"Quite true. But you are going to have it--presently. I know where it is!"
"Mr. Cleek!"
"Gently, gently, my friends. Don"t go quite off your heads with excitement. I repeat, I know where it is. I have found it and----Mr.
Narkom! Look sharp! A chair for Lady Leake--she"s tottering. Steady, steady, your ladyship; it will only complicate matters to lose a grip on yourself now; and you have kept up so brave a front all through, it would be a pity to break down at the end."
"I am not breaking down. I am quite all right. Please go on, Mr.
Cleek--please do. I can stand anything better than this. Are you sure you have found it? Are you _sure?_"
"Absolutely. I have had a nice little talk with old Jennifer, and a very satisfactory visit to Master Bevis Leake"s interesting "pirates" cave" and----Gently, gently, Sir Mawson; gently, all of you. Don"t jump to conclusions too quickly. No, your ladyship, I did not find the necklace in that cave, and for the simple reason that it is not and never has been there--in short, neither your son Bevis nor the servant, Jennifer, has the least idea in the world _where_ it is. I have, however, and if in return for handing it over to him, Sir Mawson will give me his promise to take that boy, Henry, back and give him another chance, he shall have it in his hands ten seconds afterward."
"I promise! I promise! I promise!" broke in Sir Mawson, almost shouting in his excitement. "I give you my word, Mr. Cleek, I give you my solemn oath."
"Right you are," said Cleek in reply. Then he twitched forward a chair, stepped on the seat of it, reached up into the midst of the chandelier"s glittering cut-gla.s.s l.u.s.tres, snapped something out from their sparkling festoons, and added serenely, "Favour for favour: there you are, then!" as he dropped the Ladder of Light into Sir Mawson"s hands.
And all in a moment, what with Lady Leake laughing and crying at one and the same time, her liege lord acting pretty much as if he had suddenly gone off his head, and Mr. Maverick Narkom chiming in and a.s.serting several times over that he"d be jiggered, there was the d.i.c.kens and all to pay in the way of excitement.
"Up in the chandelier!" exclaimed Lady Leake when matters had settled down a bit. "Up there, where it might have remained unnoticed for months, so like is it to the strings of l.u.s.tres. But how? But when?
Oh, Mr. Cleek, who in the world put it there? And why?"
"Jennifer," he made answer. "No, not for any evil purpose, your ladyship. He doesn"t know even yet that it was there, or that he ever in all his life held a thing so valuable in his hands. All that he does know in connection with it is that while he was cleaning those l.u.s.tres out there in the hallway yesterday afternoon between four and five o"clock your son Bevis, out on one of his "treasure raids," paid him a visit, and that long after, when the old fellow came to replace the l.u.s.tres on the chandelier, he discovered that one string was missing.
""I knowed the precious little rascal had took it, sir, of course,"
was the way he put it in explaining the matter to me; "and I felt sure I"d be certain to find it in his pirates" cave. But Lord bless you, it turned out as he hadn"t took it there at all, as I found out a goodish bit afterward, when her ladyship comes down to the landing at the top of the first flight of stairs, calls me up to give me the lint for Miss Eastman, and then gives a jump and a cry, like she"d just recollected something, and runs back upstairs as fast as she could fly. For when I looks down, there was the missing string of l.u.s.tres lying on the landing right where her ladyship had been standing, and where he, little rascal, had went and hid it from me. So I picks it up and puts it back in its place on the chandelier just as soon as I"d taken the lint to Miss Eastman like her ladyship told me."
"In that, Lady Leake, lies the whole story of how it came to be where you saw me find it. Jennifer is still under the impression that what he picked up on that landing was nothing more than the string of twelve cut-gla.s.s l.u.s.tres joined together by links of bra.s.s wire which is at this moment hanging among the "treasures" in your little son"s pirates" cave."
"On the landing? Lying on the landing, do you say, Mr. Cleek?"
exclaimed her ladyship. "But heavens above, how could the necklace ever have got there? n.o.body could by any possibility have entered the boudoir after I left it to run down to the landing with the lint.
You saw for yourself how utterly impossible such a thing as that would be."
