CHAPTER THIRTY
NEARING THE TRUTH!
It was one o'clock when Mr. Maverick Narkom, pacing uneasily up and down the narrow strip of turf just outside the boundary wall of Wuthering Grange, saw the door at the wall angle flash open and shut again, and without so much as a murmur of sound looked up to find Cleek standing within a few paces of him.
"My dear fellow! Gad, I never was so glad to see anybody in all my days," exclaimed the superintendent, swooping down on him in a little whirlwind of excitement. "Cinnamon! You'll never guess what's happened, Cleek, never! After all my instructions, those blundering idiots of local police were too late to catch Margot and her crew at Wimbledon, the house where young Raynor visited, as you wrote me. I went down myself directly Dollops brought me your note, but it was too late, the police had frightened her in some way——"
"It does not matter," said Cleek calmly. "I have come to the end of the riddle."
"The end?" gasped Mr. Narkom. "The end! Man alive, tell me who——"
"Patience, my friend; perhaps I ought not to have said that yet, some few things remain to be discovered, but the first thing to do is to carry out the murderer's message before it is too late, or the letters get into the wrong hands."
"Whose letters?" exclaimed Mr. Narkom, naturally bewildered.
"The woman who lured Count de Louvisan, though that is not his name, to his death, Lady Clavering——"
"Lady Clav—— Heavens, man, what possible motive could she have?"