Constable Roberts did "come on" and at a speed highly commendable, considering his portly build. Cleek, passing the long French windows through which he had obtained entry but an hour before, stopped to ascertain that they, too, were now bolted and barred.
Snapping on their electric torches they tore up the short flight of steps leading to the front door.
"Someone has made good use of their time," Cleek whispered, as he thought how easily he had entered with Lady Margaret such a short while before. "There's no use trying to force this door and the windows are now shuttered and barred. The only thing to do is to try knocking them up."
A second later Mr. Roberts sent a valiant peal resounding through the house and both men listened tensely for any response. One, two, perhaps five minutes passed; the echoes of their blows had died away into silence, and the flash of their torches showed to each of them only the other's strained expectant face. Neither eye nor ear could detect any signs of movement within.
"How we're to get in beats me," said Constable Roberts with a frown puckering his bushy brows. "We'll have to break in, in the name of the law."
And as though that very name had in itself something of the supernatural, there came a sound, a rustle, a step within the house, and the nerves of both men were near to snapping point. They stood a moment listening, while the harsh grating of bolts being withdrawn into their sockets came to their ears, and in another second the great door swung slowly back upon its hinges. The mellow radiance of lamps streamed out and flung a circle of light round them. As it did so a little gasp of astonishment came from both men, for in the doorway, gazing out on them in dignified reproof, stood an immaculate butler. Their hearts seemed for a moment to cease beating and they stared in dumb amazement.
It was Cleek who recovered his wits first. He turned to the butler with a perfectly impassive face.
"We want to see Lady Margaret Cheyne at once," he rapped out sharply. "At once please!"
The butler moved a little aside, as if the visit were the most ordinary one in the world.
"Her ladyship has retired for the night, sir," was the surprising answer. "I will see if the mistress—Miss Cheyne—will see you."
"Miss Cheyne!" said Cleek, sharply.
"Heavens! man, but she is dead," shouted the outraged constable before Cleek could stop him. "This gentleman came to fetch me to view the body. In the name of the law, I am going to search the place."
Staggered by the announcement, with staring eyes and dough-white countenance the man fell back a pace, and seizing the opportunity thus offered, Cleek stepped into the hall, closely followed by Roberts.
"This is preposterous!" ejaculated the butler, at last, as if only just realizing the gravity of the situation; then, raising his voice, he echoed the last words, "Miss Cheyne dead!"
And then—a good many strange things had happened in the course of this night, but to Cleek it seemed as if the very earth had stopped in its course, the door of the room which he knew to be the dining room opened with a little angry jerk, and in the doorway stood a figure that caused Cleek's heart to leap in his mouth. It was no less than that of the woman who had lain dead at his feet but a short time ago. It was Miss Cheyne herself!
"Miss Cheyne dead! What does this impertinence mean?" she demanded in a hard, shrill voice at the sound of which the constable's ruddy face became purple with anger. He whipped off his helmet and he pulled savagely at his forelock.
"Beg yer pardon, Miss Cheyne, yer ladyship," he stuttered "for disturbing you—but this—this-individual—," he almost choked over his words—"came and fetched me away from the nicest bit of supper I ever wants to see, to tell me you was a-lying murdered, begging yer pardon, and that Lady Margaret, whom he'd driven over in his car, was asleep alone in the empty house. More fool me to believe him, yer ladyship, but you'd 'ave done the same yourself in my place——"
"But I tell you——" began Cleek.
The Honourable Miss Cheyne wheeled round on him, her eyes sparkling with anger.
"So," she ejaculated, one hand pressed to her side, and Cleek found himself unconsciously recognizing the rings which had flashed in the lamplight on the fingers of the murdered woman. "So you are the impertinent stranger who inflicted himself on an ignorant, helpless girl, and caused me to miss my niece at the station. I drive back with the servants I had ordered from London to find my niece sleeping in a chair. I have packed her off to bed. And as for you, sir, you are an impostor and a thief for aught I know——"
This last assertion Cleek took no notice of, but advancing toward her he said firmly:
"I want to see Lady Margaret——"
"Indeed," was the sarcastic reply. "I am not aware that it is customary for strangers to intrude themselves upon people, even if they have been of some service. As far as you are concerned, sir, my niece's reputation has had every prospect of being blighted by your misconceived and misdirected attentions."
"I have no wish to intrude or to make much of the trifling aid I was able to give your niece, Madam," responded Cleek seriously. "My name is Deland, and you can make what enquiries you like from my friend Mr. Maverick Narkom, Superintendent of Scotland Yard as to—er—my general character if you are at all doubtful about it."
A still angrier gleam shone in Miss Cheyne's eyes, and even as the words left his mouth, Cleek, with that queer sixth sense of intuition, felt that he had said the wrong thing. If there were anything wrong, then the very name of the law would set them on their guard.
Miss Cheyne, however, seemed disposed to push her momentary advantage to its utmost.
"I don't care for fifty Superintendents," she declared, angrily, looking back into Cleek's face with flaming eyes. "You have no right to force your way into my house on any pretext whatsoever. Indeed, I am not sure that I can't have the law on you for breaking in my windows this evening. It will cost me a pretty penny. But I should like you to understand that I won't have my niece disturbed by anybody, so if you can't explain your visit to me, I'll say good-night and good riddance. As for you, Policeman, you ought to be ashamed of yourself to come here and rouse me on such a nonsensical errand."
She cut short Mr. Roberts's excuses and practically drove the two men back until they found themselves once more on the steps. Then the door slammed in their faces.
Constable Roberts turned swiftly upon his companion, and commenced a pent-up tirade against him for having fetched him out on this wild-goose chase.
Cleek stood still, pinching his chin with a thumb and forefinger, his eyes narrowed down to slits. Review the facts however calmly, he could still find no fitting solution. Sure he was that a dead woman had stared at him from the floor of that house, but he was also just as sure that the same woman had driven him out from it. And what of Lady Margaret herself? He had not a shadow of right to insist on seeing her. She was in the hands of her natural guardian, and yet, and yet——! The shadow of doubt hung over him.
