Mary E. Hanshew - The Riddle of the Frozen Flame

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When all was in readiness, Cleek settled down to the story. He was the
only man left standing, a straight slim figure, full of that controlled
power and energy that is so often possessed by a small but perfect
machine. He bowed to the judge with something of the theatrical in his
manner, and then rested one hand upon the clerk's table.

"Now, naturally, you are wanting to hear the story," he said briskly,
"and I'll make it as brief as possible. But I warn you there's a good
deal to be told, and afterward there'll be work for Scotland Yard, more
work than perhaps they'll care about; but that is another story. To begin
with, the jury, my lord, was undoubtedly, from all signs, about to
convict the prisoner upon a charge of murder--a murder of which he was
entirely innocent. You have heard Merriton's story. Believe me, every
word of it is true--circumstantial evidence to the contrary
notwithstanding.

"In the first place, Dacre Wynne was shot through the temple at the
instigation of that man there," he pointed to Brellier, standing pale and
still between two constables, "foully shot, as many others had been
similarly done to death, because they had ventured forth across the Fens
at night, and were likely to investigate this man's charming little
midnight movements, further than he cared about. To creatures of his like
human life is nothing compared to what it can produce. Men and women are
a means to an end, and that end, the furtherance of his own wealth, his
own future. The epitome of prehistoric selfishness, is it not? Club the
next man that comes along, and steal from his dead body all that he has
worked for. Oh, a pretty sort of a tale this is, I promise you!

"What's that, my lord? What has the Frozen Flame to do with all this?
Why, the answer to that is as simple as A.B.C. The Frozen Flames, or that
most natural of phenomena, marsh-gas--of which I won't weary you with an
explanation--arose from that part of the Fens where the rotting
vegetation was at its worst. What more natural, then, than that this
human fiend should endeavour to shape even this thing to his own ends?
The villagers had always been superstitious of these lights, but their
notice had never been particularly called to them before the story of the
Frozen Flames had been carefully spread from mouth to mouth by Brellier's
tools.

"Then one man, braver than the rest, ventured forth--and never came back.
The story gained credence, even with the more educated few. Another,
unwilling to conform to public opinion, did likewise. And he, too, went
into the great unknown. The list of Brellier's victims--supposed, of
course, to be burnt up by the Frozen Flames--grew fairly lengthy in the
four years that he has been using them as a screen for his underhanded
work. A guard--and I've seen one of the men myself during a little
midnight encounter that I had with him--went wandering over that part of
the district armed with a revolver. The first sight of a stranger caused
him to use his weapon. Meanwhile, behind the screen of the lights the
bank robbers were bringing in their gold by motor and hiding the sacks
down in a network of underground passageways that I also discovered--and
traversed. They ran, by devious ways, both to a field in Saltfleet
conveniently near the factory, and by another route up to the back
kitchen of Merriton Towers.

"You'll admit that, when I discovered this to be the case, I felt pretty
uneasy about Sir Nigel's innocence. But a still further search brought to
light another passage, which ran straight into the study of Withersby
Hall, occupied by the Brelliers, and was hidden under the square rug in
front of the fireplace. A nice convenient little spot for our friend here
to carry on his good work. Just a few words to say that he didn't want to
be disturbed in his study, a locked door, a rug moved, and--there you
are! He was free from all prying eyes to investigate the way things were
going, and to personally supervise the hiding of the gold. While outside
upon the Fens men were being killed like rats, because one or two of them
chose to use their intelligence, and wanted to find out what the flames
really were. They found out all right, poor devils, and their widows
waited for them in vain.

"And what does he do with all this gold, you ask? Why, ship it, by using
an electrical factory where he makes tubings and fittings--and a good
deal of mischief, to boot. The sovereigns are hidden as you have seen,
and are shipped out at night in fishing boats, loaded below the water
mark--I've helped with the loading myself, so I know--_en route_ for
Belgium, where his equally creditable brother, Adolph, receives the
tubes and invariably ships them back as being of the wrong gauge. Look
here--" He stopped speaking for a moment and, stepping forward, lifted up
another tubing from the table, and unfastened it at one of the joints.
Then he held it up for all to see.

