"Yes, sir?"
"You might explain to the constable on duty in the neighbourhood--if he comes to inquire, that is--the cause of the disturbance, and that Scotland Yard is in charge and Superintendent Narkom already on the premises. That"s all, thank you. You may close the door and take your colleagues below. Hullo! our prisoner seems to be subsiding into something akin to gibbering idiocy, Mr. Trent. Fright has turned his brain, apparently. Let us make use of the respite from his shrieks. You will, of course, wish to hear how I got on the track of the man, and what were the clues which led up to the solving of the affair. Well, you shall. Sit down, and while we are waiting for the darkness to come I"ll give you the complete explanation."
CHAPTER x.x.xVIII
Colliver, who had now sunk into a state of babbling incoherence, lay on his face in the wreck of the tableau, rolling his head from side to side and clasping and unclasping his manacled hands.
Trent turned his back upon the unpleasant sight and, placing three chairs at the opposite end of the room, dropped into one and lifted an eager countenance to Cleek.
"Tell me first of all," he asked, "how under heaven you came to suspect how the disappearance of the boy was managed? It seems like magic, to me. When in the world did you get the first clue to it, Mr. Cleek?"
"Never until I heard of those two women looking into this room and seeing the vase of pink roses standing on a spindle-legged table in the centre of it," he replied. "You see, even in the old days when I had the other case in hand and was searching for a clue to Colliver"s disappearance, never had any one mentioned the name of Loti to me. I knew, of course, that you made wax figures here, but I never heard until this afternoon that Loti was the man who was employed to model them. I also knew about the existence of the gla.s.s-room and its position, for I had been at the pains of inspecting it from the outside. That came about in this way: Just before Miss Larue closed up the case of James Colliver I had obtained the first actual clue to his movements after he left Mr.
Trent, senior, and came out of the office.
"That clue came from the door porter, Felix Murchison. What careful "pumping" got out of him was that when James Colliver left the office he had asked him, Murchison, which was the way to the place where they made the waxworks, as he"d heard that they were making a head of Miss Larue to be used in the execution scene of Catharine Howard, and he"d like to have a look at it. Murchison said that he told him the figures were made in a gla.s.s-room on the top of the house, and directed him how to reach it. He went up the stairs, and that was the last that was seen of him.
"Naturally when I heard that I thought I"d like to see the exterior of the building to ascertain if there was any opening, door or window, by which he could have left the upper floor without coming down the main staircase. That led me to beg permission of the people in the house across the pa.s.sage there to look from one of the side windows, and so gave me my first view of the gla.s.s-room.
What I saw was exactly what Mrs. Sherman and her daughter saw yesterday--namely, that spick and span room with the table in the centre and the vase of pink roses standing on it.
"Need I go further than to say that when I heard of those women seeing a room that was badly littered a few minutes before suddenly become a tidy one with a table and a vase of roses standing in the middle of it, without anybody having come into the place for the purpose of making the change, I instantly remembered my own experience and suspected a painted blind?
"When I entered this room to-day and saw the peculiar position of that blind I became almost certain I had hit upon the truth, and sent Mr. Narkom to the house across the way to test it. That"s why I pulled the blind down. Why I stumbled and nearly fell into the tableau was because I had a faint suspicion of the horrible truth when I noticed how abominably thick the neck, hands, and ankles of that "dead soldier" were; and I wanted to test the truth or falseness of the "straw stuffing" a.s.sertion by actual touch, particularly as I felt sure that the presence of all these strongly scented flowers was for the purpose of covering less agreeable odours should the heat of the weather cause decomposition to set in before he could dispose of the body. I don"t think he ever was mad enough to intend letting the thing remain a part of the tableau. I fancy he would have found an excuse to get it out somehow and to make away with it entirely, as, no doubt, he did with the body of Loti.
