“Oho!” said Cleek, screwing round suddenly. “Then Miss Valmond told you something with regard to Barrington-Edwards?”
“Yes—a horrible something. She came to me this morning looking as I hope I shall never see a good woman look again—as if she had been tortured to the last limit of human endurance. She had been fighting a silent battle for weeks and weeks she said, but her conscience would not let her keep the appalling secret any longer, neither would her duty to Heaven. Wakened in the dead of night by a sense of oppression, she had gone to her window to open it for air, and, looking down by chance into the garden of Lemmingham House, she had seen a man come rushing out of the rear door of Barrington-Edwards’ place in his pajamas, closely followed by another, whom she believed to be Barrington-Edwards himself, and she had seen that man unlock the door in the side wall and push the poor wretch out into the road where he was afterward found by the constable.”
“By Jupiter!”
“Ah, you may be moved when you connect that circumstance with what you have yourself unearthed. But there is worse to come. Unable to overcome a frightful fascination which drew her night after night to that window, she saw that same thing happen again to the fourth, and finally, the fifth man—the web-footed one—and that last time she saw the face of the pursuer quite plainly. It was Barrington-Edwards!”
“Absolutely. It was the positive certainty it was he that drove her at last to speak!”
Cleek made no reply, no comment; merely screwed round on his heel and took to pacing the floor again. After a minute however:
“Mr. Narkom,” he said halting abruptly. “I suppose all my old duds are still in the locker of the limousine, aren’t they? Good! I thought so. Give Lennard the signal, will you? I must risk the old car in an emergency like this. Take me first to the cable office, please; then to the mortuary, and afterward to Miss Valmond’s home. I hate to torture her further, poor girl, but I must get all the facts of this, first hand.”
He did. The limousine was summoned at once, and inside of an hour it set him down (looking the very picture of a solicitor’s clerk) at the cable office, then picked up and set him down at the Hampstead mortuary, this time, making so good a counterpart of Petrie that even Hammond, who was on guard beside the dead man, said “Hullo, Pete, that you? Thought you was off duty to-day,” as he came in with the superintendent.
“Jim Peabody fast enough, Mr. Narkom,” commented Cleek, when they were left together beside the dead man. “Changed, of course, in all the years, but still poor old Jim. Good-hearted, honest, but illiterate. Could barely more than write his name, and even that without a capital, poor chap. Let me look at the hand. A violet smudge on the top of the thumb as well as those marks on the palm, I see. Hum-m-m! Any letters or writing of any sort in the pockets when found? None, eh? That old bone-handled pocket knife there his? Yes, I’d like to look at it. Open it, please. Thanks. I thought so, I thought so. Those the socks he had on? Poor wretch! Down to that at last, eh?—down to that! Let me have one of them for a day or so, will you? and—yes—the photographs of the other four, please. Thanks very much. No, that’s all. Now then, to call on Miss Valmond, if you don’t mind. Right you are. Let her go, Lennard. Down with the blinds and open with the locker again, Mr. Narkom, and we’ll ‘dig’ Mr. George Headland out of his two-months’ old grave.” And at exactly ten minutes after eight o’clock, Mr. George Headland was ‘dug up’ and was standing with Mr. Narkom in Rose Valmond’s house listening to Rose Valmond’s story from her own lips, and saying to himself, the while, that here surely was that often talked-of, seldom-seen creature, a woman with an angel’s face.