“Good God! I never was so glad to see anybody in my life, gentlemen,” broke out young Drake as they appeared. “It’s beyond the hour you asked for—ages beyond—and my nerves are almost pricking their way through my skin. Mr. Cleek—Mr. Narkom—speak up, for heaven’s sake. Have you succeeded in finding out anything?”
“We’ve done better than that, Mr. Drake,” replied Cleek, “for we have succeeded in finding out everything. Look sharp there, Mr. Narkom, and shut that door. Lady Marjorie looks as if she were going to faint, and we don’t want a whole houseful of servants piling in here. That’s it. Back against the door, please; her ladyship seems on the point of crumpling up.”
“No, no, I’m not; indeed, I’m not!” protested Lady Marjorie with a forced smile and a feeble effort to hold her galloping nerves in check. “I am excited and very much upset, of course, but I am really much stronger than you would think. Still, if you would rather I should leave the room, Mr. Cleek——”
“Oh, by no means, your ladyship. I know how anxious you are to learn the result of my investigations. And, by that token, somebody else is anxious, too—the doctor. Call him in, will you, Mr. Drake? He is still with the others in the Stone Drum, I assume.”
He was; and he came out of it with them at young Drake’s call, and joined the party in the armoury.
“Doctor,” said Cleek, looking up as he came in, “we’ve got to the puzzle’s unpicking, and I thought you’d be interested to hear the result. I was right about the substance employed, for I’ve found the stuff and I’ve nailed the guilty party. It was woorali, and the reason why there was no trace of a weapon was because the blessed thing melted. It was an icicle, my friend, an icicle with its point steeped in woorali, and if you want to know how it did its work—why, it was shot in there from the cross-bow hanging on the wall immediately behind me, and the person who shot it in was so short that a chair was necessary to get up to the bowman’s slit when——No, you don’t, my beauty! There’s a gentleman with a noose waiting to pay his respects to all such beasts as you!”
Speaking, he sprang with a sharp, flashing movement that was like to nothing so much as the leap of a pouncing cat, and immediately there was a yap and a screech, a yell and a struggle, a click of clamping handcuffs, and a scuffle of writhing limbs, and a moment later they that were watching saw him rise with a laugh, and stand, with his hands on his hips, looking down at Ojeebi lying crumpled up in a heap, with gyves on his wrists and panic in his eyes, at the foot of the guarded door.
“Well, my pleasant-faced, agreeable little demon, it’ll be many a long day before the spirits of your ancestors welcome you back to Nippon!” Cleek said as the panic-stricken Jap, realizing what was before him, began to shriek and shriek until his brain and nerves sank into a collapse and he fainted where he lay. “I’ve got you and I’ve got the woorali. I went through your trunk and found it—as I knew I should from the moment I clapped eyes upon you. If the laws of the country are so lax that they make it possible for you to do what you have done, they also are stringent enough to make you pay the price of it with your yellow little neck!”
“In the name of heaven, Mr. Cleek,” spoke up young Drake, breaking silence suddenly, “what can the boy have done? You speak as if it were he that murdered my father; but, man, why should he? What had he to gain? What motive could a harmless little chap like this have for killing the man he served?”
“The strongest in the world, my friend—the greed of gain!” said Cleek. “What he could not do in your father’s land it is possible for him to do in this one, which foolishly allows its subjects to insure even the life of its ruler without his will, knowledge, or consent. For nearly a twelvemonth this little brute has been carrying a heavy insurance upon the life of Jefferson P. Drake; but, thank God, he’ll never live to collect it. What’s that, Doctor? How did I find that out? By the simplest means possible, my dear sir.