CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A QUESTION OF VERACITY
Geoffrey Clavering's reply to Lady Katharine's staggering question was given so promptly that one might have been tempted to believe he had expected it and prepared himself for the question beforehand.
"I had no idea of going there at first," he said. "I couldn't remain among the guests after you had left the Close and Narkom's men had bundled that De Louvisan out of the house; my head seemed full of fire, and I simply couldn't. I got away as soon as I decently could, and went upstairs to my own room. I couldn't stop there, either; the stillness and the loneliness half maddened me and set me to thinking and thinking until I thought my head would burst. So, in sheer desperation, I caught up a cap, sneaked down the back stairs, and let myself out. Nobody saw me go, and, thank God, nobody saw me return, either. I walked about the Common for heaven knows how long before I turned round at the sound of some one coming toward me through the mist, and the next thing I knew I 'bumped' smack into that person, and found it to be my stepmother."
"Lady Clavering?" said the girl in a tone of the utmost surprise – and Cleek could have blessed her for the words, since they voiced an inquiry upon a subject which he much desired to have explained. "You mean to say that Lady Clavering was out there on the Common, away from her guests? What could have impelled her to take such a step – and at such a time?"
"She had come in search of me, she said. She felt anxious, distressed, afraid, so she said, that I would do something desperate, and went to my room to talk with me. When she found it empty she jumped to the conclusion that I had gone out for the purpose of following De Louvisan and meeting him somewhere for the mere satisfaction of thrashing him. She begged and implored me to come back to the Close; to do nothing rash; to think of my father; to remember her; to be careful to do nothing that would get your name mixed up in a vulgar brawl. And she wouldn't leave me until I promised her on my word of honour that I would make no effort to find De Louvisan. When I did that, she was satisfied and went back to the Close."
In the darkness of the stone staircase Cleek puckered up his brows and thoughtfully pinched his chin.
Oho! so that was the explanation of her ladyship's presence on the Common last night, was it? Mere solicitude for the welfare of a beloved stepson, eh? Hum-m-m! Rather disappointing, to say the least of it, to find that she had no more connection with the case than just that. After all, she was merely "a red herring drawn across the trail," eh? He shouldn't have thought so, but, of course, if young Clavering spoke the truth, that eliminated her from the affair altogether. Odd that she should have bribed the Common keeper not to say a word about having met her! In the circumstances, why should she have done so?
Ah, yes – just so! She wouldn't like to have the affair talked about; she wouldn't like to have young Geoff put on his guard, so that he might purposely avoid meeting her, and she would be most anxious to get him back into the house as quietly and as expeditiously as possible. No, decidedly, you never can be certain. Women are queer fish at the best of times, and mothers have odd methods of reasoning when beloved sons are concerned. But stepmothers? Hum-m-m! Yes, yes! To be sure, there are always exceptions. Still, he hadn't thought – he decidedly had not thought —
Young Clavering was speaking again. Cleek let the "thought" trail off and lose itself, and pricked up his ears to listen.
"I suppose it was her speaking of you that first put the idea into my head," Geoff went on, "and impelled me to walk over to the place where we had been so happy before your father returned from Argentina and spoiled everything for us. That's why I went. That's how I came to meet you there."
"You did not meet me there!" she flung back indignantly. "Really this is past a jest."
"A jest? You think I'm likely to jest over it – a thing that threatens the life of the girl I love? In the name of heaven, Kathie, put an end to this nonsense. You know I did meet you there! You know how surprised I was when I got to the place to see you stealing out of the gates. Why, the very moment you saw me you spoke my name, and that I had no more than just time to say to you, 'For God's sake, Kathie, how did you come here?' when you plucked me by the sleeve and said, 'Come in, come in; I'll show you something that will light the way back to the land of happiness, dear!' And after all that to face me down like this – to pretend that you were not there. It is simply ridiculous."
"I am glad you can give it so mild a name," said the girl coldly. "To me it seems the cruellest and the wickedest falsehood a man could possibly utter. Dear God! what has come over you, Geoff? Are you mad, or are you something worse, to come here and make this abominable lying charge against me – against me? And when you know in your heart that there is not one word of truth in it!"
