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CHAPTER XXI
"A LUNNON GENTLEMAN"

"By all that's good!" he ejaculated, as Mr. Narkom jumped into the room somewhat heavily at sound of his hastily spoken ejaculation. "See that mark there in the woodwork, above the spot where we dug the bullet out this morning? Nearly shot me through the head, old friend, and made an end of your troublesome ally at last! Gad! the ingenuity of it! The devilish ingenuity! So that's how it was done, eh? We'll look into the thing a bit closer, but from what I have already seen I'd say there was a pistol hidden inside that wheel, but the thing's so perfectly done that it must have taken a master-hand to have done it. And where's the master-hand here? Ross Duggan? – with his hobby for electricity? He's not got the face of a man who could contrive a thing like that, and carry it out to such a pitch of perfection. And yet – it's a soundless pistol, all right, that did the deed. But the patience of the manipulator! the straightness of vision, to be certain of the moment to operate it! That man would be a useful adjunct to Scotland Yard's force, Mr. Narkom, with knowledge such as that. It's the most diabolically clever thing I've ever encountered!"

"It is – by James! it is!" returned the Superintendent, mopping his forehead in his excitement and going very red in the face. "Sure it isn't a woman, old chap? Women are pretty tricky people in affairs of this kind. And the contrivance of it, too!.. So that's how it is done, is it?" as Cleek's agile fingers slid over the wheel and stopped upon a faint line which showed how the thing had been cut out and then stuck in again after the pistol had been lodged in its hiding-place. "Here; use my knife and dig it out, won't you?"

"Never! The time for doing that will be after I have given a demonstration of its prowess before the assembled company. I'm no master at intricate woodwork and mechanism such as that, Mr. Narkom, and I want to keep it in perfect working order for the crucial moment. If I extracted it now, ten chances to one I'd never get it back again. The thing to be discovered is to find out the man in this establishment whose fingers give him away as a delicate worker. And there's just one I've noticed that – "

And it was just as the name formed itself upon his lips that Cyril Duggan burst hurriedly into the room, despite the detaining hands of the constable on duty outside the door, and beckoned hastily to Cleek.

"Your man wants you, Mr. Deland," he said breathlessly. "Says it's awfully important and must see you at once. He wouldn't come in, but asked me to tell you, would you come round to the servants' quarters as soon as you could? He's waiting in the outer courtyard. Ginger-headed chap by the name of Dollops. I'd only just gone out for a breath of fresh air before Mother packed me off to bed – ten o'clock is the latest hour I'm permitted to sit up to. But he seemed so anxious to see you that I promised to come along at once. It's gone ten now, I think, and Mother will be after me if I'm not off – she's frightfully particular on little matters. But the policeman here said you and Mr. Narkom were busy and were not to be disturbed… I say! What's the matter with the old spinning wheel, eh? You seem to be frightfully interested in it!"

"I am – as you say – frightfully," returned Cleek with a smile. "But nothing of any more consequence than an outsider's interest in something he knows nothing about. Ever looked at the thing, my boy?"

"Yes – heaps of times. And experimented upon it, too! Tried all sorts of ways to make it go, until Mother put a stop to my touching it, and said I should probably hurt myself with the spindle and break the thing."

"Oh, she did, did she? Well, perhaps you might. It's more harmful than people give it credit for. All right, Cyril; many thanks for telling me. I'll be along in a moment or two. You'd better get off to bed now, or Lady Paula will be on your track, I'll swear. Good-night."

"Good-night, Mr. Deland; good-night, Mr. Narkom."

He was off again like a shot, and Cleek could hear his light steps running down the hallway and up the stairs, like the big child he was.

"Funny thing," he said to Mr. Narkom as the two left the room together and walked down the corridor toward the servants' quarters, "but that young gentleman always seems to turn up in the most unforeseen moments. Notice his fingers, did you, Mr. Narkom? No? Well, they are as delicate as a woman's and as strong as a man's. Curiously strong for a fifteen-year-old, I must say. Now, if I didn't know better, I'd lay a ducat to a dollar that that lad is a good sight cleverer than either you or I give him credit for, and with his mother's blood in him and a portion of his rascally grandfather's, too, there's no telling just exactly where he will end up… Hello! is that you, Jarvis? I'm told my man wants to see me very particularly. Know where he is by any chance? It's probably about that blue suit of mine. He worries more over my clothes than any woman. In the courtyard? Thanks, very much. You coming along, too, Mr. Narkom?"

