III
Through the ever-deepening dusk Cleek and Arjeeb Noosrut moved onward together; and onward behind them moved, too, the same dilatory messenger boy who had loitered about in the neighbourhood of the Park, squandering his halfpence now as then, leaving a small trail of winkle shells and trotter bones to mark the record of his passage, and never seeming to lose one iota of his appetite, eat as much and as often as he would.
The walk led down into the depths of Soho, that refuge of the foreign element in London; but long before they halted at the narrow doorway of a narrow house in a narrow side street that seemed to have gone to sleep in an atmosphere of gloom and smells Cleek had adroitly "pumped" Arjeeb Noosrut dry, and the riddle of the sacred son was a riddle to him no longer. He was now only anxious to part from the man and return with the news to Lady Chepstow, and was casting round in his mind for some excuse to avoid going indoors with him to waste precious time in breaking bread and eating salt. Suddenly there lurched out of an adjoining doorway an ungainly figure in turban and sandals and the full flower of that grotesque regalia which passes muster at cheap theatres and masquerade balls for the costume of a Cingalese. The fellow had bent forward out of the deeper darkness of the house-passage into the murk and gloom of the ill-lit street, and was straining his eyes as if in search for some one long expected.
"Dog of an infidel!" exclaimed Arjeeb Noosrut, speaking in Hundustani and spitting on the pavement as he caught sight of the man. "See, well-beloved, he is of those 'others' of which I spoke when I first met thee. There are many of them, but true believers none. They dwell in a room huddled up as unclean things in the house there; they drink and make merry far into the night, and a woman veiled and in European garb comes to them and drinks with them. Sometimes a man of her kind is with her, and they speak a tongue that is not the tongue of our people; yet have I seen them go forth into the city and do homage as we to the sacred son."
Cleek sucked in his breath and, twitching round, stared at the dim figure leaning forward in the dim light.
"By George!" he said to himself; "if I know anything, I ought to know the slouch and the low-sunk head of the Apache! And a woman comes! And a man comes! And there are five lacs of rupees! I wonder! I wonder! But no – she wouldn't come here, to a place like this, if she had ventured back into England and had called some of the band over to help. She'd go to the old spot where she and I used to lie low and laugh whilst the police were hunting for me. She'd go there, I'm sure, to the old Burnt Acre Mill, where, if you were 'stalked,' you could open the sluice gates and let the Thames and the mill stream rush in and meet, and make a hell of whirling waters that would drown a fish. She would go there if it were she. And yet – it is an Apache: I swear it is an Apache!"
He turned and looked back at Arjeeb Noosrut, then raised his hand and brushed it down the back of his head, which was always the sign "Wait!" to Dollops, and then spoke as calmly as he could.
"Brother, I will go in and break bread and eat salt with thee," he said. "But I may do no more, for to-night I am in haste."
"Come, then," the man answered; and taking him by the hand, led him in and up to a room at the back of the second storey, where, hot as the night was, the windows were closed and a woman, squatted before a lighted brasier, was dripping the contents of an oil cruse over the roasting carcase of a young kid.
"It is to shut out the sounds of the vile infidel orgies from the house adjoining," explained Arjeeb Noosrut, as Cleek walked to the tightly closed window and leant his forehead against it. "Yet, if the heat oppresses thee – "
"It does," interposed Cleek, and leant far out into the darkness as though sucking in the air when the sash was raised and the thing which had been only a dim babel of wordless sounds a moment before became now the riotous laughter and the ribald comments of men upon the verses of a comic song which one of their number was joyously singing.
"French!" said Cleek under his breath, as he caught the notes of the singer and the words of his audience, "French – I knew it!"
Then he drew in his head, and having broken of the bread and eaten of the salt which, at a word from Arjeeb Noosrut, the woman brought on a wicker tray and laid before them, he moved hastily to the door.
"Brother and son of the faithful, peace be with thee, I must go," he said. "But I come again; and it is written that thou shalt be honoured above all men when I return to thee, and that the true believers – the true sons of Holy Buddha – shall have cause to set thy name at the head of the records of those who are most blest of him!"
Then he salaamed and passed out. Closing the door behind him, he ran like a hare down the narrow stairs. At the door Dollops rose up like the imp in a pantomime and jumped toward him.
