"That"s my business, Mr. Narkom, and I"ll take no man into my confidence regarding that."
"Yes, my friend, but "Margot"?"
"I"m done with her! We broke last night, when I returned, and she learned---- Never mind what she learned! I"m done with her, done with the lot of them. My life is changed forever."
"In the name of Heaven, man, who and what are you?"
"Cleek--just Cleek: let it go at that," he made reply. "Whether it"s my name or not is no man"s business; who I am, what I am, whence I came, is no man"s business, either. Cleek will do, Cleek of the Forty Faces.
Never mind the past; my fight is with the future, and so---- Examine me, Sir Horace, and let me know if I or Fate"s to blame for what I am."
"Absolutely Fate," Sir Horace said, when, after a long examination, the man put the question to him again. "It is the criminal brain fully developed, horribly p.r.o.nounced. G.o.d help you, my poor fellow; but a man simply could not be other than a thief and a criminal with an organ like that. There"s no hope for you to escape your natural bent except by death. You can"t be honest. You can"t rise. You never will rise: it"s useless to fight against it!"
"I will fight against it! I will rise! I will! I will! I will!" he cried out vehemently. "There is a way to put such craft and cunning to account; a way to fight the devil with his own weapons and crush him under the weight of his own gifts, and that way I"ll take!
"Mr. Narkom"--he whirled and walked toward the superintendent, his hand outstretched, his eager face aglow--"Mr. Narkom, help me! Take me under your wing. Give me a start, give me a chance, give me a lift on the way up!"
"Good heaven, man, you--you don"t mean----?"
"I do. I do. So help me Heaven, I do. All my life I"ve fought against the law, now let me switch over and fight with it. I"m tired of being Cleek, the thief; Cleek, the burglar. Make me Cleek, the detective, and let us work together, hand in hand, for a common cause and for the public good. Will you, Mr. Narkom? Will you?"
"Will I? Won"t I!" said Narkom, springing forward and gripping his hand.
"Jove! what a detective you will make. Bully boy! Bully boy!"
"It"s a compact, then?"
"It"s a compact--Cleek."
"Thank you," he said in a choked voice. "You"ve given me my chance; now watch me live up to it. The Vanishing Cracksman has vanished forever, Mr. Narkom, and it"s Cleek, the detective--Cleek of the Forty Faces from this time on. Now, give me your riddles, I"ll solve them one by one."
CHAPTER II
THE PROBLEM OF THE RED CRAWL
It was half-past two o"clock in the morning of July 25, when the constable on duty at the head of Clarges Street, Piccadilly, was startled to see a red limousine swing into that quiet thoroughfare from the Curzon Street end, come to an abrupt halt, and a man who had every appearance of a sailor alight therefrom, fish a key from his pocket, and admit himself to a certain house. This house for more than a year had been known to be occupied only by one Captain Burbage, a retired seaman of advanced years, his elderly housekeeper, a deaf and dumb maid-of-all-work, and a snub-nosed, ginger-haired young chap of about nineteen--as pure a specimen of the genus c.o.c.kney as you could pick up anywhere from Bow Church to the Guildhall--who acted as a sort of body servant to the aged captain, and was known by the expressive name of "Dollops."
"Don"t like the goings-on at that house at all," commented the policeman in a sort of growl. "All sorts of parties coming and going at all hours of the night. Reported it more than once, I have; and yet Superintendent Narkom says there"s nothing in it and it needn"t be watched. I wonder why?"
He wouldn"t have wondered any longer could he have looked into the hall of the house at that moment; for the man who had just entered had no sooner closed the lower door than one above flashed open, a stream of light gushed down the stairs, and a calm, well-modulated voice said serenely: "Come right up, Mr. Narkom. I knew it would be you before your motor turned the corner. I"d know the purr of your machine among a thousand."
"Fancy that!" said Narkom, as he removed the hot wig and beard he wore, and went up the stairs two at a time. "My dear Cleek, what an abnormal animal you are! Had you"--entering the room where his now famous ally (divested of the disguise which served for the role of "Captain Burbage") stood leaning against the mantelpiece and calmly smoking a cigarette--"had you by any chance a fox among your forbears?"
"Oh, no. The night is very still, the back window is open, and there"s a trifling irregularity in the operations of your detonator: that"s all.
But tell me, you"ve got something else for me; something important enough to bring you racing here at top speed in the middle of the night, so to speak?"
"Yes. An amazing something. It"s a letter. It arrived at headquarters by the nine o"clock post to-night--or, rather, it"s last night now. Merton, of course, forwarded it to my home; but I was away--did not return until after one, or I should have been here sooner. It"s not an affair for "the Yard" this time, Cleek; and I tell you frankly I do not like it."
"Why?"
"Well, it"s from Paris. If you were to accept it, you--well, you know what dangers Paris would have for you above all men. There"s that she-devil you broke with, that woman Margot. You know what she swore, what she wrote back when you sent her that letter telling her that you were done with her and her lot, and warning her never to set foot on English soil again? If you were to run foul of her; if she were ever to get any hint to your real ident.i.ty----"
"She can"t. She knows no more of my real history than you do; no more than I actually know of hers. Our knowledge of each other began when we started to "pal" together; it ended when we split, eighteen months ago.
But about this letter? What is it? Why do you say that you don"t like it?"
"Well, to begin with, I"m afraid it is some trap of hers to decoy you over there, get you into some unknown place----"
"There are no "unknown places" in Paris so far as I am concerned. I know every hole and corner of it, from the sewers on. I know it as well as I know London, as well as I know Berlin--New York--Vienna--Edinburgh--Rome.
You couldn"t lose me or trap me in any one of them. Is that the letter in your hand? Good--then read it, please."
