RGL e-Book Cover©
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.
RGL e-Book Cover©
"Monsieur, this is amazing. He shall make
even paper talk, this wonderful monsieur.
THE case in question was certainly a most unique one, possessing most uncommon features and a mystery quite its own. It was, therefore, meet that the arrangements for bringing it to Cleek's notice should have departed from the general rule as they most decidedly did.
In the present instance, the note which he found awaiting him when he returned at noon from a five miles' walk by the Thames' side had said clearly and succinctly: "The Two Services Club, as near l:30 as you can make it. Give name of Burke and they'll show you up. Urgent."
So quick was Cleek's response that the minute hand of the clock in the "office" of the Two Services Club had but just come to the point of the half hour after one when he stepped over the threshold of the private room to which a servant had piloted him and found himself in the presence of Mr. Narkom and of a young, fair-haired man, fair-mustached, most immaculately dressed, who was seated opposite him with his elbows on the dividing table and his chin upon his shut hands.
"Gad! What a model of punctuality you are, you abnormal beggar!" exclaimed the superintendent, screwing round in his chair and Jumping up as the servant closed the door and left the three men to their privacy. "And it's a quality to be taken into account in the present instance, by Jove! The matinée is at 2, you know, and she's 'on' about 2:30."
"'Matinée?' 'She?'" replied Cleek, arching his brows inquiringly. "My dear Mr. Narkom, before we go into the matter of the antecedent of that personal pronoun may I ask, are we, then, going to a theater?"
"Yes. To the Frivolity. As the guests of its manager, Mr James Collingwood, and in company with this gentleman here. But I am forgetting. My dear Cleek, allow me to have the pleasure of introducing you to Captain Alan Kennedy, of the Royal Engineers."
"Delighted to meet you, captain," said Cleek, gripping the hand which the young man sprang up and extended to him, and at the same time, telling himself that he liked the firm, manly clasp of it, and liked, too, the expression of those clear, straight-looking blue eyes. "Any connection by chance, may I ask, of that other important factor in the matter of our national defences, Sir Maxwell Kennedy, the inventor of that most successful of all high explosives, picrine?"
"Yes. A very close connection indeed, Mr. Cleek. He is my uncle. I am, in fact, his only living relative, and, up to a matter of six weeks ago, I was not only his nephew, but his heir. Since then, however, he has chosen to disinherit me for what he terms my unfortunate attachment. Or, at least, I suppose he has. He threatened to, at all events, and he's hardly the kind to let the grass grow under his feet when his temper is up."
"I observe, however, that you do not take your disinheritance very broken-heartedly, captain."
"I? Not a bit of it. Why, I'd give up twenty fortunes sooner than I'd give up Luella, Mr. Cleek."
"Luella?"
"Yes. Miss Vultee, you know—or, at least, you don't know. Hardly anybody does outside of a very few intimates and—of course—Mr. Collingwood. The world at large knows her merely as La Sylphine."
"La Sylphine, eh? H-m! that's enlightening. Oh, yes, I have heard the name before. Who, in London, has not, when it stares at one daily from every newspaper and on every hoarding from one end of the town to the other? La Sylphine, beautiful and gifted Russian dancer who leaped into popularity in one single night some three or four months ago as the inventor of the most novel and poetic pas seul the century has seen. I have never had the pleasure of seeing the lady, but I am told that this 'Nymph of Vesuvius' dance of hers is something positively marvelous."
"And they're right, who tell you that, Mr Cleek!" struck in the captain, enthusiastically. "Wait until you see her. You will no longer wonder that I love her, that I am willing to give up everything upon God's earth for her—even life itself, if that will save her from this new and horrible persecution which is driving her to the verge of insanity and making her existence a very hell upon earth."
"Hello!" rapped out Cleek, jerking up his chin. "So there's a fly in the ointment, is there, captain? And with all her popularity and success the lady is being persecuted, eh? By whom? And for what purpose, please?"
"By bloodsuckers, blackmailers, devils!" he gave back. "Wretches who are terrorizing her night and day, beggaring her by their constant demands for blood money and driving her to madness and despair by the well-known methods of that hell's brood, the Black Hand!"
"Black—your grandmother!" retorted Cleek, with a lurch of the shoulders and a short, deriding laugh. "My dear captain, get that silly rubbish about the Black Hand out of your head as expeditiously as possible. You may take it from me, my friend, that no such society exists."