"Law, guv'ner, I'm nigh starved a-waitin' for yer!" he said in a whisper. "Wot's the lay now? A double quick change? I've got the stuff here, look!" – holding up the package he was carrying – "or a chance for me to do some fly catchin' with me bloomin' tickle tootsies?"
The man in the Cingalese costume had vanished from the doorway of the adjoining house, and, catching the boy by the arm, Cleek hurried him to it and drew him into the dark passage.
"I'm going to the back; I'm going to climb up to the windows of the second storey and see who's there and what's going on," he whispered. "Lie low and watch. I think it's Margot's gang."
"Oh, colour me blue! Them beauties? And in London? I'd give a tanner for a strong cup o' tea!"
"Shh-h! Be quiet – speak low. Don't be seen, but keep a close watch; and if anybody comes downstairs – "
"He's mine!" interjected Dollops, stripping up his sleeves. "Glue to the eyebrows and warranted to stick! Nip away, guv'ner, and leave it to the tickle tootsies and me!" Then, as Cleek moved swiftly and silently down the passage and slipped out into the sort of yard at the back of the house, he pulled out his roll of brown paper squares and his tube of adhesive, and crawling upstairs on his hands and knees, began operations at the top step. But he had barely got the first "plaster" fairly made and ready to apply when there came a rush of footsteps behind him and he was obliged to duck down and flatten himself against the floor of the landing to escape being run down by a man who dashed in through the lower door, flew at top speed up the stairs and, with a sort of blended cheer and yell, whirled open a door on the landing above and vanished. In a twinkling other cheers rang out, there was the sound of hastily moving feet and the uproar of general excitement.
"Oh, well, if you won't stop to be waited on, gents, help yourselves!" said Dollops with a chuckle. Then he began backing hastily down the stairs, squirting the contents of the tube all over the steps, and concluded the operation by scattering all the loose sheets of paper on the floor at the foot of them before slipping out into the street and composedly waiting.
Meantime Cleek, sneaking out through the rear door, found himself in a small, brick-paved yard hemmed in by a high wall thickly fringed on the top with a hedge of broken bottles. At one time in its history the house had been occupied by a catgut maker, and the rickety shed in which he had carried on his calling still clung, sagging and broken-roofed, to the building itself, its rotten slates all but vanished, and its interior piled high with mildewed bedding, mouldy old carpet, broken furniture, and refuse of every sort.
A foot or two above the roof-level of this glowed – two luminous rectangles in the blackness of darkness – the windows of the back room on the second storey; and out of these came floating still the song, the laughter, and the jabbered French he had heard in the house next door. It did not take him long to make up his mind. Gripping the swaying supports of the sagging shed, he went up it with the agility of a monkey, crawled to the nearer of the two windows, and, cautiously raising himself, peeped in. What he saw made him suck in his breath sharply and sent his heart hammering hard and fast.
A dozen men were in the room, men whose faces, despite an inartistic attempt to appear Oriental, he recognized at a glance and knew better than he knew his own. About them lay discarded portions of Cingalese attire, thrown off because of the heat, and waiting to be resumed at any moment. The air was thick with tobacco smoke and rank with spirituous odours. Sprawled figures were everywhere, and on a sort of couch against the opposite wall, a cigarette between her fingers, a glass of absinthe at her elbow, her laughter and badinage ringing out as loudly as any, lay the lissom figure of Margot!
But even as Cleek looked in upon it the picture changed. Swift, sharp, and sudden came the rattle of flying feet on the outer stairs. Margot flung aside her cigarette and jumped up, the song and the laughter came to an abrupt end, the door flew open, and with a shout and a cheer a man bounced into the room.
"Serpice! Ah, le bon Dieu! it is Serpice at last!" cried out Margot in joyous excitement as she and the others crowded round him. "Soul of a sluggard, don't waste time in laughing and capering like this! Speak up, speak up, you hear? Are we to fly at once to the mill and join him? Has he succeeded? Is it done?"
"Yes, yes, yes!" shouted back Serpice, throwing up his cap and capering. "It is done! It is done! Under the very nose of the Cracksman, too! Merode's got them both! The little lordship and the Mademoiselle Lorne, too! They took the bait like gudgeons; they stepped into the automobile without a fear, and – whizz! it was off to the mill like that! La, la, la! We win, we win, we win!"
