The Riddle of the Night Part 23

Afterward, you and I can meet again here. And you, Dollops, listen closely to what I say. The chances are that some one, either man or woman, will secretly visit that ruin to-night. Keep yourself well hidden and your eyes wide open. If a woman comes, slip away from the place as quietly as you can, come round to the shrubbery near the front entrance to the house, and hoot like an owl three times in succession; then lie low until I come out and join you. But if, on the other hand, it should be a man who puts in an appearance--here, lay hold of this pair of handcuffs--look sharp! At all costs, at any hazard, get those things on him and then blow your police whistle as a signal to me. I'll be with you like a shot. Now, then, cut along with you. Show him the way, Miss Lorne, and be as quiet as you can in your movements, both of you."

"Mice'll be fools to us, sir," whispered Dollops.

Cleek waited a minute to let them get well on their way, then stooped in the darkness, crept to the wall door, opened it cautiously, and went down on all-fours upon the strip of gra.s.s and the row of furze bushes that flanked that wall upon the outer side and made a narrow black alley between it and the crowded mulberry trees.

The moon had ridden farther than ever into the depths of the thick, slow-moving clouds, and the darkness was almost opaque. To the left the great Common stretched out, a thing of gloom and shadows, blotted here and there with deeper black where the furze clumps were thickest or the full-leaved tree reached up above the skyline. On the right, the blank wall rose, flat, smooth as your hand, so tall it shut out even the lights in the windows of the Grange; and between these lay Mulberry Lane, a black funnel leading on to deeper darkness and the shapelessness of crowded trees.

In the shadows of that narrow alley made by the wall and the furze bushes Cleek crouched a moment and listened before he ventured to move another inch. Not a sound, not the merest ghost of a sound. If the woman were in the immediate neighbourhood, she was keeping extremely quiet; therefore it behoved him to progress with infinite caution. Inch by inch, on hands and knees, he moved up that narrow alley, stopping every now and then to p.r.i.c.k up his ears and listen breathlessly. But upon every occasion he found the stillness yet unbroken and no sign or sound of breathing life anywhere about him.

Two minutes pa.s.sed--three--five--half a dozen, and still all was as it had been in the beginning. By this time this slow, cautious creeping had carried him over two thirds of the distance, and he was now within ten or eleven feet of the hidden gate; and still no sound or sign of the woman's return. Indeed, no sound of any sort until, with one hand outstretched and one knee lifted to edge forward yet a trifle more, he paused abruptly, sucked in his breath, and huddled softly down, becoming but a mere dark heap on the damp, dark gra.s.s.

A sound had come at last! The unmistakable sound of some one moving cautiously through close-pressing branches and crowded leaves.

It was so faint a thing that ears less keen than his might not have detected it. Yet, at the first rustle of the first stirred leaf he caught the hiss of it and knew it was not the woman that made it; for the p.r.i.c.kly foliage of furze makes no rustling sound when a pa.s.sing body brushes it, and there was nothing upon the outer side of the wall _but_ furze that was low enough to be brushed in pa.s.sing.

Clearly, then, the sound was from the other side of the wall, from within the grounds of the Grange! Some one was coming to keep the tryst--some one who, evidently, had been delayed past an agreed time, otherwise the woman would not have made all those anxious pilgrimages to the door and been so upset when she found it still locked and n.o.body there to meet her.

Well, this was a stroke of good fortune at all events; for if by any chance the woman did not return there would at least be the satisfaction of discovering----A sound interrupted: a cat's mew to the life. And from the shadow of a thick furze hedge on the Common side of the lane it was answered.

"Yes, I am here," a shrill, eager voice called out in a sharp, keen whisper. "Oh, come quickly or I shall go insane!"

Almost instantly there was a rustle of silken garments, a patter of footsteps, the swift moving of a figure across the lonely lane, followed by the rattle and click of a key in a spring lock, the creak of an in-swung gate moving upon its hinges, and with these things the sound of an excited man whispering warningly, "Sh-h-h!" as the woman swept down upon him in a state bordering on absolute hysteria.