"Oh, for God's sake, don't treat me as if I were a fool, Katharine. Who is there to impersonate you, and for what reason? I know what I know, I know what I've seen, what I've heard, what I've been through! Then what in heaven's name is the use of keeping up this idle pretence with me?"
"It is not a pretence – it is the truth, the simple and the absolute truth!" she replied with heat. "If they were the last words I had to say in this world, I would repeat on the very threshold of the one to come: I was not at Gleer Cottage last night. I came straight from Clavering Close to Wuthering Grange, and I never left my room for one instant from that time until I came down to breakfast this morning. Ailsa Lorne was with me when I returned; she will tell you that I am speaking the truth."
Yes, decidedly Ailsa Lorne would tell him; that Cleek acknowledged to himself. Had she not done so already? But again she might also have told him that she thought she heard Lady Katharine's bedroom door open in the night and some one steal out of it. Besides, there was another thing – the golden capsule of the scent bracelet – to be reckoned with. Hum-m-m! Was there, then, a possibility that Geoff Clavering was speaking the truth, and that it was Lady Katharine herself who was lying? Of course, in that case – Stop a bit – they were going at it again, and he could not afford to lose a single word.
"I don't care a hang what Ailsa Lorne or anybody else will say; I know what I know," young Clavering flung in doggedly. "You can't tell me that I didn't see a thing when I did see it – at least, you can't and expect to make me believe it. Give me credit for a little common sense."
"How can I when your own words so utterly refute it, when you convict yourself out of your own mouth, when even the dead man himself is a witness to the utter folly of this charge?"
"De Louvisan?"
"Yes. He speaks for me!"
"What nonsense!"
"He speaks for me," she repeated, not noticing the interruption, "and if you will not believe a living witness, then you must believe a dead one. Uncle Raynor and Harry said this morning that the Count de Louvisan's body had been found, not lying on the ground, but lifted up and spiked to the wall; and you who claim to have seen me in that house last night claim also to have searched the place and found no one but me present. Will you tell me, then, how I could possibly have lifted the body of a man weighing ten or eleven stone at the least computation, much less have lifted it high enough to spike it to a wall?"
"One for the girl!" commented Cleek silently.
"You might have had help; there might have been somebody there who left before I arrived," replied Geoff.
"And another one for the man!" Cleek was obliged to admit. "Which of this interesting pair is doing the lying? They can't both be speaking the truth. At least, they can't unless – By Jupiter! Hum-m-m! Quite so! Quite so! 'Write me down an ass, gentlemen,' and an ass with a capital A." Then the curious one-sided smile travelled up his cheek, and lingered there longer than usual.
Young Clavering's last remark had hurt the girl more than anything he had yet said; hurt her so deeply that she gave a little shuddering cry and, womanlike, broke into tears.
"That is the wickedest thing of all!" she said. "The very wickedest thing of all. I can't doubt any longer that you have made up your mind to bolster up this abominable thing by every possible insult to me!"
"Insult? What funny things are sometimes said by accident!" he flung back stridently. "I am likely to 'insult' you when I'm ready to stand by you through thick and thin, am I not? And to lie till I'm black in the face, so that I keep others from knowing what I know!"
"You don't know it – you can't know it! It never happened! I was not in that house last night, and you did not see me there!"
"Oh, well then, let us say I didn't," impatiently. "What does it matter one way or the other? Say I didn't, then! Say I murdered him; but, for God's sake, don't say I insult you when I have come here merely to show you how much I love you – how ready I am to fight the whole world for you. Come back into my arms, and let me tell you what I want to tell, dear. Come back, and don't fear anything or anybody on earth. They shan't touch you! They shan't lift a finger to harm you, say one single word against you; and God help the first that tries it, that's all! A man doesn't cease to love a woman just because she does a desperate thing for his sake. No, not he! If he's worthy of the name of man, he loves her all the better for it. That's how I love you! Better to-day than I ever loved you in all the days that were; better than I shall ever love anything in all the days that are to be. I don't care if you are red with the blood of a hundred men, you're the girl I love, the girl I mean to marry, the girl I'm going to stand up and fight for as long as there's breath left in my body!"
