The Riddle of the Night Part 17

"Right ho!" said Dollops, and vanished like a blown-out light. In half a minute's time he was back again, and the kit bag with him.

"Here you are, gov'ner. Shall I get out the evenin' clothes, and put the bag back under the hedge, or will you take it with you?"

"I'll take it. There are other things I shall want. Where's Mr. Narkom?"

"Gone back to town, sir--to the Yard. Want him?"

"No, not yet; maybe not to-night at all. Nip off and get yourself something to eat and be back here by nine o'clock at the latest. I shall very likely need you. Cut along!" Then he caught up the kit bag, whisked away with it into the darkness, and five minutes later stood again in the room which he had so recently left.

Accustomed to rapid dressing, he got into his evening clothes in less time than it would have taken most men to unpack and lay them out ready for use when required; and then, taking the half-burnt labels from his pocketbook, carried them to the light and studied them closely. None was so big as the one which he had first inspected nor bore so much printed matter; but fortunately one was a fragment of the exactly opposite side, so that by joining the two together he was able to make out the greater part of it.

Clearly, then, the original label, making allowance for what had been totally destroyed by the flames, must have read:

JETANOLA

AN UNRIVALLED PREPARATION

FOR BOOTS, SHOES, AND ALL LEATHER

GOODS

MANUFACTURED SOLELY BY

FERDINAND LOVETSKI

63 ESs.e.x ROW

SOHO

After all, the imaginative reporter had not been so far out when he figured those mysterious markings upon the dead man's shirt bosom to read "63 Ess.e.x Row," an address where one Ferdinand Lovetski once did manufacture a certain kind of blacking for boots, shoes, etc. Not that they really did stand for that, of course, or that this ingenious person had done anything more than work out as a solution to the riddle of the marks a name and an address that were eventually to come into the case--as they now had done--but in a totally different manner from what the author of the theory intended or supposed.

Of two things Cleek was certain beyond all question of error. First: that the dead man was not Ferdinand Lovetski--not in any way connected with Ferdinand Lovetski to be precise; second: that the markings on the shirt were not made with "Jetanola" or any other kind of blacking; and ingenious as the theory was, he was willing to stake his life that those marks no more stood for 63 Ess.e.x Row than they did for 21 Park Lane. For one thing, what would be the sense of smearing them on the dead man's shirt bosom if they merely stood for that? It was all very well for that imaginative reporter to suggest that it was a sign given by the a.s.sa.s.sin to the whole anarchistical brotherhood that a debt of vengeance had been paid and a traitor punished; but the brotherhood did not need any such sign. If the man were Lovetski it would know of his death without any such silly nonsense as that. It knew the men it "marked," and it knew when those men died, and by whose hand, too; and it did not go about placarding its victims with clues to their ident.i.ty or signs of whose hands had directed the exterminating blow.

And Ferdinand Lovetski it never had "marked"--never had issued any death sentence against, never had sought to punish, never, indeed, had taken any interest in--for the simple reason that, as Cleek knew, the man had been in his grave these seven years past! He knew that beyond all question; for in those dark other times that lay behind him forever--in his old "Vanishing Cracksman" days, in those repented years when he and Margot had cast their lot together and he had been the chosen consort of the queen of the Apaches--in those wild times Lovetski, down on his luck, bankrupt through dissipation, a thief by nature, and a lazy vagabond at heart, had joined the Apaches and become one of them. Not for long, however. Within six months word had come to him of the death of a relative in his native Russia, and of a little property that was now his by right of inheritance; and he was for saying good-bye to his new colleagues and journeying on to Moscow to claim his little fortune. But the law of the Apaches is the law of the commonwealth, and Margot and her band had demanded the usual division.

Lovetski had rebelled against it; he had sworn that he would not share; that what was his should remain his only as long as he lived and--it did. But five days later his knife-jagged body was fished out of the Seine and lay in the morgue awaiting identification; Margot went thrice to see it before it went into the trench with others that were set down in the records as unknown.

