EPILOGUE
The Affair of the Man Who Was Found
Mr. Maverick Narkom glanced up at the calendar hanging on the office wall, saw that it recorded the date as August 18th, and then glanced back to the sheet of memoranda lying on his desk, and forthwith began to scratch his bald spot perplexedly.
"I wonder if I dare do it?" he queried of himself in the unspoken words of thought. "It seems such a pity when the beggar"s wedding day is so blessed near--and a man wants his last week of single blessedness all to himself, by James--if he can get it! Still, it"s a case after his own heart; the reward"s big and would be a nice little nest egg to begin married life upon. Besides, he"s had a fairly good rest as it is, when I come to think of it. Nothing much to do since the time when that Mauravanian business came to an end. I fancy he rather looked to have something come out of that in the beginning from the frequent inquiries he made regarding what that johnnie Count Irma and the new Parliament were doing; but it never did. And now, after all that rest--and this a case of so much importance----Gad! I believe I"ll risk it. He can"t do any more then decline. Yes, by James! I will."
His indecision once conquered, he took the plunge instantly; caught up the desk telephone, called for a number, and two minutes later was talking to Cleek, thus:
"I say, old chap, don"t snap my head off for suggesting such a thing at such a time, but I"ve a most extraordinary case on hand and I hope to heaven that you will help me out with it. What"s that? Oh, come, now, that"s ripping of you, old chap, and I"m as pleased as Punch. What? Oh, get along with you! No more than you"d do for me under the same circ.u.mstances, I"ll be sworn. Yes, to-day--as early as possible. Right you are. Then could you manage to meet me in the bar parlour of a little inn called the French Horn, out Shere way, in Surrey, about four o"clock? Could, eh? Good man! Oh, by the way, come prepared to meet a lady of t.i.tle, old chap--she"s the client.
Thanks very much. Good-bye."
Then he hung up the receiver, rang for Lennard, and set about preparing for the journey forthwith.
And this, if you please, was how it came to pa.s.s that when Mr.
Maverick Narkom turned up at the French Horn that afternoon he found a saddle horse tethered to a post outside, and Cleek, looking very much like one of the regular habitues of Rotten Row who had taken it into his mind to canter out into the country for a change, standing in the bar parlour window and looking out with appreciative eyes upon the broad stretch of green downs that billowed away to meet the distant hills.
"My dear chap, how on earth do you manage it?" said the superintendent, eying him with open approval, not to say admiration. "I don"t mean the mere putting on the clothes and _looking_ the part--I"ve seen dozens in my time who could do that right enough, but the beggars always "fell down" when it came to the acting and the talking, while you--I don"t know what the d.i.c.kens it is nor how you manage to get it, but there"s a certain something or other in your bearing, your manner, your look, when you tackle this sort of thing that I always believed a man had to be born to and couldn"t possibly acquire in any other way."
"There you are wrong, my dear friend. It _is_ possible, as you see. That is what makes the difference between the mere actor and the real _artiste_," replied Cleek, with an air of conceited self-appreciation which was either a clever illusion or an exhibition of great weakness. "If one man might not do these things better than another man, we should have no Irvings to illuminate the stage, and acting would drop at once from its place among the arts to the undignified level of a tawdry trade. And now, as our American cousins say, "Let"s come down to bra.s.s tacks." What"s the case and who"s the lady?"
"The widow of the late Sir George Essington, and grandmother of the young gentleman in whose interest you are to be consulted."
"Grandmother, eh? Then the lady is no longer young?"
"Not as years go, although, to look at her, you would hardly suspect that she is a day over five-and-thirty. The Gentleman with the Hour Gla.s.s has dealt very, very lightly with her. Where he has failed to be considerate, however, the ladies, who conduct certain "parlours"
in Bond Street, have come to the rescue in fine style."
"Oh, she is that kind of woman, is she?" said Cleek with a pitch of the shoulders. "I have no patience with the breed! As if there was anything more charming than a dear, wrinkly old grandmother who bears her years gracefully and fusses over her children"s children like an old hen with a brood of downy chicks. But a grandmother who goes in for wrinkle eradicators, cream of lilies, skin-tighteners, milk of roses, and things of that kind--faugh! It has been my experience, Mr. Narkom, that when a woman has any real cause for worrying over the condition of her face, she usually has a just one to be anxious over that of her soul. So this old lady is one of the "face painters," is she?"
"My dear chap, let me correct an error: a grandmother her ladyship may be, but she is decidedly not an old one. I believe she was only a mere girl when she married her late husband. At any rate, she certainly can"t be a day over forty-five at the present moment.
A frivolous and a recklessly extravagant woman she undoubtedly is--indeed, her extravagances helped as much as anything to bring her husband into the bankruptcy court before he died--but beyond that I don"t think there"s anything particularly wrong with her "soul.""
