Читать книгу Cleek of Scotland Yard: Detective Stories - Thomas W. Hanshew - Страница 11

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Twenty minutes later his desires in that respect were granted; and, having been introduced by Mr. Nippers to the little gathering in the sitting-room of the house of disaster as “a friend of mine from Scotland Yard, miss,” he found himself in the presence of one of those meek-faced, dove-eyed, “mousy” little bodies who seem born to be “patient Griseldas”; and in looking at her he was minded of the description of “Lady Jane” in the poem:

“Her pulse was slow, milk white her skin—

She had not blood enough to sin.”

Years of repression had told upon her, and she looked older than she really was—so old and so dragged out, in fact, that Mrs. Armroyd, the cook, appeared youthful and attractive in contrast. Indeed, it was no wonder that Mr. Ephraim Nippers had been attracted by that good soul; for, although her hair was streaked with gray, and her figure was of the “sack of flour” order, and her eyes were assisted in their offices by a pair of steel-bowed spectacles, her face was still youthful in contour, and Mr. Narkom, looking at her, concluded that at twenty-four or twenty-five she must have been a remarkably pretty and remarkably fascinating woman. What Cleek’s thoughts were upon that subject it is impossible to record; for he merely gave her one look on coming into the room, and then took no further notice of her whatsoever.

“Indeed, Mr. Headland, I am glad—I am very, very glad—that fortune has sent you into this neighbourhood at this terrible time,” said Miss Renfrew when Cleek was introduced. “I do not wish to say anything disparaging of Mr. Nippers, but you can see for yourself how unfitted such men as he and his assistant are to handle an affair of this importance. Indeed, I cannot rid my mind of the thought that if more competent police were on duty here the murder would not have happened. In short, that the assassin, whoever he maybe, counted upon the blundering methods of these men as his passport to safety.”

“My own thought precisely,” said Cleek. “Mr. Nippers has given me a brief outline of the affair—would you mind giving me the full details, Miss Renfrew? At what hour did Mr. Nosworth go into his laboratory? Or don’t you know, exactly?”

“Yes, I know to the fraction of a moment, Mr. Headland. I was looking at my watch at the time. It was exactly eight minutes past seven. We had been going over the monthly accounts together, when he suddenly got up, and without a word walked through that door over there. It leads to a covered passage connecting the house proper with the laboratory. That, as you may have heard, is a circular building with a castellated top. It was built wholly and solely for the carrying on of his experiments. There is but one floor and one window—a very small one about six feet from the ground, and on the side of the Round House which looks away from this building. Nothing but the door to that is on this side, light being supplied to the interior by a roof made entirely of heavy corrugated glass.”

“I see. Then the place is like a huge tube.”

“Exactly—and lined entirely with chilled steel. Such few wooden appliances as are necessary for the equipment of the place are thickly coated with asbestos. I made no comment when my uncle rose and walked in there without a word. I never did. For the past six or seven months he had been absorbed in working out the details of a new invention; and I had become used to his jumping up like that and leaving me. We never have supper in this house—my uncle always called it a useless extravagance. Instead, we defer tea until six o’clock and make that the final meal of the day. It was exactly five minutes to seven when I finished my accounts, and as I had had a hard day of it, I decided to go to bed early, after having first taken a walk as far as the old bridge where I hoped that somebody would be waiting for me.”

“I know,” said Cleek, gently. “I have heard the story. It would be Mr. Charles Drummond, would it not?”

“Yes. He was not there, however. Something must have prevented his coming.”

“Hum-m-m! Go on, please.”

“Before leaving the house, it occurred to me that I ought to look into the laboratory and see if there was anything my uncle would be likely to need for the night, as I intended to go straightway to bed on my return. I did so. He was sitting at his desk, immediately under the one window of which I have spoken, and with his back to me, when I looked in. He answered my inquiry with a curt ‘No—nothing. Get out and don’t worry me!’ I immediately shut the door and left him, returning here by way of the covered passage and going upstairs to make some necessary changes in my dress for the walk to the old bridge. When I came down, ready for my journey, I looked at the clock on the mantel over there. It was exactly seventeen minutes to eight o’clock. I had been a little longer in dressing than I had anticipated being; so, in order to save time in getting to the trysting place, I concluded to make a short cut by going out of the rear door and crossing diagonally through our grounds instead of going by the public highway as usual. I had scarcely more than crossed the threshold when I ran plump into Constable Gorham. As he is rather a favourite with good Mrs. Armroyd here, I fancied that he had been paying her a visit, and was just coming away from the kitchen. Instead, he rather startled me by stating that he had seen something which he thought best to come round and investigate. In short, that, as he was patrolling the highway, he had seen a man vault over the wall of our grounds and, bending down, dart out of sight like a hare. He was almost positive that that man was Sir Ralph Droger. Of course that frightened me almost out of my wits.”