That was seven years ago; and now here was Lord St. Ulmer, or some one in his room, burning labels that had to do with the days when that dead man was in honest business, and had lost it simply through dissipation after the police had discovered that 63 Ess.e.x Row was used in part as a meeting place for several "wanted" aliens, and had raided it and closed it up.

Lovetski had never belonged to the brotherhood; he had never even known that they met under that roof until the time of the raid; but he had been arrested with every other inmate of the house, held as a suspect to await examination at the hands of a magistrate, and in the meantime his business had gone to the dogs. After that drink got him, and acquaintances made in the place of detention became a.s.sociates and pals.

It was only a step from that to the Apaches, and from the Apaches to the Seine and the trench; and the little fortune in Russia was never claimed.

And now this Lord St. Ulmer was burning labels that once had been the property of that man, was he? And burning them at this particular period, of all others, when somebody, who evidently had some undesirable knowledge regarding him, had been mysteriously done to death and the Yard was out on the trail of the crime!

What did that mean? How did Lord St. Ulmer come into possession of those labels? And having come into possession of them, why had he suddenly become anxious to get rid of them?

What few paltry effects Lovetski had possessed when he joined the Apaches were left in the room he hired from old Marise--Madame Serpice's mother--at the inn of the "Twisted Arm." The Apaches had gone through them, and voted them not worth ten sous the lot--and very probably they were not. Still there might have been letters, and there might have been some unused labels; fellows of that sort would be apt to keep things of that kind merely to back up maudlin boasts of former standing. And if there had been, if this Lord St. Ulmer had come into possession of things that were left in the secret haunts of the Apaches---- Decidedly it would be an advantage to get a look at his lordship, and that, too, as expeditiously as possible.

A footman's waistcoat--merely that. He had one, that he knew; but was it in the kit bag? He went over and reopened the bag, and examined its contents. Good old Dollops! What strokes of inspiration the chap sometimes had! There it was, the regulation thing--the stripes, perhaps, a trifle broader than those the General's servants wore, but quite near enough to pa.s.s muster with a stranger. Now, then, upon what pretext?

How? When? Hullo! What was that? The dinner gong, by Jupiter!

Certainly! The very thing. "Master wishes to know if there is any especial dish your lordship fancies, or shall I bring up just what cook has prepared?" That would do the trick to a turn; and he need be only four or five minutes late in going down to join his host and the ladies.

He whisked off his coat, waistcoat, and necktie, and made the change in a twinkling. Another and more subtle "change"--yet made even quicker--altered his countenance so completely that not one trace of likeness to Mr. Philip Barch remained. A moment later he had pa.s.sed swiftly out of the room and was tapping upon Lord St. Ulmer's door.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A BLUNDER AND A DISCOVERY

Cleek's knuckles had no more than touched the panel before he became aware of a singular and most significant circ.u.mstance. A faint "snick"

sounded upon the other side of the door, a quick, metallic "snick,"

which his trained ears identified at once as the switching off of an electric light; and quick as he was in opening the door, it was an utterly black room he looked into. Still, that did not dismay him. He knew full well that the b.u.t.ton controlling the switch must be near the bed for it to be so quickly reached; and Lord St. Ulmer was most certainly _in_ bed, as the creaking springs told him, and it was always within his power to make an awkward slip and, with every appearance of an accident, to switch the light on again.

But for the present--as he had thoughtfully stepped in and closed the door behind him that he might not stand there in the full glow of the lights in the outer pa.s.sage, seen, but himself unseeing--for the present he was in blackness as dark as ink and as thick as tar, as far as the eye was concerned; and through that blackness the sharp staccato of an excited man's voice was flinging a challenge at him.

"Who are you? What do you want? What the devil do you mean by coming in here, unasked?" that voice rapped out with an unmistakable note of alarm in it.

"Master sent me up, your lordship," replied Cleek in the bland, deeply deferential tones of the well-trained manservant. "He is anxious to know if your lordship would prefer some especial dish prepared for your lordship's dinner, or if----"

He got no further than that, for the rasping, excited voice broke sharply in, and the violent jangling of the bed springs told that the speaker had as sharply turned over in bed.

