The Riddle of the Night Part 18

It was in the midst of this confusion that suddenly the door of the room immediately adjoining his lordship's bedchamber was drawn sharply inward, and then as sharply reclosed until it left but a half foot or so between itself and the casing, and through that half foot of s.p.a.ce the head of Mr. Philip Barch was thrust; not, however, before the General and his son and the two footmen had had a chance to see that the owner of that head was arrayed simply in his underclothing, and to understand why he had partly reclosed the door when he found people in the immediate neighbourhood of it.

Apparently Mr. Barch was in a state of violent excitement and did not at once notice the presence of the General or his son.

"I say, dash it all! what's up? What are you bounders kicking up all this noise about? And why on earth hasn't one of you answered my ring?"

he blurted out, addressing the nearer of the two footmen. "I've pulled that dashed bell rope until I'm tired. I say, nip downstairs, one of you, and tell that valet chap to bring back my clothes, and not to bother about brushing them until after I go to bed. Mr. Harry promised to lend me a suit of evenin' togs, but went off without doing so, blow him! And I haven't a blessed livin' st.i.tch to put on!"

"Good Lud, Barch! I do beg a thousand pardons, old chap!" exclaimed the General's hopeful. "Sorry I forgot about the evenin' togs, dear boy.

What a beast of a hole you'd have been in if I hadn't come back. Eh, what?"

"Well, if it could be any worse than the one I've been in for the past five minutes it would be a marvel, dear boy," responded Cleek, with lamblike innocence. "Always was a thoughtless beggar, don't you know.

Took off my blessed clothes, and let your valet toddle off with 'em to brush 'em, as he suggested, before I once thought about the evenin' ones you'd promised to lend me."

"Harry's valet?" It was the General who spoke. "Do I understand you to say, Mr. Barch, that you gave your clothes to somebody whom you took for my son's valet? In the name of reason, where did you get that impression of the man? I ask, because Harry has no special valet. Hawkins, here"--indicating the second footman--"valets both my son and myself; but having only me to look after this evening, as we did not expect Harry to return in time for dinner, he has been in attendance upon me up to the present moment, so it most certainly could not have been he."

"Oh, no; chap wasn't a bit like him, General. Wasn't like the other footman, either. Tallish chap, fair-haired, little turned-up 'ginger'

moustache. Was dressed in evening clothes and wore a black-and-yellow striped waistcoat."

"That's the man! That's the man!" trumpeted forth Harry Raynor and Lord St. Ulmer in concert, the latter's excited voice ringing out from the room into which, unfortunately, Cleek could not, of course, see. "That's the identical fellow, pater; Barch has described him to a hair," went on young Raynor, addressing his father. "Sneak thief--that was his little game, St. Ulmer. Nicked my friend Barch's clothes and would have nicked yours, too, if he hadn't come a cropper. Got down the staircase there, and dodged into one of the empty rooms, I'll lay my life, pater, and as soon as you came up and left the coast clear, slipped out of the house and got away."

In the game of life chance is an important factor; and chance, as much as anything else, favoured Cleek in this particular instance, for it was his especial aim to lull Lord St. Ulmer's suspicions of the mysterious "man" and to quiet any fear he might possess of that man's possible connection with the police. It need scarcely be recorded, therefore, that he hastened to second Harry Raynor's suggestion relative to the intruder being nothing more nor less than a sneak thief, who had taken precisely the mode mentioned of making his escape, and backed it up with a panicky sort of appeal to the General to "have the house searched and all the empty rooms below stairs looked into on the off-chance that the fellow hadn't really got away as yet."

The suggestion was acted upon forthwith. Every vacant room was searched, and it was in this matter that chance favoured Cleek so signally, for it was found that a window in one of the lower rooms had been left wide open, and as that window communicated with a veranda, from which a short flight of steps led down to the garden at a point where the walk was asphalted and could not be expected to retain a footprint, there would seem to be no question of where and how the man had made his escape.

Dinner, owing to this interruption, together with the unexpected return of Mr. Harry and the awkward position in which Philip Barch had been placed, was put back for half an hour; and Cleek, left to himself, proceeded to dress himself in the clothes with which young Raynor had supplied him. But for all his cleverness in turning suspicion into another channel, he was not best pleased with the result of the adventure, for he was faced with the fact that he had failed to accomplish what he had set out to do, and that his efforts concerning Lord St. Ulmer had been absolutely barren of results. He had _not_ succeeded in seeing his lordship's face, he had _not_ succeeded in discovering how this man, of all men, should have come into possession of the Jetanola labels, or, indeed, _anything_ that had belonged to Ferdinand Lovetski. Ferdinand Lovetski had been done to death in Paris only seven years ago, and his lordship had been--or was said to have been--more than twice that number of years in Argentina.