He stopped short suddenly and sniffed in the air, much to the open-mouthed astonishment of Constable Roberts, whose grumbling remonstrances died away.
"Good Lord man, sir, I mean," he exclaimed, agitatedly, "but what's in the wind now?"
"Scent and sense, my good fellow," said Cleek. "There is a distinct odour of jasmine in the air and an artificial scent, Huile de jasmin at that. It is a woman's scent, too, and some woman has been here to-night. She's been on these very stone steps."
"Well, what if she has? That don't excuse you a-saying that Miss Cheyne is dead, when she's no more dead than you or me——" retorted the constable, heatedly. "I shall be the laughing-stock of the country, fetched out like a fool——"
Hardly listening to the stream of grumbling expostulation issuing from the mouth of Constable Roberts, Cleek bent down and sniffed again vigorously. He tested each step till he reached the gravelled path. All at once he gave vent to a sharp cry of triumph for there, indented in the path before him and revealed by the light of his torch, was the mark of a slender shoe—a woman's shoe unmistakably.
In a second they had passed the lodge gates and were out in the narrow lane, which was black as a beggar's pocket, and as empty. A placid moon shone over silent fields, and only the soft whirr of the motor broke the silence as they sped along.
Nevertheless Cleek, as ever, was on the look-out. The sixth sense of impending danger which was in him strangely developed hung over him.
Suddenly, with a little cry of surprise and a grinding of brakes, he pulled the car up with such a jerk that Roberts, who had subsided into a somnolent silence, was nearly thrown off the seat at his side.
"A dollar for a ducat but I'm right!" he exclaimed sharply. "There's someone on that side of the hedge."
Without stopping a second he leaped down, cleared the low hedge as lightly as any schoolboy, and pounced on a crouching, running, panting figure.
"One minute, sir," he began. Then his fingers almost lost their hold, as the face of a man in deadly terror gazed up at him, and from him to the majesty of the law as embodied in the person of Constable Roberts. That worthy, having descended from the car, was now looking over the hedge.
"Lawks, sir, if it bain't Sir Edgar himself!" he ejaculated, and the sound of the evidently familiar voice seemed to pull the distraught young man together.
"Hello, Roberts," he said with a brave attempt at the debonair nonchalance which was his usual manner, an attempt that did not blind Cleek to the fact that his lips were trembling and beads of perspiration standing on his pale forehead.
"What are you doing gadding around at this time of night?"
"Me, sir?" replied Roberts, bitterly. "I've bin fetched out to see murdered women and——"
"Not—not Miss Cheyne!" gasped the young man.
A queer little smile looped up one corner of Cleek's mouth.
"Hello, hello!" he said, mentally, "someone else knows of it, eh?" Here was somebody who, to his way of thinking, jumped to right conclusions too quickly. Why should Sir Edgar Brenton, as he knew this man to be, know that it should be Miss Cheyne, unless—and here Cleek's mind raced on wings of doubt again—unless he himself had killed Miss Cheyne? And if so, who was this woman——?
As if from some distance he could hear Roberts's grumbling bellow:
"Miss Cheyne? Lor', don't you go for to say you've got that bee in your bonnet, too, Sir Edgar. It is quite enough with this gent, Lieutenant Deland, a-coming and fetching me away from my bit of supper. What my missis will say remains to be 'eard, as they says. 'Deed, no, Miss Cheyne's as live as you, and in a thunderin' bad temper——"
"Thank the Lord!" ejaculated the young squire in a low, fervent undertone.
"An' what made you think, if I might be so bold, Sir Edgar, that it was Miss Cheyne?" asked the constable curiously, voicing Cleek's unspoken thought.
That gentleman cleared his throat before answering.
"It was just a chance hit, Roberts," said he, but his voice held an odd little crabbed note in it. "You see, you were coming straight from Cheyne Court, so it couldn't have been any one else."
"No, sir, come to think, it couldn't be," assented Roberts, and Cleek, who had stepped back into the shadow of the hedge, twitched up his eyebrows as he sensed the relief that stole over Sir Edgar's face.
"A nice fright you gave me, too," continued the young man, speaking more easily. "I'm supposed to be at a political dinner-fight in London, you know, Roberts. Only just got back, in fact, and I didn't feel up to it, so when I heard that precious motor of yours I was afraid it might be some dashed good-natured friend, don't you know, and so I cut across the hedge."
"Quite right, too," assented Constable Roberts approvingly, in whose eyes Sir Edgar could do no wrong. Then to Cleek, "Well, sir, I think we'll be moving, if you don't mind."
"Indeed I don't," Cleek replied, and then he addressed Sir Edgar. "Sorry I startled you, sir—took you for a poacher, don't you know. Perhaps you'll let me drive you through the village if you are going this way." He smiled with a well-feigned air of stupidity, put up his eyeglass into his eye, and lurched up against the young man as he spoke.
"Pleased," mumbled Sir Edgar, and got into the limousine.
Another two or three minutes' run brought them into the village, and here Sir Edgar insisted on alighting, and continuing his journey on foot.
Cleek watched him go with brows on which deep furrows were marked.
"Wonder what made the young gentleman lie so futilely?" he said at length as his shadow gradually merged in with the darkness ahead.
"Lie?" echoed the astonished constable, as he fumbled with the latch of his garden gate.
"Yes, lie, my friend," flung back Cleek, his foot on the step of the car. "He was running to the station not from it; his clothes smelt strongly of the scent which pervaded the house this afternoon, namely jasmine; and thirdly, there was a revolver in his pocket. A revolver is a thing no gentleman takes to a dinner with him, even a political one."