"See that stuff in there? That's tungsten. Perhaps you don't all know
what tungsten is. Well, it's a valuable commodity that is mined from the
earth, and which is used expressly in the making of electric lamps. Our
good friend Adolph, like his brother, has the same twist of brain.
Instead of keeping the tubes, he returns them with the rather thin excuse
that they are of the wrong gauge, and fills them with this tungsten, from
the famous tungsten mines for which Belgium holds first place in the
world. And so the stuff is shipped in absolutely free of duty, while our
friend here unloads it, supplies the raw material to one or two firms in
town, trading under the name of Jonathan Brent (you see I've got the
whole facts, Brellier), and uses some himself for this factory, which is
the 'blind' for his other trading ideas. Very clever, isn't it?"

The judge nodded.

"I thought you would agree so, my Lord. Even crime can have its clever
side, and more often than not the criminal brain is the cleverest which
the world produces.

"Where was I? Ah, yes! The shipping of the stuff to Belgium. You see,
Brellier's clever there. He knows that the sudden appearance of all
this gold at his own bank would arouse suspicions, especially as the
robberies have been so frequent, so he determines that it is safer out of
the country, and as the exchange of British gold is high, he makes money
that way. Turns his hand to everything, in fact." He laughed. "But now
we're turning our hands to _him_, and the Law will have its toll, penny
for penny, life for life. You've come to the end of _your_ resources,
Brellier, when you engaged those two strange workmen. Or, better still,
your accomplice did it for you. You didn't know they were Cleek and his
man, did you? You didn't know that on that second night after we'd worked
there at the factory for you, we investigated that secret passage in the
field outside Saltfleet Road? You didn't know that while you walked down
that passage in the darkness with your man Jim Dobbs--or 'Dirty Jim,' to
give him the sobriquet by which he is known among your employees--that
we were hidden against the wall opposite to that first little niche
where the bags of sovereigns stood, and that--though I hadn't seen
you--something in your voice struck a note of familiarity in my memory?
You didn't know that, then? Well, perhaps it's just as well, because I
might not be here now to tell this story, and to hand you over to
justice."

CHAPTER XXVII

THE SOLVING OF THE RIDDLE

"For the sake of _le bon dieu_, man, cease your cruel mockery!" said
Brellier, suddenly, in a husky voice, as the clerk rose to quell the
interrupted flow of oratory, and the court banged his mace for quiet.

"You didn't think of the cruel mockery of God's good world, which you
were helping so successfully to ruin!" continued the detective, speaking
_to_ the court but _at_ Brellier, each word pointed as a barb, each pause
more pregnant with scorn than the spoken words had been. "You didn't
think of that, did you? Oh, no! You gave no thought to the ruined home
and the weeping wife, the broken-hearted mother and the fatherless child.
That was outside your reckoning altogether. And, if hearsay be true (and
in this case I believe it is) you even went so far as to kill a
defenceless woman who had been brave enough to wander out across that
particular part of the Fens just to see what those flames really were.
And yet,--your lordship, this man howls for mercy."

He paused a moment and passed a hand wearily over his forehead. The
telling of the tale was not easy, and the expression of 'Toinette
Brellier's tear-misted eyes added to the difficulty of it. But he knew
he must spare no detail; in fairness to the man who stood in the dock,
in fairness to the Law he served, and in whose service he had unravelled
this riddle which at first had seemed so inexplicable.

Then the judge spoke.

"The court must congratulate you, Mr. Cleek," he said in his fine,
metallic voice, "upon the very excellent and intricate work you have done
on this case. Believe me, the Law appreciates it, and I, as one of its
humble exponents, must add my admiration to the rest. Permit me, however,
to ask one or two questions. In the first place, before we proceed
further with the case, I should like you to give me any explanation that
you can relative to the matter of what the prisoner here has told us with
regard to the story of the Frozen Flame. This gentleman has said that the
story goes that whenever a new victim had been claimed by the flames,
that he completely vanishes, and that another flame appears in amongst
its fellows. The prisoner has declared this to be true; in fact, has
actually sworn upon oath, that he has seen this thing with his own eyes
the night that Dacre Wynne was killed. I confess that upon hearing this,
I had my strong suspicions of his veracity. Can you explain it any
clearer?"

Cleek smiled a trifle whimsically, then he nodded.

