Part 26 (1/2)

There was no question whatsoever regarding the man's condition.

Satisfied now, Cleek felt his pulse, pushed up one of his eyelids and examined the eye itself. The pupil was largely dilated, the white suffused considerably, and both were slightly filmed.

”Hum-m-m!” he breathed conclusively, then turned from the man and looked at the decanters and gla.s.ses on the littered table. ”Port, Brandy, Benedictine, Scotch. To be sure! to be sure! Who is to know the taste of a mere guest in the matter of his after-dinner drink? So, if it is put in _all_----” He took up the decanters one by one, sampled their contents in turn, and smiled one of his queer crooked smiles when he set the last one down.

”Clever, very clever, my friend,” he said. ”And who was to tell you that the guest would not drink at all?”

Then he turned on his heel suddenly and left the room.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

THE OPEN WINDOW

He had scarcely taken a dozen steps down the hallway, however, before he encountered General Raynor, who had just then reentered the house by the front door.

His rugged old face wore a look of deep anxiety, as though the exciting scene through which he had so recently pa.s.sed bore heavily upon his spirits, despite Cleek's attempt to allay his distress by branding Dollops as a possible sneak thief; but he brightened perceptibly and made a valiant effort to appear quite at his ease when he looked up and saw Cleek.

”Get your call over the telephone all right, Mr. Barch?” he inquired pleasantly.

”Yes, thanks,” said Cleek serenely, still keeping up his ”Johnnie” air.

”Awfully obliged to you, I'm sure. d.i.c.kens of an important message.

Should have been in no end of a hole if I hadn't received it. But I say, General, you ought to be more careful, you know, especially with sneak thieves about.”

”As how, Mr. Barch?”

”Why, that blessed swing window in the library. I found the thing unfastened, don't you know.”

He hadn't, of course, for he had not been near it. But his statement undeniably agitated the General, though he made a brave effort to disguise it.

”Did you?” he said. ”That's peculiar. I never noticed it. I must speak to Johnston about it; it's his duty to see that it is locked, and I supposed he had done so. Still, it's of no great consequence as it happens. The sneak thief didn't enter by that way, I am sure.”

”No, but he might easily have done so; and if he had come in there while you were alone you might have had a warm time of it; don't you think so, eh, what?”

”I fancy _he_ would have had a warm time of it, as you express it, Mr.

Barch. I'm not so old but I know how to take care of myself, believe me.”

”No, I suppose not,” said Cleek. ”Had a jolly lot of practice in your young days--with the gloves and all that. Forty-fifth Queen's Own used to have a national reputation for the best boxers and wrestlers in the service, I'm told. Suppose it was the same in your day; and you got a lot of practice out there in Simla in your subaltern days.”

”You are wrong in both particulars. I did not belong to the Forty-fifth Queen's Own, Mr. Barch, and I was not billeted to India. I pa.s.sed out of Sandhurst into the Imperial Blues, and from the time I was twenty-two until I was twenty-six I was stationed at Malta.”

Cleek made a mental tally of those two statements.

”Oh, I see; mistake on my part,” he said serenely. ”Malta was it? And the Imperial Blues? Thought Harry said the other. I've got a rotten memory. But it doesn't matter which, does it, so long as you learned the trick, and are able to put up a stiff fight and floor a burglar still?

I'll lay you could floor one in short order, too, when I come to look at you,” he went on, glancing the General up and down with apparent admiration. ”Lord! shouldn't like to run foul of you when your temper's up. Built like a blessed gladiator. Shoulders on you like a giant; arms like--mind if I feel what they're like?”

Impudently taking hold of him before he could reply or resent the familiarity, Cleek moved the General's forearm up as if to see the swelling of the biceps.

”That's what I call muscle!” he exclaimed. ”What a wrist! What a fist to floor a man or---- Hullo! been flooring some one since I left you, General? Big green smudge on your cuff, as if you'd been up against a mossy wall? Didn't get into a sc.r.a.p with Sir Philip after I left you, did you, eh?”