"Possibly not. There"s always an exception to every rule," said Cleek. "Her ladyship may be the shining exception to this unpleasant one of the "face painters." Let us hope so. English, is she?"
"Oh, yes--that is, her father was English and she herself was born in Buckinghamshire. Her mother, however, was an Italian, a lineal descendant of a once great and powerful Roman family named de Catanei."
"Which," supplemented Cleek, with one of his curious one-sided smiles, "through an ante-papal union between Pope Alexander VI and the beautiful Giovanna de Catanei--otherwise Vanozza--gave to the world those two arch-poisoners and devils of iniquity, Caesar and Lucretia Borgia. Lady Essington"s family tree supplies a mixture which is certainly unique: a fine, fruity English pie with a rotten apple in it. Hum-m-m! if her ladyship has inherited any of the beauty of her famous ancestress--for in 1490, when she flourished, Giovanna de Catanei was said to be the most beautiful woman in the world--she should be something good to look upon."
"She is," replied Narkom. "You"ll find her, when she comes, one of the handsomest and most charming women you ever met."
"Ah, then she has inherited some of the attractions and accomplishments of her famous forbears. I wonder if there has also come down to her, as well, the formula of those remarkable secret poisons for which Lucretia Borgia and her brother Caesar were so widely famed. They were marvellous things, those Borgia decoctions--marvellous and abominable."
"Horrible!" agreed Narkom, a curious shadow of unrest coming over him at this subject rising at this particular time.
"Modern chemistry has, I believe, been quite unable to duplicate them. There is, for instance, that appalling thing the aqua tofana, the very fumes of which caused instant death."
"Aqua tofana was not a Bornean poison, my friend," said Cleek, with a smile. "It was discovered more than two hundred years after _their_ time--in 1668, to be exact--by one Jean Baptiste de Gaudin, Signeur de St. Croix, the paramour and accomplice of that unnatural French fiend, Marie Marquise de Brinvilliers. Its discoverer himself died through dropping the gla.s.s mask from his face and inhaling the fumes while he was preparing the h.e.l.lish mixture. The secret of its manufacture did not, however, die with him. Many chemists can, to-day, reproduce it. Indeed, I, myself, could give you the formula were it required."
"_You?_ Gad, man! what don"t you know? In heaven"s name, Cleek, what caused you to dip into all these unholy things?"
"The same impulse which causes a drowning man to grip at a straw, Mr. Narkom--the desire for self-preservation. Remember what I was in those other days, and with whom I a.s.sociated. Believe me, the statement that there is honour among thieves is a pleasant fiction and nothing more; for once a man sets out to be a professional thief, he and honour are no longer on speaking terms. I never could be wholly sure, with that lot; and my biggest _coups_ were always a source of danger to me after they had been successfully completed.
It became necessary for me to study _all_ poisons, all secret arts of destruction, that I might guard against them and might know the proper antidote. As for the rest--Sh! Mumm"s a fine wine. Here comes the landlady with the tea. We"ll drop the "case" until afterward."
"Now tell me," said Cleek, after the landlady had gone and they were again in sole possession of the room, "what is it this Lady Essington wants of me? And what sort of a chap is this grandson in whose interest she is acting? Is he with her in this appeal to the Yard?"
"Certainly not, my dear fellow. Why, he"s little more than a baby--not over three at the most. Ever hear anybody speak of the "Golden Boy," old chap?"
"What! The baby Earl of Strathmere? The little chap who inherited a t.i.tle and a million through the drowning of his parents in the wreck of the yacht _Mystery_?"
"That"s the little gentleman: the Right Honourable Cedric Eustace George Carruthers, twenty-seventh Earl Strathmere, variously known as the "Millionaire Baby" and the "Golden Boy." His mother was Lady Essington"s only daughter. She was only eighteen when she married Strathmere: only twenty-two when she and her husband were drowned, a little over a year ago."
"Early enough to go out of the world, that--poor girl!" said Cleek, sympathetically. "And to leave that little shaver all alone--robbed at one blow of both father and mother. Hard lines, my friend, hard lines! It is fair to suppose, is it not, that, with the death of his parents, the care and guidance of his little lordship fell to the lot of his grandmother, Lady Essington?"
"No, it did not," replied Narkom. "One might have supposed that it would, seeing that there was no paternal grandmother, but--well, the fact of the matter is, Cleek, that the late Lord Strathmere did not altogether approve of his mother-in-law"s method of living (he was essentially a quiet, home-loving man and had little patience with frivolity of any sort), and it occasioned no surprise among those who knew him when it was discovered that he had made a will leaving everything he possessed to his little son and expressly stipulating that the care and upbringing of the boy were to be entrusted to his younger brother, the Honourable Felix Camour Paul Carruthers, who was to enjoy the revenue from the estate until the child attained his majority."
