CHAPTER IV

At ten to the tick on the following night, he had said, and at ten to the tick he was there – the old red limousine whirling him up to the door in company with Mr. Narkom, there to be admitted by Miss Valmond’s brother.

“My dear Mr. Headland, I have been on thorns ever since I heard,” said he. “I hope and pray it is right, this assistance we are giving. But tell me, please – have you succeeded in your plans? Are you sure they will not fail?”

“To both questions, yes, Mr. Valmond. We’ll have our man to-night. Now, if you please, where is your sister?”

“Upstairs – in her own room – with my mother. We tried to get the mater to bed, but she is very fractious to-night and will not let Rose out of her sight for a single instant. But she will not hamper your plans, I’m sure. Come quickly, please – this way.” Here he led them on and up until they stood in Miss Valmond’s bedroom and in Miss Valmond’s presence again. She was there by the window, her imbecile mother sitting at her feet with her face in her daughter’s lap, that daughter’s solicitous hand gently stroking her tumbled hair, and no light but that of the moon through the broad window illuminating the hushed and stately room.

“I keep my word, you see, Miss Valmond,” said Cleek, as he entered. “And in five minutes’ time if you watch from that window you all shall see a thing that will amaze you.”

“You have run the wretched man down, then, Mr. Headland?”

“Yes – to the last ditch, to the wall itself,” he answered, making room for her brother to get by him and make a place for himself at the window. “Oh, it’s a pretty little game he’s been playing, that gentleman, and it dates back twenty years ago when he was kicked out of his regiment in Ceylon.”

“In Ceylon! I – er – God bless my soul, was he ever in Ceylon, Mr. Headland?”

“Yes, Mr. Valmond, he was. It was at a time when there was what you might call a sapphire fever raging there, and precious stones were being unearthed in every unheard-of quarter. He got the fever with the rest, but he hadn’t much money, so when he fell in with a lot of fellows who had heard of a Cingalese, one Bareva Singh, who had a reef to sell in the Saffragam district, they made a pool between them and bought the blessed thing, calling it after the man they had purchased it from, the Bareva Reef, setting out like a party of donkeys to mine it for themselves, and expecting to pull out sapphires by the bucketful.”

“Dear me, dear me, how very extraordinary! Of course they didn’t? Or – did they?”

“No, they didn’t. A month’s work convinced them that the ground was as empty of treasure as an eggshell, so they abandoned it, separated, and went their several ways. A few months ago, however, it was discovered that if they had had the implements to mine deeper, their dream would have been realized, for the reef was a perfect bed of sapphires – and eight men held an equal share in it. The scheme, then, was to get rid of these men, secretly, one by one; for one – perhaps two men – to get the deeds held by the others; to pretend that they had been purchased from the original owners, and to prevent by murder those original owners from – ”

He stopped suddenly and switched round. Miss Valmond had risen and so had her mother. He was on the pair of them like a leaping cat; there was a sharp click-click, a snarl, and a scream, and one end of a handcuff was on the wrist of each.

“Got you, Miss Rosie Edgburn! Got you, Señor Juan Alvarez!” he rapped out sharply; then in a louder tone, as the Reverend Horace made a bolt for the door: “Stop him, nab him, Mr. Narkom! Quick! Played sir, played. Come in, Petrie; come in, Hammond. Gentlemen, here they are, all three of them: Lieutenant Eric Edgburn, his daughter Rose, and Señor Juan Alvarez, the three brute beasts who sent five men to their death for the sake of a lode of sapphires and the devil’s lust for gain!”

“It’s a lie!” flung out the girl who had been known as Rose Valmond.

“Oh, no, it’s not, you vixen! You loathsome creature that prostituted holy things and made a shield of religion to carry on a vampire’s deeds. Look here, you beast of blasphemy: I know the secret of this,” he said, and walked over and laid his hand on the crucifix at the head of the bed. “Petrie! round into the oratory with you. There’s a nob at the side of the prayer desk – press it when I shout. Oh, no, Miss Edgburn; no, I shan’t dance circles nor put my fingers into my nose, nor bite the dust and die. Look how I dare it all. Now Petrie, now!”

And lo! as he spoke, out of the nostrils of the figure on the cross there rushed downward two streams of white vapour which beat upon the pillows and upon him, smothering both in white dust.