"To be sure," he admitted. "It was the absolute certainty that n.o.body in the world could have actually forced the key to the solution upon me. Since it was possible for only one solitary person to have entered and left that room since Sir Mawson placed the necklace in your charge, clearly then that person was the one who carried it out. Therefore, there was but one conclusion, namely, that when your ladyship left that room the Ladder of Light left it with you: on your person, and----Gently, gently, Lady Leake; don"t get excited, I beg. I shall be able in a moment to convince you that my reasoning upon that point was quite sound, and to back it up with actual proof.
"If you will examine the necklace, Sir Mawson, you will see that it has not come through this adventure uninjured; in short, that one of the two sections of its clasp is missing, and the link that once secured that section to the string of diamonds has parted in the middle. Perhaps a good deal which may have seemed to you sheer madness up to this point will be clearly explained when I tell you that when I lifted Lady Leake"s negligee from that chair a while ago I found this thing clinging to the lace of the right sleeve."
"Good heavens above! Look, Ada, look! The missing section of the clasp."
"Exactly," concurred Cleek. "And when you think of where I found it I fancy it will not be very difficult to reason out how the necklace came to be where Jennifer picked it up. On your own evidence, Lady Leake, you hastily laid it down on your dressing-table, when the sight of the lint bandage recalled to your mind your promise to Miss Eastman, and from that moment it was never seen again. The natural inference then is so clear I think there can hardly be a doubt that when you reached over to pick up that bandage the lace of your sleeve caught on the clasp, became entangled, and that when you left the room you carried the Ladder of Light with you. The great weight of the necklace swinging free as you ran down the staircase would naturally tell upon that weak link, and no doubt when you leaned over the banister at the landing to call Jennifer, that was, so to speak, the last straw. The weak link snapped, the necklace dropped away, and the thick carpet entirely m.u.f.fled the sound of its fall. As for the rest----"
The loud jangling of the door bell cut in upon his words. He pulled out his watch and looked at it.
"That will be the Ranee"s _major domo_, I fancy, Sir Mawson," he observed, "and with your kind permission Mr. Narkom and I will be going. We have, as I have already told you, a little matter of importance still to attend to in the interest of the Yard, and although I haven"t the slightest idea we shall be able to carry it to a satisfactory conclusion for a very long time--if ever--we had better be about it. Pardon? Reward, your ladyship? Oh, but I"ve had that: Sir Mawson has given me his promise to let that bonny boy have another chance. That was all I asked, remember. There"s good stuff in him, but he stands at the crossroads, and face to face with one of life"s great crises. Now is the time when he needs a friend.
Now is the time for his father to _be_ a father; and opportunity counts for so much in the devil"s gamble for souls. Get to him, daddy--get to him and stand by him--and you"ll have given me the finest reward in the world."
And here, making his adieus to Lady Leake, whose wet eyes followed him with something of reverence in them, and shaking heartily the hand Sir Mawson held out, he linked arms with Narkom, and together they pa.s.sed out, leaving a great peace and a great joy behind them.
"Gad, what an amazing beggar you are!" declared the superintendent, breaking silence suddenly as soon as they were at a safe distance from the house. "You"ll end your days in the workhouse, you know, if you continue this sort of tactics. Fancy chucking up a reward for the sake of a chap you never saw before, and who treated you like a mere n.o.body. Why, man alive, you could have had almost any reward--a thousand pounds if you"d asked it--for finding a priceless thing like that."
"I fancy I"ve helped to find something that is more priceless still, my friend, and it"s cheap at the price."
"But a thousand pounds, Cleek! a thousand pounds! G.o.d"s truth, man, think what you could do with all that money--think what you could buy!"
"To be sure; but think what you _can"t_! Not one day of lost innocence, not one hour of spoilt youth! It isn"t because they have a natural tendency toward evil that _all_ men go wrong. It is not what they possess but what they lack that"s at the bottom of the downfall of four fifths of them. Given such ingredients as a young chap suffering under a sense of personal injury, a feeling that the world"s against him, that he has neither a home nor a friend to stand by him in his hour of need, and the devil will whip up the mixture and manufacture a criminal in less than no time. It is easier to save him while he"s worth the saving than it is to pull him up after he has gone down the line, Mr. Narkom, and if by refusing to accept so many pounds, shillings, and pence, a man can do the devil out of a favourable opportunity----Oh, well, let it go at that. Come on, please. We are still as far as ever from the "game" we set out to bag, my friend; and as this district seems to be as unpromising in that respect as all the others--where next?"