And, leaving Mr. Roberts to digest this piece of mental food with his long-delayed supper, the car whizzed away in the moonlight. Cleek's first duty was to Ailsa, and he found her waiting for him pale and expectant at the little gate.
"Oh," she cried, as the motor panted its way into silence. "I thought you were never coming back. Where is she, dear? Where is that helpless child?"
She hurried out, but Cleek flung up an arresting hand.
"I am either going mad, Ailsa, or else there is a greater mystery here than I can fathom," he said quickly. "Miss Cheyne herself was there to receive us and——"
"Miss Cheyne!" echoed Ailsa, her eyes dilating, and apparently she was almost as shocked at this news of her evident existence as she had been a short while back by her demise. "But you said——" her voice trailed away into silence, and Cleek took the words out of her mouth.
"She was dead! Yes, I certainly thought so, and I cannot understand it. Nevertheless, Miss Cheyne is there all right, Constable Roberts will vouch for that; and Lady Margaret is presumably tucked up safe and sound in her bed, but it is incomprehensible to me. Here's the story if you care to hear it."
He gave a rough outline of his various discoveries and at the end of it Ailsa nodded her head gravely.
"I cannot understand it, either," she said. "I suppose nothing can be done, but I will go up to Cheyne Court early in the morning and see the child for myself."
Cleek smiled his approval.
"I wish you would," he said. "I must run up and see Mr. Narkom, and to-morrow perhaps—well, who knows——"
It had just gone nine o'clock on that same eventful evening when the limousine slowed down before Scotland Yard, and the car was handed over to its natural owners. Superintendent Narkom, Cleek learned to his extreme relief, was engaged on a special case involving his working at the Yard to a late hour. In the fraction of a second Cleek was ascending the stone staircase and traversing the corridor, at the end of which lay the private room of his friend and ally. He still felt that all was not as it should be at Cheyne Court, and even though he was unable to do anything at the moment, yet he felt he must pour the story of his adventure into the trained and sympathetic ears of the man with whom he had worked so long and so faithfully. It could not have been more than a minute, but the time seemed endless till he at length, after a preliminary tap, threw open the door of the room and saw the figure of Mr. Narkom ensconced in his arm-chair, his brows knitted, and his hands clenched over a sheet of paper lying on the desk before him. He looked up irritably at the evidently unwelcome intrusion.
"Now, what the——" he began. Then as he caught sight of the intruder, he leaped from his seat and fairly hurled himself on Cleek.
"Cleek!" he shouted. "Cleek, the very man I was praying for! Come along in and lock the door behind you so we can't be disturbed."
Cleek obeyed, smiling a little. He was always willing and eager to give his help to the Yard, and the very fact that Mr. Maverick Narkom so plainly depended on him lent still further zest to his willingness.
"Hello," he said lightly, "you look fairly dazed, Mr. Narkom. What's in the wind? It's a case, of course. And a jewel case at that," he added.
"Cinnamon! Cleek," stuttered the Superintendent, falling limply into his lately vacated chair. "How the dickens did you know, or are you——"
"In league with the Evil One himself, eh?" finished Cleek, the queer, one-sided smile travelling over his face. "No, it's quite simple, my dear fellow. At your side you have a book, 'Famous Stones and Their History.' In front of you is a lapidary's glass. Clearly you have been examining stones of some kind, real or artificial, see?"
"Yes, I do see," muttered Mr. Narkom. "And you're right Cleek, devilish right. It is a jewel theft. As a matter of fact, it's a series of thefts, all by the same gang, and Heaven alone knows how or from where they operate."
"Oho!" said Cleek, with a strong rising inflection. "A gang, eh? Now I wonder if I know. There's the French gang, headed by our old friend Margot; the Viennese gang, by Mr. Von Henri, and the Lambeth Walk gang that have called themselves the Pentacle Club——"
"That's the set. But how you knew beats me! Petrie and Hammond will have it they are at the bottom of these cases. There have been one after the other, jewels stolen from travellers at railway stations, jewels from shops, jewels at balls. There is a constant inrush of fresh cases, and I am almost beside myself with anxiety. In two instances, in fact, murder has been done, and the body found marked with a kind of six-pointed star."
Cleek's voice went up, and his brows came down. "Star, you say," he ejaculated rapidly. "Star? As you know, my friend, the Pentacle is a star formed by two equilateral triangles intersecting so as to form a six-pointed star. Properly it should be a five-pointed object, from the Greek pente, five, like a pentagram, or pentagon, but as applied to a magical figure it is probably a corruption of pendre, to hang, and that is a very appropriate sign for our friends to have chosen. This gang, too, if I remember rightly, used to be led by a man known as Snaky Jim, though I believe James Blake was his real name. At any rate, that was the name under which he served time. All this is by the way, so now you give me such facts as you have to hand, and you may be sure you can rely upon my doing my best to help you."
"Well, it will certainly be a hanging matter this time if we catch the culprit, for when it comes to committing murder in broad daylight within an ace of Bond Street Police Station itself, it is a bit too thick. Why any one should have murdered a harmless old theatrical wardrobe keeper in Drury Lane anyway, just beats me."
"What's that?" said Cleek. "Do you mean to tell me that a person attached to the theatre has been killed? Or—no—no, let me see, a seller of second-hand clothes is a wardrobe keeper, is he not?"
"Yes," responded Mr. Narkom, "it was my mistake, though in this case it was a woman. As I said before, what they wanted to kill the old dame for is past comprehension. There wasn't an article worth ten shillings in the place and yet they took the trouble, to say nothing of the risk, of carrying off all the old wigs and gowns that the shop contained. It was a regular clean sweep I'm told."
Cleek sat up suddenly. "What's that? Murdered an old woman for the sake of a few 'old clo'? Why, Mr. Narkom, the thieves must have been mad. When did this peculiar outrage take place; at what time; and when? But perhaps you don't know."