"Don't mind if I do," returned the Superintendent off-handedly, "seeing that there is nothing more to be discovered to-night. My man's in charge, so we might go over to the Three Fishers and have a quiet smoke in your rooms. That is, if you'd care about it?"

"Love to, my dear chap, love to. Through this door, eh, Jarvis? Nice snug place you've got here, I must say. Family do you well, I suppose?"

"Yessir," Jarvis's voice bordered upon the confidential. "Tight-fisted where the money is, sir, but – that's Scotch, you know."

"And you're London, eh? – and naturally generous! I understand. Well, here's something to buy yourself a drink with." And Cleek dropped half-a-crown into the butler's hands.

As the two men disappeared through the kitchen door and out into the courtyard, the highly elated Jarvis turned to his fellow servants with a genuine sigh of admiration.

"Amachoor detective or not," he apostrophized the absent gentleman, "an' queer in the top story though 'e may be, that's what I calls a right-down Lunnon gentleman!"

CHAPTER XXII
DAMNING EVIDENCE

They found Dollops waiting in the little squared-in courtyard which led down to the dungeons, and in a state bordering upon hysteria from the excitement of all those exciting things which had just come to pass.

He blurted out his story of Jarvis's practical joke and its ultimate consequences in a helter-skelter fashion, anxious to get on to this new development, and except for a "By James!" from Mr. Narkom and a nod of the head from Cleek, pursued his course without interruption.

"And when we'd walked a mile or so over them 'ills and dahn inter the dales, Minnie ups and says ter me, 'Come an' 'ave a drink, Ginger-snap!' And er course I was nuffin' loaf, as they s'y (though what bread 'as to do with it I niver could tell). So we comes upon a pub in a little bit of a shanty built of timber dahn in the nest of the 'ills, and she tykes me by the arm and pulls me inter it."

"And what did you find there, Dollops?" put in Cleek, with a smile for the lad's poetical expression.

"A bit of a bar full of Scotties wot looked as though they'd come 'ome from a funeril, from the h'expression of their fyces," he returned emphatically. "Them Scotties do take their pleasure sadly, not 'arf! Not a blinkin' one of 'em got a bit er jollyin' left in 'em. ''Ello, Minnie-gairl,' they s'ys to 'er wen we come in, 'who's the noo mon ye ken?' – talkin' in their silly langwidge wot an Englishman can't unnerstand. 'Pal o' mine,' s'ys Minnie, pert-like, 'come ter visit fer a little time. Gen'leman's st'yin' at the Castle.'

"'Where that there wee beetie o' crrime has taken place?' puts in a sandy-'eaded feller wiv beetling brows an' a complexion like a bit er red granite. 'Yes,' says Minnie. 'Then better give 'im a wee drappier ter warrm 'is freetened hearrt!'"

Dollops paused a moment, and Cleek threw back his head and gave vent to a smothered laugh.

"You'll be the death of me yet, lad," he remarked merrily, "with your Cockney and 'Scotch' rolled into one. But let's hear the end of the story. What happened then?"

"They giv me a drink, Guv'nor, of very strong whisky it were, an' when I asked 'em where it come from an 'oo made it, thinkin' I'd lay in a bottle or two fer when we gets back ter Clarges Street, a feller wot just come in (an' a bit tight 'e were, too) slaps me on the back and says, 'Hoo noo, laddie? It's frae the valley, under the little brookies and amangst th' gravel.'"

"And what did you say, Dollops?"