The shock of the thing was too much for Cleek. Carried out of himself by the knowledge that the woman he loved was now in peril of her life, discretion forsook him, blind rage mastered him, and he did one of the few foolish things of his life.
"You lie, you brute, you lie!" he shouted, jumping up into full view. "God help the man who lays a hand on her! Let him keep his life from me if he can!"
"The Cracksman!" yelled out Serpice. "The Cracksman! The Cracksman!" echoed Margot and the rest. Then a pistol barked and spat, the light was swept out, a bullet sang past Cleek's ear, and he realized how foolish he had been. For part of the crowd came surging to the window, part went in one blind rush for the door to head him off and hem him in, and, through the din and hubbub rang viciously the voice of Margot shrilling out: "Kill him! Kill him!" as though nothing but the sight of his blood would glut her malice.
It was neck or nothing now, and the race was to the swift. He dropped through a gap in the ragged roof, sheer down, like a shot, into the rubble and refuse below; he lurched through the shed to the door, and through that to the black passage leading to the street – the clatter on the higher staircase giving warning of the crowd coming after him – and flew like a hare hard pressed toward the outer door, and then, just then, when every little moment counted, there was a scrambling sound, a chorus of oaths, a slipping, a sliding, a bang on one step and a bump on another; and, as he darted by and sprang out into the street the hall was filled with a writhing, scuffling, swearing mass of glue-covered men struggling in a whirling waste of loose brown paper.
"This way! come quickly, for your life!" he shouted to Dollops as he came plunging out into the street. "They've got them, got the little boy! Got Miss Lorne – in spite of me. Come on! come on! come on!" He flew like an arrow from crossing to crossing and street to street with Dollops, like a shadow, at his heels.
A sudden swerve to the right brought them into a lighted and populous thoroughfare. Italian restaurants, German delicatessen shops, eating places of a dozen other nationalities lined the pavement on both sides of the street, and in front of one of these a high-power motor stood, protected by the watchful eye of an accommodating policeman while the chauffeur sampled Chianti in a wine-shop close by. With a rush and a leap Cleek was upon it, and with another rush and a leap the constable was upon him, only to be greeted with the swift flicking open of a coat and the gleam of badge that every man in the force knew.
"Cleek?"
"Yes! In the name of the Yard; in the name of the king! get out of the way! In with you, Dollops! We'll get the brutes yet!"
Then he bent over, threw in the clutch, and discarding all speed laws, sent the car humming and tearing away.
"Hold tight!" he said through his teeth. "Whatever comes, we've got to get to Burnt Acre Mill inside of an hour. If you know any prayers, Dollops, say them."
"The Lord fetch us home in time for supper!" gulped the boy obediently. "S'help me, guv'ner, the wind's goin' through my teeth like I was a mouth organ, and I'm hollow enough for a flute!"
IV
It is strange how, in moments of stress and trial, even in times of tragedy, the most commonplace thoughts will intrude themselves and the mind separate itself from the immediate events. As Merode put the cold muzzle of the revolver to Ailsa's temple and she ought, one would have supposed, to have been deaf and blind to all things but the horror of her position, one of these strange mental lapses occurred, and her mind, travelling back over the years to her early schooldays, dwelt on a punishment task set her by her preceptress – the task of copying three hundred times the phrase "Discretion is the better part of valour."
As the recollection of that time rose before her mental vision, the value of the phase itself forced its worth upon her and, huddling back in the corner of the limousine, she clutched the frightened child to her and gave implicit obedience to Merode's command to make no effort to attract attention either by word or deed. And he, fancying that he had thoroughly cowed her, withdrew the touch of the weapon from her temple, but held it ready for possible use in the grip of his thin, strong hand.
For a time the limousine kept straight on in its headlong course, then, of a sudden, it swerved to the left. The gleam of a river – all silver with moonlight – struck up through a line of trees on one side of the car, the blank, unbroken dreariness of a stretch of waste land spread out upon the other, and presently, by the slowing down of the motor, Ailsa guessed that they were nearing their destination. They reached it a few moments later, and a peep from the window, as the vehicle stopped, showed her the outlines of a ruined watermill, ghostly, crumbling, owl-haunted, looming black against the silver sky.