"As it happens, I do," said Mr. Narkom, answering the latter part of his ally's question, "for I happened to be visiting Bond Street when the policeman on point duty brought the case in. The woman, Madame Elise she called herself, though in reality she was as Irish as a Dublin-born woman can be and spoke with a brogue that you could cut with a knife, had lived in this little court in the lane, and carried on business for nearly ten years. She was known, I believe, to be a tough customer as we understand the term, but no crook. No 'Fence' business; just the buying and selling of old clothes, and mostly theatrical ones. Well, according to the old crony who lodged with her, she hadn't a friend or relative in the world, and such money as she made went to keep a cot at St. Thomas's Hospital in memory of her son who died as a baby. Poor old soul.
"Well, according to Mrs. Malone, who goes out for the day, Madame, as they call her, had an appointment with some man who wanted to fit up a small touring company and needed clothes. He particularly mentioned a 'makeup' for an old woman."
Cleek twitched up his eyebrows. "How did Mrs. Malone know that?" he asked.
"She says Mrs. McBride, to give Madame her real name, told her so, and at the same time, said she didn't expect the deal to come off, for she wasn't going to lower her price, not if she died for it——"
"H'm," said Cleek, rubbing his chin softly with his forefinger, "and she did 'die for it,' poor soul. That looks suspicious. Did she already suspect her customer of sinister designs?"
"Goodness knows! All we know is that a man was seen to go in——"
"By whom?" interposed Cleek swiftly.
"Several people, but the one most likely to be certain is the crippled paper-boy who has a stand opposite the shop. He says a man went in, stayed ever so long, and came out finally with a big bag. He then strode off up in the direction of Wellington Street."
"H'm, like looking for a needle in a haystack to find him," threw in Cleek with a little gesture of despair. "And when was the murder discovered, may I ask?"
"Not until a couple of hours later, I believe, when Mrs. Malone returned and came screeching out of the house with the news that Madame was murdered, having been stabbed to the heart with a dagger. That's all I know up to the present. But that's the case in a nutshell, Cleek."
"H'm, and a pretty tough nut to crack," threw in Cleek with a little laugh. "If it is not too late I wouldn't mind viewing the body to-night, if you don't mind. Unless——"
"Only too thankful," responded Mr. Narkom, jumping to his feet with alacrity. "For what with these jewel thefts and now this murder, I am almost beside myself with worry. Going to make any 'alterations' in your appearance?"
"Yes. Give me a moment and I'll be ready."
"Thanks, Cleek. I knew I could rely upon you! I don't believe you need bother about a disguise, though. It's as dark as pitch and there's nobody now to see whether Cleek of Scotland Yard is still in the land of the living or not."
The curious one-sided smile so characteristic of the man looped up the corner of Cleek's mouth; his features seemed to writhe; and a strange, indescribable change came over them as he made use of his peculiar birth-gift. An instant later the only likeness which remained of the dapper Lieutenant who had entered the room was his clothing, for the bovine, stupid face above the Lieutenant's collar was the face of George Headland who stood blinking and grinning into the Superintendent's amazed and delighted countenance.
"I do not think it will matter at all," Cleek said as he smiled into Mr. Narkom's eyes. "But it's as well to be careful. And Mr. George Headland is good enough to take chances on. Come along."
Mr. Narkom "came along" forthwith and it was not until they were safely seated in the limousine and heading swiftly for the purlieus of Drury Lane, that Cleek spoke of his doings.
"I only hope the old-clothes woman has come to life again, like my corpse did this evening," he said with just a tinge of whimsical humour as he remembered the incidents through which he had just passed.
Mr. Narkom stared at him in natural astonishment and Cleek proceeded to relate his adventures of the night, with the utmost detail, from the moment when the shot attracted his attention outside Cheyne Court, down to that when the ghastly discovery was made by him in the dusty ballroom.
"You are absolutely sure the woman was dead?" said Mr. Narkom, mopping his head with a silk handkerchief.
"Quite sure. I have seen death too many times not to recognize its presence immediately, my friend. No, that woman was dead right enough, but as to whether she was in reality Miss Cheyne, or whether it was Miss Cheyne who drove us out of the house an hour later, is quite another matter. The thing is not supernatural, it is simply a trick. Once, in the old days that lie behind, when I was amongst those who are hunted, in the old 'vanishing cracksman' days, I saw Margot play a similar trick. Even in that time of the 'Kid Crawl,' I employed a similar method to achieve a coup which would otherwise have ended badly enough."
"Margot," repeated Narkom. "Yes, I wonder if it was she and what her object was, but even if we knew it would not help us. Besides, she would have recognized you."
"Oh, no, my friend," replied Cleek, with one of his curious smiles. "I do not think any living being would recognize me, unless I wished them to. I can assure you, and I think I should know, that it was not Margot. As to an object, that is another matter. Do not forget the fact that the jewels belonging to the house of Cheyne are historic, and worth untold wealth. All are or will be shortly in the power of the poor little girl I drove home and who stands a very good chance of being the target of every jewel thief in Europe. Still, I don't suppose any one would be allowed to remove them without there being first-class evidence as to their identity. That is where the mystery lies. It is a pity we do not know the family lawyers, or we could put them on their guard."
Mr. Narkom looked up with a little start. "That's strange, now you come to think of it, for as it happens I do know them—they are Shallcott, Woodward & Company of Lincoln's Inn, and I came up to town this morning with old Mr. Shallcott. He's a precise old soul, and I don't fancy there's any chance of their playing any tricks on him. He was telling me about a young client of his who comes into her kingdom of jewels in a week or so's time. He did not mention any names, but in the light of what you say, it must be this very same lady. Perhaps you would like to see him for yourself, old chap, and if I can get off I will see into the matter of that dead body without fail. I will issue a search warrant if you like. That is, if it'll be any good to you, with your amazing methods!"