CHAPTER XXIV
"I"m bothered if I know," returned Narkom helplessly. "Gad! I"m at my wits" end. We seem to be as far as ever from any clue to that devilish pair and unless you can suggest something----" He finished the sentence by taking off his hat, and looking up at Cleek hopefully, and patting his bald spot with a handkerchief which diffused a more or less agreeable odour of the latest Parisian perfume.
"H"m!" said Cleek, reflectively. "We might cross the Heath and have a look round Gospel Oak, if you like. It"s a goodish bit of a walk and I"ve no idea that it will result in anything, I frankly admit, but it is one of the few places we have _not_ tried, so we might have a go at that if you approve."
"By James! yes. The very thing. There"s always a chance, you know, so long as it"s a district we"ve never done. Gospel Oak it is, then.
And look here--I"ll tell you what. You just stop here a bit and wait for me, old chap, while I nip back to the house and ask Sir Mawson"s permission to use his telephone--to ring up the Yard as usual, you know, and tell them in what quarter we"re operating, in case there should be reason to send anybody out to find me in a hurry. Back with you in no time and then we"ll be off to Gospel Oak like a shot."
"Right you are. I"ll stop here under the trees and indulge in a few comforting whiffs while you are about it. Get along!"
Narkom paused a moment to grip his cuff between finger tips and palm, and run his coat sleeve round the shiny surface of his "topper,"
then shook out his handkerchief and returned it to his pocket, jerked down his waistcoat and gave it one or two sharp flicks with the backs of his nails, and before a second diffusion of scent had evaporated, or the whimsical twist it called to Cleek"s lips had entirely vanished, the scene presented nothing more striking than an ordinary man leaning back against a tree and engaged in scratching a match on the side of an ordinary wooden matchbox. The Yard"s Gentleman had gone.
It was full ten minutes later when he lurched into view again, coming down the garden path at top speed, with one hand on his hat"s crown and the other holding the flapping skirts of his frock coat together, and Cleek could tell from the expression of his round, pink face that something of importance had occurred.
It had--and he blurted it out in an outburst of joyous excitement the moment they again stood together. The search for Dutch Ella and Diamond Nick was at an end. The police of Paris had cabled news of their location and arrest that very morning in the French capital, and would hold them under lock and key until the necessary preliminaries were over, relative to their deportation as undesirables, and their return to Canada.
"The news arrived less than an hour ago," he finished, "and that wideawake young beggar, Lennard, thought it was so important that I ought to know it as soon as possible, so he hopped on to the limousine and put off as fast as he could streak it. He"s up here in this district now--this minute--hunting for us. Come on! let"s go and find him. By James! it"s a ripping end to the business--what?"
"That depends," replied Cleek without much enthusiasm. "Which limousine is Lennard using to-day? The new blue one?"
"Cinnamon, no! That won"t be delivered until the day after to-morrow.
So it will be the good old red one, of course. Will it matter?"
"Come and see!" said Cleek, swinging out of the grounds into the public highway again, and walking fast. "At all events, an ounce of certainty is worth a pound of suspicion, and this little _faux pas_ will decide the question. They are no fools, those Apaches; and Waldemar knows how to wait patiently for what he wants."
"Waldemar? The Apaches? Good lud, man, what are you talking about?
You are not worrying over that business again, I hope. Haven"t I told you over and over again that we couldn"t find one trace of them anywhere in London--that they cleared out bag and baggage after that fruitless trip to Yorkshire? The whole truth of the matter, to my way of thinking, is that they awoke then to the fact that you had "dropped" to their being after you, and knowing you weren"t to be caught napping, gave it up as a bad job."
"Or altered their tactics and set out to follow some one else."
"Some one else? Good lud, don"t talk rubbish. What good would following some one else do if they were after you?"
"Come and see," said Cleek again, and would say no more, but merely walked on faster than ever--up one thoroughfare and down another--flicking eager glances to right and to left in search of the red limousine.
In the thick of the High Street they caught sight of it at last, tooling about aimlessly, while Lennard kept constant watch on the crowd of shoppers that moved up and down the pavement.
"Cut ahead and stop it and we shall see what we _shall_ see, Mr.
Narkom. I"ll join you presently," said Cleek, and he stood watching while the superintendent forged ahead in the direction of the limousine; and continued watching even after he saw him reach it and bring it to a halt, and stand at the kerb talking earnestly with Lennard.