“Why?”

“There was bad blood between my uncle and Sir Ralph Droger—bitter, bad blood. As you perhaps know, my uncle held this ground on a life lease from the Droger estate. That is to say, so long as he lived or refused to vacate that lease, no Droger could oust him nor yet lift one spadeful of earth from the property.”

“Does Sir Ralph desire to do either?”

“He desires to do both. Borings secretly made have manifested the fact that both Barnsley thick-coal and iron ore underlie the place. Sir Ralph wishes to tear down the Round House and this building and to begin mining operations. My uncle, who has been offered the full value of every stick and stone, has always obstinately refused to budge one inch or to lessen the lease by one half hour. ‘It is for the term of my life,’ he has always said, ‘and for the term of my life I’ll hold it!’”

“Oho!” said Cleek; and then puckered up his lips as if about to whistle.

“Under such circumstances,” went on Miss Renfrew, “it was only natural that I should be horribly frightened, and only too willing to act upon the constable’s suggestion that we at once look into the Round House and see if everything was right with my uncle.”

“Why should the constable suggest that?”

“Everybody in the neighbourhood knows of the bitter ill feeling existing between the two men; so, of course, it was only natural.”

“Hum-m-m! Yes! Just so. Did you act on Constable Gorham’s suggestion, then?”

“Yes. I led the way in here and then up the covered passage to the laboratory and opened the door. My uncle was sitting exactly as he had been when I looked in before—his back to me and his face to the window—but although he did not turn, it was evident that he was annoyed by my disturbing him, for he growled angrily, ‘What the devil are you coming in here and disturbing me like this for, Jane? Get out and leave me alone.’”

“Hum-m-m!” said Cleek, drawing down his brows and pinching his chin. “Any mirrors in the Round House?”

“Mirrors? No, certainly not, Mr. Headland. Why?”

“Nothing—only that I was wondering, if as you say, he never turned and you never spoke, how in the world he knew that it really was you, that’s all.”

“Oh, I see what you mean,” said Miss Renfrew, knotting up her brows. “It does seem a little peculiar when one looks at it in that way. I never thought of it before. Neither can I explain it, Mr. Headland, any more than to say that I suppose he took it for granted. And, as it happened, he was right. Besides, as you will remember, I had intruded upon him only a short time before.”

“Quite so,” said Cleek. “That’s what makes it appear stranger than ever. Under the circumstances one might have expected him to say not ‘What are you coming in here for,’ but, ‘What are you coming in for again.’ Still, of course, there’s no accounting for little lapses like that. Go on, please—what next?”

“Why, of course I immediately explained what Constable Gorham had said, and why I had looked in. To which he replied, ‘The man’s an ass. Get out!’ Upon which I closed the door, and the constable and I went away at once.”

“Constable there with you during it all, then?”

“Yes, certainly—in the covered passage, just behind me. He saw and heard everything; though, of course, neither of us actually entered the laboratory itself. There was really no necessity when we knew that my uncle was safe and sound, you see.”

“Quite so,” agreed Cleek. “So you shut the door and went away—and then what?”

“Constable Gorham went back to his beat, and I flew as fast as I could to meet Mr. Drummond. It is only a short way to the old bridge at best, and by taking that short cut through the grounds, I was there in less than ten minutes. And by half-past eight I was back here in a greater state of terror than before.”

“And why? Were you so much alarmed that Mr. Drummond did not keep the appointment?”

“No. That did not worry me at all. He is often unable to keep his appointments with me. He is filling the post of private secretary to a large company promoter, and his time is not his own. What terrified me was that, after waiting a few minutes for him, I heard somebody running along the road, and a few moments later Sir Ralph Droger flew by me as if he were being pursued. Under ordinary circumstances I should have thought that he was getting into training for the autumn sports (he is, you may know, very keen on athletics, and holds the County Club’s cup for running and jumping), but when I remembered what Constable Gorham had said, and saw that Sir Ralph was coming from the direction of this house, all my wits flew; I got into a sort of panic and almost collapsed with fright.”

“And all because the man was coming from the direction of this house?”