"You never can tell, as the old woman said when she married for the fifth time, and a search warrant is a search warrant when necessity arises. I'll have it, my friend."
Mr. Narkom nodded. Then he looked out of the window of the limousine and beckoned to Lennard to stop.
"Here we are," said he, "and I promise you poor Madame will be dead enough!"
Dead she certainly was, and the cause of death was only too plain. The poor soul had been stabbed straight to the heart as she had stood bargaining over her own counter. Cleek gave a little sigh as he turned away from the gruesome sight. Except for the fact that every wig and article of woman's clothing had been removed, there was no evidence of any robbery in the shop. It looked likely to prove one of those plain, straightforward cases that end simply in the verdict of murder against some person or persons unknown.
He was about to follow Mr. Narkom when his eye caught sight of an old, faded daguerreotype photo standing on the mantelshelf. It was no less than a photo of the Honourable Miss Cheyne, in a red dress and her unique rings and at the bottom of it was inscribed, "Elsie McBride from her mistress, Marion Cheyne."
Lady Margaret Cheyne awoke suddenly.
As Cleek had surmised, left to herself, she would have slept on undisturbed for hours, but the sharp sound of opening and closing doors, the buzz of voices, and blaze of light, caused the forget-me-not blue eyes to open and stare dazedly round her. For the moment she thought she was back in the seclusion of the convent.
"Am I late, sister?" she murmured drowsily. Then as she grew wider awake, the recollection of the events of the last hours swept over her, and with this came the memory of her journey, and all the misery that it had entailed. With a little cry, half mental pain, half physical tiredness, she started up, and her eyes fell on the figure of the Honourable Miss Cheyne, who stood at the side of the chair, a lamp in hand, looking anxiously down at her.
"Auntie," cried the girl joyfully, and grasping at the hand put out to her, she remembered only just in time not to kiss her aunt, for Miss Cheyne had invariably hated caresses.
"Oh, you are back at last. I missed you at the station——"
"So I should think, my dear," said Miss Cheyne, grimly. "I've had the servants looking for you, such lazy devils as they are, gobblers all of them. I've been looking for you, and I find you here all the time. I want to know who the person was who brought you." She finished as she turned to put the lamp down on a table.
"I don't know who he is, except that his name is Lieutenant Deland," cried Lady Margaret, "and that he is a friend of a lady who was on the boat, Miss Ailsa Lorne, who was so good to me. Oh, Auntie, I was so sick. I shall never go back again. I simple couldn't go through it."
"No, no, you shan't, my dear," said Miss Cheyne, almost amiably for her, "you shall have a good time over here, but now you are tired out, and must get to bed. I don't keep any servants, so you'll have to set to, and do for yourself—the lazy good-for-noughts, they eat you out of house and home! John shall get you something to eat and drink, my dear, and then to-morrow we'll have the house to ourselves."
Lady Margaret was too tired to argue, even if she had thought of so doing, and she knew of her aunt's parsimonious habits.
She certainly did not like the look of John, who leered into her face as he brought a glass of what was presumably lemonade and a plate of thickly cut bread and butter, which she could not touch. She was thirsty, however, and carried the glass quickly to her lips, only to be put down with a shudder as she detected the flavour of strong spirit.
"I don't think I want anything, Auntie, after all, only just to go to bed."
"Nonsense, my girl, you drink it up sharp," was the response. "You'll catch your death of cold driving about with strange men at night. Come, down with it."
"Better hurry up," said John, significantly, and even Lady Margaret's tired mind took in the strangeness of the remark coming as it did from her aunt's butler.
With a little puzzled frown, the girl took a long gulp of the liquid, then fled up the staircase, pausing at the first landing only long enough to pick up a candle.
"Good-night, Auntie," she called down to the bejewelled and rouged figure standing at the bottom. "I'll be better to-morrow."
With a little nod she vanished, and the listeners heard her light footfall on the bare staircase of the second flight. A moment later there came the click of a door shut to. Lady Margaret had retired for the night.
A sigh of relief came from Miss Cheyne's lips and she met the peculiar look of her servant with one equally significant.
"Send Aggie up to her," she commanded, "and don't forget to lock her in."
With this remark she turned on her high-heeled shoes, and minced painfully back to the dining room.
Whether it was the effects of her journey, or what was more likely the strong spirit in the lemonade, Lady Margaret slept as soundly as the proverbial top till close on mid-day, when she was awakened by the rough entry of the person designated as "Aggie."
She was a queer-looking maid, Lady Margaret thought to herself, with rough, unkept hair, and strangely roughened and stained fingers.
She did not like the way the woman looked at her as she banged on the table a cup of weak tea and some thick slices of bread and butter.
"Here you are, Miss—yer ladyship, I mean," she said in harsh cockney tones which made Lady Margaret wince unconsciously, accustomed as she was to the soft, pure French of the good nuns at Notre Dame. "An' the quicker you gets up and attends to yerself, the better I shall like it," the woman continued, muttering more to herself than to the girl. "It's a bit more than I bargained for."
"That will do very well. I shall not require anything more, and please tell my aunt I shall be with her directly."
"I don't doubt you will," responded the blunt Aggie in a rather surprising manner, then without another word she swung on her heel, and stalked out of the room, banging the door behind her.
"What an awful creature," said Lady Margaret as she jumped lightly out of her bed. "I shall get Auntie to discharge her very soon. Oh, I am so thankful to be home," and she ran lightly to the window and looked out. With all the resilience of youth, she seemed a different being this morning from the worn-out, fragile child who had been driven home last night by Lieutenant Deland.
A few minutes later she ran lightly down the staircase and into the dining room where she found the Honourable Miss Cheyne deeply absorbed in the morning newspapers.
She greeted her niece a little gruffly, but knowing her eccentric ways, Lady Margaret took but scant notice. It was not long, however, before she realized that her future life was not to be entirely a bed of roses.
