Mary E. Hanshew - The Riddle of the Frozen Flame

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He went on, still in a fury of indignation, but with the knowledge of Mr.
Headland's true name still locked in his breast. "Did I bring you here as
a friend and give you every opportunity to work on this strange business,
to have you arraign me as a murderer? Do not treat me as a suspect, Mr.
Detective. I am not on trial. I want this thing cleared up, yes; but I am
not here to be accused of the murder of a man who was a guest in my own
house, by the very man I brought in to find the true murderer."

"You haven't given me time to say whether I accuse you or not, Sir
Nigel," replied Cleek, patiently. "Now, if you'll permit me to speak,
we'll take up this man's evidence. There are gaps in it that rather badly
want filling up, and there are thin places which I hardly think would
hold water before a judge and jury. But he swears himself a witness, and
there you are. And as for believing his word before yours--who fired the
shot, Sir Nigel? Did he, or did you? I am a representative of the Law and
as such I entered your house."

Merriton made no reply, simply held his head a little higher and clasped
the edge of the table more firmly.

"Now," said Cleek, turning to the butler and fixing him with his keen
eyes. "You are ready to swear that this is true, upon your oath, and
knowing that perjury is punishable by law?"

"Yes, sir." Borkins's voice was very low and rather indistinct.

"Very well. Then may I ask why you did not immediately report this matter
to the rest of the party, or to the police?"

Something flashed across Borkins's face, and was gone again. He cleared
his throat nervously before replying:

"I felt on me honour to--Sir Nigel, sir," he returned at length. "A man
stands by his master, you know--if 'e's a good one; and though we'd 'ad
words before, I didn't bear 'im no malice. And I didn't want the old
'ouse to come to disgrace."

"So you waited until things looked a little blacker for him, and then
decided to cast your creditable scruples to the wind?" said Cleek, the
queer little one-sided smile travelling up his cheek. "I take it that you
had had what you term 'words' since that fatal date?"

Borkins nodded. He did not like this cross-examination, and his
nervousness was apparent in voice and look and action.

"Yes, sir."

"H'm. And if we put that to one side altogether can you give me any
reason why I should believe this unlikely story in place of the equally
unlikely one that your master has told me--knowing what I do?"

Borkins twitched up his head suddenly, his eyes fear-filled, his face
turned suddenly gray.

"I--I--What can you know about me, but that I 'ave been in the employment
of this family nearly all my life?" he returned, taken off his guard by
Cleek's remark. "I'm only a poor, honest workin' man, sir, been in the
same place nigh on to twenty years and--"

"And hoping you can hang on another twenty, I dare say!" threw in Cleek,
sarcastically. "Oh, I know more about you, my man, than I care to tell.
But at the moment that doesn't enter into the matter. We'll take that up
later. Now then, there's the revolver. Doctor, you should be useful here;
if you will use your professional skill in the service of the law that
seems trying to embroil your friend. I want you to examine the head
wound, please--the head wound of the man called Dacre Wynne, and, if you
can, remove the bullet that is lodged in the brain. Then we shall have a
chance to compare it with those remaining in Sir Nigel's revolver."

"I--can't do it, Mr. Headland," returned Doctor Bartholomew, firmly.
"I won't lend myself to a plot to inveigle this poor boy, to ruin his
life--"

"And I demand it--in the name of the Law." He motioned to Petrie and
Hammond, who through the whole length of the inquiry had stood with
Dollops, beside the doorway. They came forward swiftly. "Arrest Doctor
Bartholomew for treating the Law with contempt--"

"But, I say, Mr. Headland, this is a damned outrage!"

Cleek held up a hand.

"Yes," he said, "I agree with you. But a very necessary one. Besides"--he
smiled suddenly into the seamed, anxious face of the man--"who knows but
that bullet may prove Sir Nigel's innocence? Who knows but that it is not
the same kind as lie now in this deadly little thing here in my hand? It
lies with you, Doctor. Must I arrest him now, and take him off to the
public jail to await trial, or will you give him a sporting chance?"

