The Riddle of the Frozen Flame Part 11

Truth to tell, he was obsessed with a feeling that something was going to happen, and happen soon. The premonition, to one who was not used to such things, carried all the more conviction. With Cleek on the track-anything might happen. Cleek was a man for whom things never stood still, and his amazing brain was concentrated upon this problem as it had been concentrated-successfully-upon others. Merriton had a feeling that it was only a matter of time.

Then, just as he was standing there, humming something softly beneath his breath, the cavalcade, headed by Cleek and Mr. Narkom, rather grim and silent, reached the gateway. Behind them-Merriton gave a sudden cry which brought the doctor to his side-behind them three men were carrying something-something bulky and large and wrapped in a black oilskin tarpaulin. And one of the men was Headland's servant, Dollops! He recognized that, even as his inner consciousness told him that his "something" was about to happen now.

"Gad! they've found the body," he exclaimed, in a hoa.r.s.e, excited voice, fairly running to the front door and throwing it open with a crash that rang through the old house from floor to rafters, and brought Borkins scuttling up the kitchen stairs at a pace that was ill-befitting his age and dignity. Merriton gave him a curt order.

"Have the morning-room door thrown open and the sofa pulled out from against the wall. My friends have been for a walk across the Fens, and have found something. You can see them coming up the drive. What d'you make of it?"

"Gawd! a haccident, Sir Nigel," said Borkins, in a shaky voice. "'Adn't I better tell Mrs. Mummery to put the blue bedroom in order and 'ave plenty of 'ot water?..."

"No." Merriton was running down the front steps and flung the answer back over his shoulder. "Can't you use your eyes? It's a body, you fool-a body!"

Borkins gasped a moment, and then stood still, his thin lips sucked in, his face unpleasant to see. He was alone in the hallway, for Doctor Bartholomew's fat figure was waddling in Merriton's wake.

He put up his fist and shook it in their direction.

"Pity it ain't your body, young upstart that you are!" he muttered beneath his breath, and turned toward the morning room.

Meanwhile Merriton had reached the solemn little party and was walking back beside Cleek, his face chalky, the pupils of his eyes a trifle dilated with excitement.

"Found 'em? Found 'em both, you say, Mr. Headland?" he kept on repeating over and over again, as they mounted the steps together. "Good G.o.d! What a strange-what a peculiar thing! I'll swear there was no sight nor sign of them when I've tramped over the Fens dozens of times. I don't know what to make of it, I don't indeed!"

"Oh, we'll make something of it all right," returned Cleek, with a sharp look at him, for there was one thing he wanted to find out, and he meant to do that as soon as possible. "Two and two, you know, put together properly, always make four. It's only the fools of the world that add wrong. If you'd had as much practice as I've had in dealing with humanity, you'd find it was an ever-increasing astonishment to see the way things dovetail in.... Who's this, by the way?"

He jerked his head in the direction of the doctor, who had stopped at the foot of the steps and waited for them to come up to him.

"Oh, a very old friend of mine, Mr. Headland. Doctor Bartholomew. Has a very big practice in town, but a trifle eccentric, as you can see at first glance."

Cleek sent his keen eyes over the odd-looking figure in the worn tweeds.

"I see. Then can you tell me how he finds time to run down here at leisure and visit you? Seems to me a man with a big practice never has enough time to work it in. At least, that has been my experience of doctors."

Merriton flushed angrily at the tone. He whipped his head round and met Cleek's cool gaze hotly.

"I know you're down here to investigate the case, but I don't think there's any reason for you to start suspecting my friends," he retorted, his eyes flas.h.i.+ng. "Doctor Bartholomew has a partner, if you want to know. And also he's supposed to be retired. But he carries on for the love of the thing. Best man ever breathed-remember that!"

Cleek smiled to himself at the sudden onslaught. The young pepper-pot! Yet he liked him for the loyal defence of his friend, nevertheless. There were all too few creatures in the world who found it impossible to suspect those whom they cared for, and who cared for them.

"Sorry to have given any offence, I'm sure," he said, smoothly. "None was meant, right enough, Sir Nigel. But a policeman has an unpleasant duty, you know. He's got to keep his eyes and his ears open. So if you find mine open too far, any time, just tip me the wink and I'll shut 'em up again."

"Oh, that's all right," said Merriton, mollified, and a trifle shamefaced at the outburst. Then, with an effort to turn the conversation: "But think of findin' 'em both, Mr.-er-Headland! Were they-very awful?"

"Pretty awful," returned Cleek, quietly; "eh, Mr. Lake?"

"G.o.d bless my soul-yes!" threw in that gentleman, with a shudder. "Now then, boys, if you don't mind-" He took the att.i.tude of a casual acquaintance with his two a.s.sistants who helped to bear the burden. "Come along inside. This way-that's it. Where did you say, Merriton? Into the morning room? All right. Ah, Borkins has been getting things ready, I see. That couch is a broad one. Good thing, as there are two of 'em."