"Marry – marry?" Her voice struck through his even before he had finished speaking, and there was a sting in it that bit. "Do you think for one instant that I would marry you when you make such a charge as that against me? Do you think I would? Do you? I'd no more marry you than I would cut off my right hand, Geoff Clavering, after you have slandered me and lied about me like this."
"Kathie, dearest – "
"No – please! If you touch me I think I shall faint! Stay where you are! Let me alone! Ah, please do – please! I have suffered and suffered and suffered, but not like this; oh, never like this before! That you should say these things – you! That you should even dream of saying them! You ought to be ashamed of yourself – ashamed!"
"Kathie, darling – "
"No, no – don't, please don't; it would be wicked to touch me when I am suffering so much. I want to get back to my room – I want to lie down; my head will split if I don't. Please do not follow me; please stay where you are. I won't say a word to anybody; I promise you I won't. I'll try to bear it, I'll try to forget it. Nine years! Dear God, nine years; and – those marks totalled nine!"
He jumped as though some one had stabbed him; a red wave rushed up and crimsoned all his face, then flashed out of existence again and left it waxen white.
"Good God! you won't attempt to suggest – " he began, then lost the power of speaking altogether, and stood looking at her with blank eyes and with colourless lips hard shut as she crept on through the shadowy dusk to where the doorway of the ruin showed a pointed arch against the dimming saffron of a twilight sky. A moment her drooping figure stood there against that shield of yellow light, pausing irresolute with one foot on the edge of the drawbridge, one hand pressed to her head; then she turned and looked back at the place where he stood. But in the dim dusk of the ruin she could scarcely see him.
"I will never speak, I will never tell – even to the day I die I won't!" she said in a whisper; then waited an instant as if expecting a reply, and getting none, added yet more sadly, "Good-bye," and went across the drawbridge to the darkening gardens, and was gone.
For a minute the man made neither movement nor sound till of a sudden there came something so totally unexpected as to cause him to literally jump. Some one had given a none too perfect representation of a muffled sneeze, telling him that he was not alone.
"Who's there? Who are you?" he cried in an excited whisper
But nobody answered.
"Do you hear what I say? Come out and show yourself, whoever you are!" he called in a slightly louder tone; and then, getting no answer this time either, he fumbled in his pocket, fished out his match box, and struck a vesta.
The glimmering light showed him what the dusk had so successfully concealed heretofore – namely, the gap in the floor and the underside of the slab which usually covered the entrance to the underground cells, but which was now laid back on its hinges with its lower side upmost and the way to the stone staircase in full view. And in the very instant he made this discovery there rolled up from that gap the sound of somebody running away.
In a sort of panic young Clavering made a dash for the trap, and was through it and down the stone steps in almost no time, the wax vesta flickering and flaring in the fingers of his upraised hand and sending gushes of light weaving in and out among the arches of the passage and the gaping doorways of the mimic cells.
Nobody in sight. He called, but nobody answered; he commanded, but nobody came forth. And with the intention of routing the author of the sneeze and the footsteps, he had just started forward to investigate the cells themselves, when the match burnt his fingers and was flung down sharply. Darkness shut in as though a curtain had fallen. He fumbled with the box to get another match, and had almost secured one when he heard a movement behind him and flashed round on his heel.
"Anybody there?" he rapped out sharply.
"Yes; Cleek, of Scotland Yard!" answered a bland voice immediately in front of him; then there was a sharp spring, a swift rustle, a metallic click-click! His match box was on the floor, and a band of steel was locked about each wrist.
"Good Lord! you've put handcuffs on me, you infernal scoundrel!" Clavering cried out indignantly. "What is the meaning of this outrage? What are – Here! chuck that! Confound your cheek! what are you doing to my ankles?"
"Same thing as I've done to your wrists," replied Cleek serenely. "Sorry, but I shall have to carry you, my young friend; and I can't risk getting my shins kicked to a pulp."