The doctor looked up into the keen eyes bent upon him, his own equally
keen. He did not know whether he liked this man of the law or not.
Something of the man's personality, unfortunate as had been its
revelation during this past trying hour, had caught him in its thrall. He
measured him, eye for eye, but Cleek's never wavered.

"I've no instruments," he said at last, hedging for time.

"I have plenty--upstairs. I have dabbled a little in surgery myself, when
occasion has arisen. I'll fetch them in a minute. You will?"

The doctor stood up between the two tall policemen who had a hand upon
either shoulder. His face was set like a mask.

"It's a damned outrage, but I will," he said.

Dollops was gone like a flash. In the meantime Cleek cleared the room. He
sent Merriton off to the smoking room in charge of Petrie and Hammond,
and Borkins with them--though Borkins was to be kept in the hallway, away
from his master's touch and voice.

Cleek, Mr. Narkom, and the doctor remained alone in the room of death,
where the doctor set to his gruesome task. Outside, Constable Roberts's
burly voice could be heard holding forth in the hall upon the fact that
he'd been after a poacher on Mr. Jimmeson's estate over to Saltfleet, and
wasn't in when they came for him.

And the operation went quietly on....

... In the smoking room, with Hammond and Petrie seated like deaf mutes
upon either side of him, Merriton reviewed the whole awful affair from
start to finish, and felt his heart sink like lead in his breast. Oh,
what a fool he had been to have these men down here! What a fool! To see
them wilfully trumping up a charge of murder against himself was--well,
it was enough to make any sane man lose hold on his reason. And
'Toinette! His little 'Toinette! If he should be convicted and sent to
prison, what would become of her? It would break her heart. And he might
never see her again! A sudden moisture pricked at the corners of his
eyes. God!--never to call her _wife_!... How long were those beasts going
to brood in there over the dead? And was there not a chance that the
bullet might be different? After all, wasn't it almost impossible that
the bullet _should_ be the same? His was an unusual little revolver made
by a firm in French Africa, having a different sort of cartridge. Every
Tom, Dick, and Harry didn't have one--couldn't afford it, in the first
place.... There was a chance--yes, certainly there was a _chance_.

... His blood began to hammer in his veins again, and his heart beat
rapidly. Hope went through him like wine, drowning all the fears and
terrors that had stalked before him like demons from another world. He
heard, with throbbing pulses, approaching footsteps in the hall. His head
was swimming, his feet seemed loaded with lead so that he could not rise.
Then, across the space from where Cleek stood, the revolver in one hand
and the tiny black object that had nested in a dead man's brain in the
other, came the sound of his voice, speaking in clear, concise sentences.
He could see the doctor's grave face over the curve of Mr. Narkom's fat
shoulder. For a moment the world swam. Then he caught the import of what
Cleek was saying.

"The bullet is the same as those in your revolver, Sir Nigel," he said,
concisely. "I am sorry, but I must do my duty. Constable Roberts, here is
your prisoner. I arrest this man for the murder of Dacre Wynne!"

CHAPTER XVII

IN THE CELL

What followed was like a sort of nightmare to Merriton. That he should be
arrested for the murder of Dacre Wynne reeled drunkenly in his brain.
Murderer! They were calling him a murderer! The liars! The fools! Calling
him a murderer, were they? And taking the word of a crawling worm like
Borkins, a man without honour and utterly devoid of decency, who could
stand up before them and tell them a story that was a tissue of lies. It
was appalling! What a fiend incarnate this man Cleek was! Coming here at
Nigel's own bidding, and then suddenly manipulating the evidence, until
it caught him up in its writhing coils like a well-thrown lasso. Oh, if
he had only let well enough alone and not brought a detective to the
house. Yet how was he to know that the man would try to fix a murder on
him, himself? Useless for him to speak, to deny. The revolver-shot and
the cruel little bullet (which showed there were others who possessed
that sort of fire-arm besides himself) proved too easily, upon the
circumstantial evidence theory at all events, that his word was naught.

