III

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      The little gathering in the drawing-room had not undergone much in the way of a change since they left it Cleek and the superintendent saw when they returned. The tea things had been removed, for the young duke's peppery temper was still in the ascendant and he was parading his six-feet-one of vigorous young manhood up and down the floor in a manner which wasn't the best thing in the world for the white-and-green Persian carpet. The tall captain sat on a low sofa beside his beautiful wife, who thoughtfully turned her rings on her fingers and followed with grave, sad-looking eyes the constantly pacing figure of the restless duke.

      "My dear fellow, of course neither Amy nor I believe," the captain was saying, as Cleek and Narkom made their reappearance; "but the thing is, can you make others as disbelieving when your unhappy condition is so well known and her Grace's maid positively swears that the door was not locked, and—— Ah, here you are again, Mr. Narkom, and your good friend the amateur investigator with you."

      "Amateur fiddlesticks!" blurted out the young duke, with a short, derisive laugh. "Fellow who doesn't know any better than to look for jewels that are not lost, and look for them on a lady's fingers at that! By Jove, you know, Glossop, if it had been my wife!—— But there! you easy-going fellows will swallow anything for the sake of keeping peace. Well, Mr. Crime Investigator, found out who did it yet, eh?"

      "Perhaps not exactly," replied Cleek, moving over toward the sofa; "but I've found out who didn't do it, and that's something."

      "Oh, yes, decidedly!" flung back the duke, with another sarcastic laugh. "Wonderfully brainy, that! Not more than two or three million people in Great Britain who could tell you that Napoleon didn't do it, and the Black Prince didn't do it, and it's twopence to a teacup that Shakespeare hadn't any hand in it at all. You'll be out-Cleeking Cleek by the time you've sucked the head off that cane. Well, whatever other amazing thing have you 'unearthed'? What's next—eh?"

      "Only this," said Cleek quietly, making a feint of dropping his cane and stooping to recover it. Then he moved like a quick-leaping animal. There was a sharp metallic "click-click," a frightened scream from Mrs. Glossop, a half-indignant, wholly excited roar from the captain, and the duke, glancing toward them, saw that they both had got to their feet in a sort of panic and were standing there, white, quaking, and handcuffed together.

      "Good Lord!" began the duke. "Look here, Mr. Narkom—I say! This idiot's out of his head."

      "More than out of it!" swung in the captain furiously. "To people in our position! Good God! I can stand a fool as far as any man can, Mr. Narkom, but when it comes to this—— Look here, you, Mr. Woodhead, or Thickhead, or whatever your infernal name is——"

      "Call a spade a spade, my dear captain. The name is Cleek, if you can't remember my other."

      "Cleek!" The duke repeated it with a sort of gulp; the captain spat it out as though it were something red-hot, and the captain's wife merely whined it and fainted.

      "Yes, Captain—Cleek! Oh, I've got you, my friend, got you foul!" said Cleek in reply. "All but ruined by the failure of the gold reefs and the milling and mining companies last autumn, weren't you, and have been playing a bluff game and living on your credit ever since? A pretty little scheme you two beauties hatched up between you to get the old duchess into your clutches, to rob her of the Siva stones, and to have Mrs. Glossop and your Hindu ally slip over to India with them and claim the reward before the truth of your financial condition leaked out! Oh, yes; I've got you, my friend, got you tight and fast.

      "And, Captain, I've got something more as well! I've got the place where the panel slides in the striped wall-paper and leads to the wardrobe with the false back in your own room; I've got your private papers; I've got the safety razor-blade, and I've got the hiding-place of the Siva stones as well! Humph! Fainted like any other human brute when he's pushed to the wall! That's right, Hammond; call the constable in from outside and take the pair of them away. Oh, don't waste any pity on them, your Grace," as the duke moved impulsively toward the stricken and defeated pair. "They wouldn't have hesitated to hang you if they could have turned the evidence your way and saved their own wretched skins—and all for a pair of rose-pink diamonds that are red enough now, God knows. What's that? Where are they? Where you must get a surgeon to abstract them, for I wouldn't touch them for millions, your Grace. They are hidden in the body itself, embedded in the flesh, jammed out of sight through those cuts in the arms and embedded under the muscles!"

      "Good heaven, how horrible!"

      "Yes, isn't it? Oh, they laid their plans well, those two, and they laid them together. The body would not be put underground for a long, long time, and when it was the Siva stones would not go to earth with it. There was the specially constructed vault at Brompton, their private property. They would get the stones while the body lay there, and nobody would be a whit the wiser.

      "Ring for a glass of wine, your Grace, and after you have steadied your nerves I'll take you upstairs and show you something. In the captain's room there's a wardrobe which has a false back, and behind that is a sliding panel, its joining hidden by the stripes of the wall-paper, which leads into the old duchess's bedroom. That is how they got in and got out again and left every door and window locked on the inside. When they had finished their work, they lit the candles, and the rest you know. If there is anything to joy over in this appalling affair, find it in this fact: I am convinced that the dowager duchess died intestate. That being so, and she having no other living relatives, her property will no doubt be divided equally, by order of the Crown, between three persons: yourself, for one, and those two poor, homeless creatures, Tom Spender and his sister, for the others; and as it amounts to several millions sterling, dark days are over for you and for them forever!"

      * * * * *

      "How did I find it out?" said Cleek, answering Narkom's question, as they drove home through the shadows of evening together. "Well, I think I first got a suspicion of the captain and his wife when you told me about the cut bell-rope, because, you see, it is hardly likely that anybody could get into the room and cut that without disturbing the old lady, and, as she didn't cry out, I came to the conclusion that that somebody must certainly be some one she knew and trusted, and whose presence in the room would not be unusual. That at once suggested Mrs. Glossop, and the possibility of the lady saying that she had heard a noise, and had come up and found the door unlocked. The captain, who would make his entrance unheard while they were talking, would cut the rope, throw the noose round the victim's neck while she was off guard, and the rest would follow easily.

      "But I could find no motive and could get no actual clue until I looked at the lady's rings. Clearly the putting of them on was an attempt to accentuate the presumed fact of their great wealth by exhibiting open evidence of how richly the lady was dowered with jewels and how little she need covet those of others. I got upon the trail of the true state of affairs when I examined those rings and found that they were simply paste, close imitations of the splendid originals which she had no doubt long since been obliged either to pawn or sell.

      "As for the hiding-place of the Siva stones, the fact of the utterly unnecessary wounds in the arms—unnecessary as helping the assassin to kill her, I mean—gave me the first hint of that. Afterward, when I saw the body, and noticed the position of those wounds, I was sure of it. That is where Glossop bungled. They could not have come about in any struggle or any possible effort of the deceased to protect herself by throwing up her arms, for they were in the wrong position, for one thing, and they were deep, clean-cut