"Your master sent you up about my dinner?" the voice trumpeted out in a sort of panic. "Sent you about my _dinner_--and by that door?"

Then came yet another sound--the jingle of a spoon or a fork against a plate or a cup--and hard after it a noise of rustling paper, and Cleek had just time to realize that he had blundered, that there must be another staircase and another door by which the servants came and went, and that, in all probability, judging from that telltale clink of metal and china, his lordship's dinner had already _been_ served, when he made another and a yet more embarra.s.sing discovery: his lordship was not alone in the room. Some one was there with him, some one who simply gave an amazed exclamation without putting it into words, then moved swiftly, snicked on the light, and scattered all the darkness with one dazzling electric glare.

In that sudden outburst of light Cleek saw a bed and a man on it, a man who had turned over, so that his face was to the opposite wall, while an open newspaper--one of many--almost covered his head. Beside that bed there was a table and a salver loaded with many dishes, and beyond that an open door, and beyond that again a gaping pa.s.sage and the head of a staircase that led up from below.

And between the table and the door he saw something more startling and dismaying than all the rest.

With his hand on the switch that controlled the electric light, his head bent forward, and his small, ferret eyes brightly gleaming, Mr. Harry Raynor stood looking him in the face.

"Hullo! I say, who the devil are you?" snarled that startled and amazed young man. "What's your game? What are you up to? You're no servant in this house, dash you! You can't fool _me_ on that point, b'gad! What are you doing here? What are you up to? What's your little dodge, eh?"

For the present Cleek's "little dodge" was to get out of that room as expeditiously as possible. For here was an emergency which could not be adequately met by mental finesse; a situation which could result only in exposure and the complete undoing of all his plans if he made any attempt to bolster up his claim to being one of the servants in this house, or stopped to be "interviewed" by young Raynor; and being never slow to make up his mind or to act, he did both now with amazing celerity.

Without one word of reply to young Raynor's challenge, indeed without one second's hesitation, he backed out of the door by which he had just entered, shut it sharply after him, snicked out the electric light in the pa.s.sage, and dodged back into his own room with the fleet soundlessness of a hunted hare, shutting and bolting himself in with no more noise than a cat would have made in getting over a garden wall.

In a twinkling, young Raynor, although taken somewhat aback by this unexpected action, was out after him, being obliged, of course, to stop for a second and turn on the extinguished light before he could see in which direction this pseudoservant had gone, much less follow him; but by the time he had done this Cleek was safely out of sight, and was engaged in tearing off his evening clothes and bundling them back into the kit bag as fast as his hands could fly.

The turning on of the light had resulted in the discovery that the pa.s.sage was empty, and in a moment there was an uproar. For no sooner had Raynor voiced one astonished "Good Lord! why, the fellow's gone--gone as clean as a whistle, blow him!" than Lord St. Ulmer began to rattle out an absolute fusillade of excited cries and frightened queries and suggestions, all snarled up in one hopeless tangle of jumbled words, and to tug with all his force at the bell rope hanging beside his bed.

"Head him off! Have him stopped! Find out who he is and what he's up to!" he shrilled out in an excited treble, which was audible to Cleek, even through the thickness of the dividing wall. "Send for your father.

Call up the servants. I want to know who that man is and what he was doing here."

If that were possible, he had certainly gone the surest and the shortest way about accomplishing what he desired, for the wild pulling of the bell rope had brought the servants flocking up by one staircase and the General and a couple of footmen dashing up by another; and for the next twenty seconds, what with young Raynor trying to give his version of the affair and his lordship excitedly flinging out his, there was confusion and hubbub enough in all conscience. n.o.body had any light to shed on the mysterious occurrence, however; n.o.body had seen any man coming down any staircase, and n.o.body had the very slightest idea who that particular one could be, whence or why he had come, nor whither and how he could have gone.