"I told him in good old English ter go tell that ter the marines and stow the gaff, and he ups and larfs at me, and he says, says 'e, 'I'll show ye if I speak the truith or no.' And then a lot o' 'em says, 'Hoots' and 'toots' and 'nah,' as though they was monkeys in the zoo, and set up such a gabbling as you never 'eared of, and the end of it was that ole Barmy tykes me by the arm and pushes me through the door. 'Come from Lunnon, does yer?' he says ter me. 'Well, then, never any tellin' but ye can gie us a han' wi' disposin' of our wares.' And with that he ups and pulls Minnie along with him, in spite of them uvvers, and off we goes dahn th' 'ill inter a deep sort of gravel-pit, and there – the blinkin' thing was, sir, as large as life and twice as nateril!"

"My dear chap! – what the dickens does he mean, Cleek?" threw in Mr. Narkom at this juncture.

"Simply what he says. And it was there, was it, Dollops?"

"It were, sir"; Dollops's tone was portentous with mystery; "and what's more, there was that black-eyed Dago feller wiv the chase-me look and the hearf-brush moustache, talkin' fifteen ter the dozen in sevin different langwidges, and makin' more noise than all the rest of 'em put together."

"Gad! you've surely found out something, Dollops, and done a good day's work, bless your heart," said Cleek admiringly, slipping his arm through the boy's on one side and through Mr. Narkom's on the other. "Well, it's to the gravel-pit with the lot of us this evening – at least for you and me, Dollops. You had better remain here at the Castle, Mr. Narkom, while we're gone. And meet me at midnight under the big gate. But let's not be seen, Dollops, else the fat will be in the fire with a vengeance. Anything else?"

Dollops bent nearer to the man he loved best in all the world, and put his mouth close up against Cleek's ear.

"One uvver fing, sir – an' wot I calls the piece of resisters," he said in a low voice. "As I comes aw'y, 'oo should I see a-runnin' dahn the 'ill, side by side with Dicky-Dago, but that there young feller as they calls Cyril (sickenin' sissy sort er nyme ter give a chap, too!), an' I jumps back inter the bushes wiv Minnie clinging ter me arm, an' waits till they've gorn parst. An' I 'ears the youngster s'y you nyme – 'Mr. Deland,' he says, an' 'clever' – and then summink else, wot I didn't 'ear, but wot made Dicky-Dago give out a sort er garsp and gurgle in 'is froat, an' says something which sounded like a Russian patent medicine, an' – that's all."

"And a very good 'all', too, Dollops," ejaculated Cleek, giving the boy's arm a squeeze. "You have surely done your share of unravelling in this case, at all events. What do you say about it, Mr. Narkom?.. There'll be a nice five-pound note to add to that growing account of yours for this night's job, I promise you… And so Cyril is mixed up in it, too – Cyril! That boy! Gad! what does it mean, eh? And in league with those scoundrels… 'Ten o'clock for bedtime,' says he, so frankly. Ten o'clock! And the young underhanded rascal roaming the countryside just before that in company with an Italian of questionable character! Looks bad, every way you look at it. And with Lady Paula's actions and secret meetings taken into account as well, puts a pretty black face upon their little share in last night's tragedy. Now, I wonder if this Dago, as Dollops calls him, is a lover of the lady's or what?.. Gad! Mr. Narkom, what's your opinion?"

The Superintendent waited a moment, and cleared his throat, and when he spoke his voice was emphatic and a trifle bored.

"No two questions about it, to my way of thinking," said he quietly, as they traversed the darkness together. "That Captain Macdonald did the thing – because of those footprints of his outside the window – and as he couldn't or wouldn't give the reason of why he was in the grounds here last night at that identical time. And the person he was shielding was obviously Lady Paula. She, too, has been involved in this, though whether in the actual murder or not, I'm not prepared to say. And Ross Duggan, too. I imagine the whole thing is a put-up job; don't you, Cleek?"