"I am going over to see Miss Lorne to-day, Auntie," she said presently, "and to thank her for getting me out of my difficulties."
"Got us into them, you mean," snapped Miss Cheyne angrily. "She's a designing adventuress trying to scrape acquaintance with you, so that she can say she is a friend of Lady Margaret Cheyne! Oh, I know the breed, she and her blessed accomplice, Beland, or Deland, or whatever his name is, they were probably on the watch for you, and managed to carry you off before I arrived on the scene. I forbid you even to mention their names again, much less speak to them."
"Oh, Auntie!" pleaded poor Lady Margaret, her bright young face clouding at this unexpected ban on a friendship to which she had looked forward with such pleasure. "I am sure you are mistaken, and Miss Lorne said that she was coming to see you to-day and explain——"
"Well, if she has the impertinence to come here," snapped Miss Cheyne angrily, "she will not be admitted. Don't you dare to argue with me, child, or back to school you'll go. I'm not going to have you drive about with strange men just as you like, so don't you think it——"
"I told you last night how it happened," responded Lady Margaret in a little gust of impatience. "I slept in the car all the time till I got here. I don't know what I should have done had it not been for Miss Lorne, anyway, and especially on board ship."
Miss Cheyne's thin lips set in a straight, grim line. "Well, the best thing you can do is to forget her, or else send her some money, probably she'll value that more," she retorted with heat, shaking a finger in the girl's face. "Don't forget you have something more important to think of than designing minxes and pert Lieutenants, if he is really a genuine officer, which I doubt. Anyhow, I shall take you up to town next week out of their reach, for one thing, and for another to celebrate your coming of age. Then you will have all the Cheyne jewels, don't forget that——"
Lady Margaret was young enough and human enough to forget temporarily her grief for Miss Lorne's rejected friendship in the idea of seeing, to say nothing of wearing, the famous treasures of her family.
"Oh, Auntie!" she cried. "I had forgotten them, are you really going to let me see them?"
"You shall do more than that, my dear," replied her aunt almost amiably, "you shall wear them. I mean to have you presented at Court, and you will certainly have to wear some jewellery then. I don't suppose you know anything about the pieces themselves. I myself have forgotten——"
"Oh, yes, I do," said Lady Margaret, "don't you remember the list father gave me in his last letter, in case there was any trouble? I don't remember all of them, but I know there were three strings of pearls, a big diamond necklace and tiara, ever so many rings, and of course the Purple Emperor!"
"Oh, yes, I had not forgotten that," said Miss Cheyne drily. "It is something one is not likely to forget."
"But I don't think there's any need to have that out, Auntie; do you?" asked Lady Margaret with a little tremor of fear in her voice. "It's not particularly beautiful. In fact, I don't suppose it looks much different from an amethyst, and father used to say it was best at the bottom of the sea."
"That's because he knew no better and spoke like a fool," snapped Miss Cheyne, her voice quivering with excitement, and as the girl looked up at her, she saw a face that was changed out of all recognition, distorted as it was with avarice and envy. "I want them all, I tell you—all! They ought to have been mine and I want to see them before I die. Do you hear me?"
"Oh, of course, Aunt Marion," said Lady Margaret, astonished at the unexpected outburst. "You can have them and wear them, too. I shan't want them, that is, until——" she broke off, her face crimsoning.
"Until what, pray?" demanded Miss Cheyne, sharply, switching round and looking at her.
"Until—well, until I get married. I meant to have told you before long, but I am going to be married some day to Sir Edgar Brenton——" She paused as if waiting for another outburst, but to her intense amazement Miss Cheyne only laughed.
"Marry, well, so you shall, my dear, if you want to, and your jewels will be a good wedding present." She gave a little chuckle which mystified the girl still further.
"Meanwhile," went on Miss Cheyne, as if to change the subject to other things, "you had better get upstairs and unpack your boxes. Don't expect Aggie to help you, she has enough to do downstairs."
"Oh, I don't want Aggie's help," responded Lady Margaret quickly with a wry little smile. "She wasn't exactly charming, and I must say I don't quite like the look of her. Can't you get rid of her, Aunt? I'm sure she is not honest, and that man, too. If we are going to have the Cheyne jewels here——"
"We are," snapped Miss Cheyne, "and don't you trouble your head about what doesn't concern you, my dear. You leave John and Aggie alone. I'll settle them."
Lady Margaret said no more but ascended to her room, thinking in her innermost heart of many things. She could only dimly remember her aunt when she had been allowed to spend her holidays at Cheyne Court, but she knew she was eccentric, and because she herself had been jilted in her youth hated all men.
Still she did not mean to be made a prisoner of. She was determined to visit not only Miss Lorne, to whom she had been undeniably attracted, but also, and this she considered far more important, Lady Brenton, the mother of the man she had pledged herself to marry in those stolen interviews under the walls of Notre Dame.
Thanks to Miss Cheyne's many requests, Lady Margaret had little time to pay visits or write letters that day, and when night did fall, she was glad to crawl into bed and sleep the sleep of youth and healthy fatigue.
She slept soundly for hours, but all at once she was rudely awakened. From the depths below that supposedly sleeping household came a queer bumping noise, and it seemed to the terrified girl, as she sat up in bed, that the very house was being torn to pieces.
Conquering her natural fears she rose, and donning a dressing gown, unconsciously tried the handle of her door.
To her amazement it was locked on the outside, locked! She was a prisoner in her own house!
Burglars were Lady Margaret's first thought, and she pulled vigorously at the door. At first it resisted, but to her delight the old lock, rotten with age, gave way under her vigorous onslaught. A second later she was descending the staircase, bent on rousing Miss Cheyne or obtaining assistance.
She had reached the bottom of the first flight, amid complete silence, and for a moment she thought she had heard the sounds only in her dream.
