THE SECRET OF THE SINGING WHEEL
The scene that followed this startling announcement can well be imagined rather than described. For even as the man stood glowering at them, his mouth muttering the curses that his heart held, came a new diversion from another quarter. For Catherine Dowd had called out sharply, "Quick! quick! some smelling-salts here—and brandy!" and as the women of the party endeavoured to produce one item, while the men more successfully produced the other, it was seen that Johanna McCall was the object of this aid, for she half-lay, half-sprawled upon the floor, mouth open, face twitching, eyes already glazing over, and the white froth forming about her pale lips.
Cleek leaned down and lifted her head in his uninjured arm; and looked down into her upthrown ghastly face.
"Gad!" he said under his breath, "and now the other one—self-confessed! Who'd have thought it?—who, indeed? And for what reason, I wonder?"
"For him—for Ross—for the man I love," the pale lips framed the words brokenly as the strength of the girl sagged and ebbed slowly away. "He would have disinherited him—disinherited Ross, turned him out—penniless! Cruel—wicked—I stabbed him with—the stiletto—the light went out—caught it off the table—wiped it on her dress—must have been mad—mad—but you can't get me. It's poison—arsenic. I had it ready. And I needn't have done it—after all!"
Then she sighed a little, opened her eyes suddenly and closed them again, and then slumped forward in Cleek's arms—dead.
Cleek caught at a cushion, pushed it under the sagging head, slipped his own arm out from under it, and got slowly to his feet. His face was pale, his lips set.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said quietly, pointing a hand at the still figure, so pitifully small and childlike, huddled together upon the floor, "the other—murderer. Poor, misguided little creature! Of such folly can Love only be held to blame. A hopeless passion, a breaking heart, a suddenly maddening resolution made and carried out in a red-hot moment, and—another soul gone to meet its Maker with the red blot of death upon it. Tragic, is it not?... Lady Paula, take a seat. There is so much more to tell, and this has slightly precipitated matters. Tavish, my friend, you will do better not to glower and struggle like that. The Law has you, and the Law will make you pay—in spite of all your efforts to fix the blame upon someone else. I think, my friends, if we might adjourn to the drawing-room, the rest of the riddle would make easier and better telling. It is hardly fitting—here and now."
"You're right, Mr. Deland, perfectly right," threw in Ross at this juncture, jumping to his feet and catching his fiancée by the arm. "Come, all of you. Out of this room and into the next. I want to hear the end of the tangle, Mr. Deland, and find exactly how you implicated me."
Cleek looked up suddenly with a slight smile.
"Not Deland, my friend, just Cleek—Cleek of Scotland Yard, at your service," he made reply smoothly, smiling at the amazed faces which greeted this statement. "So you see, Tavish, you had greater odds against you than you knew. We'll have your other prisoner, please, Constable. The worthy Antoni Matei shall tell us something before the day is out. Of that I am certain. And I have promised him a good price for his loose tongue. Tavish, never trust a lying comrade. This is the friend who saw you through—and then split afterward upon you. Choose birds of another colour next time you practise such tricks—only, I'm afraid it is a trifle late to start new methods—now."
Speaking, he passed out of that tragic room, waving his hand with a gesture which was almost theatrical to the others to follow him, and when they were all assembled around him in the drawing-room, went on with his amazing story.
"You want to hear the whole story from start to finish? Well, it will make long telling, I'm afraid," he said, as Maud Duggan put the question, glancing a trifle anxiously at the slumped figure of the Italian which stood manacled between two burly constables, waiting his turn to speak up and tell what he knew. "To begin with, I must confess I was a little mistaken in my calculations. To begin with. Circumstantial evidence does not always prove guilt, Miss Duggan, although it's generally a good pointer in a broad way. And your brother had many pieces of evidence against him. That bit of red flexible electric wire, you know, that I picked up in the library that first day you showed me around. I admit I thought it belonged to him, particularly when young Cyril here told such an excellent story of how Sir Ross (I must give you your proper title, you know!) wired the room temporarily, just to show James Tavish how it could be done. But it didn't, you see. That fragment was found in Tavish's own bedroom. Then, when I went down into the dungeons, I discovered—something else."
His hand dived into his pocket and brought forth a crumpled handkerchief, slightly bloodstained, and handed it to her. "Can you identify that?"
"Of course. It's yours, Ross, isn't it? See, here are your initials. And yet you found it down there—with something else, Mr.—Cleek?"