"Carry me? Carry me where? Good God, man! not to jail?"
"Oh, no. That may come later, and certainly will come if you are guilty. For the present, however, I am simply going to carry you to a rather uncomfortable cell at the end of the passage, and put you where you won't be able to run away. I am afraid, however, that I shall have to gag you as well as handcuff you, and make you more uncomfortable still. But I'll manage somehow to get some bedding of some sort, and to see that you don't miss your dinner. You are going to spend the night here, my friend. Now, then, up you come and – there you are, on my shoulder. Steady, if you please, while I get out my pocket torch to light the way. I suppose you realize that I have heard all that passed between you and Lady Katharine Fordham this evening?"
"And you know that I lied, don't you?" put in Geoff eagerly. "You know that she wasn't there last night, after all?"
"To the contrary, my friend, I know that she was."
"It's a lie – it's a dashed lie! She never was near the place. That was pure bluff. It was I who killed the man."
"Don't tell any more lies than you are obliged to, my lad. I don't believe she killed him, and I'm not so very sure that you killed him – and there you are."
"Then what are you arresting me for?"
"I'm not arresting you; I'm simply sifting evidence. Your stepmother – according to your story – must be very, very fond of you, and very, very solicitous for your welfare. And if she risked catching cold and having people talk and all that sort of thing to rush out after you when you had only been gone for a short time, let's see how she'll act when you disappear mysteriously and don't come home all night!"
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A CHANGE IN THE PROGRAM
"I suppose you understand that this is a pretty high-handed sort of proceeding?" began young Clavering agitatedly, half indignantly. "Even the processes of the law have their limits; and to abduct a man and imprison him before there is the ghost of a charge against him – "
There he stopped; his ear caught by a faint metallic click, his eye by a little gleam of light that spat out through the darkness and made a luminous circle upon the earthen floor of the passage. Cleek had switched on his electric torch the better to see his way in carrying his captive to the cell of which he had spoken and was now moving with him toward it. His interest attracted in yet another direction, Geoffrey twitched round his head and made an effort to see the face of his captor. Pretty nearly everybody in England had, at one time or another, heard of the man, and a not unnatural curiosity to see what he was like seized upon young Clavering.
His effort to satisfy that curiosity was, however, without fruit, for the downward-directed torch cast only that one spot of light upon the floor and left everything else in the depths of utter darkness. But that Cleek was aware of this desire upon the part of the young man and of his effort to satisfy it, was very soon made manifest.
"In a minute, my friend – have a little patience," he said serenely. "If you wanted to take me unawares you should have remembered that we must soon come to the cell and I shall have to set you down, and you could then see all that you wanted to without putting me on my guard. What's that? Oh, yes, I am frequently off it – even Argus occasionally shut all his hundred eyes and went to sleep, remember."
By this time he had travelled the entire length of the passage, and now stood upon the threshold of the cell toward which he was aiming. He was no longer careful to keep the light from illuminating the surroundings, however. Indeed, he had merely done that in the first place to prevent Geoff from seeing, as they passed, the excavation he had made and the clothing he had dug up. He now flashed the light round and round the place as if taking stock of everything. He was not, by the way; what he sought was what he had seen in each of the other cells and hoped to find here as well – the iron ring in the wall and the short length of rusty chain attached to it.
The air of antiquity had been perfectly reproduced, and this cell was as carefully equipped as its mates. He walked toward the ring the instant he saw it, switched off the light of the torch, swung Geoff down from his shoulder, unfastened his ankles and one end of the shackles that held his wrists.
"What are you going to do with me now?" demanded young Clavering with sudden hopefulness. "I say – look here – is this thing a joke after all, and are you going to give me my liberty?"
The only response was a sharp click; then Cleek's hands fell away from his captive entirely, and under the impression that he was free, young Clavering made an effort to spring up from the ground where he had been laid.
A sharp backward jerk and a twinge of the right wrist brought him to a realization that while one end of the handcuffs still encircled that wrist, the other had been snapped into the ring in the wall, and it was, therefore, impossible for him to move ten inches from the spot where he had been left.