He went through the next hour or two like a man who has been tortured.
Silent, but bearing the mark of it upon his white face and in his haggard
eyes. And indeed his situation was a terrible and strange one. He had set
the wheels of the law in motion; he himself had brought the relentless
Hamilton Cleek into the affair and now he was called a murderer!

In the little cell where they placed him, away from the gaping,
murmuring, gesticulating knot of villagers that had marked his progress
to the police-station--for news flies fast in the country, especially
when there is a viper-tongue like Borkins's to wing it on its way--he was
thankful for the momentary peace and quiet that the place afforded. At
least he could _think_--think and pace up and down the narrow room with
its tiny barred window too high for a man to reach, and its hard camp
bedstead with the straw mattress, and go through the whole miserable
fabrication that had landed him there.

The second day of confinement brought him a visitor. It was 'Toinette.
His jailer--a rough-haired village-hand who had taken up with the "Force"
and wore the uniform as though it belonged to someone else (which indeed
it had)--brought him news of her arrival. It cut him like a lash to see
her thus, and yet the longing for her was so great that it superseded all
else. So he faced the man with a grim smile.

"I suppose, Bennett, that I shall be allowed to see Miss Brellier? You
have made enquiries?"

"Yes, sir." Bennett was crestfallen and rather ashamed of his duty.

"Any restrictions?"

Bennett hedged.

"Well--if you please--Sir Nigel--that is--"

"What the devil are they, then?"

"Constable Roberts give orders that I was to stay 'ere with you--but I
can turn me back," returned Bennett, with flushing countenance. "Shall
I show the lady in?"

"Yes."

She came. Her frock was of some clinging gray material that made her look
more fairy-like than ever. A drooping veil of gray gauze fell like a mist
before her face, screening from him the anguished mirrors of her eyes.

"Nigel! My poor, poor Nigel!"

"Little 'Toinette!"

"Oh, Nigel--it seems impossible--utterly! That you should be thought to
have killed Dacre. You of all people! Poor, peace-loving Nigel! Something
must be done, dearest; something _shall_ be done! You shall not suffer
so, for someone else's sin--you shall not!"

He smiled at her wanly, and told her how beautiful she was. It was
useless to explain to her the utter futility of it all. There was the
revolver and there the bullet. The weapon was his--of the bullet he could
say nothing. He had only told the truth--and they had not believed him.

"Yes see, dear," he said, patiently, "they do not believe me. They say I
killed him, and Borkins--lying devil that he is--has told them a story of
how the thing was done; sworn, in fact, that he saw it all from the
kitchen window, saw Wynne lying in the garden path, dying, after I fired
at him. Of course the thing's an outrageous lie, but--they're acting upon
it."

"_Nigel!_ How dared he?"

"Who? Borkins? That kind of a devil dares anything.... How's your uncle,
dear? He has heard, of course?"

Her face brightened, her eyes were suddenly moist. She put her hands upon
his shoulders and tilted her chin so that she could see his eyes.

"Uncle Gustave told me to tell you that he does not believe a word of
it, dearest!" she said, softly. "And he is going to make investigations
himself. He is so unhappy, so terribly unhappy over it all. Such a
tangled web as it is, such a wicked, wicked plot they have woven about
you! Oh, Nigel dearest--_why_ did you not tell me that they were
detectives, these friends of yours who were coming to visit? If you
had only said--"

He held her a moment, and then, leaning forward, kissed her gently upon
the forehead.

"What then, _p'tite_?"