Narkom, obeying the request, read:
"TO THE SUPERINTENDENT OF POLICE, SCOTLAND YARD,
"DISTINGUISHED MONSIEUR:
"Of your grace and pity, I implore you to listen to the prayer of an unhappy man whose honour, whose reason, whose very life are in deadly peril, not alone of "The Red Crawl," but of things he may not even name, dare not commit to writing, lest this letter should go astray. It shall happen, monsieur, that the whole world shall hear with amazement of that most marvellous "Cleek"--that great reader of riddles and unmasker of evildoers who, in the past year, has made the police department of England the envy of all nations; and it shall happen also that I who dare not appeal to the police of France appeal to the mercy, the humanity, of this great man, as it is my only hope. Monsieur, you have his ear, you have his confidence, you have the means at your command. Ah! ask him, pray him, implore him for the love of G.o.d, and the sake of a fellow-man, to come alone to the top floor of the house number 7 of the Rue Toison d"Or, Paris, at nine hours of the night of Friday, the 26th inst., to enter into the darkness and say but the one word "Cleek" as a signal it is he, and I may come forward and throw myself upon his mercy. Oh, save me, Monsieur Cleek--save me! save me!
"There, that"s the lot, and there"s no signature," said Narkom, laying down the letter. "What do you make of it, Cleek?"
"A very real, a very moving thing, Mr. Narkom. The cry of a human heart in deep distress; the agonized appeal of a man so wrought up by the horrors of his position that he forgets to offer a temptation in the way of reward, and speaks of outlandish things as though they must be understood of all. As witness his allusion to something which he calls "The Red Crawl," without attempting to explain the meaningless phrase.
Whatever it is, it is so real to him that it seems as if everybody must understand."
"You think, then, that the thing is genuine?"
"So genuine that I shall answer its call, Mr. Narkom, and be alone in the dark on the top floor of No. 7, Rue Toison d"Or to-morrow night as surely as the clock strikes nine."
And that was how the few persons who happened to be in the quiet upper reaches of the Rue Bienfaisance at half-past eight o"clock the next evening came to see a fat, fussy, red-faced Englishman in a gray frock-coat, white spats, and a shining topper, followed by a liveried servant with a hat-box in one hand and a portmanteau in the other, so conspicuous, the pair of them, that they couldn"t have any desire to conceal themselves, cross over the square before the Church of St.
Augustine, fare forth into the darker side pa.s.sages, and move in the direction of the street of the Golden Fleece.
They were, of course, Cleek and his devoted henchman Dollops--a youth he had picked up out of the streets of London and given a home, and whose especial virtues were a dog-like devotion to his employer, a facility for eating without ever seeming to get filled, and fighting without ever seeming to get tired.
"Lumme, guv"ner," whispered he, as they turned at last into the utter darkness and desertion of the narrow Rue Toison d"Or, "if this is wot yer calls Gay Paree, this precious black slit between two rows of houses, I"ll take a slice of the Old Kent Road with thanks. Not even so much as a winkle-stall in sight, and me that empty my shirt-bosom"s a-chafing my blessed shoulder-blades!"
"You"ll see plenty of life before the game"s over, I warrant you, Dollops. Now, then, my lad, here"s a safe spot. Sit down on the hat-box and wait. That"s No. 7, that empty house with the open door, just across the way. Keep your eye on it. I don"t know how long I"ll be, but if anybody comes out before I do, mind you don"t let him get away."
"No fear!" said Dollops sententiously. "I"ll be after him as if he was a ham sandwich, sir. Look out for my patent "Tickle Tootsies" when you come out, guv"ner. I"ll sneak over and put "em round the door as soon as you"ve gone in." For Dollops, who was of an inventive turn of mind, had an especial "man-trap" of his own, which consisted of heavy brown paper, cut into squares, and thickly smeared over with a viscid, varnish-like substance that adhered to the feet of anybody incautiously stepping upon it, and so interfered with flight that it was an absolute necessity to stop and tear the papers away before running with any sort of ease and swiftness was possible. More than once this novel method of hampering for a brief period the movement of a fugitive had stood him and his master in good stead, and Dollops, who was rather proud of his achievement, never travelled without a full supply of ready-cut papers and a big collapsible tube of the viscid, ropy, varnish-like glue.
Meantime Cleek, having left the boy sitting on the hat-box in the darkness, crossed the narrow street to the open doorway of No. 7, and, without hesitation, stepped in. The place was as black as a pocket, and had that peculiar smell which belongs to houses that have long stood vacant. The house, nevertheless, was a respectable one, and, like all the others, fronted on another street. The dark Toison d"Or was merely a back pa.s.sage used princ.i.p.ally by the tradespeople for the delivery of supplies. Feeling his way to the first of the three flights of stairs which led upward into the stillness and gloom above, Cleek mounted steadily until he found himself at length in a sort of attic--quite windowless, and lit only by a skylight through which shone the ineffectual light of the stars. It was the top at last. Bracing his back against the wall, so that n.o.body could get behind him, and holding himself ready for any emergency, he called out in a clear, calm voice: "Cleek!"
Almost simultaneously there was a sharp metallic "snick," an electric bulb hanging from the ceiling flamed out luminously, a cupboard door flashed open, a voice cried out in joyous, perfect English: "Thank G.o.d for a man!" And, switching round with a cry of amazement, he found himself looking into the face and eyes of a woman.
And of all women in the world--Ailsa Lorne!
He sucked in his breath and his heart began to hammer.
"Miss Lorne!" he exclaimed, so carried out of himself that he scarcely knew what he did. "Good heavens above!--Miss Lorne!"