"I can't rightly say," returned Cleek in an uncertain tone. "Sometimes it points one way and sometimes another. And I'm inclined to agree with you where Lady Paula is concerned. She knows a good deal more than she says, and is wily – deuced wily, as all drug-takers are. And the motive would be there all right, judging from what Maud Duggan told me was the share which Sir Andrew had apportioned out for his widow and her boy. She'll double that easily enough. But to kill for such a thing seems incredible – though I've known of worse crimes for less reason than that. But Ross Duggan's is the greatest motive of all, taking into consideration just when the thing happened —before his name was erased, you must remember, Mr. Narkom, and as he's a dabster at electricity and the only person with an air-pistol in the house … well, circumstantial evidence looks pretty black against him, doesn't it?"

"It certainly does." Mr. Narkom's voice was a trifle apologetic. "Well, I hardly know what to think, Cleek. And you're such a beggar for stringing evidence together, and never forgetting it! And there's such a dickens of a lot of evidence in this case that a chap gets horribly involved, and his memory is likely to play him tricks. And then that Italian chap whom Dollops has seen such a lot of to-day – where does he come in?"

"Right into the midst of the whole caboosh," returned Cleek enigmatically, "and don't you make any mistake about that, my friend. Dicky-Dago, to use Dollops's name, is one of the prime movers in this little inheritance game, and in another one also. A dollar to a ducat he knows the whole thing, and Tweed Coat's with him."

"Who the dickens is Tweed Coat?"

"The gentleman whom Dollops so aptly described a few moments ago," returned Cleek quietly. "Perhaps you didn't notice Ross Duggan's coat this morning, Mr. Narkom? No? Well, it was made of a very sweetly smelling cloth called Harris tweed; and when Dollops described the one he saw to me this evening, I recognized it at once."

"Then Tweed Coat is Ross Duggan, Cleek?"

Mr. Narkom's voice was a trifle shrill. Cleek's eyes met his squarely, and his eyebrows went up.

"Who else?" he said.

CHAPTER XXIII
A STARTLING DÉNOUEMENT

And so it came about that Dollops and Cleek, both wearing dark suits (procured in Cleek's case at the Three Fishers, and from his own dressing-bag), and with caps pulled down over their faces and false moustaches decorating their upper lips as a protection against unforeseen discovery, made their way out in the clear moonlight toward that "gravel pit" of which Dollops had spoken, and padded soft-footedly down the hill toward the little "shanty" to which Dollops guided them, and after a quick glance at it, pushed on into the darkness of the night; down, down, down into the valley – to the thing that lay there revealed in the moon's rays, and which in the face of the to-morrow's sun would have vanished like the picture upon an exposed camera film.

But to-night – to-night they could see the whole panorama of it, lying close to the earth, concealed behind a huge furze-bush upon the hillside, stomachs flat against the face of it, eyes sharpened upon that identical spot which told so much to them of what they sought. Perhaps a dozen men worked there – perhaps more – coats off, shirt-sleeves rolled up – big, bonny men of brawn and muscle, come of a stock as tough as the granite of the hillside itself and hardened by the keen winds and the keener air of the Highlands that had given them birth.

"Giants!" whispered Dollops awe-inspiringly, his lips close against Cleek's ear.

"Thieves!" responded Cleek, with a quick intake of the breath. "Gad! they're a lot, Dollops! And if they caught us up here, hidden away, our chances would be exactly nil. Where's your friend Balmy, eh?"

"Dahn there – under that big flare, sir – 'im wiv the blue shirt and the red neck-cloth. Likely lookin' blighter, ain't 'e?"

"H'm. Not very. Not a sound, boy! There's a couple of 'em coming this way. Got it in barrels, have they? Gad! I'd like to have a look at one of those homely articles. I'll swear there's a false bottom to it, if I know anything of this kind of trickery… Hello! – there's Tweed Coat!"

"Tweed Coat," thus named, passed a stone's throw in front of them, his arm linked with another man's, his head downbent. But Cleek had seen the moonlight upon his face, and knew his man at last. Ross Duggan had worn that coat this morning, or one so like it that even he, hawk-eyed detective that he was, could have told no difference between them. The moonlight struck upon the white bosom of his evening-dress shirt, making it shine like a strip of ivory, and at something which his companion said to him, he caught it close together, and turned the collar of the jacket up about his throat.