"I would have made you send them away--I would! I would!" she cried,
vehemently. "They should not have come--not if I had wired to them
myself! Something told me that day, after you were gone, that a dreadful
thing would happen. I was frightened for you--frightened! And I could not
tell why! I kept laughing at myself, trying to tease myself out of it, as
though it were simply--what you call it?--the 'blues'. And now--this!"

He nodded.

"And now--this," he said, grimly, and laughed.

Bennett, hand upon watch, turned apologetically at this juncture.

"Sorry, Sir Nigel," he said, "but time's up. Ten minutes is the time
allowed a prisoner, and--and--I'm afeared the young leddy must go. It
'urts me to tell you, sir, but--you'll understand. Dooty is dooty."

"Yes, doubtless, Bennett, though some people's idea of it is different
from others'," returned Merriton, with a bleak smile. "Have no fear,
'Toinette. There is still plenty of time, and I shall engage the
finest counsel in the land to stand for me. This knot shall be broken
somehow, this tissue of lies must have a flaw somewhere. And nowadays
circumstantial evidence, you know, doesn't hold too much water in a court
of law. God bless you, little 'Toinette."

She clung to him a moment, her face suddenly lightening at the tenor of
his words--so bravely spoken, with so little conviction behind them. But
they had helped her, and for that he was glad.

When she had gone, he sat down on the edge of his narrow bed and dropped
his face in the cup of his hands. How hopeless it seemed. What chance had
he of a future now--with Cleek against him? Cleek the unraveller of a
thousand riddles that had puzzled the cleverest brains in the universe!
Cleek would never admit to having made a blunder this time--though there
was a sort of grim satisfaction in the knowledge that he _had_ blundered,
though he himself was the victim.

... He sat there for a long time, thinking, his brain wearied, his heart
like lead. Bennett's heavily-booted feet upon the stone floor brought him
back again to realities.

"There's another visitor, sir," said he. "A gentleman. Seen 'im up at the
Towers, I 'ave. Name of West, sir. Constable Roberts says as 'ow you may
see him."

How kind of the constable, thought Nigel bitterly. His mouth twisted into
a wry smile. Then his eyes lightened suddenly. Tony West, eh? So all the
rats hadn't deserted the sinking ship, after all. There were still the
old doctor, who came, cheering him up with kind words, bringing him books
that he thought he could read--as though a man _could_ read books, under
such circumstances--and now Tony West--good old West!

West strode in, his five-feet-three of manhood looking as though it were
ready to throw the jailer's six-feet-one out of the window upon request,
and seized Nigel's hand, wringing it furiously.

"Good old Nigel! Gad! but it's fine to see you. And what fool put you in
this idiotic predicament? Wring his damned neck, I would. How are you,
old sport?"

Under such light badinage did West try to conceal his real feeling but
there was a tremour of the lips that spoke so banteringly.

Good old West! A friend in a thousand.

"Nice sort of place for the Squire of the Manor to be disporting himself,
isn't it?" returned Merriton, fighting his hardest to keep his composure
and reply in the same light tone. "I--I--damn it, Tony, you don't believe
it, do you?"

West went red to the rim of his collar. He choked with the vehemence of
his response.

"Believe it, man? D'you think I'm crazy? What sort of a fool would I be
to believe it? Wasn't I there, that night, with you? Wait until I give my
evidence in court. Bullet or no bullet, you're no--no murderer, Nigel;
I'd swear my life away on that. There were others on worse terms with
Wynne than you, old chap. There was Stark, for one. Stark used to borrow
money from him in the old days, you know, until they had a devil of a
shindy over an I.O.U. and the friendship bust. You'd no more reason to
kill him than Lester Stark, I swear. Or me, for that matter."

"No, I'd no reason to kill him, Tony. But they'll take that quarrel we
had over the Frozen Flame that night, and bring it up against me in
court. They'll bring everything against me; everything that can be
twisted or turned or bullied into blackening my name. If ever I get
scot-free, I'll kill that man Borkins."

West put up his hand suddenly.