“Not that alone,” she answered with a shudder. “I have said that I should under ordinary circumstances have thought he was merely training for the autumn sports—for, you see, he was in a running costume of white cotton stuff and his legs were bare from the knee down—but as he shot past me in the moonlight I caught sight of something like a huge splash of blood on his clothes, and coupling that with the rest I nearly went out of my senses. It wasn’t until long afterward I recollected that the badge of the County Club is the winged foot of Mercury wrought in brilliant scarlet embroidery. To me, just then, that thing of red was blood—my uncle’s blood—and I ran and ran and ran until I got back here to the house and flew up the covered passage and burst into the Round House. He was sitting there still—just as he had been sitting before. But he didn’t call out to me this time; he didn’t reprove me for disturbing him; didn’t make one single movement, utter one single sound. And when I went to him I knew why. He was dead—stone dead! The face and throat of him were torn and rent as if some furious animal had mauled him, and there were curious yellow stains upon his clothes. That’s all, Mr. Headland. I don’t know what I did nor where I went from the moment I rushed shrieking from that room until I came to my senses and found myself in this one with dear, kind Mrs. Armroyd here bending over me and doing all in her power to soothe and to comfort me.”

“There, there, cherie, you shall not more distress yourself. It is of a hardness too great for the poor mind to bear,” put in Mrs. Armroyd herself at this, bending over the sofa as she spoke and softly smoothing the girl’s hair. “It is better she should be at peace for a little, is it not, monsieur?”

“Very much better, madame,” replied Cleek, noting how softly her hand fell, and how gracefully it moved over the soft hair and across the white forehead. “No doubt the major part of what still remains to be told, you in the goodness of your heart, will supply——”

“Of a certainty, monsieur, of a certainty.”

“—But for the present,” continued Cleek, finishing the interrupted sentence, “there still remains a question or two which must be asked, and which only Miss Renfrew herself can answer. As those are of a private and purely personal nature, madame, would it be asking too much——” He gave his shoulders an eloquent Frenchified shrug, looked up at her after the manner of her own countrymen, and let the rest of the sentence go by default.

“Madame” looked at him and gave her little hands an airy and a graceful flirt.

“Of a certainty, monsieur,” she said, with charming grace. “Cela m’est egal,” and walked away with a step remarkably light and remarkably graceful for one of such weight and generous dimensions.

“Miss Renfrew,” said Cleek, sinking his voice and looking her straight in the eyes, as soon as Mrs. Armroyd had left them, “Miss Renfrew, tell me something please: Have you any suspicion regarding the identity or the purpose of the person who murdered your uncle?”

“Not in the slightest, Mr. Headland. Of course, in the beginning, my thoughts flew at once to Sir Ralph Droger, but I now see how absurd it is to think that such as he——”

“I am not even hinting at Sir Ralph Droger,” interposed Cleek. “Two other people in the world have a ‘motive’ quite as strong as any that might be assigned to him. You, of course, feel every confidence in the honour and integrity of Mr. Charles Drummond?”

“Mr. Headland!”

“Gently, gently, please! I merely wished to know if in your heart you had any secret doubt; and your flaring up like that has answered me. You see, one has to remember that the late Mr. Nosworth is said to have made a will in your favour. The statement is correct, is it not?”

“To the best of my belief—yes.”

“Filed it with his solicitors, did he?”

“That I can’t say. I think not, however. He was always sufficient unto himself, and had a rooted objection to trusting anything of value to the care of any man living. Even his most important documents—plans and formulas of his various inventions, even the very lease of this property—have always been kept in the desk in the laboratory.”

“Hum-m-m!” said Cleek, and pinched his chin hard. Then, after a moment. “One last question,” he went on suddenly. “What do you know, Miss Renfrew, of the recent movements of Mr. Harry Nosworth—the son who was kicked out?”

“Nothing, absolutely nothing!” she answered, with a look of something akin to horror. “I know what you are thinking of, but although he is as bad as man can be, it is abominable to suppose that he would lift his hand against his own father.”

“Hum-m-m! Yes, of course! But still, it has been known to happen; and, as you say, he was a bad lot. I ran foul of the young gentleman once when——No matter; it doesn’t signify. So you don’t know anything about him, eh?”

“Nothing, thank God. The last I did hear, he had gone on the stage and taken up with some horrible creature, and the pair of them were subsequently sent to prison for enticing people to dreadful places and then drugging and robbing them. But even that I heard from an outside source; for my uncle never so much as mentioned him. No, I know nothing of him—nothing at all. In fact, I’ve never seen him since he was a boy. He never lived here, you know; and until I came here, I knew next to nothing of my uncle himself. We were poor and lived in a quite different town, my mother and I. Uncle Septimus never came to see us while my mother lived. He came for the first time when she was dead and his son had gone away: and I was so poor and so friendless I was glad to accept the home he offered. No, Mr. Headland, I know nothing of Harry Nosworth. I hope, for his own sake, he is dead.”

Cleek made no reply. He sat for a minute pinching his chin and staring at the carpet, then he got up suddenly and faced round in the direction of the little group at the far end of the room.

“That’s all for the present,” he said. “Mr. Narkom, Mr. Nippers—get a light of some sort, please, and let’s go out and have a look at those footprints.”