"I used to think that myself once upon a time, Mr Cleek, but I've changed my mind these days. It's all very well to say that there's no such society in existence, but when you have their letters and they make demands and threaten to blow up your house if you don't comply with them, and then do blow up your house to show that they mean it, you can't go behind that sort of evidence, can you now?"
"You can go behind any sort of evidence—if you only know the way," declared Cleek, with a curious smile. "But come! Tell me something. You have excited my curiosity. Am I to understand from what you have just said that these—Dr—persons who choose to adopt the name of the Black Hand have actually gone to the length of blowing up Miss Vultee's private residence?"
"Yes. With one of their infernal bombs. They didn't succeed in entirely wrecking it, however, but they made a veritable scrap heap of young Lex's room."
"Lex? And who may Lex be, if you please?"
"Alexis Vultee, Luella's brother—a mere beardless boy of nineteen, as harmless as a kitten and as gentle as any girl. They said they'd 'finish him off' before noon today if she didn't—in their own brutal phraseology—'come to time with the 'oof'—and I prevented her doing so."
"The 'oof,' eh? A purely British slang term for money. So, then, it is fair to suppose that if the writer of the letter is not actually a British subject he is a person sufficiently acquainted with the slang of Great Britain to make use of it in the most matter-of-fact manner."
"There was no 'writer' of the letter, Mr. Cleek. Whoever indited it was careful enough to furnish no clue to his identity by supplying a sample of his penmanship. The message it bore was composed of words cut from newspapers and stuck upon an unwritten sheet."
"The very oldest device in the art of the amateur blackmailer," commented Cleek. "Sit down, please, and let me have the affair from its starting point and such details as you are able to give me of Miss Vultee herself. As you say this blackmailing business did not begin until after her success in England was assured, it may be that its genesis lies back somewhere in her past."
"Oh, by George, I never thought of that! Maybe it does, Mr. Cleek. At all events, her father was once prominent in the anarchistic movement, but shied at murder and was banned by the section. Afterward, his body was found in the Neva fairly riddled with bullets, and his widow, fearing for her life and theirs, flew with her two children to Paris, where she subsequently died, leaving them all alone in the world and without a friend or a penny to bless them. At that time, Luella was thirteen years of age and Alexis ten, but she even then found a position in the corps de ballet of the Eden Theater and was the sole support of her little brother, to whom she was—and still is—devoted heart and soul. Deprived of a sound education herself, her one desire was to give him one at any sacrifice, and she bent all her energies to that end, for as she rose in her profession her salary naturally increased and every penny not absolutely necessary for the purpose of living went to pay for his schooling. Her great dream for him was, of course, a 'varsity career; but that, of course, was never within the possibilities until this year when her visit to England and her sudden leap into popularity made all things possible."
"I see. Then it is fair to suppose that she lost no time in entering him for such a career, is it not?"
"Yes. He's at a local tutor's establishment now, working hard for Cambridge and hoping to pass into Emmanuel next term. Poor Lex! It will be a vain hope now, I'm afraid, unless you can get hold of the blackguards who are draining my poor girl of her earnings before they absolutely pauperize her; for she'll give up her last farthing rather than have anything happen to him. When it was just herself that was threatened, she could stand that; but now that they've found out about Lex and are threatening him it is positively the last straw."
"How did they find out? Or don't you know?"
"No, I don't. Nobody does. But possibly it was—as Marceline suggested—because of her taking that furnished house at Maida Vale and rashly insisting upon bringing Lex there to live with her instead of letting him continue to board at the tutor's as formerly. As Marceline rightly says, they might never have known of his existence but for that."
"Quite so. And who, please, is this Marceline?"
"Miss Vultee's dresser and waiting maid. Marceline Dubois is her name."
"H-m! French, eh? Miss Vultee got her here or abroad?"
"Oh, abroad. Has known her for years. In the days when she was in the corps de ballet at the Eden Theater she and Lex used to have lodgings in the same house with Marceline, and her mother and Mme. Dubois looked after the boy while Luella was away at the theater."
"I see. So that this Marceline might almost be said to have been raised with the boy—that is, if she is young. Is she?"
"About Luella's own age—twenty-three, I should say."