A crumbled wheel hung, rotten and moss-grown, over a dry water-course, where straggling willows stretched out from the bank and trailed their long, feathery ends a yard or so above the level of the weeds and grasses that carpeted the sandy bed of it, and along its edge – once built as a protection for the heedless or unwary, but now a ruin and a wreck – a moss-grown wall with a narrow, gateless archway made an irregular shadow on the moon-drenched earth. She saw that archway and that dry water-course, and a new, strong hope arose within her. Discretion had played its part; now it was time for Valour to take the stage.
"Come, get out – this is the end," said Merode, as he unlatched the door of the limousine and alighted. "You may yell here until your throat splits, for all the good it will do you. Lanisterre, show us a light; the path to the door is uncertain, and the floor of the mill is unsafe. This way, if you please, Miss Lorne. Let me have the boy, I'll look after him!"
"No, no! – not yet! Please, not yet!" said Ailsa, with a little catch in her voice as she plucked him to her and smothered his frightened cries against her breast. "Let me have him whilst I may; let me hold him to the last, Monsieur Merode. His mother trusts me. She will want to know that I – I stood by him until I could stand no longer. Please! – we are so helpless – I am so fond of him, and – he is such a very little boy. Listen! You want me to write to Mr. Cleek; you want me to ask something of him. I won't do it for myself, not if you kill me for refusing. I'll never do it for myself; but – but I will do it if you won't separate us until he has had time to say his prayers."
"Oh, all right, then," he agreed. "If it's any consolation doing a fool's trick like that, why do it! Now come along, and let's get inside the mill without any more nonsense. Lanisterre, bring that lantern here so that mademoiselle can see the path to the door. This way, if you please, Miss Lorne."
"Thank you," she said as she alighted and moved slowly in the direction of the door, soothing the child as they crept along almost within touch of the crumbling wall. "Ceddie, darling, don't cry. You are a brave little hero, I know, and heroes are never afraid to die." From the tail of her eye she watched Merode. He seemed to realize from these words to the child that she was reconciled to the inevitable, and with an air of satisfaction he put the pistol back into his pocket and walked beside her. She kept straight on with her soothing words; and, in the half shadow, neither Merode nor Lanisterre could see that one hand was lost in the folds of her skirt.
"Ceddie, darling, let Miss Lorne be able to tell mummie that her little man was a hero; that he died, as heroes always die, without a fear or a weakening to the very last. I'll stand by you, precious; I'll hold your hand; and, when the time comes – "
It came then! The gateless archway was reached at last, and the thing she had been planning all along now became possible. With one sudden push she sent the boy reeling down the incline into the dry water-course, flashed round sharply, and before Merode really knew how the thing had happened, she was standing with her back to the arch and a revolver in her levelled hand.
"Throw up your arms – throw them up at once, or, as God hears me, I'll shoot!" she cried. "Run, Ceddie, run, baby! He shan't follow you. I'll kill him if he tries!"
"You idiot!" began Merode, and made a lurch toward her. But the pistol barked and something white-hot zig-zagged along his arm and bit like a flame into his shoulder.
"Up with your hands – up with them!" she said in a voice that shook with excitement as he howled out and made a reeling backward step. "Next time it will be the head I aim at, not the arm!" Then, lifting up her voice in one loud shriek that made the echoes bound, she called with all her strength: "Help, somebody – for God's sake help! Scream, Ceddie – scream! Help! Help!"
And lo! as she called, as if a miracle had been wrought, out of the darkness an answering voice called back to her, and the wild, swift notes of a motor horn bleated along the lonely road.
"I'm coming – I – Cleek!" that voice rang out. "Hold your own – hold it to the last, Miss Lorne, and God help the man who lays a finger on you!"
"Mr. Cleek! Mr. Cleek, oh, thank God!" she flung back with all the rapture a human voice could contain. "Come on, come on! I've got him – got that man Merode, and the boy is safe, the boy is safe! Come on! come on! come on!"
"We're a-comin', miss, you gamble on that and the lightnin's a fool to us!" shouted Dollops in reply. "Let her have it, guv'ner! Bust the bloomin' tank. Give her her head; give her her feet; give her her blessed merry-thought if she wants it! Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!"
