The Riddle of the Night Part 14

"Kathie, dearest----"

"No--please! If you touch me I think I shall faint! Stay where you are!

Let me alone! Ah, please do--please! I have suffered and suffered and suffered, but not like this; oh, never like this before! That you should say these things--you! That you should even dream of saying them! You ought to be ashamed of yourself--ashamed!"

"Kathie, darling----"

"No, no--don't, please don't; it would be wicked to touch me when I am suffering so much. I want to get back to my room-- I want to lie down; my head will split if I don't. Please do not follow me; please stay where you are. I won't say a word to anybody; I promise you I won't.

I'll try to bear it, I'll try to forget it. Nine years! Dear G.o.d, nine years; and--those marks totalled nine!"

He jumped as though some one had stabbed him; a red wave rushed up and crimsoned all his face, then flashed out of existence again and left it waxen white.

"Good G.o.d! you won't attempt to suggest----" he began, then lost the power of speaking altogether, and stood looking at her with blank eyes and with colourless lips hard shut as she crept on through the shadowy dusk to where the doorway of the ruin showed a pointed arch against the dimming saffron of a twilight sky. A moment her drooping figure stood there against that shield of yellow light, pausing irresolute with one foot on the edge of the drawbridge, one hand pressed to her head; then she turned and looked back at the place where he stood. But in the dim dusk of the ruin she could scarcely see him.

"I will never speak, I will never tell--even to the day I die I won't!"

she said in a whisper; then waited an instant as if expecting a reply, and getting none, added yet more sadly, "Good-bye," and went across the drawbridge to the darkening gardens, and was gone.

For a minute the man made neither movement nor sound till of a sudden there came something so totally unexpected as to cause him to literally jump. Some one had given a none too perfect representation of a m.u.f.fled sneeze, telling him that he was not alone.

"Who's there? Who are you?" he cried in an excited whisper

But n.o.body answered.

"Do you hear what I say? Come out and show yourself, whoever you are!"

he called in a slightly louder tone; and then, getting no answer this time either, he fumbled in his pocket, fished out his match box, and struck a vesta.

The glimmering light showed him what the dusk had so successfully concealed heretofore--namely, the gap in the floor and the underside of the slab which usually covered the entrance to the underground cells, but which was now laid back on its hinges with its lower side upmost and the way to the stone staircase in full view. And in the very instant he made this discovery there rolled up from that gap the sound of somebody running away.

In a sort of panic young Clavering made a dash for the trap, and was through it and down the stone steps in almost no time, the wax vesta flickering and flaring in the fingers of his upraised hand and sending gushes of light weaving in and out among the arches of the pa.s.sage and the gaping doorways of the mimic cells.

n.o.body in sight. He called, but n.o.body answered; he commanded, but n.o.body came forth. And with the intention of routing the author of the sneeze and the footsteps, he had just started forward to investigate the cells themselves, when the match burnt his fingers and was flung down sharply. Darkness shut in as though a curtain had fallen. He fumbled with the box to get another match, and had almost secured one when he heard a movement behind him and flashed round on his heel.

"Anybody there?" he rapped out sharply.

"Yes; Cleek, of Scotland Yard!" answered a bland voice immediately in front of him; then there was a sharp spring, a swift rustle, a metallic click-click! His match box was on the floor, and a band of steel was locked about each wrist.

"Good Lord! you've put handcuffs on me, you infernal scoundrel!"

Clavering cried out indignantly. "What is the meaning of this outrage?

What are----Here! chuck that! Confound your cheek! what are you doing to my ankles?"

"Same thing as I've done to your wrists," replied Cleek serenely.

"Sorry, but I shall have to carry you, my young friend; and I can't risk getting my shins kicked to a pulp."

"Carry me? Carry me where? Good G.o.d, man! not to jail?"

"Oh, no. That may come later, and certainly will come if you are guilty.

For the present, however, I am simply going to carry you to a rather uncomfortable cell at the end of the pa.s.sage, and put you where you won't be able to run away. I am afraid, however, that I shall have to gag you as well as handcuff you, and make you more uncomfortable still.

But I'll manage somehow to get some bedding of some sort, and to see that you don't miss your dinner. You are going to spend the night here, my friend. Now, then, up you come and--there you are, on my shoulder.

Steady, if you please, while I get out my pocket torch to light the way.

I suppose you realize that I have heard all that pa.s.sed between you and Lady Katharine Fordham this evening?"

"And you know that I lied, don't you?" put in Geoff eagerly. "You know that she _wasn't_ there last night, after all?"

"To the contrary, my friend, I know that she was."

