presently, by the slowing down of the motor, Ailsa guessed that they were nearing their destination. They reached it a few moments later, and a peep from the window, as the vehicle stopped, showed her the outlines of a ruined watermill, ghostly, crumbling, owl-haunted, looming black against the silver sky.

A crumbled wheel hung, rotten and moss-grown, over a dry water-course, where straggling willows stretched out from the bank and trailed their long, feathery ends a yard or so above the level of the weeds and gra.s.ses that carpeted the sandy bed of it, and along its edge--once built as a protection for the heedless or unwary, but now a ruin and a wreck--a moss-grown wall with a narrow, gateless archway made an irregular shadow on the moon-drenched earth. She saw that archway and that dry water-course, and a new, strong hope arose within her.

Discretion had played its part; now it was time for Valour to take the stage.

"Come, get out--this is the end," said Merode, as he unlatched the door of the limousine and alighted. "You may yell here until your throat splits, for all the good it will do you. Lanisterre, show us a light; the path to the door is uncertain, and the floor of the mill is unsafe.

This way, if you please, Miss Lorne. Let me have the boy, I'll look after him!"

"No, no!--not yet! Please, not yet!" said Ailsa, with a little catch in her voice as she plucked him to her and smothered his frightened cries against her breast. "Let me have him whilst I may; let me hold him to the last, Monsieur Merode. His mother trusts me. She will want to know that I--I stood by him until I could stand no longer. Please!--we are so helpless--I am so fond of him, and--he is such a very little boy.

Listen! You want me to write to Mr. Cleek; you want me to ask something of him. I won't do it for myself, not if you kill me for refusing. I'll never do it for myself; but--but I will do it if you won't separate us until he has had time to say his prayers."

"Oh, all right, then," he agreed. "If it's any consolation doing a fool's trick like that, why do it! Now come along, and let's get inside the mill without any more nonsense. Lanisterre, bring that lantern here so that mademoiselle can see the path to the door. This way, if you please, Miss Lorne."

"Thank you," she said as she alighted and moved slowly in the direction of the door, soothing the child as they crept along almost within touch of the crumbling wall. "Ceddie, darling, don't cry. You are a brave little hero, I know, and heroes are never afraid to die." From the tail of her eye she watched Merode. He seemed to realize from these words to the child that she was reconciled to the inevitable, and with an air of satisfaction he put the pistol back into his pocket and walked beside her. She kept straight on with her soothing words; and, in the half shadow, neither Merode nor Lanisterre could see that one hand was lost in the folds of her skirt.

"Ceddie, darling, let Miss Lorne be able to tell mummie that her little man was a hero; that he died, as heroes always die, without a fear or a weakening to the very last. I'll stand by you, precious; I'll hold your hand; and, when the time comes----"

It came then! The gateless archway was reached at last, and the thing she had been planning all along now became possible. With one sudden push she sent the boy reeling down the incline into the dry water-course, flashed round sharply, and before Merode really knew how the thing had happened, she was standing with her back to the arch and a revolver in her levelled hand.

"Throw up your arms--throw them up at once, or, as G.o.d hears me, I'll shoot!" she cried. "Run, Ceddie, run, baby! He shan't follow you. I'll kill him if he tries!"

"You idiot!" began Merode, and made a lurch toward her. But the pistol barked and something white-hot zig-zagged along his arm and bit like a flame into his shoulder.

"Up with your hands--up with them!" she said in a voice that shook with excitement as he howled out and made a reeling backward step. "Next time it will be the head I aim at, not the arm!" Then, lifting up her voice in one loud shriek that made the echoes bound, she called with all her strength: "Help, somebody--for G.o.d's sake help! Scream, Ceddie--scream!

Help! Help!"

And lo! as she called, as if a miracle had been wrought, out of the darkness an answering voice called back to her, and the wild, swift notes of a motor horn bleated along the lonely road.

"I'm coming--I--Cleek!" that voice rang out. "Hold your own--hold it to the last, Miss Lorne, and G.o.d help the man who lays a finger on you!"

"Mr. Cleek! Mr. Cleek, oh, thank G.o.d!" she flung back with all the rapture a human voice could contain. "Come on, come on! I've got him--got that man Merode, and the boy is safe, the boy is safe! Come on!

come on! come on!"