Then there was another point: What had called Harry Raynor away so unexpectedly, and what had so unexpectedly called him back? What was he doing in Lord St. Ulmer's room this evening? Was his being there merely a commonplace thing, or was there something between them? More than that, what was the connection between young Raynor and Margot? How came she to be writing letters to him, sending her photograph to him? And what was the explanation of the sc.r.a.p of pink gauze that was hidden with the other things in the filled tobacco jar? The sc.r.a.p of gauze which had been caught by the nail head in the pa.s.sage at Gleer Cottage was pink, the same shade of pink he believed as Raynor's fragment, and neither was anything like Ailsa Lorne's frock. True, there was no st.i.tchery of rose-coloured silk upon that fragment Raynor had kept hidden in the tobacco jar, but that didn't prove that there was none upon the frock from which it came. It might have been torn from a part that was devoid of st.i.tchery; and, again, it might not be part of the frock at all. It might be part of a gauze scarf that was worn with the dress. Women do wear things like that with evening gowns.

Hum-m-m! Now if the dress which Margot wore was found in time to have rose-coloured st.i.tchery, and the pattern of that st.i.tchery matched the pattern on the piece found in Gleer Cottage---- Yes, but what would take Margot to Gleer Cottage? Certainly it would be to meet a man; but what man? De Louvisan? But if he had been an Apache and a traitor, he would have been on his guard, and would make no appointment with her or with any of her followers.

Then what other man? Lord St. Ulmer, who, on the evidence of his muddy boots, had been out _somewhere_ last night, or the fellow--whoever he might prove to be--who had killed the Common keeper and had hidden the clothing in the General's famous ruin? For, according to that unfortunate Common keeper, there had been two persons implicated in the attack upon him. What two? Margot would not fit in with any theory that implicated Sir Philip Clavering--it would be preposterous to suggest such a thing--nor did it really seem feasible to connect her with St.

Ulmer either but for the fact of those labels and his own knowledge that Lovetski had once been a member of the Apaches.

Perplexed with these thoughts, Cleek was almost startled at the sound of the second dinner gong, and he walked swiftly to the gla.s.s to note the effect of his borrowed plumes. They were certainly not a good fit, and he pa.s.sed his hand over the wrinkled breast; then--his fingers stopped suddenly at the touch of something hard in the pocket. Slowly, his lips drawn to a soundless whistle, he pulled out a round metal object and looked at it with startled eyes, his thoughts in a sudden conflicting whirl.

Last night, when he had found the golden capsule with the name of Katharine upon it, and had given Mr. Narkom a brief history of the famous _Huile Violette_ and the methods of the _grande dames_ of old, he had declared that he knew of but one woman who ever had worn one of those antique scent bracelets, and knew of _her_ wearing it simply because he himself had stolen it from a famous collection and given it to her. To-night that identical bracelet, with the scent globe and the stopper cut from an emerald, was in his hand again! Margot's bracelet in the pocket of Harry Raynor's coat! And only a moment or two ago he had asked himself, "Which man?"

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

SPRINGING A SURPRISE

The circ.u.mstance was something of a shock to him. Up to this moment he had looked upon young Raynor as being merely a selfish, irresponsible wastrel, not as something vicious, something that had the courage or even the power to bite or to sting. Now, however---- He turned the bracelet over in his hand and examined it closely, to be certain before he finally decided that it really was Margot's.

The act served merely to deepen suspicion into certainty. By a dozen things he knew it for what he hoped it might not be. It was Margot's bracelet, beyond all possible question it was! So, then, he had been a fool for his pains, had he--a fool taken in and gulled by appearances, eh? And the creature he had fancied a mere worm was, after all, a serpent and--dangerous!

Margot's bracelet in the pocket of Harry Raynor's evening coat was something rather more significant than Margot's picture and Margot's letters in Harry Raynor's tobacco jar, for an evening coat consorted well with an evening frock, and some woman who was not Ailsa Lorne, nor yet Lady Katharine Fordham, had worn an evening frock at Gleer Cottage last night.

Where was Harry Raynor last night? That, too, would want looking into in the light of present events. And possessing two evening suits, which had that interesting young gentleman worn yesterday? This one, which he had lent to Cleek, or the one he would himself wear at dinner to-night? A great deal would depend upon that point--as great a deal as sometimes sends men to the gallows. For whensoever he had last worn this suit, this bracelet was put in the pocket of it. Upon that point there could be no shadow of doubt; for although he had forgotten all about the thing--as evidenced by his leaving it in the pocket when sending the clothes to Cleek--he could not possibly have put this coat on again without noticing how abominably the thing sat upon the wearer, and discovering the cause of it.