"Just so. The boy ten, Marceline thirteen. Just the age for childish confidences. It is, then, quite within the possibilities that from her little companion's innocent prattle Marceline may have learned a great deal of the family's former history—his birth in Russia, his father's anarchistic connection, his sad taking off with the rest."
"Oh, as for that, she knew all about it from the first. So, too, did her mother and father."
"Mother and father still living?"
"No—dead. That's how Luella came to take the girl into her service. She was left all alone in the world, you know, and they had been so closely connected in the old days. When Luella rose to the point of needing a dresser and being able to afford one, she naturally thought of Marceline and—there you are."
"Quite so," agreed Cleek. "There you are! Marceline would naturally know just when the state of her mistress' finances rose, of course, and—there you are again!"
"But, good heavens above, Cleek, do you mean to say that you suspect—"
"Gently, gently, gently, Mr. Narkom! May not a man in search of an idea decently unearth a possibility without regarding it as a certainty and galloping off on it pell-mell? It seems to me from the manner of the attack that there is more than a mere likelihood that there is a woman's hand at the bottom of it, and that as the trouble did not begin until after Miss Vultee came to England and made her remarkable success, it is at least probable that it arises from some one who is in a position to know the actual state of her finances, and if it is or is not possible for her to be 'squeezed.' I gather from what Captain Kennedy says that the blackmailing began almost immediately her success was assured."
"Absolutely immediately, Mr. Cleek. She opened at the Frivolity on the understanding that should her dance be the success Mr Collingwood expected from his private view of it her salary was to be 200 pounds a week for a season of three months. On the first night of her appearance, she took the house by storm. On the very next day, the first of the blackmailing letters turned up at the theater, demanding that on that day week she should place the sum of fifty pounds in a hole at the roots of a certain tree in Hyde Park, walk away without ever once looking back or at any time mentioning the matter to a living soul; otherwise she would meet with a violent death on her way to the theater the night following. Terrorized like this, she complied with that demand, Mr. Cleek, and carried the money to the tree, believing that she had by so doing purchased immunity from the wretch or wretches who had threatened her. She had not, however. The next week brought a similar demand, and so it has continued week after week, ever since; only that as time passed the sum required of her has gone up and up until almost all her earnings have gone into the maw of the insatiable monster that is preying upon her. She has never let Lex know what horrible thing is preying upon her—for he is a weak, delicate, highly strung fellow, and she has always feared the consequences—but to-day he has had to know, and the shock of the thing has almost driven him silly."
"No doubt, if he is as easily terrorized as his sister seems to be," said Cleek. "But why, please, has he had to know today, captain?"
"Because of the terrible thing which has followed Luella's acting upon my rash advice yesterday, Mr. Cleek. Until then, my poor girl had borne her cross in silence, but yesterday when there came to her a demand for £1,000—otherwise her house would be blown up and her brother with it—she simply had to speak. She had not so much money at hand. There was nothing for it but to appeal to Mr. Collingwood to advance it—without, however, confessing to him the purpose for which it was needed—and finally, in despair should such another demand be made upon her next week, she broke down and confessed to me. You may guess what I advised her. To put the money back into Mr. Collingwood's safe; to defy the blackmailers; to leave me to go to the tree in the park in her stead and to lie in wait for the scoundrels should they come. Also if she was afraid that any harm might possibly come to Lex to send him away secretly upon some pretended mission. She acted upon my advice, Mr. Cleek. She put the money into Collingwood's safe; she sent Lex to his tutor's for the night; she let me go to the tree and wait there vainly until the park closed and—the result was the verification of her worst fears. At dawn this morning, an explosive bomb was thrown through the window of her brother's room, every atom of furniture in it was absolutely blown to pieces and but for the mercy of God in directing me to advise her to send the boy away he would be dead at this minute. There, that's the case as it stands, Mr. Cleek, that's the thing I've called you here to my club to unravel and to defeat. In the name of heaven, get to the bottom of the thing if getting there be possible. Run down the rascals who are engineering the diabolical business, or I tell you that by this time tomorrow my dear girl will be a raving maniac and my uncle's mad desire to prevent our marriage horribly and accursedly gratified."
"A rather unhappy remark that, captain, considering that a high explosive of some sort has been used in carrying out the attack upon the young lady," commented Cleek, looking at him with a curious sort of intentness—as if trying to fix in his mind just what this manner of bringing Sir Maxwell Kennedy into the business might or might not portend. "I hope you do not mean to imply that there is any possible connection between the two circumstances?"
