DETECTIVE HAMILTON CLEEK: 8 Thriller Classics in One Premium Edition. Thomas W. Hanshew
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formerly in service on the P & O line; the remaining two were Alexander McCurdy, a Scotchman, and T. Jenkins Quegg, a Yankee. The latter, however, was a naturalized Englishman, and both were privates in her late Majesty’s army and honourably discharged.”
“Cleek, my dear fellow, are you a magician?” said Narkom, sinking into a chair, overcome.
“Oh, no, my friend, merely a man with a memory, that’s all; and I happen to remember a curious little ‘pool’ that was made up of eight men. Five of them are dead. The other three are Juan Alvarez, a Spaniard, that Lieutenant Edgburn who married and beggared the girl Captain Barrington-Edwards lost when he was disgraced, and last of all the ex-Captain Barrington-Edwards himself. Gently, gently, my friend. Don’t excite yourself. All these murders have been committed with a definite purpose in view, with a devil’s instrument, and for the devil’s own stake—riches. Those riches, Mr. Narkom, were to come in the shape of precious stones, the glorious sapphires of Ceylon. And five of the eight men who were to reap the harvest of them died mysteriously in the vicinity of Lemmingham House.”
“Cleek! My hat!” Narkom sprang up as he spoke, and then sat down again in a sort of panic. “And he—Barrington-Edwards, the man that lives there—deals in precious stones. Then that man——”
“Gently, my friend, gently—don’t bang away at the first rabbit that bolts out of the hole—it may be a wee one and you’ll lose the buck that follows. Two men live in that house, remember; Mr. Archer Blaine is Mr. Barrington-Edwards’ heir as well as his nephew and—who knows?”
CHAPTER III
“Cinnamon! what a corroboration—what a horrible corroboration! Cleek, you knock the last prop from under me; you make certain a thing that I thought was only a woman’s wild imaginings,” said Narkom, getting up suddenly, all a-tremble with excitement. “Good heavens! to have Miss Valmond’s story corroborated in this dreadful way.”
“Miss Valmond? Who’s she? Any relation to that Miss Rose Valmond whose name one sees in the papers so frequently in connection with gifts to Catholic Orphanages and Foundling Homes?”
“The same lady,” replied Narkom. “Her charities are numberless, her life a psalm. I think she has done more good in her simple, undemonstrative way than half the guilds and missions in London. She has an independent fortune, and lives, in company with an invalid and almost imbecile mother, and a brother who is, I am told, studying for the priesthood, in a beautiful home surrounded by splendid grounds, the walls of which separate her garden from that of Lemmingham House.”
“Ah, I see. Then she is a neighbour of Barrington-Edwards?”
“Yes. From the back windows of her residence one can look into the grounds of his. That is how—Cleek!” Mr. Narkom’s voice shook with agitation—“You will remember I said, a little time back, that I would have something startling to tell you in connection with Barrington-Edwards—something that was not connected with that old army scandal? If it had not been for the high character of my informant; if it had been any other woman in all England I should have thought she was suffering from nerves—fancying things as the result of an overwrought mind sent into a state of hysteria through all those abominable crimes in the neighbourhood; but when it was she, when it was Miss Valmond——”
“Oho!” said Cleek, screwing round suddenly. “Then Miss Valmond told you something with regard to Barrington-Edwards?”
“Yes—a horrible something. She came to me this morning looking as I hope I shall never see a good woman look again—as if she had been tortured to the last limit of human endurance. She had been fighting a silent battle for weeks and weeks she said, but her conscience would not let her keep the appalling secret any longer, neither would her duty to Heaven. Wakened in the dead of night by a sense of oppression, she had gone to her window to open it for air, and, looking down by chance into the garden of Lemmingham House, she had seen a man come rushing out of the rear door of Barrington-Edwards’ place in his pajamas, closely followed by another, whom she believed to be Barrington-Edwards himself, and she had seen that man unlock the door in the side wall and push the poor wretch out into the road where he was afterward found by the constable.”
“By Jupiter!”
“Ah, you may be moved when you connect that circumstance with what you have yourself unearthed. But there is worse to come. Unable to overcome a frightful fascination which drew her night after night to that window, she saw that same thing happen again to the fourth, and finally, the fifth man—the web-footed one—and that last time she saw the face of the pursuer quite plainly. It was Barrington-Edwards!”
“Sure of that, was she?”
“Absolutely. It was the positive certainty it was he that drove her at last to speak!”
Cleek made no reply, no comment; merely screwed round on his heel and took to pacing the floor again. After a minute however:
“Mr. Narkom,” he said halting abruptly. “I suppose all my old duds are still in the locker of the limousine, aren’t they? Good! I thought so. Give Lennard the signal, will you? I must risk the old car in an emergency like this. Take me first to the cable office, please; then to the mortuary, and afterward to Miss Valmond’s home. I hate to torture her further, poor girl, but I must get all the facts of this, first hand.”
He did. The limousine was summoned at once, and inside of an hour it set him down (looking the very picture of a solicitor’s clerk) at the cable office, then picked up and set him down at the Hampstead mortuary, this time, making so good a counterpart of Petrie that even Hammond, who was on guard beside the dead man, said “Hullo, Pete, that you? Thought you was off duty to-day,” as he came in with the superintendent.
“Jim Peabody fast enough, Mr. Narkom,” commented Cleek, when they were left together beside the dead man. “Changed, of course, in all the years, but still poor old Jim. Good-hearted, honest, but illiterate. Could barely more than write his name, and even that without a capital, poor chap. Let me look at the hand. A violet smudge on the top of the thumb as well as those marks on the palm, I see. Hum-m-m! Any letters or writing of any sort in the pockets when found? None, eh? That old bone-handled pocket knife there his? Yes, I’d like to look at it. Open it, please. Thanks. I thought so, I thought so. Those the socks he had on? Poor wretch! Down to that at last, eh?—down to that! Let me have one of them for a day or so, will you? and—yes—the photographs of the other four, please. Thanks very much. No, that’s all. Now then, to call on Miss Valmond, if you don’t mind. Right you are. Let her go, Lennard. Down with the blinds and open with the locker again, Mr. Narkom, and we’ll ‘dig’ Mr. George Headland out of his two-months’ old grave.” And at exactly ten minutes after eight o’clock, Mr. George Headland was ‘dug up’ and was standing with Mr. Narkom in Rose Valmond’s house listening to Rose Valmond’s story from her own lips, and saying to himself, the while, that here surely was that often talked-of, seldom-seen creature, a woman with an angel’s face.
How it distressed her, to tell again this story which might take away a human life, was manifest from the trembling of her sweet voice, the painful twitching of her tender mouth, and the tears that rose so readily to her soft eyes.
“Oh, Mr. Headland, I can hardly reconcile myself to having done it even yet,” she said pathetically. “I do not know this Mr. Barrington-Edwards but by sight, and it seems such a horrible thing to rise up against a stranger like that. But I couldn’t keep it any longer; I felt that to do so would be equivalent to sharing his guilt, and the thought that if I kept silent I might possibly be paving the way to the sacrifice of other innocent lives almost drove me out of my mind.”
“I can quite understand your feelings, Miss Valmond,” said Cleek, touched to the very heart by the deep distress of her. “But may I say I think you have done right? I never yet knew Heaven to be anything but tender to those who do their duty, and you certainly have done yours—to