Cleek: The Man of the Forty Faces | Page 8

door as you go out. This is 'Forty Faces'' Waterloo at last."

And in another moment the light snicked out, the door closed, and he
was alone in the silent room.
For ten or a dozen minutes not even the bare suggestion of a noise
disturbed the absolute stillness; then of a sudden, his trained ear caught
a faint sound that made him suck in his breath and rise on his elbow,
the better to listen--a sound which came, not without the house, but
from within, from the dark hall where he had stationed his men, to be
exact. As he listened he was conscious that some living creature had
approached the door, touched the handle, and by the swift, low rustle
and the sound of hard breathing, that it had been pounced upon and
seized. He scrambled out from beneath the table, snicked on the light,
whirled open the door, and was in time to hear the irritable voice of Sir
Horace say, testily: "Don't make an ass of yourself by your
over-zealousness. I've only come down to have a word with Mr.
Narkom," and to see him standing on the threshold, grotesque in a
baggy suit of striped pyjamas, with one wrist enclosed as in a steel
band by the gripped fingers of Petrie.
"Why didn't you say it was you, sir?" exclaimed that crestfallen
individual, as the flashing light made manifest his mistake. "When I
heard you first, and see you come up out of that back passage, I made
sure it was him; and if you'd a struggled, I'd have bashed your head as
sure as eggs."
"Thank you for nothing," he responded testily. "You might have
remembered, however, that the man's first got to get into the place
before he can come downstairs. Mr. Narkom," turning to the
superintendent, "I was just getting into bed when I thought of
something I'd neglected to tell you; and as my niece is sitting in her
room with the door open, and I wasn't anxious to parade myself before
her in my night clothes, I came down by the back staircase. I don't
know how in the world I came to overlook it, but I think you ought to
know that there's a way of getting into the picture gallery without using
either the windows or the stairs, and that way ought to be both searched
and guarded."
"Where is it? What is it? Why in the world didn't you tell me in the first

place?" exclaimed Narkom irritably, as he glanced round the place
searchingly. "Is it a panel? a secret door? or what? This is an old house,
and old houses are sometimes a very nest of such things."
"Happily, this one isn't. It's a modern innovation, not an ancient relic,
that offers the means of entrance in this case. A Yankee occupied this
house before I bought it from him--one of those blessed shivery
individuals his country breeds, who can't stand a breath of cold air
indoors after the passing of the autumn. The wretched man put one of
those wretched American inflictions, a hot-air furnace, in the cellar,
with huge pipes running to every room in the house--great tin
monstrosities bigger round than a man's body, ending in openings in the
wall, with what they call 'registers,' to let the heat in, or shut it out as
they please. I didn't have the wretched contrivance removed or those
blessed 'registers' plastered up. I simply had them papered over when
the rooms were done up (there's one over there near that settee), and if
a man got into this house, he could get into that furnace thing and hide
in one of those flues until he got ready to crawl up it as easily as not. It
struck me that perhaps it would be as well for you to examine that
furnace and those flues before matters go any further."
"Of course it would. Great Scott! Sir Horace, why didn't you think to
tell me of this thing before?" said Narkom, excitedly. "The fellow may
be in it at this minute. Come, show me the wretched thing."
"It's below--in the cellar. We shall have to go down the kitchen stairs,
and I haven't a light."
"Here's one," said Petrie, unhitching a bull's-eye from his belt and
putting it into Narkom's hand. "Better go with Sir Horace at once, sir.
Leave the door of the gallery open and the light on. Fish and me will
stand guard over the stuff till you come back, so in case the man is in
one of them flues and tries to bolt out at this end, we can nab him
before he can get to the windows."
"A good idea," commented Narkom. "Come on, Sir Horace. Is this the
way?"

"Yes, but