"It's a lie--it's a dashed lie! She never was near the place. That was pure bluff. It was I who killed the man."

"Don't tell any more lies than you are obliged to, my lad. I don't believe she killed him, and I'm not so very sure that you killed him--and there you are."

"Then what are you arresting me for?"

"I'm not arresting you; I'm simply sifting evidence. Your stepmother--according to _your_ story--must be very, very fond of you, and very, very solicitous for your welfare. And if she risked catching cold and having people talk and all that sort of thing to rush out after you when you had only been gone for a short time, let's see how she'll act when you disappear mysteriously and don't come home all night!"

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A CHANGE IN THE PROGRAM

"I suppose you understand that this is a pretty high-handed sort of proceeding?" began young Clavering agitatedly, half indignantly. "Even the processes of the law have their limits; and to abduct a man and imprison him before there is the ghost of a charge against him----"

There he stopped; his ear caught by a faint metallic click, his eye by a little gleam of light that spat out through the darkness and made a luminous circle upon the earthen floor of the pa.s.sage. Cleek had switched on his electric torch the better to see his way in carrying his captive to the cell of which he had spoken and was now moving with him toward it. His interest attracted in yet another direction, Geoffrey twitched round his head and made an effort to see the face of his captor. Pretty nearly everybody in England had, at one time or another, heard of the man, and a not unnatural curiosity to see what he was like seized upon young Clavering.

His effort to satisfy that curiosity was, however, without fruit, for the downward-directed torch cast only that one spot of light upon the floor and left everything else in the depths of utter darkness. But that Cleek was aware of this desire upon the part of the young man and of his effort to satisfy it, was very soon made manifest.

"In a minute, my friend--have a little patience," he said serenely. "If you wanted to take me unawares you should have remembered that we must soon come to the cell and I shall have to set you down, and you could then see all that you wanted to without putting me on my guard. What's that? Oh, yes, I am frequently off it--even Argus occasionally shut all his hundred eyes and went to sleep, remember."

By this time he had travelled the entire length of the pa.s.sage, and now stood upon the threshold of the cell toward which he was aiming. He was no longer careful to keep the light from illuminating the surroundings, however. Indeed, he had merely done that in the first place to prevent Geoff from seeing, as they pa.s.sed, the excavation he had made and the clothing he had dug up. He now flashed the light round and round the place as if taking stock of everything. He was not, by the way; what he sought was what he had seen in each of the other cells and hoped to find here as well--the iron ring in the wall and the short length of rusty chain attached to it.

The air of antiquity had been perfectly reproduced, and this cell was as carefully equipped as its mates. He walked toward the ring the instant he saw it, switched off the light of the torch, swung Geoff down from his shoulder, unfastened his ankles and one end of the shackles that held his wrists.

"What are you going to do with me now?" demanded young Clavering with sudden hopefulness. "I say--look here--is this thing a joke after all, and are you going to give me my liberty?"

The only response was a sharp click; then Cleek's hands fell away from his captive entirely, and under the impression that he was free, young Clavering made an effort to spring up from the ground where he had been laid.

A sharp backward jerk and a twinge of the right wrist brought him to a realization that while one end of the handcuffs still encircled that wrist, the other had been snapped into the ring in the wall, and it was, therefore, impossible for him to move ten inches from the spot where he had been left.

In the utter darkness he had no means of telling if Cleek had or had not left the cell; and in a sort of panic, called out to him.

"I say, officer! Have you left me?" he asked; then hearing a sound quite close to him, a sound so clearly that of some one moving and breathing that his question was answered without words, he added nervously: "What are you up to now? What are you doing that you have to work about it in the dark?"

"Merely twisting up a handkerchief into a form of gag," replied Cleek, in a tone which clearly indicated that he was speaking with one end of that handkerchief held between his teeth. "It is not a nice thought, the idea of gagging a gentleman as if he were a murderous navvy or a savage dog that needs muzzling. I should much prefer, Mr. Clavering, accepting your parole--putting you on your word of honour not to cry out or to make any effort to attract the attention of anybody who may enter this ruin to-night; and if you will give me that----"

"I'll give you anything rather than undergo any further indignity,"

snapped Geoff. "Look here, you know, Mr. Thingamy, this is a beastly caddish trick altogether, jumping on a man in the dark and giving him no chance to defend himself."

"Unfortunately, the law cannot allow itself to study the niceties of etiquette, my dear sir," replied Cleek. "It has to go on the principle that the end justifies the means, and it must always be prepared to accept risks. I, as one of its representatives, am, as I have told you, quite ready to accept one now; so if you will give me your word of honour not to make any outcry, the gag can be dispensed with."