"Oh, good Lord, no! Such a notion is simply the purest tommy rot, Mr. Cleek. My uncle isn't the kind of man to descend to such low-lived tricks as blackmailing and bomb-throwing for any purpose whatsoever. I know him, Mr Cleek! He's the dearest old chap at bottom, and as he never had any children of his own I'm the very apple of his eye. He may bluster and he may swear, but when once he meets my Luella and knows her he'll come round, never you fear."
"Ah-h!" said Cleek with a deeply drawn breath of relief—as if a load had suddenly been lifted off his mind. "Then we must manage to have him meet her—by hook or by crook—just as soon as possible. Meantime, is there any reason why I should be denied that privilege any longer, captain? I assure you I should take great pleasure in seeing the lady and—yes—this estimable Marceline, too, just as soon as possible, if you and Mr. Narkom will be so kind."
The limousine was at the door and Lennard in readiness, so it fell out that in ten minutes' time the pleasure he desired was his and he found himself seated in a proscenium box at the Frivolity—accompanied by the manager thereof and with Mr. Narkom and the captain upon either side of him—enjoying to the fullest the wonderful dance and the marvelous art of La Sylphine in the execution thereof.
"It is wonderful, it is exquisite, it is pure art!" he declared. "The lady is at once artist, goddess and woman, Mr. Collingwood. All is said in that!"
"Yes—isn't she?" he agreed, "as great as she is beautiful and as pure as she is great. Can you imagine anything human trying to injure a little woman like that, Mr Cleek?"
"Is the boy 'behind' with her, Mr. Collingwood?"
"Lord, yes! She wouldn't let him get out of her sight for worlds after this morning's affair. It's simply pitiful to see how frightened they are at every sound and how they cling to each other, and wait and watch and listen in dumb agony. Look here, Mr. Cleek, it's worth the best thousand pounds that ever came out of the Bank of England if you can run this thing to earth and nab the parties who are engineering it, and my check's waiting for you the minute you are in a position to claim it."
"Thanks, Mr. Collingwood. I'll endeavor to claim it in very short order, I assure you." replied Cleek. "But as very much depends upon an inspection of the terrorizing letters, shan't we go round and see Miss Vultee as soon as possible? I see that Captain Kennedy has already done so—no doubt to prepare her for our coming. So, if you wouldn't mind conducting Mr. Narkom and me—"
"Yes; certainly. Come along at once!" exclaimed Collingwood, and forthwith unlocked and opened a little door leading out of the box on to the stage itself. "You'll see a picture that will make you want to hit out and floor somebody, I promise you."
He was quite right. When they came to enter Miss Vultee's room they did. For there was she, in an agony of terror, clinging to a white-faced, shivering, half-grown boy so like her that any one might have guessed their relationship at first glance, and there was Captain Kennedy endeavoring to soothe and to comfort them with the rough tenderness of a soldier and the deep earnestness of a lover, and there, too, hovering on the verge of hysterics, was a pale-faced, peroxide-haired French girl so clearly of the class from which the Apaches are recruited that any one who knew the brood must have been on to her at the drop of a hat.
Cleek was, be assured. But he contrived to keep that knowledge wholly to himself, and after the first convincing glance at her gave his attention to other and equally enlightening things. One of these was the fact that whereas he had expected La Sylphine to be a little mite of a creature, with flowing auburn tresses, he found her, on close inspection, to be a good head taller than she had seemed on the stage and a most pronounced brunette, the deep red hair which she had worn being nothing more than a wig which now lay on her dressing table with some wisps of dark gauze woven into it and falling thence in long, loose streamers to the floor. But her rich, dusk beauty was at closer quarters even more pronounced than behind the glamor of the footlights, and the molding of her perfect arms was something almost divine.
"Oh. monsieur, if you are indeed so wonderful in the art of detection as Alan tells me that you are," she cried out with just a touch of the Russian accent to make her English deliciously musical, as Cleek came in and was introduced to her. "I pray you, in the name of all the saints, to remove this horror from my life before it drives me mad. For, indeed, I cannot stand this torture, this horrible uncertainty, another twenty-four hours, and I tell you plainly, monsieur, that sooner than face again the possibility of evil coming to my brother I will flood this London of yours with hand-bills announcing to my persecutors my willingness to accede to their abominable terms and to pay them all that they demand at any hour that they may appoint."
