Such were the facts regarding the singular Colliver case at the time when Cleek laid it down—unprobed, unsolved, as deep a mystery in the end as it had been in the beginning—and such they still were when, on this day, at this critical time and after an interval of eleven months, Mr. Maverick Narkom came to ask him to pick it up again.
“And with an element of fresh mystery added to complicate it more than ever, dear chap,” he declared, rather excitedly. “For, as the father vanished eleven months ago, so yesterday the son, too, disappeared. In the same manner—from the same point—in the selfsame building and in the same inexplicable and almost supernatural way! Only that in this instance the mystery is even more incomprehensible, more like ‘magic’ than ever. For the boy is known to have been shown by a porter into a room almost entirely surrounded by glass—a room whose interior was clearly visible to two persons who were looking into it at the time—and then and there to have completely vanished without anybody knowing when, where, or how.”
CHAPTER XXXIV
“What’s that?” rapped out Cleek, sitting up sharply. His interest had been trapped, just as Mr. Narkom knew that it would. “Vanished from a glass-room into which people were looking at the time? And yet nobody saw the manner of his going, do you say?”
“That’s it precisely. But the most astonishing part of the business is the fact that, whereas the porter can bring at least three witnesses to prove that he showed the boy into that glass-room, and at least one to testify that he heard him speak to the occupant of it, the two watchers who were looking into the place at the time are willing to swear on oath that he not only did not enter the place, but that the room was absolutely vacant at the period, and remained so for at least an hour afterward. If that isn’t a mystery that will want a bit of doing to solve, dear chap, then you may call me a Dutchman.”
“Hum-m-m!” said Cleek reflectively. “How, then, am I to regard the people who give this cross testimony—as lunatics or liars?”
“Neither, b’gad!” asseverated Narkom, emphatically. “I’ll stake my reputation upon the sanity and the truthfulness of every mother’s son and every father’s daughter of the lot of them! The porter who says he showed the boy into the glass-room I’ve known since he was a nipper—his dad was one of my Yard men years ago—and the two people who were looking into the place at the time, and who swear that it was absolutely empty and that the lad never came into it——Look here, old chap, I’ll let you into a bit of family history. One of them is a distant relative of Mrs. Narkom—an aunt, in fact, who’s rather down in the world, and does a bit of dressmaking for a living. The other is her daughter. They are two of the straightest-living, most upright, and truly religious women that ever drew the breath of life, and they wouldn’t, either of ’em, tell a lie for all the money in England. There’s where the puzzle of the thing comes in. You simply have got to believe that that porter showed the boy into that room, for there are reliable witnesses to prove it, and he has no living reason to lie about it; and you have got to believe that those two women are speaking the truth when they say that it was empty at that period and remained empty for an hour afterward. Also—if you will take on the case and solve at the same time the mystery attending the disappearance of both father and son—you will have to find out where that boy went to, through whose agency he vanished, and for what cause.”
“A tall order that,” said Cleek with one of his curious, one-sided smiles. “Still, of course, mysteries which are humanly possible of creation are humanly possible of solution, and—there you are. Who is the client? Miss Larue? If so, how is one to be sure that she will not again call a halt, and spoil a good ‘case’ before it is halfway to completion?”
“For the best of reasons,” replied Narkom earnestly. “Hers is not the sole ‘say’ in the present case. Added to which, she is now convinced that her suspicions in the former one were not well grounded. The truth has come out at last, Cleek. She stopped all further inquiry into the mysterious disappearance of her brother because she had reason to believe that the elder Mr. Trent had killed him for the purpose of getting possession of those jewels to tide over a financial crisis consequent upon the failure of some heavy speculations upon the stock market. She held her peace and closed up the case because she loves and is engaged to be married to his son, and she would have lost everything in the world sooner than hurt his belief in the honour and integrity of his father.”