"Oh, if you could but know what agonies I have suffered, what horrors of suspense I have endured!" she said in a wailing sort of whisper, "I feared that you might not be able to come, after I have risked so much to be here; but when I heard the cat's mew, I wonder that I did not scream."

And again the man's whispered "Sh-h-h!" sounded, but fuller than ever of excitement and fear.

But Cleek scarcely heard it. Other and more startling things were claiming his thoughts. A scent of violets was in his nostrils; a sting of bitter recollection was in his memory. What was it the dying Common keeper had said? "All shiny pale green satin, sir, with sparklin' things on her bosom, and smellin' like a field of voylits in the month of May!"

He did not need Ailsa Lorne to point her out to him after this. He knew without anybody telling him; knew in that first moment, as surely as he ever lived to know in moments yet to come, that this veiled and night-hidden woman who stood there by the garden door keeping tryst with a man was she who had been out on the Common last night: Sir Philip Clavering's wife!

And the man she was meeting, this crafty fellow who hung back in the shadow of the solid gate, who and what was he? What part was his in this grim riddle of death?

It was Lady Clavering herself who gave the answer.

"Oh, it is so easy to say that," she went on, answering his warning "Sh-h-h" in a whisper that was shrill with agony and despair, "but the dread of shrieking will be on me forever after this, the horrible dread that if I do not cry out in my waking moments I may unconsciously do so in my sleeping ones. I know it was mad of me to do this thing, to take this dreadful risk in coming here; but I couldn't sleep until I saw you, until I had told you that I know! I think I knew it yesterday; I think I foresaw it when you wrote and warned me, and if I had not been a coward, if fate had not sent him to Clavering Close last night and let me see that it was written he should come back into my life again----"

Her voice snapped off and failed her for an instant, sinking down to a dull, whimpering sound like the wail of an animal that is beaten; then it came back to her and she spoke again.

"I knew you would kill him, I knew that you would!" she said in that horrible, excited whisper. "I felt it in my soul the moment he looked up and recognized me, and I knew what I--what you--had to dread. It was that that drove me out on the Common. I wanted to find you; I wanted to stop you. But it was too late, too late! I know that you did it for my sake as much as for your own, but the thought of the thing, the _thought_ of it! If anything can palliate that, if G.o.d can in any way excuse it, it will be that you got the letters; that you tore them up, burnt them, did anything in the world but let them fall into that woman Margot's hands! Oh, did you? I cannot sleep until I know. For if you did not----"

Here her voice snapped again, but for quite another reason this time, a reason which made Cleek groan inwardly.

Far down at the other end of the dark alley where he lay breathlessly listening, a faint rustling sound had suddenly risen--the sound of some one creeping gently toward him. He knew and understood what was happening, what an unkindly blow fate had dealt him. Ailsa was returning. She had taken his expression, "Afterward you and I can meet here again," to mean after she had conducted Dollops to the ruin, not after Cleek's own work was done; and lo! here she was returning at this inopportune moment. She was creeping along on tiptoe, it was true, and moving as stealthily and as silently as she knew how, but in that utter stillness, with silk skirts that brushed the wall as she advanced----

The end came abruptly. There was just one second of breathless listening, then without a word the two people at the open doorway parted. Lady Clavering jumped back, darted across the lane, and vanished in the blackness of the Common; the wall door closed, the spring lock clicked, and the sound of a man's running echoed faintly from the other side. No time this for craft and finesse. Here was a call for action, a demand for muscle, not brain. If that man was a member of this household, if fleet running could do it, if any man who should be under that roof was _not_ there----

Cleek was on his feet like a flash. He scudded down the lane openly, he ducked into the door and vanished into the gardens without so much as a word to Ailsa, he struck through the plantation and made a short cut for the lawn and the front door, and with jaw squared and teeth shut, ran and ran and ran.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

THE MOUSETRAP

Cleek covered the distance between the wall angle and the door of the Grange in a fraction over a minute, and he had neither heard any one nor seen any one on the way. He went up the steps two at a time, and, swinging into the hallway, made hot foot for the dining-room. An inward push on the door and all that lay beyond it was in view.