"I should not for an instant dream of doing anything so rash if I were you, mademoiselle. At least, not yet," said Cleek. "I hear from Mr. Collingwood that the one thousand pounds he advanced to you is still in his safe awaiting your demand. Take my advice and leave it there until after your performance is over tonight. If by then I have failed in running your persecutors down and bringing them to book, withdraw it at your leisure and do with it as your heart dictates, for I shall then be beyond any possibility of helping you even in the smallest degree. But—I do not think I shall be."
"Ah, the dear heaven! You have hopes then, monsieur—you have hopes?"
"Very great ones, indeed, mademoiselle. But much will depend upon the evidence to be obtained from the blackmailing letters themselves. I am told that you still retain them. Will you let me have a look at them?"
"Oh, willingly, willingly, monsieur. Marceline, ma chérie, the little tin box, at the bottom of the dressing basket. They are there. Get them. Let the monsieur see them at once—at once!"
"Of a certainty," said Marceline, and did so forthwith. "But look! What can one make of things like this, monsieur, when there is nothing to be traced from them—nothing to be learned at all?"
"Don't you be so sure of that, Marceline," gave back Cleek in such excellent French that it smacked of the boulevards themselves and made Marceline twitch up her chin and stare at him with her round, bright, piercing eyes. "Even the dumb may speak if one knows the sign language, petite!"
"But, yes. Monsieur has himself been in la belle Paris, then? And comes back with its tongue in his mouth?"
"Of a certainty. And with some of its knowledge in his head to boot," he gave back, but in English this time. "Look! Here is some of it—these printed words here. They are English, it is true, but the sheet of paper upon which they are stuck is French—undeniably French. One knows it by the texture, the shape, the little criss-cross pattern water-lined all over the surface. But here—this second sheet. This is of English manufacture, but of cheap quality, and by these little nicks in the side of it evidently torn from a note-book. These others, too—some are English and some are of American manufacture; some best cream-land and some of inferior quality, but all to be bought at the shop of any stationer or bookseller in the town here. You see, Marceline, that even dumb things can talk when one knows the sign language, eh?"
It was not Marceline who responded to this—it was Marceline's astonished mistress.
"Monsieur, this is amazing. You hear, Alan? You hear, Lex? He shall make even paper talk, this wonderful monsieur. Is it not an astonishing thing?"
"Spiffing!" declared the boy, his eyes round with amazement. "I say, you know, you must be jolly sharp, Mr Cleek, to tumble to things off-hand like that. Blest if you don't give me hope that you will get to the bottom of this business after all."
"I'm quite sure I shall—now!" said Cleek, in reply. "What's that, Mr. Collingwood? Anything more to be learned from these letters? Yes—heaps. Type talks as well as paper you know. Look here at this word 'performance' at the end of this line reading 'as soon as your performance closes.' You ought to know what paper that was cut from. It's the type of The Era, as plain as the nose on your lace. Besides, where would a man be likely to find the word 'performance' if he stood in need of it if not in a theatrical paper? Now this word 'closes' is cut from a pink paper, as you see, which at once brings up The Sporting Times, otherwise the 'Pink Un', and so fits another round peg into another round hole and gives us something definite to go upon."
"God bless my soul! How?"
"Gives us a hint as to the tastes, if not the actual surroundings, of the person who 'cooked up' the letter. Fancy hunt to sporting and to theatrical subjects and must be located in a quarter where papers dealing with both are within easy reach. That's all for the present, Miss Vultee, and thank you very much for allowing me to look at them"—bowing gracefully and returning the letters to her. "Now, if you all will remain here until my return and Mr. Narkom will allow me the use of his limousine for an hour or two, I'll go and look into another little matter that wants investigating—in other words, the possible character of the explosive used this morning in the hope of blowing this poor boy here into smithereens, and if it should prove to be, as I strongly suspect, that particular one known as picrine."
"For the love of heaven, Mr. Cleek!"
"Just so, captain—'for the love of heaven!'" finished Cleek. "With you again at 4 by the latest. Good-by!"
AT four he had said he would return, and it was 4 to the tick when he came back and found them awaiting him in almost breathless suspense.