"What"s that, Mr. Narkom? No, I don"t think that Murchison had any actual hand in the crime or really knew the ident.i.ty of the man. I fancy he must have gone up to tell the fict.i.tious Loti that he knew James Colliver had entered that gla.s.s-room and never come out of it, and Colliver, of course, had to shut his mouth by buying him off and sending him out of the country. That is why he took yet another disguise and p.a.w.ned the jewels. He had to get the money some way.
As for the rest, I imagine that when Colliver went up to the room to see that wax head, and Loti caught sight of him, the old Italian jumped on him like a mad tiger; and, seeing that it was Loti"s life or his own, Colliver throttled him. When that was done, the necessity for disposing of the body arose, and the imposture was the actual outcome of a desire to save his own neck. That"s all, I think, Mr.
Narkom; so you may revise your "notes" and mark down the Colliver case as "solved" at last and the mystery of it cleared up after all."
Three hours of patient waiting had pa.s.sed and gone. The darkness had fallen, the streets were still, save for the faint hum of life coming from districts afar, and the time for action had come at last.
Cleek rose and put on his hat.
"I think we may safely venture to remove our prisoner now, Mr.
Narkom," he said, "and if you will slip out the back way and get Lennard to bring the limousine around to the head of that narrow alley----"
"They"re there already, dear chap. I stationed Lennard there when I went across to look into that business about the painted blind. It seemed the least conspicuous place for him to wait."
"Excellent! Then, if you will run on ahead and have the door of it open for me and everything ready so that we may whisk him in and be off like a shot, and Mr. Trent will let one of these good chaps here run down to the man"s room and fetch him a hat, I"ll attend to his removal."
"Here"s one here, sir, that"ll do at a pinch and save time,"
suggested one of the men, picking up a cavalryman"s hat from the wreck of the ruined tableau and dusting it by slapping it against his thigh. "I don"t think he"ll resist much, sir; he seems to have gone clear off his biscuit and not to know enough for that; but if you"d like me and my mate to lend a hand----"
"No, thanks; I shall be able to manage him myself, I fancy," said Cleek, serenely. "Get him on his feet, please. That"s the business!
Now then, Mr. Narkom nip off; I"m following."
Mr. Narkom "nipped off" without an instant"s delay, and two minutes later saw him slipping out through the rear door of the building with Cleek and the jabbering, unresisting prisoner at the bottom of the last flight of stairs not twenty yards behind.
But the pa.s.sage of the next half minute saw something of more moment still; for, as Narkom ran on tiptoe up the dim alley to the waiting limousine standing at its western end, and unlatching the vehicle"s door, swung it open to be ready for Cleek, out of the stillness there roared suddenly the shrill note of a dog-whistle, and all in a moment there was--mischief.
A crowd of quick-moving Apache figures sprang up from sheltering doors and, scudding past him, headed full tilt down the narrow alley, calling out as they ran that piercing "La, la, loi!" which is the war cry of their kind.
A blind rage--all the more maddening in that it was impotent, since he had neither weapon to defend nor the power to slay--swept down upon the superintendent as he realized the import of that mad rush, and, ducking down his head, he bolted after them, into the thick of them--punching, banging, slogging, shouting, swearing--an incarnate Pa.s.sion, the Epitome of Man"s love for Man--a little fat Fury that was all a whirl of flying fists as it swept onward and that seemed to go absolutely insane at what he looked up the alley and saw.
"Get back, Cleek! Get back, for G.o.d"s sake!" he yelled, in a very panic of fear and dismay; then cleft his way with beating arms and kicking feet through the hampering crowd, arrowed out of its midst, and bore down upon the cavalry-hatted figure that had stepped out of the dark doorway of Trent & Son"s building and was standing flattened against the rear wall of it.
He reached out his hand and made a blind clutch at it, and, while he was yet far out of reaching distance of it, faced round and made a wild effort to cover it with his short, fat body and his arms outflung, like a crucifix, and looked at the Apaches and swore without one thought of being profane.