"Don't," he said, quietly; "or they'll be putting that against you, too.
Believe me, Nigel, old boy, the Law's the greatest duffer on earth. By
the way, here's a piece of news for you! Heard it as I stopped in at the
Towers this morning. Saw that man Headland, the detective. He told me to
tell you, and I clean forgot. But they found an I.O.U. on Wynne's body,
an I.O.U. for two thou'--in Lester Stark's name. Dated two nights before
the party. Looks a bit funny, that, doesn't it?"

Funny? Merriton felt his heart suddenly bound upward, and as suddenly
drop back in his breast like lead. Glad that there was a chance for
another pal to come under the same brutal sway as he had? What sort of
a friend was he, anyway? But an I.O.U.!... And in Lester Stark's name!
He remembered the black looks that passed between the two of them that
night, remembered them as though they had been but yesterday. He jerked
his chin up.

"What're they going to do about it?"

"Headland told me to tell you that he was going to investigate the matter
further. That you were to keep up your heart.... Seemed a decent sort of
a chap, I must say."

Keep up his heart!... And there was a chance of someone else taking his
share of the damnable thing, after all!... But Lester Stark wouldn't
_kill_. Perhaps not--and yet, some months ago he had told him to his face
that he'd like to send Wynne's body to burn in hell!... H'm. Well, he
would have to keep his mouth shut upon _that_ conversation, at all
events, or they'd have poor Stark by the heels the next minute.... But
somehow his heart had lightened. Cleek didn't seem such a bad chap, after
all. And they couldn't hang him yet, anyhow.

For the rest of the long, dreary day the memory of that I.O.U. with
Lester Stark's name sprawled across the bottom of it, in the dashing
caligraphy that he knew, danced before his mind's eye like a fleeting
hope, making the day less long.

CHAPTER XVIII

POSSIBLE EXCITEMENT

Meanwhile, Cleek, Mr. Narkom, and Dollops stayed on at the Towers for
such time as it would take to have the coroner's inquest arranged, and
Merriton brought up before the local magistrate.

Mr. Narkom was frankly uneasy over the whole affair.

"There's something fishy in it, Cleek," he kept saying. "I don't like
the looks of it. Taking that innocent boy up for a murder which I feel
certain he never committed. Of course, circumstantial evidence points
strongly against him, but--"

"He's better out of the way, at all events," interposed Cleek. "Mind you,
I don't say the chap is innocent. Men of Wynne's calibre have the knack
of raising the very devil in a person who is under their influence for
long. And there's Borkins's story." The queer little one-sided smile
looped up his cheek for a moment and was gone again in a twinkling. He
crossed to where Mr. Narkom stood, and put a hand on his arm. "Tell me,"
he said, quietly, "did you ever hear of a chap squirming and moaning and
doing the rest of the things that the man said Wynne was doing in the
garden pathway, when a bullet had got him clean through the brain?
Something 'fishy' there, if you like."

"I should think so," replied Mr. Narkom. "Why, the chap would have died
instantly. Then you think Borkins himself is guilty?"

"On the contrary, I do not," returned Cleek, emphatically. "If my
theory's correct, Borkins is not the murderer of Dacre Wynne. Much more
likely to be Nigel Merriton, for that matter. Then there's the question
of this I.O.U. that I found on the body. Signed 'Lester Stark', and the
doctor--Gad! what a loyal friend to have!--told me that Lester Stark,
Merriton, and a little man called West were bosom friends and
club-mates."

"Then perhaps the man Stark killed him, after all?" threw in Mr. Narkom
at this juncture, and there was a tinge of eagerness in his excited
tones, which made Cleek whirl round upon him and say, accusingly, "Old
friend, Merriton has won your heart as he has won others'. You're dead
nuts on the youngster, and I must say he does seem such a clean, honest,
upstanding young fellow. But you're ready to convict any one of the
murder of Dacre Wynne but Merriton himself. Own up now; you've a sneaking
regard for the fellow!"