The lights were still burning, the decanter and the gla.s.ses still _en evidence_, and, what was still more to the point, there lay Mr. Harry Raynor with his arms sprawled out over the tablecloth and his head between them, snoring away in a semi-drunken stupor, with his mouth wide open and his flushed face a little less attractive in slumber than it was in wakefulness.

Not he, then!

Cleek dashed out of the room and flew upstairs to Lord St. Ulmer's room.

No time for craft and cunning this. At whatever risk, at whatever cost, he must a.s.sure himself of where _that_ man was at this particular moment; and, even if he had to break down the door to get in---- The possibility ceased to exist while it was yet taking shape in his mind.

For he had reached the second landing, had come within three feet of Lord St. Ulmer's room, when he heard a voice from within it say, "Then if there is nothing more, your lordship, allow me to thank your lordship and to say good-night"--and was in time to see the door open and Johnston, the butler, come out. More than that, to look past him and see the figure of a man lying in bed with his back to the door, his face to the wall, and one pajama-clad arm lying outside the bedclothing.

Not St. Ulmer either, eh? Then who the d.i.c.kens----He turned and made a bolt for the staircase again.

"Anything I can get you, Mr. Barch?" inquired Johnston. "I've just returned from town, sir, so if there's anything Hamer has neglected to do in my absence----"

"No, thanks, don't want anything!" flung back Cleek, not waiting for him to finish; and then cut downstairs again in such hot haste that his feet beat an audible tattoo upon the padded steps and gave such evidence of excitement that he was not at all surprised when the key of the library click-clacked sharply, the door opened, and General Raynor appeared.

"What's this? What's the meaning of all this confounded hubbub when I expressly said"--he began--and then, looking up and seeing Cleek, stopped short and changed his tone. "Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Barch; I didn't know it was you! Is there anything wrong?"

"No, General," replied Cleek. "Sorry if I disturbed you. Just looking for----" Then he, too, stopped short and changed his tone. For of a sudden his ear had caught the shrilling note of a distant police whistle, and excitement swayed him.

"Dollops, by Jupiter!" he cried unthinkingly. "Got him! Got him, the little brick!" and without another word he faced about, ran down the hall, and pelted off through the grounds in the direction of the ruin.

And all the time the police whistle was shrilling, and Dollops's voice was sounding, and the darkness was full of scuffling sounds. For the noise of the whistle had disturbed the servants, and Cleek was hard put to it to get to the scene of the uproar before them. He did, however; but they were close upon his heels and as excited as he when, upon nearing the ruin, they came upon two struggling figures linked together and careering about like a couple of fighting tomcats.

"Here yer are, gov'ner; ketched him foul, the rotter," sang out Dollops as his master came scudding up with all that troop of servants pounding along in his wake. "Look! See!"

Then an electric torch clicked, and lo, there he was, with one end of a pair of handcuffs snapped on his own wrist and the other locked fast upon that of a distinguished-looking man in a spring overcoat and evening clothes.

A stranger to Cleek this man, but not to the servants of Wuthering Grange; and it came as a shock when he heard them speak his name.

It was Sir Philip Clavering.

The man's ident.i.ty had no sooner been made known than he broke forth with a storm of indignant protest.

"What is the meaning of this outrage, and who is this young person?" he demanded with heat. "As some of you have good enough eyes to recognize me, perhaps you will have good enough wits to go for your master and let me get to the bottom of this extraordinary proceeding as soon as possible. I should like to know what on earth this means. Ah, Raynor, is that you?" he added, as he caught sight of the General forcing his way to the front. "Glad you've put in an appearance. Perhaps you can throw some light upon this affair. Who's this fellow?" twitching his head toward Dollops. "What's he doing here? And what is the meaning of this astonishing business, if you please?"

"Good heavens above, how do you expect I am going to know? Never saw him in all my life," exclaimed the General in bewilderment. "Look here, young man, what's the meaning of this? Who are you? What are you doing in this place? Speak up.

"Name's Dollops," replied that youth serenely. "Business: Scotland Yard.

Lay: Doin' wot I'm told by my gov'ner. Boss: Mr. 'Amilton Cleek, _Es_-quire. All other questions I refers to him."