And if he had worn this particular suit last night, and Margot could be proved to have visited Gleer Cottage at, or about, the time of the murder----Cleek shut off that train of thought, and puckered up his lips until they were white and full of creases, and sighed inwardly, thinking of the loving mother and of the added cross for the shoulders of the bitterly disappointed father, a man and a hero, a soldier and a gentleman, cursed with such offspring as this!

"And the little beast would sacrifice the pair of them for the price of a night's orgy, and turn suspicion even against his mother to save his own skin if he were in danger," was his unspoken summing up of Harry Raynor's character. "Gad, how little there is in heredity, after all, when we so often see eagles breeding jackdaws and lions bringing forth mice!"

The dinner gong sounded again; and it was only then that he realized how long a time he had spent mooning over a stolen bracelet and a gnat that seemed suddenly to have grown into a bird of prey.

He turned round on his heel and switched off the light. "A bombsh.e.l.l for _you_, my laddie!" he said in the soundless words of thought, as he put the bracelet into the tail pocket of his coat and nodded as if young Raynor were there in person to be addressed; then he walked out and shut the door behind him, and went down to the business of dining.

He found the General and his son and Mrs. Raynor and Ailsa awaiting him in the drawing-room, and was not--considering what he now knew--at all surprised to learn that Lady Katharine had developed a bad headache, gone to bed, and wished no dinner at all.

"I can't think what's come over her," said Ailsa when she made this announcement.

"Oh, can't you?" said young Raynor with a cackling laugh. "Lord! women don't look far beneath the surface of things, do they, Barch? Who wouldn't go to bed with a headache after a visit from a goat like Geoff Clavering?"

"Harry, dearest, do think what you are saying, and before whom, darling!" bleated apologetically his adoring mother. "You mustn't mind him, Mr. Barch; he _is so_ full of spirit, the dear boy."

Cleek did not reply, neither did the General. Possibly both were secretly battling with a desire to catch hold of this young man and to kick him as far as the human foot could propel him; and it was, no doubt, a relief to all when the two footmen swung open the great double doors leading into the dining-room and announced gravely that dinner was served.

With the matter of that dinner it is doubtful if anybody but Cleek really enjoyed the hour spent in consuming it, and even he merely because the girl of his heart was beside him, and _that_ would make a heaven with any healthy and well-conditioned man in the universe. But it was certain that n.o.body was deeply regretful when the end came, and Mrs.

Raynor, rising, gave the hint to Miss Lorne that it was time to return to the drawing-room and to leave the gentlemen to their half hour with the coffee, the liqueurs, and the cigars. But to-night the General would have none of these.

"Young men to young men's pleasure, gentlemen. I'm an old fogy, and I'm sleepy," he said immediately after the ladies had retired. "Besides, my monthly copy of the _Gardener and Fruit Grower_ arrived this evening, and I haven't looked at it yet. So, if you will excuse me, Mr.

Barch----"

"My dear General, pray make no apologies," said Cleek, struggling between the necessity for keeping up his rakish att.i.tude and the desire to be a man in the eyes of this rugged old soldier, who was fighting a braver battle now than he had ever fought in the days when king and country called him. "If a man may not consider his personal convenience in his own house, what's the good of saying that an Englishman's home is his castle?"

"Ah, we outlive old notions, Mr. Barch, we outlive them!" replied the General with a kindly smile and something that was like a smothered sigh. "Pray make yourself thoroughly at home, however. I hear from Harry that you have decided to honour us with a week's visit, and I am very greatly pleased. Hawkins, in the absence of Johnston, see that the gentlemen want for nothing."

"Very good, sir. Serve your coffee in your study, sir?"

"No, I shan't take any. See that I'm not disturbed; and don't bother to valet me to-night; I shall be reading late. Good-night, Harry; good-night, Mr. Barch." And with that he walked out of the room and left them.

"Now, then, Hawkins," said young Raynor as soon as his father was fairly out of sight and sound, "set the decanters and the gla.s.ses on the table here, and you and Hamer clear off about your business as fast as you can toddle. We don't need you. Hook it!"

"Very good, sir," replied Hawkins deferentially, and obeyed the order to the letter.

Harry Raynor waited a moment to give both time to leave the room and to get beyond earshot, then caught up a decanter, drew a gla.s.s toward him, and poured out a stiff peg of brandy.

"I say, Barch, I've got a flea to put into your ear," he said earnestly, "and I didn't want those blighters hanging round to hear it; that's the reason I packed them off as I did. I'm going to give you a shock that will set you thinking."

"Are you?" said Cleek with the utmost serenity. "Well, I'm going to give _you_ one, too, dear boy; and as first horse at the post wins--I say, what price this little caper? How did you come by this, dear boy--and when?"

He dipped round and down into his coat-tail pocket, as he spoke, pulled out the scent bracelet, and laid it on the table before him.