Mr. Narkom reddened.

"Well, if you want the truth of it--I have!" he said, finally, in an
"I-don't-care-what-the-devil-you-think" sort of voice. "He's exactly the
kind of chap I'd like for a son of my own, and--and--dash it! I don't
like seeing him in the lock-up; and that's the long and short of it!"

"So long as it's only the long and short, and not the end of it, it
doesn't greatly matter," returned Cleek. "Hello! Is that you, Dollops?"

"Yessir."

"Any news for me? Found that chap with the straggling black moustache
that tried to do me in the other night? I've not a doubt that you've
discovered the answer to the whole riddle, by the look upon your face."

Dollops cautiously approached, looking over his shoulder as though he
expected any minute that the cadaverous face of Borkins would peer in at
him, or that perhaps Dacre Wynne himself would rise from the dead and
shake an accusing finger in his face. He reached Cleek and laid a timid
hand upon the detective's arm. Then he bent his face close to Cleek's
ear.

"Well, I've an inklin' that I'm well on to the untyin' of it, s'help me
if I ain't!" he whispered in highly melodramatic tones.

Cleek laughed, but looked interested at once, while Mr. Narkom prepared
to give his best attention to what the lad had to say.

"Traced the blighter wiv the straggling whiskers on 'is lip, anyway!" he
said, triumphantly, casting still another glance over his shoulder in the
direction of the door, and lowering his tones still further. "Caught a
glimpse of 'im 'long by the Saltfleet Road this afternoon, Guv'nor, and
thinks I to myself, 'You're the blinkin' blighter wot tried to do the
Guv'nor in, are you? Well, you wait, my lad! There's a little taste of
'ell-sauce a-comin' your way wot'll make you sit up and bawl for yer
muvver.' He'd got on sailorin' togs, Mr. Cleek, an' a black 'at pulled
down low over one eye. Mate wiv 'im looked like a real bad 'un. Gold
rings in 'is ears 'e'd got like a bloomin' lydy, an' a blue sweater, and
sailor's breeches. Chin whiskers, too, wot were somethin like rotten
seaweed. Oh, a 'eavenly specimen of a chap 'e were, I kin tell you!"

"On the Saltfleet Road, eh?" interposed Cleek, rapidly, as the boy paused
a moment for breath. "So? My midnight friend is doubtless sailing for
foreign parts, as the safest place when coroner's evidence begins to get
too hot for him. And what then, Dollops?"

"Couldn't find out much else, Mr. Cleek, 'cept to trace the place where
the beggar 'angs out, and that's a bit of a shanty just off Saltfleet
Bay, an' a stone's throw from what looks ter me very like a boat-factory
of some kind. Reckon the chap's employed there, as, from a casual chat
wiv a sailorin' Johnny in the bar parlour of the 'Pig and Whistle', where
I wuz a-linin' of me empty stummick (detectin' is that 'ungry work, sir!)
wiv a sossage an' a pint o' four-and-er-'arf, this feller tells me that
pretty near everyone around here works there. I arsked 'im wot they did,
an' 'e says, 'Make boats an' fings, with now an' agin a little flurry in
shippin' ter break the monotony.'... Anyway, I traced the devil wot
nearly got _you_, Guv'nor, and _that's_ somefing. And if I don't give 'im
a taste of the 'appy 'ereafter, well, my name's not Dollops."

Cleek laughed and laid a hand upon the lad's shoulder.

"You've done a lot toward unravelling the mystery, Dollops, my lad,"
he said. "A regular right-hand man you are, eh, Mr. Narkom? This
evening we'll hie us to the Saltfleet Road and see what further the 'Pig
and Whistle' can reveal to us. It'll be like the old times of the
'Twisted-Arm' days, boy, where every second held its own unknown and
certain danger. Give us an appetite for our breakfast, eh?"

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