But at the head of the stairs she stood hesitating when from all around her came a sound as of a soul in agony, a horrible moaning cry that chilled her very heart. Startled and terrified she gave a shriek, and losing her balance, came hurtling down the shallow staircase. Her slim ankle was twisted under her, and she lay there for some time, a little, moaning, writhing heap.
When Lady Margaret awoke to consciousness, it was to find herself once more in her own room, with Aggie, the pert serving maid, bending anxiously over her.
"What was it?" she cried out, clutching feverishly at the grimy, toil-worn hand of the girl. "Oh, what was it? Didn't you hear it?" She struggled to get up, but sank back with a moan at the pain in her ankle.
"Hear what? Lawks o'mussy, but you gave us all a turn, Miss—yer ladyship," said the woman roughly.
"But the horrible noise!" shuddered the girl.
"That? Why, it was one of the dogs. There's a dog ill down in the cellar and that's what you heard," retorted Aggie. "A nice twist you've given this ankle of yours. It's a good job; Auntie—the mistress—I mean, knows something about sprains."
"Does she?" asked the girl wearily, her mind still bent on the horrible sound. Appallingly human it was; no dog could have screamed like that, she felt sure. It was the hurt cry of a human being in pain.
"Yes, you bet, and here she is." Aggie relinquished her place, apparently only too gladly, to Miss Cheyne, who appeared with lotions and bandages, and literally took possession of the patient. Her long, slender fingers manipulated the swollen ankle with the experience and precision of a trained hand.
"Now, my lady, you'll just have to be still and patient," she said grimly. To Lady Margaret it seemed as if this eccentric relative were by no means ill-pleased at the catastrophe which had overtaken her niece.
"I thought it was burglars, Aunt Marion," said the girl, as Miss Cheyne's eye fell on the splintered lock, "and that reminds me, I was locked in——Did you know that? You won't dare to keep that woman now——"
"You go off to sleep, and I'll inquire into it," was all Miss Cheyne would say, and with that the girl was obliged to rest content. But when she fell into an uneasy sleep, it was with the profound intention to ask Edgar Brenton's advice at the earliest opportunity.
A sprained ankle is not a dangerous occurrence, but it is sufficiently painful and depressing to be worthy of more anxiety than was expended over Lady Margaret.
Rendered practically a prisoner she had only to rely on such books and magazines as Miss Cheyne brought up to her and the days passed very slowly indeed.
She wrote letters to Sir Edgar and to Miss Lorne, bribing Aggie with such coins as she possessed to post them, unknown to her aunt.
No answer came to them, though Aggie swore that they had been sent to the post, and later the girl was not surprised to find them in the possession of Miss Cheyne, opened and mutilated.
At intervals she heard the dull, distant moans, but had schooled herself to believe Aggie's statement.
On the first day that she could walk about her room she was almost hysterical with delight.
For once, too, Miss Cheyne relaxed her firm manner.
"I suppose you know what to-morrow is, my dear," she said, looking almost furtively at her niece.
Lady Margaret thought a moment, then gave a little cry of delight.
"Why, it's my birthday, of course, and I'm eighteen."
"Yes, and what is just as important," said Miss Cheyne, "you are the owner of the Cheyne jewels. We're going up to town in the morning to bring them back."
"Bring them all here?" cried Lady Margaret, startled at the odd look in the black, flashing old eyes. "Do you think it safe enough? Thieves might break in. Why not leave them, at least some of them, where they are, Aunt Marion. It is safer, surely!"
"Because I want them. I want to see them," Miss Cheyne snapped ferociously. "I'm curious, you know, more curious than you are. And I mean to have them here."
"Just as you like, Aunt. I want to see them, too, only I was thinking of the danger."
"There is no danger. I am having special safes made for them downstairs," said Miss Cheyne. "If you have them here you can wear them whenever you like without having to go up to those thieving lawyers every time you happen to want them."
Lady Margaret agreed, but deep down in her own mind she felt that she would prefer to leave the Cheyne jewels in the safe custody of Messrs. Shallcott, Woodward & Company in London. On the other hand, she had gained an unspoken victory in regard to her future marriage.
Indeed it seemed to her as if Miss Cheyne had but one obsession: to see the Cheyne Court jewels. Her inexplicable antipathy even against Ailsa Lorne seemed to have died a natural death. When Lady Margaret, albeit a trifle timidly, ventured to hint at a visit to her newly found friend, Miss Cheyne said pleasantly enough:
"Yes, if you like my dear, after we come back from London, then there is no reason at all why you should not see your friends."
To say that this lifted a load off the girl's mind, is to express the matter in the mildest terms imaginable. Her failure to hear either from Lady Brenton or her lover, as well as from Ailsa Lorne herself, had filled Lady Margaret's mind with strange forebodings. She almost felt that she would be willing to lose every stone among the heirlooms if her aunt could be made so much pleasanter to live with.
And downstairs, Miss Cheyne said aloud with a queer little chuckle, when the girl had left the room:
"See your friends? So you shall, my dear. After we come back!"
Despite the mysterious fact that the Honourable Miss Cheyne's photo had been found in the dirty little shop in Crown Court, Drury Lane, Cleek could find no visible connection between it and the fact of the murder. Its presence was also speedily accounted for, owing to the information garrulously volunteered by Mrs. Malone. It appeared that "Madame" had been in the service of the Honourable Miss Cheyne. "Hupper 'ousemaid, she were," said that lady, "and when she left to get married, the mistress gave her half-a-crown and her photo to remind her wot a fool she was to do it. 'Er very own words, sir, not but what she wasn't 'appy enough—— Still, it's a man wot's killed 'er, so the old girl wasn't far out."
"How do you know that?" asked Cleek, to whom she was talking at the time.
Mrs. Malone bit her lip.
"Stands to reason it was so, sir. I'll not be speaking the black word against anybody, but sure an' I belave I know the man what did it——"
"What's that? What do you mean?"