In the utter darkness he had no means of telling if Cleek had or had not left the cell; and in a sort of panic, called out to him.
"I say, officer! Have you left me?" he asked; then hearing a sound quite close to him, a sound so clearly that of some one moving and breathing that his question was answered without words, he added nervously: "What are you up to now? What are you doing that you have to work about it in the dark?"
"Merely twisting up a handkerchief into a form of gag," replied Cleek, in a tone which clearly indicated that he was speaking with one end of that handkerchief held between his teeth. "It is not a nice thought, the idea of gagging a gentleman as if he were a murderous navvy or a savage dog that needs muzzling. I should much prefer, Mr. Clavering, accepting your parole – putting you on your word of honour not to cry out or to make any effort to attract the attention of anybody who may enter this ruin to-night; and if you will give me that – "
"I'll give you anything rather than undergo any further indignity," snapped Geoff. "Look here, you know, Mr. Thingamy, this is a beastly caddish trick altogether, jumping on a man in the dark and giving him no chance to defend himself."
"Unfortunately, the law cannot allow itself to study the niceties of etiquette, my dear sir," replied Cleek. "It has to go on the principle that the end justifies the means, and it must always be prepared to accept risks. I, as one of its representatives, am, as I have told you, quite ready to accept one now; so if you will give me your word of honour not to make any outcry, the gag can be dispensed with."
"Very well, then; I do give it."
"Good! And I accept it; so that's the end of that, as the fellow said when he walked off the pier," said Cleek as he ceased twisting up the handkerchief and returned it to his pocket. "But why not go farther and spare us both an unnecessary amount of trouble and discomfort, Mr. Clavering?"
"I don't know what you mean. Put it a little clearer, please. I'm not good at guessing things."
"No, you are not; otherwise you might have guessed that when Lady Katharine Fordham denied so emphatically what you knew to be true – But no matter; we'll talk of that some other time."
"No, we won't!" flashed in Geoff hotly. "We'll leave Lady Katharine Fordham's name out of this business altogether. Understand that? I don't care whether you're a police officer or not, by George! Any man that tries to drag her into this affair will have to thrash me, or I'll thrash him, that's all. You can believe what you jolly well please about what you overheard. You've got no witness to prove that you did hear it; and as for me – I'll lie like a pickpocket and deny every word if you try to make capital out of it against her."
Cleek laughed, laughed audibly. But there was a note of gratification, even of admiration, underlying it; and he found himself liking this loyal, lovable, hot-tempered boy better and better with every passing moment. But the laughter nettled Geoff, and he was off like a firework in a winking.
"Look here! I'll tell you what!" he flung out hotly. "If you'll set me free from this confounded chain and come outside with me and will take a sporting chance – if you thrash me I'll take my medicine and do whatever you tell me; but if I thrash you, you're to let me go about my business, and to say nothing to anybody about what you happened to hear. Now, then, speak up. Which are you – a man or a mouse?"
"I know which you are, at all events," replied Cleek, with still another laugh. "You have some most original ideas of the workings of the law, it must be admitted, if you think Scotland Yard affairs can be settled in that way."
"You won't come out and stand up to me like a man, then?"
"No, I won't; because if I did I should catch myself wanting to clap you on the back and shake hands with you, and wishing to heaven that I were your father. But – wait – stop! You needn't go off like a blessed skyrocket, my lad. There's still a way to do very much what you have proposed, and that I was about to mention when you tore at me about Lady Katharine. I said, if you remember, that you might go farther than simply give me your word of honour with regard to the gagging part of the matter, and might save us both a lot of trouble and discomfort."
"Yes, I know you did. Well, what of it? What trouble and discomfort can be saved?"
"A great deal if you are wise as well as loyal, my boy. It couldn't be a very pleasant experience for you to pass the night in a place like this. Nevertheless, it is absolutely imperative that you should not return to your home to-night, and that your stepmother should have no hint of where you had gone or what had become of you."
"Why?"