"I can. Shortly after I made my discovery of the secret passage that led
out upon the Fens--the entrance to it, by the way, was marked by a patch
of charred grass about the size of a small round table (you remember,
Dollops, I asked you if you noticed anything then?), that lifted up, if
one had keen enough eyes to discover it, and revealed the trap-door
beneath--Dollops and I set out on another tour of investigation. We were
determined to take a sporting chance on being winged by the watchful
guards and have a look round behind those flames for ourselves. We did
this. It happened that we slipped the guard unobserved, having knowledge,
you see, of at least part of the whole diabolical scheme, and getting
within range of the flames without discovery, or, for that matter, seeing
any one about, we got down on our hands and knees and dug into the earth
with our penknives."

"What suggested this plan to you?"

Cleek smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

"Why, I had a theory, you see. And, like you, I wanted to find out if
Merriton were telling the truth about that other light he had seen or
not. This was the only way. Marsh-gas was there in plenty, though there
is no heat from the tiny flames, as you know, from which fact, no doubt,
our friend Brellier derived the very theatrical name for them, but the
light of which Merriton spoke I took to be something bigger than that.
And I had noticed, too, that here and there among the flames danced
brilliant patches that seemed, well--_more_ than natural. So our
penknives did the trick. Dollops was digging, when something suddenly
exploded, and shot up into our faces with a volume of gassy smoke. We
sprang back, throwing our arms up to shield our eyes, and after the fumes
had subsided returned to our task. The penknife had struck a bladder
filled with gas, which, sunk into the ground, produced the larger lights,
one of which Sir Nigel had seen upon the night that Wynne disappeared.
Even more clever, isn't it? I wonder whose idea it originally was."

He spun round slowly upon his heel and faced the line of seated
witnesses. His eyes once more travelled over the group, face to face,
eye to eye, until he paused suddenly and pointed at Borkins's chalk-white
countenance.

"That's the man who probably did the job," he said casually. "Brellier's
right-hand man, that. With a brain that might have been used for other and
better things."

The judge leaned forward upon his folded elbows, pointing his pen in
Borkins's direction.

"Then you say this man is part and parcel of the scheme, Mr. Cleek?" he
queried.

"I do. And a very big part, too. But, let me qualify that statement by
saying that if it hadn't been for Borkins's desire for revenge upon the
man he served, this whole ghastly affair would probably never have been
revealed. Wynne would have vanished in the ordinary way, as Collins
vanished afterward, and the superstitious horror would have gone on until
there was not one person left in the village of Fetchworth who would have
dared to venture an investigation of the flames. Then the work at the
factory would have continued, with a possibly curtailed payroll. No need
for high-handed pirates armed with revolvers _then_. That was the end the
arch-fiend was working for. The end that never came."

"H'm. And may I ask how you discovered all this, before going into the
case of Borkins?" put in the judge.

Cleek bowed.

"Certainly," he returned. "That is the legal right. But I can vouch for
my evidence, my lord. I received it, you see, at first-hand. This man
Borkins engaged both the lad Dollops and myself as new hands for the
factory. We therefore had every opportunity of looking into the matter
personally."

"Gawdamercy! I never did!" ejaculated Borkins, at this juncture, his face
the colour of newly-baked bread. "You're a liar--that's what you are! A
drorin' an innocent man into the beastly affair. I never engaged the
likes of _you_!"

"Didn't you?" Cleek laughed soundlessly. "Look here. Remember the man
Bill Jones, and his little pal Sammie Robinson, from Jamaica?" He writhed
his features for a moment, slipped his hand into his pocket, and
producing the black moustache that had been Dollops's envy and
admiration, stuck it upon his upper lip, pulled out a check cap from the
other pocket, drew that upon his head, and peered at Borkins under the
peak of it. "What-o, matey!" he remarked in a harsh cockney voice.

"Merciful 'Eavens!" gasped out that worthy, covering his eyes with his
hands, one more incredulous witness of Cleek's greatest gift. "Bill Jones
it is! _Gawd!_ are you a devil?"

"No, just an ordinary man, my dear friend. But you remember now, eh?
Well, that does away with the need of the moustache, then." The clerk of
the court, only too familiar with Cleek's disregard of legal formality,
frowned at this violation of dignity and raised his mace to rap for order
and possibly to reprimand Cleek for his theatrical conduct but at that
moment the detective pulled off the cap and moustache as though well
pleased with his performance. Cleek turned once more to the judge.