"Well, sir," said the woman, "I wasn't 'ere myself all day, but it might have been the man who used to come in 'ere and pump 'er all about 'er old 'ome and 'er first place—which was 'er last, too. It were Cheyne Court itself down on the river somewhere, I don't exactly know where, but poor 'Madame' was bred and born there, and loved the place like 'ome. This man was always a coming in, after he spotted that dratted photograph there. Talk, talk, talk 'e would. What was the place like and how far away was it? And ever so many more such-like questions. But Madame always shut up and once when 'e offered to buy the picture itself, she nearly broke his neck with a broom handle."
Cleek sat very still, his eyes half closed. To all appearances he was half asleep. But his thoughts were racing at topmost speed. So he was right. There was some connection between this murder and the Cheyne Court mystery; but what? What was it that this stranger wanted to learn, and why had he been so persistent in his inquiries? He could find no answer to his mental queries, and eventually he was obliged to own himself beaten. But that in nowise prevented his taking the impression of the finger-prints on the dagger with which the grim deed had been perpetrated. The case was left in the hands of the jury with the result that the verdict was one he had prophesied, "wilful murder against someone or persons unknown." Notwithstanding its practical passing into oblivion, Cleek felt that the case was connected in some way with the Cheyne Court mystery, and as he left the grimy regions of Drury Lane behind him his thoughts went back to Lady Margaret.
Meanwhile, the object of his solicitude was apparently far from needing it. "Lady Margaret Cheyne, the Honourable Miss Cheyne and maid," the latter, the furtive-faced "Aggie," had registered their arrival in a quiet little hotel in Craven Street, W. Once in London Miss Cheyne had shown an amazing knowledge of its thoroughfares and shopping centres, despatching the girl, in the company of Aggie, on delightful expeditions that sent the child, for she was little more, almost delirious with delight. After being pent up in the austere walls of that convent abroad it was small wonder that to have all the bewildering splendour of feminine fashions at her command turned her head a little.
Only one little thing gave her cause for dissatisfaction, and that was the presence of the ever-watchful Aggie.
"If only you would come, too, Auntie," she cried, on the third morning of their stay, previous to setting forth on another whirl of purchasing. "Aggie hasn't an atom of taste, you know. She would cheerfully let me buy a green hat to go with a mauve skirt, and I don't think even an orange blouse would upset her equanimity."
"Well, why should it?" demanded Miss Cheyne. "I like a bit of colour myself."
This coming from her aunt, whose clothes were always of the darkest and dowdiest combinations of gray or black that could be imagined, left Lady Margaret almost breathless.
"Don't be too long to-day," said Miss Cheyne, apparently totally unconscious of the effect her words had produced. "Don't forget that we have an appointment with the solicitors this afternoon, and I shall want all my energies to see you are not done out of those jewels."
Lady Margaret laughed gaily.
"No, I don't suppose they will like giving them up after all these years."
With a little nod she passed out and was soon on her way westward. In Trafalgar Square she stopped to stare skyward at the Nelson monument. So absorbed was she that she did not see the start of glad surprise which a stalwart young man gave as he came rushing to her side.
It was not, indeed, until the sound of her own name spoken in glad, joyous tones fell on her ears that she came back once more to her surroundings.
"Edgar," she said breathlessly, clapping her hands like a little child. "Isn't this just wonderful; meeting you like this? Why, where did you spring from, and why haven't you been near me?"
Without waiting for his reply she led him round till they found a seat on the stone steps.
"I jolly well haven't had a chance of seeing you, my darling," said the young man as he devoured the radiant young face with his eyes. "I've fairly haunted the grounds of Cheyne Court but didn't dare to face your old dragon after the drubbing she gave me last week. I suppose she's all right?" he asked, a little irrelevantly.
Lady Margaret looked at him in surprise.
"Why, of course she is all right. She has been good to me, though she seems queerer than ever. But, Edgar, what do you think, she says my jewels will be a good wedding present for us! What do you say to that?"
"What!" cried the young man. "Do you mean you tackled her—you brave darling. I wonder she didn't snap your pretty head off."
"I did expect an outcry, when I said I was going to marry you," she said, shaking her fair head, "but she said I might, and should have the Cheyne Court jewels, too."
"Considering they're your own property, my darling, that's just like her cheek," retorted Sir Edgar. "But I'm hanged if I can understand it, for when I saw her last, as I told you, she abused me like a pickpocket."
Lady Margaret laughed aloud in childish glee.
"Well, we'll just take the goods the gods send," said she. "She can keep the old jewels if she likes, if only she gives her consent to our marriage."
Her voice dropped tenderly upon the words, and the wild-rose colour bloomed for a moment in her cheeks until Sir Edgar, impetuous young man that he was, gave a hasty look round at the practically empty square and snatched the kiss he had been longing for ever since he had caught sight of her.
"And now," he said, when Lady Margaret, blushing deeper than ever, had reproved him for his audacity, "what are you going to do next?"
"Go back to the hotel, Maxell's, in Craven Street, and get ready for those horrid old lawyers," she responded, laughing, as she surveyed Aggie's broad figure some distance away. "Auntie won't rest till she gets those precious jewels home."
"Jove, Meg darling, but you don't mean to tell me you're going to be mad enough to take the Cheyne jewels back to that old rookery of a place?" exclaimed Sir Edgar.
"It does seem a bit of a risk," she admitted, "but Auntie is keen on it and I don't care so long as she lets me see you. I really must go now, Edgar. I shall have to go right back instead of shopping."
"I'm coming with you," Sir Edgar said, jumping to his feet. "I won't let you out of my sight if I can help it."
"But you must. I don't want Auntie to be upset again; now be a dear, sensible Edgar! See, here is Aggie, she's a new servant of Auntie's and I can see she is getting cross. I will get back, and when we return home this evening you must meet me on the terrace. I will talk Auntie into playing the fairy godmother."