"That's my affair, and you will have to pardon me if I keep it to myself. Now, then, why not make matters easier and pleasanter for you and for me by giving me your word of honour that if I let you go free from this place, and promise not to say one word of what I overheard pass between you and Lady Katharine Fordham, you will secretly journey up to London, stop there the night, and neither by word, nor deed will let a hint of your whereabouts or of what has passed between us this evening get to the ears or the eyes of any one at Clavering Close? Come now; that's a fair proposition, is it not?"
"I don't know; I can't think what's at the bottom of it. Good Lord!" – with a sudden flash of suspicion "you don't mean that you suspect that Lady Clavering, my stepmother – and just because I said she was out on the Common last night? If that's your game – Look here, she's as pure as ice and as good as gold, my stepmother, and my dear old dad loves her as she deserves to be loved. If you've hatched up some crazy idea of connecting her with this affair simply because De Louvisan was an Austrian and she's an Austrian, too – "
"Oho!" interjected Cleek. "So Lady Clavering is an Austrian, eh? I see! I see!"
"No, you don't. And don't you hint one word against her! So if it's part of your crawling spy business to get me to give my parole so that you may sneak over to Clavering Close and play another of your sneaking abduction tricks on her, just as you have played it on me – "
"Ease your mind upon that subject. I have no intention of going near Clavering Close, nor yet of sending anybody there. Another thing: I have not, thus far, unearthed even the ghost of a thing that could be said to connect Lady Clavering with the crime. Do you want me to tell you the truth? It is you against whom all suspicions point the strongest; and I want you to go away to-night simply that I may know if you have spoken the truth, or are an accomplished actor and a finished liar!"
"What's that? Good Lord! how can my disappearing for a night prove or disprove that?"
"Shall I tell you? Then listen. I meant at first to keep it to myself, but – " His voice dropped off; there was a second of silence, then a faint clicking sound, and a blob of light struck up full upon his face. "Look here," he said suddenly, "do you know this man?"
Clavering looked up and saw in the circle of light a face he had never seen in life before – a hard, cynical face with narrowed eyes and a thin-lipped, cruel mouth.
"No," he said, "if that is what you look like. I never saw such a man before."
"Nor this one?"
In the circle of light the features of the drawn face writhed curiously, blent, softened, altered – made of themselves yet another mask. And young Clavering, pulling himself together with a start, found himself looking again into the living countenance of Monsieur Georges de Lesparre.
"Good heavens above!" he said with a catch in his voice. "Then you were that man – you? And Mr. Narkom knew all the time?"
"Oui, m'sieur– to both questions —oui. It shall again be I, mon ami; and I shall remember me last night vair well. And now since m'sieur shall haf so good a recollection of zis party —voilà! He may tell me what he remembers of this one also."
Then in a flash the face was gone, and another – changed utterly and completely – was there.
"Barch!" exclaimed young Clavering, shrinking back from the man as though he were uncanny. "And you are that man – Philip Barch, Ailsa Lorne's friend? You are that man, too?"
"Yes, I am that man, too," replied Cleek. "I have made these silent confessions that you may know – that you may understand before I make another and equally candid one. If I had chosen not to let you know the real identity of Philip Barch, you have seen how easily I could have kept that secret. Now that you know me you will understand how honestly and straightforwardly I intend to deal with you. You asked me why I wanted you to disappear for a night, and I have told you that I may prove to my own satisfaction whether you are what I hope you are, or are merely a clever actor and an accomplished liar. If what you said about your stepmother's reason for following you out upon the Common last night is as true as you would have had Lady Katharine Fordham believe, her interest in you must be an abnormal one; and if it is as great as you represent – ah, well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Not all the powers on this earth will be able to keep her indoors should you be mysteriously missing. But if it is not so great, if you have lied about that as about other things, Lady Clavering will not come out in quest of you herself, but will leave that to her husband and her servants; and I shall know then that you have simply been playing a part – that you have something to hide and some desperate reason for hiding it. Now, then, knowing what threatens, knowing what I am up to, knowing what trap has been set for you, will you give me your parole and go up to London to-night and face the issue of that act like a man?"