“Face powder, Miss Edgburn, only face powder from your own little case over there,” he said. “I removed the devil’s dust last night when I was in this room alone.”

She made him no reply – only, like a cornered wretch, screamed out and fainted.

“Mr. Narkom, you have seen the method of administering the thing which caused the death of those five men; it is now only fair that you should know what that thing was,” he said, turning to the superintendent. “It is known by two names – Devil’s Dust and Dust of Death, and both suit it well. It is the fine, feathery powder that grows on the young shoots of the bamboo tree – a favourite method of secret killing with the natives of the Malay Peninsula and those of Madagascar, the Philippines and Ceylon. When blown into the nostrils of a living creature it produces first an awful agony of suffocation, a feeling as though the brain is coming down and exuding from the nostrils, then delirium, during which the victim invariably falls on his face and bites the earth; then comes death. Death without a trace, my friend, for the hellish dust all but evaporates, and the slight sediment that remains is carried out of the system by the spasm of enteric it produces. That is the riddle’s solution. As for the rest, those men were lured here by letters – from Alvarez – telling them of the reef’s great fortune, of the necessity for coming at once and bringing their deeds with them, and impressing upon them the possibility of being defrauded if they breathed one word to a mortal soul about their leaving or why. They came, they were invited to spend the night and to sleep upon that accursed bed, and – the devil’s dust did the rest. I traced that out through poor Jim Peabody’s sock. It was one of the blue yarn kind that are given to the inmates of workhouses. I traced him through that; and the others through the photographs. Each had been known to have received a letter from London, and each had in turn vanished without a word. Poor chaps! Poor unhappy chaps! Let us hope, dear friend, that they have found ‘the Place of Sapphires’ after all.”

CHAPTER V

“How did I come to suspect the girl?” said Cleek, answering Narkom’s query, as they swung off through the darkness in the red limousine, leaving Edgburn and his confederates in the hands of the police. “Well, as a matter of fact, I did not suspect her at all, in the beginning – her saintly reputation saved her from any such thing as that. It was only when her father came in that I knew. And later, I knew even better – when I saw that pretended imbecile sitting there in that room; for the blundering fool had been ass enough to kick off his slippers and sit there in his stocking feet, and I spotted the Alvarez foot on the instant. Still, I didn’t know but what the girl herself might be an innocent victim – a sort of dove in a vulture’s nest – and it was not until I found that scrap of wood from a sharpened lead pencil that I began to doubt her. It was only when I promised that Barrington-Edwards should be trapped, that I actually knew. The light that flamed in her eyes in spite of her at that would have made an idiot understand. What’s that? What should I suspect from the finding of that scrap of pencil? My dear Mr. Narkom, carry your mind back to that moment when I found the stain on poor Jim Peabody’s thumb, and then examined the blade of his pocket knife. The marks on the latter showed clearly that the man had sharpened a pencil with it – and, of course, with the point of that pencil against the top of his thumb. By the peculiar bronze-like shine of the streaks, and the small particles of dust adhering to the knife blade, I felt persuaded that the pencil was an indelible one – in short, one of those which write a faint, blackish-lilac hue which, on the application of moisture, turns to a vivid and indelible purple. The moisture induced by the act of thrusting his forefingers up his nostrils to allay the horrible sensation of the brain descending, which that hellish powder produces, together with the perspiration which comes with intense agony, had made such a change in the smears his thumb and forefinger bore, and left no room for doubt that at the time he was smitten he had either just begun or just concluded writing something with an indelible pencil which he had but recently sharpened. Poor wretch! he of all the lot had some one belonging to him that was still living – his poor old mother. It is very fair to suppose that, finding the Alvarez place so lavishly furnished, and having hopes that great riches were yet to be his, he sat down on that bed and began to write a few lines in his illiterate way to that mother before wholly undressing and getting between the sheets. The mark on his palm is a clear proof that when the powder suddenly descended upon him he involuntarily closed his hand on that letter and the perspiration transferred to his flesh the shape of the scrawl upon which it rested. Pardon? How did I know through that scrawl that I was really on the track, and that it was the Bareva Reef that was at the bottom of the whole game? My dear Mr. Narkom, I won’t insult your intelligence by explaining that. All you have to do is to turn that tracing upside down and look through it – or at it in a mirror – and you’ll have the answer for yourself. What’s that? The parcel the girl gave Edgburn to carry out on the pretext of taking it to an orphanage? Oh, that was how they were slowly getting rid of the victims’ clothes. Cutting them up into little pieces and throwing them into the river, I suppose, or if not – ”

He stopped suddenly, his ear caught by a warning sound; then turned in his seat and glanced through the little window at the back of the limousine.