"I certainly did, my dear young lady. With a syphon of soda, a tumbler and a bottle that smelt of very good raw whisky. Rather strong for my liking, but still—we'll let that pass for the present. I'll have something to say about that later which may interest you, Mr. Narkom. I found it there—and, as you say, I found something else, too. And when I saw the initials I naturally thought of your brother—which just goes to prove that human nature is apt to make mistakes, even when it thinks itself pretty expert upon certain subjects. As a matter of fact, Miss McCall had borrowed that handkerchief—she supervises the laundering, you told me, Miss Duggan—for James Tavish when he cut his finger, and he had never given it back, obviously. When I discovered that, that was the first pointer in his direction. The others followed fairly rapidly.... Then the air-pistol, you know. You yourself told me your brother had one—and then regretted the telling afterward, like every loving and foolish woman who wants to preserve her kin from possible blame, even in the face of her own suspicions. That was Number Two against him. Number Three came from this young lady here—Miss Dowd—who brought me the stiletto that had been used to stab your poor father, and admitted, strictly against all her scruples, that, as far as she knew, it had been last used by Sir Ross to cut the edges of a book upon Poisons which he had been reading. I don't much admire your taste in literature, Sir Ross, but that is hardly to do with me. A man can choose his own companions and his own library, thank God, although Life itself chooses almost everything else for him. But I must confess that the spinning wheel got me guessing, as our American cousins say. I've Mr. Narkom to thank for that discovery. And he made it in rather a remarkable way. Leaned against the wheel and experienced a slight shock. After that, the thing was as easy as A. B. C. We simply traced the wiring to the window-sill, where we discovered a switch hidden in the ivy, turned it on, and—there you were! I nearly got potted by the devilish contrivance myself, only some sixth sense told me to get out of the way in time. But the aim was amazingly accurate. The second bullet fell a matter of half an inch below the first. A perfect marvel of ingenuity, contrived by a man who had obviously made electricity his study for years—in spite of his confessed ignorance of it. Worked out to a nicety. The failing lights were his idea also, and quite simple to manage, really. The drumming dynamo made a very good imitation of the 'singing of the wheel,' in accordance with the old story. And a less enlightened household than yours, Sir Ross, might have put all sorts of constructions upon that—except, of course, the right one.... That, my friends, was how the diabolical thing was done."
For a moment a silence held, fraught with mute astonishment; then exclamations of amazement fell from every one of that little company, and Ross Duggan was just about to speak when Lady Paula broke hurriedly in.
"And my brother?—my poor unfortunate brother?" cried she in a wrung voice. "He had no share in the crime, I'll swear it, Mr. Cleek. Even your magic cannot prove that."
"Not in the crime actually, Lady Paula, but in—other things," he replied a trifle grimly, glancing again at the flushed face of the prisoner. "For as a blackmailer I fancy he is something of an artist. That fact you already know—to your cost, I fancy. And I think I'm not wrong in saying that it was he who suggested to you the stealing of the will and——"
"I begged him not to, Mr. Cleek! I implored. I did— I swear it. And I never stole the will, that I can promise!" she broke in distractedly, beating her hands together. "Antoni suggested—yes—he wished to destroy it, so that my share of the estate might be greater as widow than that which had been apportioned to me, and of course he would have a portion of that, too. But I implored him not—that is true, is it not, Antoni? You can answer to that? I begged you, and you promised! And he threatened me even with exposure if I did not agree to the preposterous idea! I complied, only upon the promise that it should not be destroyed. But who took it I do not know."
"But I think I can pretty well guess," responded Cleek serenely, with a quick look at Cyril's suddenly flushed face. "Your son, Lady Paula, has much of his uncle's blood in his veins. And he acted, no doubt, upon forceful advice, and carried the thing through quite successfully. Perhaps he will tell us just when he decided to steal his own father's will—at the instigation of an unscrupulous relation."
Came a slight pause in the telling, meanwhile a startled exclamation broke from Ross Duggan's lips, while every eye in that little assembly fastened upon the unfortunate boy. He broke into quiet sobbing, darting his eyes here and there for possible sympathy.
"Yes, I took it, sir—when Uncle Antoni told me," he broke out between sobs. "It was—just after it had happened. I heard Mother's scream, and then she ran into my room and told me of—the dreadful thing that had happened! About half an hour afterward Uncle Antoni appeared at the balcony which opens out from my bedroom window, and told me I must steal the will for him. I was terrified—oh, I was!—but he threatened me with—with a pistol——"
"That's a lie!" gave out the prisoner with a maledictory eye upon his unfilial nephew.