"Me, you d.a.m.ned devils! Me, me, not him! Not him, d.a.m.n you! d.a.m.n you!
d.a.m.n you!" he cried, hoa.r.s.e-throated and--said no more!
The scuttling crowd came up with him, broke about him, swept past him. A loud explosion sounded; a flare of light broke full against the cavalry hat; a stifling odour of picric acid filled the air and gripped the throat, and with its coming, man and hat slid down the wall and dropped at its foot a crumpled heap that never in this world would stand erect again.
"Killed! Killed!" half-cried, half-groaned the superintendent, staggering a bit as the crowd flew on up the alley and vanished around the corner of the street into which it merged. "Oh, my G.o.d!
After all my care; after all my love for him! Killed like a dog. Oh, Cleek! Oh, Cleek! The dearest friend--the finest pal--the greatest detective genius of the age!" And then, swinging his arm up and across his eyes and holding it there, made a queer choking sound behind the sheltering crook of it.
But of a sudden a voice spoke up from the darkness of the open door near by and said quietly:
"That"s the finest compliment I ever had paid me in all my life, Mr.
Narkom. Don"t worry over me, dear friend; I"m still able to sit up and take nourishment. The Apaches have saved the public executioner a morning"s work. Colliver has parted with his brains forever; and may G.o.d have mercy on his soul!"
"Cleek!" Mr. Narkom scarcely knew his own voice, such a screaming thing it was. "Cleek, dear chap, is it you?"
"To be sure. Come inside here if you doubt it. Come quickly; there"s a crowd of quite a different sort coming: the report of that bomb has aroused the neighbourhood; and I have quite enough of crowds for one evening, thank you."
Narkom was inside the building before you could have said Jack Robinson, "pump-handling" Cleek with all his might and generally deporting himself like a man gone daft.
"I thought they"d finished you! I thought they"d "done you in." It was the Apache, you know--and that infernal scoundrel Waldemar: he must have found out somehow," he said excitedly. "But we"ve got it on him at last, Cleek: he"s come within the law"s reach after all."
"To be sure; but I doubt if the law will be able to find him, Mr.
Narkom. He will have left the country before the trap was actually sprung, believe me; or failing that, will be well on his way out of it."
"But perhaps not absolutely out of it, dear chap. There are the ports, you know; and so long as he is on English soil----Come and see! Come and see! We may be able to head him off. Let"s get out by way of the front of the building, Cleek, and if I can once get to the telegraph and wire to the coast--and he hasn"t yet sailed----Come on! come on! Or no: wait a moment. That"s a constable out there, asking for information. I"ll nip out and let him know that the Yard"s on the case and give him a few orders about reporting it.
Wait for me at the front door, old chap. With you in a winking."
He stepped out into the alley as he spoke and mingled with the gathering crowd.
But Cleek did not stir. The alley was no longer dark for, with the gathering of the crowd, lights had come and he stood for many minutes staring into it and breathing hard and the colour draining slowly out of his face until it was like a thing of wax.
Outside in the narrow alley the gathering of curious ones which the sound of the explosion and the sight of a running policeman had drawn to the place was every moment thickening, and with the latest addition to it there had come hurrying into the narrow s.p.a.ce a morbid-minded newsboy with the customary bulletin sheet pinned over his chest.
"The _Evening News_! Six o"clock edition!" that bulletin was headed, and under that heading there was set forth in big black type:
END OF THE MAURAVANIAN REVOLUTION FALL OF THE CAPITAL FLIGHT OF THE DEPOSED KING OVERWHELMING SUCCESS OF IRMA"S TROOPS.
"Mr. Narkom," said Cleek, when at the end of ten minutes the superintendent came bustling back, hot and eager to begin the effort to head off Count Waldemar. "Mr. Narkom, dear friend, the days of trouble and distress are over and the good old times you have so often sighed for have come back. Look at that newsboy"s bulletin. Waldemar is too late in all things and--we have seen the last of him forever."