"My lord," he said serenely, "you have seen the man Bill Jones, and the
impersonator of Sammie Robinson is there," he pointed to Dollops. "Well,
this man Borkins--or Piggott, as he calls himself when doing his 'private
work'--engaged Dollops and me, in place of two hands in the factory who
had been given to too much tongue-wagging, and in consequence had met
with prompt punishment, God alone knows what it was! We worked there for
something just under a fortnight. Dollops, with his usual knack for
making friends in the right direction, chummed up to one of the men--whom
I have already named--Jim Dobbs. He finally asked him to come and help
with the loading up of the boats, and gave him the chance of making a
little overtime by simply keeping his mouth shut as to what went on.
I managed to get on the job too, and we did it three times in that
fortnight--and a jolly difficult task we found it, I don't mind saying.
But I felt that evidence was necessary, and while in the employ of 'the
master' we carried on many investigations. And still in his service I
made this rough map of the varied turnings of the secret passage, and the
places to which they led. You can get a better idea of the ground if you
glance at it." He handed it up to the high desk, and paused a moment as
the judge surveyed it through his spectacles. "The passage at Merriton
Towers, and also at Withersby Hall--so conveniently placed near that
particular part of the Fens, and therefore chosen by Brellier for his
work--are both of ancient origin, dating back, I should say, to the time
of the civil war.

"Whose idea it was to connect the two passages up I could not say, or
when Borkins got into the pay of Brellier and played false to a family
that he had served for twenty years. But the fact remains. The two
passages _are_ linked up, and then continued at great labour in another
direction to that field which lies off the Saltfleet Road and just at the
back of the factory. And thus was made a convenient little subway for the
carrying on of nefarious transactions of the kind which we have
discovered."

"And how did you discover that Brellier was the 'Master' in question?"
put in the judge at this juncture.

"He happened to come to the factory one day while we were at work upon
our machines. Someone said, 'Crickey! 'Ere's the Master! Funny for _'im_
to be prowlin' round at this hour of the day--night's more to 'is
likin'.' I could hardly contain myself when I saw who it was even though
I had already discovered the passage to Withersby Hall. I had not yet
realized that 'Jonathan Brent' and Brellier were one and the same, though
I discovered that the former had a perfectly legitimate office in London
in Leadenhall Street. But when I saw him I knew. After that I wasted no
time. Since then we've been having a pretty scramble to get safely away
without giving any clues to the other men, and to put Scotland Yard upon
their track. They're down there now, and have got every man of 'em I dare
swear (and I hope they are keeping my friend Black Whiskers for me to
deal with). That is the cause of my lateness at the hearing of the case.
You can fully understand how impossible it was to be here any earlier."

The judge nodded. "Your statement against this man Borkins--?"

"Is as strong a one as ever was made," said Cleek. "It was Borkins
who--in a fit of malicious rage, no doubt--conceived the idea of
interfering with his master's work to the extent of inventing the means
to have Sir Nigel Merriton wrongly convicted of the murder of Dacre
Wynne. You have seen the revolver, the peculiar make of which caused it
to be the chief evidence in this gruesome tragedy. Here is the genuine
one."

He drew the little thing from his pocket, and reaching up placed it in
the judge's outstretched hand. That gentleman gave a gasp as he laid eyes
upon it.

"Identical with this one, which belongs to the prisoner!" he said--almost
excitedly.

"Exactly. The same colonial French make, you see. This particular one
belongs, by the way, to Miss Brellier."

"_Miss Brellier!_"

Something like a thrill ran through the crowded courtroom. In the silence
that followed you could have heard a pin drop.

"That is correct. She will tell you that she always kept it in an unused
drawer in her secretaire locked away with some papers. She had not looked
at it for months, until the other day when she happened to examine one of
those papers, and therefore went to the drawer and unlocked it. The
revolver lying there drew her attention. Knowing that it was the same as
the one owned by her fiance, Sir Nigel Merriton, and figuring so largely
in this case, she took it out and idly examined it. One of the bullets
was missing! This rather aroused her curiosity, and when I questioned her
afterward about it, when the inquest was over, and she had brought it
forward and shown it to the coroner, who--quite naturally--after the
explanation given by Mr. Brellier, gave it back to her as having no
dealings with the case, she told me that she could not _absolutely_
recollect her uncle telling her that he _had_ killed the dog with it.
A small thing but rather important."

"And you say that this man Borkins arranged this revolver so as to point
to the prisoner's guilt, Mr. Cleek?" asked the judge.