"Two of 'em, sir?" exclaimed Borkins, suddenly throwing up his hands, his eyes wide with horror. Mr. Narkom nodded with something of professional triumph in his look.

"Two of 'em, Borkins. And the second one, if I don't make any mistake, answers to the description of James Collins-eh, Headland?"

Cleek gave him a sudden look that spoke volumes. It came over him in a flash that Narkom had said too much; that it wasn't the casual visitor's place to know what a servant who was not there at the time of his visit looked like.

"At least-that's as far as I can make out from what Sir Nigel told me of him the other day," he supplemented, in an effort to make amends. "Now then, boys, put 'em there on the couch. Poor things! I warn you, Sir Nigel, this isn't going to be a pleasant sight, but you've got to go through with it, I'm afraid. The police'll want identification made, of course. Hadn't you better 'phone the local branch? Someone ought to be here in charge, you know."

Merriton nodded. He was so stunned at the actuality of these two men's deaths, at the knowledge that their bodies-lifeless, extinct-were here in his morning room, that he had stood like an image, making no move, no sound.

"Yes-yes," he said, rapidly, waving a hand in Borkins's direction. "See that it's done at once, please. Tell Constable Roberts to come along with a couple of his men. Very decent of these chaps to give you a hand, Mr. Lake. That's your man, Dollops, isn't it, Headland? Well, hadn't he better take 'em downstairs and give 'em a stiff whisky-and-soda? I expect the poor beggars have need of it."

Cleek held up a silencing hand.

"No," he said, firmly. "Not just yet, I think. They may be needed for evidence when the constable comes. Now...." He crossed over to where the bodies lay, and gently removed the covering. Merriton went suddenly white, while the doctor, more used to such sights, bit his lips and laid a steadying hand upon the younger man's arm.

"My G.o.d!" cried Sir Nigel, despairingly. "How did they meet their death?"

Cleek reached down a finger and gently touched a blackened spot upon Wynne's temple.

"Shot through the head, and the bullet penetrated the brain," he said, quietly. "Small-calibre revolver, too. There's your Frozen Flame for you, my friend!"

But he was hardly prepared for the event that followed. For at this statement, Merriton threw a hand out suddenly, as though warding off a blow, took a step forward and peered at that which had once been his friend-and enemy-and then gave out a strangled cry.

"Shot through the head!" he fairly shrieked, as Borkins came quietly into the room, and stopped short at the sound of his master's voice. "I tell you it's impossible-impossible! It wasn't my shot, Mr. Headland-it couldn't have been!"

CHAPTER XV

A STARTLING DISCLOSURE

Cleek took a sudden step forward.

"What's that? What's that?" he rapped out, sharply. "Your shot, Sir Nigel? This is something I haven't heard of before, and it's likely to cause trouble. Explain, please!"

But Merriton was past explaining anything just then. For he had bowed his head in his hands and was sobbing in great, heart-wrung sobs with Doctor Bartholomew's arms about him, sobs that told of the nerve-strain which gave them birth, that told of the tenseness under which he had lived these last weeks. And now the thread had snapped, and all the broken, jangling nerves of the man had been loosed and torn his control to atoms.

The doctor shook him gently, but with firm fingers.

"Don't be a fool, boy-don't be a fool!" he said over and over again, as he waved the other away, and, taking out a little phial from his waistcoat pocket, dropped a dose from it into a wine-gla.s.s and forced it between the man's lips. "Don't make an a.s.s of yourself, Nigel. The shot you fired was nothing-the mere whim of a man, whose brain had been fired by champagne and who wasn't therefore altogether responsible for his actions."

He whipped round suddenly upon Cleek, his faded eyes, with their fringe of almost white lashes, flas.h.i.+ng like points of light from the seamed and wrinkled frame of his face.

"If you want to hear that foolish part of the story, I can give it to you," he said, sharply. "Because I happened to be there."

"You!"

"Yes-I, Mr.-er-Headland, isn't it? Ah, thanks. But the boy's unstrung, nerve-racked. He's been through too much. The whole beastly thing has made a mess of him, and he was a fool to meddle with it. Nigel Merriton fired a shot that night when Dacre Wynne disappeared, Mr. Headland; fired it after he had gone up to his room, a little over-excited with too much champagne, a little over-wrought by the scene through which he had just pa.s.sed with the man who had always exercised such a sinister influence over his life."

"So Sir Nigel was no good friend of this man Wynne's, then?" remarked Cleek, quietly, as if he did not already know the fact.

The doctor looked up as though he were ready to spring upon him and tear him limb from limb.

"No!" he said, furiously, "and neither would you have been, if you'd known him. Great hulking bully that he was! I tell you, I've seen the man use his influence upon this boy here, until-fine, upstanding chap that he is (and I've known him and his people ever since he was a baby) he succeeded in making him as weak as a hysterical girl-and gloated over it, too!"