“I thought as much,” he said, half aloud; then leaned forward, caught up the pipe of the speaking tube, and signalled Lennard. “Look sharp – taxi following us!” he said. “Put on a sudden spurt – that chap will increase speed to keep pace with us – then pull up sharp and let the other fellow’s impetus carry him by before he can help himself. Out with the light, Mr. Narkom – out with it quick!”

Both Lennard and his master followed instructions. Of a sudden the lights flicked out, the car leapt forward with a bound, then pulled up with a jerk that shook it from end to end. In that moment the taxi in the rear whizzed by them, and Narkom, leaning forward to look as it flashed past, saw seated within it the figure of Count Waldemar of Mauravania.

“By James! Did you see that, Cleek?” he cried, and switched round and made a grab for Cleek’s arm.

But Cleek was not there. His seat was empty, and the door beside it was swinging ajar.

“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” exclaimed the superintendent, fairly carried out of himself – for, even in his old Vanishing Cracksman’s days, when he had slipped the leash and eluded the police so often, the man had not made a more adroit, more silent, more successful getaway than this. “Of all the astonishing – ! Gad, an eel’s a fool to him for slipping out of tight places. When did he go, I wonder, and where?”

Never very strong on matters of detail, here curiosity tricked him into absolute indiscretion. Sliding along the seat to the swinging door he thrust it open and leaned out into the darkness, for a purpose so evident that he who ran might read. That one who ran did, he had good reason to understand in the next instant, for, of a sudden, the taxi in advance checked its wild flight, swung round with a noisy scroo-op, and pelted back until the two vehicles stood cheek by jowl, so to speak, and the glare of its headlights was pouring full force upon Mr. Narkom and into the interior of the red limousine.

“Here! Dash your infernal impudence,” began he, blinking up at the driver through a glare which prevented him seeing that the taxicab’s leather blinds had been discreetly pulled down, and its interior rendered quite invisible; but before he could add so much as another word to his protest the chauffeur’s voice broke in with a blandness and an accent which told its own story.

“Dix mille pardons, m’sieur,” it commenced, then pulled itself up as if the owner of it had suddenly recollected himself – and added abruptly in a farcical attempt to imitate the jargon of the fast-disappearing London cabby. “Keep of the ’air on, ole coq! Only wantin’ to arsk of the question civile. Lost my bloomin’ way. Put a cove on to the short cut to the ’Igh Street will yer, like a blessed Christian? I dunno where I are.”

Mr. Narkom was not suffered to make reply. Before he had more than grasped the fact that the speaker was undeniably a Frenchman, Lennard – out of the range of that dazzling light – had made the discovery that he was yet more undeniably a Frenchman of that class from which the Apaches are recruited, and stepped into the breach with astonishing adroitness.

“Oh, that’s the trouble, is it?” he interposed. “My hat! Why, of course we’ll put you on the way. Wot’s more, we’ll take you along and show you – won’t we, guv’ner, eh? – so as you won’t go astray till you gets there. ’Eads in and door shut, Superintendent,” bringing the limousine around until it pointed in the same direction as the taxicab. “Now then, straight ahead, and foller yer nose, Jules; we’ll be rubbin’ shoulders with you the whole blessed way. And as the Dook of Wellington said to Napoleon Bonaparte, ‘None of your larks, you blighter – you’re a-comin’ along with me!’”

That he was, was a condition of affairs so inevitable that the chauffeur made no attempt to evade it; merely put on speed and headed straight for the distant High Street for the purpose of getting rid of his escort as soon as possible; and Lennard, putting on speed, likewise, and keeping pace with him, ran him neck and neck, until the heath was left far and away behind, the darkness gave place to a glitter of street lamps, the lonely roads to populous thoroughfares, and the way was left clear for Cleek to get off unfollowed and unmolested.