"Monsieur!" cried out La Sylphine, hastening toward him in a very panic of nervous dread. "Monsieur, you have decided the point and—it—it is not pleasant to contemplate?"
"Yes, mademoiselle, I have decided it and it is not pleasant by any means," he replied. "The explosive employed was picrine—the odor it leaves is not to be mistaken—and, what is more to the point, I find that directly opposite your dwelling there is a block of flats owned by—Sir Maxwell Kennedy, the inventor of that dangerous compound, and that one of those flats is let to a man who is unknown to the housekeeper and who last night occupied it for the first time since his tenancy began. That he occupied it for some purpose in connection with the exploding of that bomb would seem to be absolutely certain, for he left the place and entirely disappeared directly after the noise of the explosion had aroused the neighborhood, and nothing has been seen or heard of him since. That he was the person who discharged the bomb would seem to be beyond question, for he left its fellow in the flat and, what is more illuminative still, left also a handkerchief marked with the name of Kennedy."
"It's a dashed lie!" roared out the captain. "I wouldn't believe an angel if one tried to connect my uncle with the business."
"Gently, gently, my dear captain. Don't let your temper run away with you. Nobody is suggesting that the bomb was thrown across the street—or that it was thrown at all. As a mater of fact, it was exploded by quite different means. It was the certainty of that that set me to inquiring into the matter of the flats across the street. Have a look at this little thing, will you? I picked it from the woodwork of the window of Mr. Alexis Vultee's wrecked room, and it is curiously illuminative. You see what it is, do you not?"
"I know what it looks like at all events—the bullet of a saloon rifle."
"Exactly—and that is precisely what it is; precisely how the bomb was exploded—with the bullet of a saloon rifle. And as this particular one was embedded in the woodwork of the window, and there was a mark above it which looked suspiciously like the graze of another in passing, what does that suggest? Why, naturally, that somebody in those flats across the street was pot-shotting at that bomb until he succeeded in exploding it, and, as you can't pot-shot at a thing, until it's there to be pot-shotted, why the inference is obvious. The bomb was placed in that room beforehand, and, of course, by somebody who has the entrée to Miss Vultee's house! Now who did have the entrée to Miss Vultee's house yesterday?"
"Not my uncle. He never was there in all his life, and if you are going to take that name on the handkerchief as proof that he—"
"My dear captain, may I not remind you that Sir Maxwell is not the only person in the world who bears the name of Kennedy?"
"Good heavens! Are you going to suggest that I—"
"And may I also remind you," continued Cleek blandly, "that there are still other Kennedys in the world? Some of them with the right to bear the name, others who may have made use of it for a very distinct purpose. For one, that of covering their identity and at the same time casting suspicion in a quarter where it will be most likely to lead quite away from themselves. That, possibly, is the case in the present instance. And to return to my first question: Who did have the entrée to Miss Vultee's house yesterday?"
"I for one!"
"And I for another!" supplemented Mr Collingwood.
"Exactly. But it will be sheer insanity to suggest that you, captain, would be likely to take any steps toward depleting the exchequer of the lady you are to marry, even if your affection were not concerned in the task of shielding her in every way. It would be no less insane to suppose that Mr. Collingwood here would dream for a moment of driving to insanity the lady whose popularity is fast making his fortune, and it would be maddest of all to infer that her brother would set about blowing himself up with a bomb, would it not? Whom then does that leave outside of Miss Vultee herself and Mlle. Marceline here? And are we to suppose that Miss Vultee would try to filch herself of her own money? And are we to credit for a moment that Marceline would try to destroy young Alexis with a bomb when she knew that he was not in the house and would not be that night at all? The mere suggestion is absurdity."
"Then in the name of reason, who did put the bomb there?"
"Ah, that's where I'm going to surprise you—or at least, my boy Dollops is; for I've put the young beggar on the job, and he's not only found a clue to the individual in question, but he has promised that he will have the rascal walk into the prettiest little trap in the world at a quarter to ten o'clock to-night, if Miss Vultee will assist us in spreading the snare."
"I, monsieur? Dear heaven, what can I do?"
"Merely remain passive until, say, a quarter to 9 o'clock. That, I believe, will be something like half an hour before you are to do your famous dance, will it not?"
"Yes, monsieur—exactly a quarter past 9 is the time for that."
