Part 39 (1/2)

interposed Narkom. ”So if you will state the case at once he will be able to advise.”

”A detective? You?” She flashed round on Cleek and looked at him in amazement, her lower lip indrawn, a look almost of horror in her eyes. One may not tell a lion that another lion is a jacka.s.s, though he masquerade in the skin of one. Birth spoke to Birth. She saw, she knew, she understood. ”By what process could such as you--”

she began; then stopped and made a slight inclination of the head.

”Pardon,” she continued; ”that was rude. Your private affairs are of course your own, Mr.--er----”

”Headland, your ladys.h.i.+p,” supplied Cleek. ”My name is George Headland!” And Narkom knew from that that for all her grace and charm he neither liked nor trusted her soft-eyed ladys.h.i.+p.

”Thank you,” said Lady Essington, accepting this self-introduction with a graceful inclination of the head. ”No doubt Mr. Narkom has given you some idea of my reason for consulting you, Mr. Headland; but as time is very short let me give you the further details as briefly as possible. I am convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt that some one who has an interest in his death is secretly attacking the life of my little grandson; and I have every reason to believe that the 'some one' is either the Honourable Felix Carruthers or his wife.”

”But to what purpose, your ladys.h.i.+p? People do not commit so desperate an act as murder without some powerful motive, either of gain or revenge, behind it, and from what I have heard, neither the uncle nor the aunt can have anything to win by injuring his little lords.h.i.+p.”

”Can they not?” she answered, with a despairing gesture. ”How little you know! Mrs. Carruthers is an ambitious woman, Mr. Headland, and, like all women of the cla.s.s from which she was recruited, she aspires to a t.i.tle. She was formerly an actress. The Honourable Felix married and took her from the theatre. It is abominable that a person of that type should be foisted upon society and brought into contact with her betters.”

”Oho! that's where the shoe pinches, is it?” thought Cleek; but aloud he merely said: ”The day has long pa.s.sed, your ladys.h.i.+p, when the followers of Thespis have to apologize for their existence. There are many ladies of the stage in these times whose lives are exemplary and whose names call forth nothing but respect and admiration; and so long as this particular lady bore an unblemished reputation----Did she?”

”Oh, yes. There was never a word against her in that respect.

Felix would never have married her if there had been. But I believe in persons of that cla.s.s remaining in their own circle, and not intruding themselves into others to which they were not _born_. She is an ambitious woman, as I have told you. She aspires to a t.i.tle as _well_ as to riches, and if little Lord Strathmere should die, her husband would inherit both. Surely that is 'motive' enough for a woman of that type. As for her husband----”

”There, I am afraid, your suspicion confounds itself, your ladys.h.i.+p,”

interrupted Cleek. ”I am told that the Honourable Mr. Carruthers is extremely fond of the boy; besides which, being rich in his own right, he has no reason to covet the riches of his brother's baby son.”

”Pardon me: '_was_ rich' is the proper expression, not 'is,' Mr.

Headland. The failure, a fortnight or so ago, of the West Coast Diamond Mining Company, in which the greater part of his fortune was invested and of which he was the chairman, has sadly crippled his resources, and he has now nothing but the income from his nephew's estate to live upon.”

”Hum-m-m! Ah! Just so!” said Cleek, pinching his chin. ”Now I recollect what made the name seem familiar, Mr. Narkom. I remember reading of the failure, and of the small hope that was held out of anything being saved from the wreckage. Still, the income from the Strathmere estate is enormous; and by dint of care, in the seventeen or eighteen years which must elapse before his little lords.h.i.+p comes of age----”

”He will never come of age! He will be killed first--he is being killed now!” interposed Lady Essington, agitatedly. ”Oh, Mr.

Headland, help me! I love the boy--he is my own child's child. I love him as I never loved anything else in all the world; and if he were to die----Dear G.o.d! what should I do? And he is dying: I tell you he is. And they won't let me go near him: they won't let me have him all to myself, these two! If his cries in the night wring my heart and I run to his nursery, one or the other of them is always there, and never for one moment will they let me hold him in my arms nor be with him alone.”

”Hum-m-m! Cries out in the night, does he, your ladys.h.i.+p? What kind of cries? Those of fright or of pain?”

”Of pain--of excruciating pain: it would wring the heart of a stone to hear him, and, though there is never a spot of blood nor a sign of violence, he declares that some one comes in the night and sticks something into his neck--something which, in his baby way, he likens to 'a long, long needle that goes yite froo my neck and sets uvver needles p.r.i.c.kin' and p.r.i.c.kin' all down my arm.'”

”h.e.l.lo! what's that? Let's have that again, please!” rapped out Cleek, before he thought; then recollected himself and added apologetically, ”I beg your ladys.h.i.+p's pardon, but I am apt to get a little excited at times. Something like a needle being run into his neck, eh? And other needles continuing the sensation down the arm? Hum-m-m! Had a doctor called in?”

”No. I wished to, but neither the uncle nor aunt would let me do so. They say it is nothing--a mere 'growing pain' which he will overcome in time. But it is not--I _know_ it is not! If it were natural, why did it never manifest itself before the failure of that wretched diamond company? Why did it wait to begin until after the Honourable Felix Carruthers had lost his money? And why is it going on, night after night, ever since? Why has he begun to fail in health?--to change from a happy, laughing, healthy child into a peevish, fretful, constantly complaining one? I tell you they are killing him, those two; I tell you they are using some secret diabolical thing which is sapping his very life; and if----”

She stopped and sucked her breath in with a little gasp of fright, and, whisking down her veil, turned and made hurriedly for the door.

”I told you he guessed; I told you I should be followed!” she said in a shaking voice. ”He is coming--that man: along the road there!

look through the window and you will see. Oh, come to my a.s.sistance, Mr. Headland! Find some way to do it, for G.o.d's sake! Good-bye!”

Then the door opened and shut and she was gone, darting out from the rear of the inn into the shelter of the scattered clumps of furze bushes and the thick growth of bracken which covered the downs, and running like a hare pursued.

”Well, what do you make of it, old chap?” asked Narkom anxiously, turning to Cleek after ascertaining past all doubt that the Honourable Felix Carruthers was riding up the road toward the French Horn.

”Oh, a crime beyond doubt,” he replied. ”But whose I am in no position to determine at present. A hundred things might produce that stabbing sensation in the neck, from the p.r.i.c.k of a pin-point dipped in curare to a smear of the 'Pope's balm,' that h.e.l.lish ointment of the Borgias. Hum-m-m! And so that's the Honourable Felix Carruthers, is it? Keep back from the window, my friend.

When you are out gunning for birds, it never does to raise an alarm.