"We're a-comin', miss, you gamble on that and the lightnin's a fool to us!" shouted Dollops in reply. "Let her have it, guv'ner! Bust the bloomin' tank. Give her her head; give her her feet; give her her blessed merry-thought if she wants it! Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!"

And then, just then, when she most needed her strength and her courage, Ailsa's evaporated. The reaction came, and, with the despairing cries of Merode and Lanisterre ringing in her ears, she sank back, weak, white, almost fainting and, leaning against the side of the archway, began to laugh and to sob hysterically. Merode seized that one moment and sprang to the breach.

Realizing that the game was all but up, that there was nothing for him now but to save his own skin if he could, he called out to Lanisterre to rip out the sparking plug of the motor and follow him, then plunged into the mill, swung over the lever which controlled the sluice gates, and, darting out by the back way, fled across the waste.

But behind him he left a scene of indescribable horror, and the shrill screaming of a little child told him when that horror began. For as the sluice gates opened a sullen roar sounded; on one side the diverted millstream, and on the other the river, rose as two solid walls of water, rushed forward and--met. In the twinkling of an eye the old water-course was one wild, leaping, roaring, gyrating whirlpool of up-flung froth and twisting waves that bore in their eddying clutch the battling figure of a drowning child.

Even before he came in sight of it the roaring waters and the fearful splash of their impact told Cleek what had been done. He could hear Ailsa's screams; he could hear the boy's feeble cries, and a moment later, when the whizzing motor panted up through the moonlight and sped by the broken wall, there was Ailsa, fairly palsied with fright, clinging weakly to the crumbling arch and uttering little sobbing, wordless, incoherent moans of fright as she stared down into the h.e.l.l of waters; and below, in the foam, a little yellow head was spinning round and round and round, in dizzying circles of torn and leaping waves.

"Heavens, guv'ner!" began Dollops in a voice of appalling despair; but before he could get beyond that, Cleek's coat was off, Cleek's body had described a sort of semi-circle, and the child was no longer alone in the whirlpool!

Battling, struggling, fairly leaping, as a fish leaps in a torrent, one moment half out of the water, the next wholly submerged, Cleek struck from eddy to eddy, from circle to circle, until that little yellow head was within reach, then put forth his hand and gripped it, pulled it to him, and in another moment he was whirling round and round the whirlpool's course with the child clutched to him and its wet, white face gleaming wax-like over the angle of his shoulder.

They had not made the half of the first circle thus before Dollops had leaped to the bending willows, had scrambled up the rough trunk of the nearest of them, and, pushing his weight out upon a strong and supple bough, bent it downward until the half of its strongest withes were deep in the whirling waters.

"Grab 'em, guv'ner--grab 'em when you come by!" he sang out over the roar of the waters. "They'll hold you, sir--hold a dozen like you; and if---- Well played! Got 'em the first grab! Hang on! Get a tight grip!

Now, then, sir, hand over hand till you're at the bank! Good biz! Good biz! Blest if you won't be goin' in for the circus trade next! Steady does it, sir--steady, steady! Goal, by Jupiter! Now, then, hand me up the nipper--I should say the young gent--and in two minutes'

time----Right! Got him! 'Ere you are, Miss Lorne--lay hold of his little lordship, will you? I've got me blessed hands full a-keepin' to me perch whilst the guv'ner's a-wobbling of the branch like this. Good biz! Now, then, sir, another 'arf a yard. That's the call! Hands on this bough and foot on the bank there. One, two, three--knew you'd do it! Safe as house, Gawd bless yer bully heart!"

And then Cleek, wet, white, panting, dragged himself out of the clutch of the whirlpool and lay breathing heavily on the ground.

"By gums, guv'ner," Dollops added as he looked down on the whirling waters, "what an egg-beater it would make, wouldn't it, sir? Ain't got such a thing as a biscuit about yer, have you? Me spine's a-rasping holes in me necktie, and I'm so flat you could slip me into a pillar box and they'd take me home for a penny stamp."

But Cleek made no reply. Wet and spent after his fierce struggle with the whirling fury he had just escaped, he lay looking up into Ailsa's eyes as she came to him with the sobbing child close pressed to her bosom and all heaven in her beaming face.

"It is not the 'funeral wreath' after all, you see, Miss Lorne," he said. "It came near to being it; but--it is not, it is not. I wonder, oh, I wonder!"