And then, just then, when she most needed her strength and her courage, Ailsa's evaporated. The reaction came, and, with the despairing cries of Merode and Lanisterre ringing in her ears, she sank back, weak, white, almost fainting and, leaning against the side of the archway, began to laugh and to sob hysterically. Merode seized that one moment and sprang to the breach.
Realizing that the game was all but up, that there was nothing for him now but to save his own skin if he could, he called out to Lanisterre to rip out the sparking plug of the motor and follow him, then plunged into the mill, swung over the lever which controlled the sluice gates, and, darting out by the back way, fled across the waste.
But behind him he left a scene of indescribable horror, and the shrill screaming of a little child told him when that horror began. For as the sluice gates opened a sullen roar sounded; on one side the diverted millstream, and on the other the river, rose as two solid walls of water, rushed forward and – met. In the twinkling of an eye the old water-course was one wild, leaping, roaring, gyrating whirlpool of up-flung froth and twisting waves that bore in their eddying clutch the battling figure of a drowning child.
Even before he came in sight of it the roaring waters and the fearful splash of their impact told Cleek what had been done. He could hear Ailsa's screams; he could hear the boy's feeble cries, and a moment later, when the whizzing motor panted up through the moonlight and sped by the broken wall, there was Ailsa, fairly palsied with fright, clinging weakly to the crumbling arch and uttering little sobbing, wordless, incoherent moans of fright as she stared down into the hell of waters; and below, in the foam, a little yellow head was spinning round and round and round, in dizzying circles of torn and leaping waves.
"Heavens, guv'ner!" began Dollops in a voice of appalling despair; but before he could get beyond that, Cleek's coat was off, Cleek's body had described a sort of semi-circle, and the child was no longer alone in the whirlpool!
Battling, struggling, fairly leaping, as a fish leaps in a torrent, one moment half out of the water, the next wholly submerged, Cleek struck from eddy to eddy, from circle to circle, until that little yellow head was within reach, then put forth his hand and gripped it, pulled it to him, and in another moment he was whirling round and round the whirlpool's course with the child clutched to him and its wet, white face gleaming wax-like over the angle of his shoulder.
They had not made the half of the first circle thus before Dollops had leaped to the bending willows, had scrambled up the rough trunk of the nearest of them, and, pushing his weight out upon a strong and supple bough, bent it downward until the half of its strongest withes were deep in the whirling waters.
"Grab 'em, guv'ner – grab 'em when you come by!" he sang out over the roar of the waters. "They'll hold you, sir – hold a dozen like you; and if – Well played! Got 'em the first grab! Hang on! Get a tight grip! Now, then, sir, hand over hand till you're at the bank! Good biz! Good biz! Blest if you won't be goin' in for the circus trade next! Steady does it, sir – steady, steady! Goal, by Jupiter! Now, then, hand me up the nipper – I should say the young gent – and in two minutes' time – Right! Got him! 'Ere you are, Miss Lorne – lay hold of his little lordship, will you? I've got me blessed hands full a-keepin' to me perch whilst the guv'ner's a-wobbling of the branch like this. Good biz! Now, then, sir, another 'arf a yard. That's the call! Hands on this bough and foot on the bank there. One, two, three – knew you'd do it! Safe as house, Gawd bless yer bully heart!"
And then Cleek, wet, white, panting, dragged himself out of the clutch of the whirlpool and lay breathing heavily on the ground.
"By gums, guv'ner," Dollops added as he looked down on the whirling waters, "what an egg-beater it would make, wouldn't it, sir? Ain't got such a thing as a biscuit about yer, have you? Me spine's a-rasping holes in me necktie, and I'm so flat you could slip me into a pillar box and they'd take me home for a penny stamp."
But Cleek made no reply. Wet and spent after his fierce struggle with the whirling fury he had just escaped, he lay looking up into Ailsa's eyes as she came to him with the sobbing child close pressed to her bosom and all heaven in her beaming face.
"It is not the 'funeral wreath' after all, you see, Miss Lorne," he said. "It came near to being it; but – it is not, it is not. I wonder, oh, I wonder!"