"It isn't—it isn't! You told me to get it—just how to get it. That it was lying upon the table-top; and so I slipped down in my stockinged feet, and waited in the passage until I saw Ross slip out of the room after everyone else had gone back to bed, and—and you had come out, Mr. Cleek, and were talking to Maud in the ante-room. So I crept into the room—oh, it was dreadful, with Father lying there—like that—snatched it up and fled back to my bedroom in terror. Uncle Antoni was still waiting on the balcony, and when he got it he climbed down the balustrade again and—and—that is all I know. Oh, I wish—I wish I'd never had anything to do with it!"
Cleek nodded.
"I'm sure you do," he said quietly. "So it was really not your fault, Cyril. You acted under considerable pressure. That I'll admit. But it might have been better if you had confided in—someone else after the deed was done. It would have helped clear up the mystery sooner, at any rate. But that cannot be helped now. To proceed with the story. Here, by the way, is the missing will, Lady Paula. I found it muffling the clapper of Rhea's bell—a very ingenious hiding-place—and in the finding discovered your—er—worthy brother at the same time. That was how I happened to get hold of him. He gave me a few tips of quite useful information afterward, upon promise of a light sentence, and helped to lead me finally to the true murderer. So we will hold that in his favour, at any rate. Sir Ross, I'd prefer you to keep that document until it can be placed in the hands of your family lawyer. We don't want any more disappearing tricks for the present, do we?"
"Hardly. Gad! it's amazing, positively extraordinary how you've found all this out!" threw in that gentleman with deep emphasis. "Please accept my apologies now for those unforgivable things I said to you, Mr. Cleek. But when a chap's just been practically accused of killing his own father——"
"You must expect a little heat. That's all right, my friend. Don't bother about it further. Only, I was obliged to throw the scent upon someone other than the real man—or we'd have lost him. You understand that, of course?"
"Certainly. Only tell us how you traced the murder to its proper source, and why James Tavish should have done such a thing."
"That I will, and in the shortest way possible. But you must let me tell my story in my own particular manner," replied Cleek, with a slight smile and a warmth of feeling toward this very impetuous and generous-hearted young man. "There's still a good deal to be cleared up before you can understand, and I'm afraid some of it won't make particularly good hearing. But that I cannot help. Men are frail things, Sir Ross, where temptation is concerned. And when there is a pretty woman in the question ... it's all right, Lady Paula; it all happened long before you entered your husband's life, so that there is nothing for you to forgive—but, as I say, when a pretty woman enters at one door, a man's discretion very often flies out at another.
"I found, among other things yesterday, when I was looking for the will in your father's desk, after having appropriated his keys first, a bundle of old love-letters, written upon paper which I ascertained had been bought in the village, and bearing a post-mark which was local, and signed with the name 'Jeannette.' I confess I did not know just where these entered into the case at all, but something told me that they were a big factor. My intuition—policeman's sixth sense—call it what you will. I looked into the matter, and then discovered, after some probing through my man Dollops (who, by the way, Mr. Narkom, deserves high commendation in this case), that they were actually written by James Tavish's sister, Jeannette, and that—to put it baldly, for which I trust you will forgive me—that your father had been carrying on a secret liaison with this girl for some years, upon promise of marriage, and had, in fact, got her into very unfortunate trouble."
"But he never married her—he married me— I am his legal wife, I swear that!" struck in Lady Paula, in a high-pitched, terrified voice. "I knew nothing of this woman at all—everything in our marriage was in order——"
"Of that there is not the smallest doubt, Lady Paula," returned Cleek gravely. "I said only 'under promise of marriage.' That is where man is unfortunately so unfaithful. He merely left her to bear her trouble alone—after, of course, providing for her and the possible issue of their unhappy union—and, being a faithful woman, it broke her heart, and both she and her child died as a consequence of this neglect. When the wish to live is gone, there is little else to bind one to this earth at such times, my friends, and so she and her unwanted little one passed out to a happier realm. Much of this I have gleaned from those same letters; much I have deduced in the natural course of events. The final clue was discovered in James Tavish's own room, where this photograph, bearing the date of her death and that of her child, and having one word written across the face of it, was discovered in a box on his dressing-table."
He handed the piece of pictured pasteboard across to each of them in turn, watching their faces to see the effect of it upon them individually. Mute astonishment, dull grief showed in Ross and Maud Duggan's eyes as they looked upon it. It was as though they had discovered suddenly that their idol had feet of clay. For across the front of the pictured face was written one word in heavy black scrawl, and the word was "Avenged!"