"I say that the man Dacre Wynne was actually _killed_ with that identical
revolver which you hold in your hand, my lord. And the construction I put
upon it is this: Borkins hated his master, but the long story of that
does not concern us here, and upon the night of the quarrel he was
listening at the door, and, hearing how things were shaping themselves,
began, as he himself has told you in his evidence, to think that there
would soon be trouble between Sir Nigel and Mr. Wynne, if things went on
as they had been going. Therefore, when he was told that Mr. Wynne had
gone out across the Fens in a drunken rage, to investigate the meaning of
the Frozen Flames, the idea entered Borkins's mind. He knew his master's
revolver, had seen it slipped under his pillow more often than not of an
evening when Sir Nigel went to bed. Here Borkins saw his life's
opportunity of getting even. He knew, too, of Miss Brellier's
revolver--_must_ have known, else why should this particular instrument
be used upon this particular night, in place of the usual type of
revolver which Brellier's guards carried, and by which poor Collins
undoubtedly met his death? So we will take it that he knew of this little
instrument here, and upon hearing of Wynne's proposed investigations, he
dashed to the back kitchen of the Towers--which, was rarely used by the
other servants, as being, so one of them told me, 'so dark and damp that
it fair gave 'em the creeps.' Therefore Borkins had his way unmolested,
and it did not take him long, knowing the turnings of the underground
passage--as he did from constant use--to communicate with Withersby Hall.
To which guard he told his tale I do not know, but, since we have taken
the whole crowd--we'll find out later. Anyway, he must have told someone
else of his desire for private vengeance. And the thing worked. When poor
Wynne met his death, it was at the point of a pistol which had lain
unused in the secretaire at Withersby Hall for some little time. I have
not been able to find the actual spot where the body of Wynne and, later
on, that of Collins was first concealed, but I have no doubt that they
were brought from that spot to be discovered by us. It was very necessary
for the body of Wynne to be discovered, since the bullet in his brain was
fired from Miss Brellier's revolver. It was all part of the plot against
Sir Nigel. How bitter was that plot is evidenced by the removal of the
bodies to the place they were discovered on the Fens--no very pleasant
job for any man."

Cleek whirled suddenly upon Borkins, who stood with bent head and pallid
face, biting his lips and twisting his hands together, while Cleek's
voice broke the perfect silence of the court. But thus taken by surprise,
he lifted his head, and his mouth opened.

The judge raised his hand.

"Is this true, my man?" he demanded.

Borkins's face went an ugly purplish-red. For a moment it looked as
though he were going to have an apoplectic fit.

"Yes--damn you all--yes!" he replied venomously. "That's how I did
it--though Gawd alone knows how he come to find it out! But the game's
up now, and it's no more use a-lyin'."

"Never a truer word spoken," returned Cleek, with a little triumphant
smile. "I must admit, your Lordship, that upon that one point I was a
little shaky. Borkins has irrefutably proved that my theory was correct.
I must say I am indebted to him." Again the little smile looped up one
corner of his face. "And I have but just a little bit more of the tale to
tell, and then--I must leave the rest of it in your infinitely more
capable hands.

"... The reason why I mistrusted the story of the revolver? Why, upon
examination, that instrument belonging to Miss Brellier was a little too
clean and well-oiled to have been out of use for a matter of five months
or so. The worthy user of it had cleaned and polished it up, so as to be
sure of its action, and re-oiled it. So the 'dog story' was exploded
almost at its birth. The rest was easy to follow up, and knowing the
position of things between Borkins and his master (from both sides, so to
speak), I began to put two and two together. Borkins has, this moment,
most agreeably told me that my answer to the sum is correct. But things
worked in well for him, I must say. That Sir Nigel should actually fire
a shot upon that very night was a stroke of pure luck for the servant who
hated him. And it made his chance of fabricating the whole plot against
Sir Nigel a good deal easier. Whether he would have stolen the revolver
had that shot at the Frozen Flames--for which Sir Nigel has been so
sorely tried--never been fired, I cannot say, but that doubtless would
have been the course he would have taken. Luck favoured him upon that
dreadful night--but now that luck has changed. His own action has been
his undoing. If he had not given vent to this feeling of hatred that he
cherished in his heart for a master who was of such different stuff of
which he himself was made, the whole infernal plot might never have been
revealed. And yet--who can tell?

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