Then he laughed the foolish, vacuous laugh of a man whose thoughts are too happy for the banality of words.
* * * * *
It was midnight and after. In the close-curtained library of Chepstow House, Cleek, with little Lord Chepstow sleeping in his arms, sat in solemn conclave with Lady Chepstow, Captain Hawksley, and Maverick Narkom. While they talked, Ailsa, like a restless spirit, wandered to and fro, now lifting the curtains to peep out into the darkness, now listening as if her whole life's hope lay in the coming of some expected sound. And in her veins there burned a fever of suspense.
"So you failed to get the rascals, did you, Mr. Narkom?" Cleek was saying. "I feared as much; but I couldn't get word to you sooner. We blew out a fuse, Dollops and I, in that mad race to the mill, and of course we had to come home at a snail's pace afterward. I'm sorry we didn't get Margot, sorrier still that that hound Merode got away. They are bound to make more trouble before the race is run. Not for her ladyship, however, and not for this dear little chap. Their troubles are at an end, and the sacred son will be a sacred son no longer."
"Oh, Mr. Cleek, do tell me what you mean," implored Lady Chepstow. "Do tell me how – "
"Doctor Fordyce at last!" struck in Ailsa excitedly, as the door-bell and the knocker clashed and the butler's swift footsteps went along the hall. "Now we shall know, Mr. Cleek, now we shall know for certain!"
"And so shall all the world," he replied as the door opened and the doctor was ushered into the room. "I don't think you were ever so welcome anywhere or at any time before, doctor," he added with a smile. "Come and look at this little chap. Bonny little specimen of a Britisher, isn't he?"
"Yes; but, my dear sir, I – I was under the impression that I was called to a scene of excitement; and you seem as peaceful as Eden here. The constable who came for me said it was something to do with Scotland Yard!"
"So it is, doctor. I had Mr. Narkom send for you to perform a very trifling but most important operation upon this little boy here."
"Upon Cedric!" exclaimed Lady Chepstow, rising in a panic of alarm. "An operation to be performed upon my baby boy? Oh, Mr. Cleek, in the name of Heaven – "
"No, your ladyship, in the name of Buddha. Don't be alarmed. It is only to be a trifling cut, a mere re-opening of that little wound in the thigh which you dressed and healed so successfully at Trincomalee. You made a mistake, all of you, that night when the boy was shot. The native poor Ferralt saw skulking along with the gun was not a mere tribesman and had not the very faintest thought of discharging that weapon at your little son, or, indeed, at anybody else in the world. He was the High Priest, Seydama, guardian of the holy tooth, the one living being who dared by right to touch it or to lay hands upon the shrine that contained it. Fearful, when the false rumour of that intended loot was circulated, that infidel eyes should look upon it, infidel hands profane the sacred relic, he determined to remove it from Dambool to the rock-hewn temple of Galwihara and to enshrine it there. For the purpose of giving no clue to his movements, he chose to abandon his priestly robes, to disguise himself as a common tribesman, and, the better to defeat the designs of those who might seek to tear it from him and hold it for ransom, he hid the holy tooth in the barrel of a gun. That gun was in his hands when Ferralt leaped out and brained him!"
"Dear heaven!" cried Lady Chepstow with a sudden burst of realization. "Then that holy relic, that fetish, the sacred tooth of Buddha – "
"Is embedded in the fleshy part of the thigh of your little son!" he finished. "Enclosed, doubtless, in a sac or cyst which protective Mother Nature has wrapped round it, the tooth is there; and, for five whole years, he has been the living shrine that held it!"
And so, in truth, it proved to be. Ten minutes later the trifling operation was over, and the long-lost relic lay in the palm of the doctor's hand.
"Take it, Captain Hawksley," said Cleek, lifting it and carrying it over to him. "There is a man in Soho, one Arjeeb Noosrut, who will know it when he sees it; and there is a vast reward. Five lacs of rupees will pay off no end of debts, and a man with that balance at his banker's can't be accused of being a fortune-hunter when he asks in marriage the hand of the woman he loves. Mr. Narkom, is your motor ready? I'm a bit fagged out, and Dollops, I know, is all but starving. Ladies and gentlemen, my best respects. The riddle is solved. Good-night!"