“You don’t mean it! Well, I’m blest! Nothing but waste stuff and straw? Why, that fellow over there—the Sepoy chap with the gun in his hands——Oh, good Lord! just my blessed luck! I hope to heaven I haven’t spoilt anything!” For, in leaning over to indicate the figure alluded to, he had blundered against the edge of the low platform, lost his balance, and sprawled over so awkwardly and abruptly that, but for the fact that the figure of the dead soldier was there for his hand to fall upon in time to check it, he must have pitched headlong into the very heart of the tableau, and done no end of damage. Fortunately, however, not a figure had been thrown down, and even the “dead soldier” had stood the shock uncommonly well, not even a dent showing, though Cleek had come down rather heavily and his palm had struck smack on the figure’s chest.
“Tut! tut! tut! tut!” exclaimed the Italian with angry impatience. “Oh, do have a little care, signor! The bull in a china-shop is alone like this.” And he turned his back upon this stupid blunderer, even though Cleek was profuse in his apologies, and looked as sorry as he declared. After a time, however, he went off on another tack, for his quick-travelling glance had shown him Mr. Narkom in the house across the passage, and he turned on his heel and walked away rapidly.
“Tell you what it is: it’s this blessed glare of light that’s accountable,” he said. “A body’s likely to stumble over anything with the light streaming into the place in this fashion. What you want in here is a bit of shade—like this.”
Here he crossed the room hastily and, reaching up, pulled down the long window blind with a sudden jerk. But before either Trent or the Italian could offer any objection to this interference with the conditions under which the waxworker chose to conduct his labours, he seemed, himself, to realize that the proceeding did not mend matters, and, releasing his hold upon the blind, let the spring of the roller carry it up again to its original position. As he did this he said with a peculiarly asinine air:
“That’s a bit worse than the other, by Jip! Makes the blessed place too dashed dark altogether; so it’s not the light that’s to blame after all.”
“I should have thought even a fool might have known that!” gave back the waxworker, almost savagely. “The light is poor enough as it is. Look for yourself. It is only the afterglow—and even that is already declining. Pouffe!” And here, as if in disgust too great for words, he blew the breath from his lips with a sharp, short gust, and facing about again went back to his work on the tableau.
Cleek made no response; nor yet did Trent. By this time even he had begun to think that accident more than brains must have been at the bottom of the man’s many successes; that he was, in reality, nothing more than a blundering muddler; and, after another ten minutes of putting up with his crazy methods, had just made up his mind to appeal to Narkom for the aid of another detective, when the end which was all along being prepared came with such a rush that it fairly made his head swim.
All that he was ever able clearly to recall of it was that there came a sudden sound of clattering footsteps rushing pell-mell up the staircase; that the partition door was flung open abruptly to admit Mr. Maverick Narkom, with three or four of the firm’s employees pressing close upon his heels; that the superintendent had but just cried out excitedly, “Yes, man, yes!” when there arose a wild clatter of falling figures, a snarl, a scuffle, a cry, and that, when he faced round in the direction of it, there was the Lucknow tableau piled up in a heap of fallen scenery and smashed waxworks, and in the middle of the ruin there was the “signor” lying on his back with a band of steel upon each wrist, and over him Cleek, with a knee on the man’s chest and the look of a fury in his eyes, crying aloud: “Come out of it! Come out of it, you brute-beast! Your little dodge has failed!”
And hard on the heels of that shock Mr. Trent received another. For of a sudden he saw Cleek pluck a wig from the man’s head and leave a white line showing above the place where the joining paste once had met the grease paint with which the fellow’s face was coloured, and heard him say as he tossed that wig toward him and rose, “Out of your own stage properties, Mr. Trent—borrowed to be returned like this.”
“Heaven above, man,” said Trent in utter bewilderment, “what’s the meaning of it all? Who is that man, then, since it’s clear he’s not Loti?”