First the handkerchief so plainly marked "R. D." and now this! But that such a man should be mixed up in a thing of this sort, an illicit thing which was against all laws and regulations of the land that had borne him, made Cleek's mouth go grim. The handkerchief, the coat; and now – the man. That little chain was completed, and every link welded together. At least some part of the mystery was clear at last.

The pair passed close against them where they lay in the darkness, so close that Cleek's fingers might have reached out and caught at the other's trouser-leg and tripped him. But the time was not yet ripe for arrests. Better let the thing go unsuspected until to-morrow afternoon, and then, when the Coroner's Inquest was at hand, rally them all together in the library once more, and make the final settlement.

Here was only a part of the thing, not the whole thing itself, and if he knew one of his men, he did not yet feel certain of the other. The night should bring that uncertainty into clarity if possible.

The darkness hid the couple from view at length, and when their footsteps had died away into silence, Cleek touched Dollops upon the shoulder and commenced wriggling upon his stomach down toward the next furze-bush, and out into the open, lying flat as Indians do, until they had slid the distance between the two clumps of shrubs, and lay concealed, some twelve feet nearer to the scene of operations.

"See anything of your Dago friend?" whispered Cleek, after they had watched for a while in silence at this hive of living industry which, when the dawn had penetrated through the veil of night, would have passed out of sight and vision as though it were a mirage of their own imagining.

Dollops's voice was barely above a breath.

"Yessir. Just dahn there ter the right. Feller wiv the big black moustache. Slim-'ipped Johnny in the dark suit. Got blinkers on 'im like black velvet from wot I sees. Proper furriner – the dirty dog! Find 'im, sir?"

"Not yet. Oh! yes, I see! H'm. An Italian all right. But what the dickens is an Italian doing in these outlandish parts? And what attraction can this perishing climate have for people of their ilk? First the Lady of the Castle – and now this one. Unless… Gad! there might be some connection between 'em. Did you find any trace of Captain Macdonald's handwriting, Dollops, to show me?"

"Yessir. Got a letter from 'is groom. Pinched it while we was a-talkin'. 'E showed it ter me, an' it's in me pocket. Summink wrong there, Gov'nor?"

"So wrong that it will take more than a little explaining upon the gentleman's part to put it right, my lad," responded Cleek in a whisper. "I want to see that letter – badly. But it will have to wait until we are back again at the house. And we'll be back in a jiffy. I'm satisfied with the result of this night's work, in this direction, at any rate, Dollops. You've done well – better than I could have done in similar circumstances, and I'm downright pleased with you!"

"Lor', sir!" Dollops's voice was choking with joyful emotion. "If yer goes and frows any more buckets at me, me chest will expand that big wiv pride as they'll be spottin' us in a trick – strite they will! But I'm glad I've made up for that footlin' mistyke over the lydy… Gawd! Look, Guv'nor – look! 'Oo's this a-comin' now? A woman – strike me pink, if it ain't! And a lydy, too, from the cut of 'er. Now, 'oo in 'eavin's nyme is she?"

His pointing finger brought Cleek's eyes instantly into the line of it, and Cleek's face in the moonlight went suddenly pale. Dollops's eyes rested on the grim mask of his face, palely visible from the moon's rays. Then, at a sign from Cleek, he ducked his own head into the grass and lay motionless, as his master had already done.

And by the sound of the soft footsteps, coming from somewhere behind them, Cleek and his companion knew that the woman had reached the spot where they were lying hidden under the great clump of gorse. Then a hand reached down and touched Cleek softly upon the shoulder, and a woman's voice spoke into the darkness with a tender inflection; and at sound of it every nerve in his body tightened like wire for the tensity of the situation.

"Ross," said the woman's voice tenderly, "Ross dear, get up – get up! I followed you here to-night, because I – I wanted to talk with you – I had to talk with you, to tell you something! I simply had to. But I've been a fool to break parole, as you have done, with that man with the hawk eyes in the Castle even at this minute. But so much hangs upon it – Ross, so much! Look up and speak to me, and, whoever your companion is, tell him to go away until we have had a word together. Look up, look up —do!"