"I see! I see!" said Cleek, appreciatively. "Then that did her extravagant ladyship out of a pretty large and steady income for a matter of seventeen or eighteen years. Humm-m! Wise man--always, of course, provided that he didn"t save the boy from the frying-pan only to drop him into the fire. What kind of a man is this brother--this Honourable Felix Carruthers--into whose hands he entrusted the future of his little son? I seem to have a hazy recollection of hearing that name, somewhere or somehow, in connection with some other affair. Wise choice, was it, Mr. Narkom?"
"Couldn"t have been better, to my thinking. I know the Honourable Felix quite well: a steady-going, upright, honourable young fellow (he isn"t over two or three-and-thirty), who, being a second son, naturally inherited his mother"s fortune, and that being considerable, he really did not need the income from his little nephew"s in the slightest degree. However, he undertook the charge willingly, for he is much attached to the boy; and he and his wife--to whom he was but recently married, by the way--entered into residence at his late brother"s splendid property, Boskydell Priory, just over on the other side of those hills--you can see from the window, there--where they are at present entertaining a large house party, among whom are Lady Essington and her son Claude."
"Oho! Then her ladyship has a son, has she? The daughter who died was not her only child?"
"No. The son was born about a year after the daughter. A nice lad--bright, clever, engaging; fond of all sorts of dumb animals--birds, monkeys, white mice--all manner of such things--and as tender-hearted as a girl. Wouldn"t hurt a fly. Carruthers is immensely fond of him and has him at the Priory whenever he can.
That, of course, means having the mother, too, which is a bit of a trial, in a way, for I don"t believe that her ladyship and Mrs.
Carruthers care very much for each other. But that"s another story.
Now, then, let"s see--where was I? Oh, ah! about the house party at the Priory and Carruthers" fondness for the boy. You can judge of my surprise, my dear Cleek, when last night"s post brought me a private letter from Lady Essington asking me to meet her here at this inn--which, by the way, belongs to the Strathmere estate and is run by a former servant at the Priory--and stating that she wished me to bring one of the shrewdest and cleverest of my detectives, as she was quite convinced there was an underhand scheme afoot to injure his little lordship--in short, she had every reason to believe that somebody was secretly attacking the life of the Golden Boy. She then went on to give me details of a most extraordinary and bewildering nature."
"Indeed? What were those details, Mr. Narkom?"
"Let her tell you for herself--here she is!" replied the superintendent, as a veiled and cloaked figure moved hurriedly past the window; and he and Cleek had barely more than pushed back their chairs and risen when that figure entered the room.
A sweep of her hand carried back her veil; and Cleek, looking round, saw what he considered one of the handsomest women he had ever beheld: a good woman, too, for all her frivolous life and her dark ancestry, if clear, straight-looking eyes could be taken as a proof, which he knew that they could _not_; for he had seen men and women in his day, as crafty as the fox and as dangerous as the serpent, who could look you straight in the eyes and never flinch; while others--as true as steel and as clean-lifed as saints--would send shifting glances flicking all round the room and could no more fix those glances on the face of the person to whom they were talking than they could take unto themselves wings and fly.
But good or ill, whichever the future might prove this lovely lady to be, one thing about her was certain: she was violently agitated, and nervousness was making her shake perceptibly and breathe hard, like a spent runner.
"It is good of you to come, Mr. Narkom," she said, moving forward with a grace which no amount of excitement could dispel or diminish--the innate grace of the woman _born_ to her station and schooled by Mother Nature"s guiding hand. "I had hoped that I might steal away and come here to meet you unsuspected. But, secretly as I wrote, carefully as I planned this thing, I have every reason to believe that my efforts are suspected and that I have, indeed, been followed. So, then, this interview must be a very hurried one, and you must not be surprised if it becomes necessary for me to run off without a moment"s notice; for believe me, I am quite, quite sure that the Honourable Mr. Felix Carruthers is already following me."
"The Honourable--my dear Lady Essington, you don"t mean to suggest that he--he of all men----G.o.d bless my soul!"
"Oh, it may well amaze you, Mr. Narkom. It well-nigh stupefied me when I first began to suspect. Indeed, I can"t do any more than suspect even yet. Perhaps it is he, perhaps that abominable woman he has married. You must decide that when you have heard. I perceive"--glancing over at Cleek--"you have been unable to bring a detective police officer to listen to what I have to say, but if you and your friend will listen carefully and convey the story to one in due course----"
"Pardon, your ladyship, but my companion is a detective officer,"