"Just so. And you will, of course, be all dressed and ready. Very well then, at a quarter to 9 come to the little door in the rear of the box you saw us all occupying at the matinée. You will find us there again and awaiting you. Mr. Collingwood will have the thousand pounds advanced yesterday with him. You will knock at that door and he will open it and pass the money out to you. You will keep it on your person thereafter and at exactly 10 o'clock—mind, not a second earlier or we shall not be on hand to execute our little part of the proceedings—at exactly 10 o'clock you will go out by the stage door into the dark passage behind the theater holding that money in your hand, and before you have taken ten steps the man we are after will be there and we three will be on him like a shot, and all your troubles will be over for good and all. You will do that, will you not?"
"Monsieur, yes—I promise you that I will."
"Thanks very much. That's all for the present. Gentlemen, my best respects. I will meet you all in the box at half-past 8. Until then, good afternoon!"
And here, spectacular as usual at such times as these, he swept them a theatrical bow and—left them.
AT half past eight he had said he would meet them in the proscenium box—and at half past eight he was there. But, contrary to the expectations of those who were there awaiting him, he did not come in alone, for after him walked two detectives—brave in evening clothes—and after them walked Dollops, soft-stepping as any cat and unobtrusive as a shadow.
"Little door open, Mr. Collingwood? Thanks very much. Nip in with you, Dollops, and get out of sight until it's time. The room is at the back of the stage—first door on the right after you pass that big bunch-light up there. Look sharp! Cut along!"
It had no more than reached the chiming point of the quarter hour when there came a gentle tapping sound on the stage side of the little door, and immediately they that were waiting for the coming of that signal saw a startling thing happen. For Cleek was up and at that door with one of his quick, soundless cat leaps. It was jerked open like a flash and there in the light beyond stood the figure of the Russian dancer—bare-armed, auburn-tressed, a thing of floating, filmy draperies and flashing fire spangles, with one shaking hand outstretched for the promised thousand pounds.
For just one instant Cleek stood and looked at that figure and at that hand in utter silence; then of a sudden:
"Come, come! but there's a devil's design of an arm to expect a man to believe ever grew on any woman!" he rapped out, but was suffered to say no more; for just there and then the figure before him wheeled about and bolted, and hard on the heels of that came the voice of Dollops screaming down from the back of the stage, "Yus, guv'nor—my Lud, yuss! They done it! She's here—and so's the other one. And now 'ere 'e comes, too, the blighter! Nip in, gents, nip in for heaven's sake! I cawn't manage the pair of 'em in a bally little pill box like this. Nip in, Yard—nip in—do yer hear?"
The Yard did and it answered the call instantly. But not the Yard alone, for all that were within earshot of the cry flew in the direction of it like so many bolting hares. And when, an instant later, all these came pounding into La Sylphine's dressing room, there in a huddled heap on the floor—drugged into unconsciousness, poor creature—lay La Sylphine's self, and hard by was Dollops, with one hand gripping the collar of a screaming, scratching, spitting fury of a Frenchwoman, and the other trying to retain its clutch on a shape that wore the clothing and the wig of the nymph of Vesuvius, yet screamed and fought and howled with the voice and hands of Alexis Vultee.
"Look to her first, captain—to her!" cried out Cleek, waving his hand toward the huddled figure on the floor, as Kennedy and Collingwood came pounding in at his heels. "Look to her, and leave this precious pair to me. Here's the blackmailer—here's the bloodless little brute that preyed upon his own sister, and sold her for the sake of the flesh-pots and the smiles of a wretched little cocotte with the sign of Montmartre as thick as paint upon her. I rather thought they'd rise to the bait of that thousand pounds and the chance to make a safe getaway; for they could see how the clues were beginning to point, and that sooner or later they'd be landed high and dry. And all the while that poor creature there loving and trusting the little beast and ready to lay down her very life to protect him. Ah, well, she knows him now, I dare say, or she wouldn't be lying there like that. They simply had to lay down their cards and make a play for that money and the chance of getting out of the country as soon as they could, so—she knows them now—she knows them now, poor girl! What's that, captain? Showing signs of coming round, eh? Well, get her out as soon as possible and leave this beasty little renegade to me. Or, no—not to me, to Dollops, here. Although it's very clear that he left that handkerchief and that picrine bomb in that flat for the purpose of implicating you, captain, we simply can't prosecute him—for his poor sister's sake, we can't!"
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.