The Riddle of the Spinning Wheel

"Miss Duggan," he said, rather pompously, she thought – "Mr. Deland has promised his interest in the case. I have given him but the barest outlines. It is for you to fill in the story in the manner that you have filled it in for me. Sit down, Mr. Deland. Now, Miss Duggan, please begin all over again."

She looked into this strange man's eyes with her own anguished ones, and bit her lip a moment to keep back the tears that had been impending since the beginning of her story. Her lips trembled. But the eyes were kind – and understanding. Something in the face spoke to her as lips can never do. She leaned forward in her seat, shutting her hands together one upon another in her distress.

"Mr. Deland," she said brokenly, "help me, please —please! I am in despair; every moment that passes! I am terribly afraid for Father's life, even as I have told Mr. Narkom here. But there are some things which a woman cannot tell. Those things which she feels in her heart – and has no concrete facts with which to explain them. Father will die if you do not come to my rescue immediately. He will die, and by no natural means. I tell you, my father is being poisoned slowly, and because of his very taciturnity none of us can save him! Even now, as I sit here, something tells me that things are not right with him, or with Ross, my brother! All my life long I have had these premonitions. There must be gipsy blood in me, I think. But there it is. Oh, help me to save him, to save my brother Ross's inheritance. And my blessing will go with you to the end of your days!"

CHAPTER II

CLEEK TO THE RESCUE

She stopped speaking suddenly and choked back a sob, covering her face with her gloved hands, and for a moment Deland sat looking at her, eyes narrowed, and the curious little one-sided smile so characteristic of the man travelling up his face. Here was very evident distress indeed. And real, too, if he knew anything of women. And yet – where was the evidence, the intention to murder, as she had suggested? There was absolutely nothing to go upon but a woman's intuition – and that, strangely enough, very rarely went wrong. He'd bank a good deal upon a woman's intuition every time, and feel he'd get good credit.

"Listen, Miss Duggan," he said, leaning forward in his seat and surveying her with keen, critical eyes. "You are very grieved, I know, but, as Mr. Narkom has just told me, you have nothing to go upon but —actually– your own intuition. My friend here does not always bank on that. I do. A woman's intuition is often a great deal safer than a whole chain of circumstantial evidence. That is where Mr. Narkom and I differ – eh, old friend? At any rate, as there is another case besides yours up in Argyllshire awaiting my investigation, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll come up to Scotland to-morrow – to-night, in fact, by the midnight train – and look into both cases at once. And if I can find anything requiring my assistance I'll gladly give it. How will that do?"

Mr. Narkom stifled an exclamation of surprise. Here was an interest which he had never dreamed of awakening. Cleek (for such was the admirable gentleman in his admirably cut clothes) rarely, if ever, showed such immediate interest unless there was more in the thing than met the eye in the first place. And although this Miss Duggan was obviously in earnest, he himself would be inclined to put the thing down to a woman's natural jealousy for her rightful possessions, and a natural love for the man who was beloved to her by all the ties of flesh and blood and for whom she would fight, if necessary, to the bitter end. He had seen this sort of thing before – and paid very little attention to it. The poison story was weak – undeniably weak – though no doubt Miss Duggan firmly believed in it. A thousand things might have been contained in the phial other than the poison to which her jealous mind had instantly leapt. Powdered aspirin, perhaps, or whatnot. And for Cleek to take such an immediate interest —Cleek!

He sucked in his breath noiselessly.

"Gad!" thought he, "there is more in this than meets the eye; of that I'm sure, or he'd never take such an interest in it. Of course, there's those illicit stills in the same county, but … well, anyhow, I was right in sending for him, by James! It was worth taking a chance over."

Then he turned his eyes to where Miss Duggan had leaned forward suddenly, her wet eyes alight with gratitude and face instantly transfigured.

"Oh, will you? – will you? How good of you, how very, very good!" she ejaculated with a little half-sigh of utter relief. "That is all I ask, Mr. Deland. Someone will come and see– see for themselves how things stand at Aygon Castle. I tell you my intuition is very rarely wrong, and if harm does not come to my poor father before this week is out, then I have made the first mistake in all my life. But I'm not mistaken. Of that I am positively, absolutely sure!"

"Well, let's hope you are, my dear young lady," said Mr. Narkom, in his practical fashion, getting to his feet at a sign from Cleek, to show that the interview was over at last. "You are lucky to have the help of Mr. Deland, I must say. Personally I never thought for an instant that your case would interest him, but as it has, you'll no doubt meet on the midnight express – eh, Deland? – and travel up together? And now, as I have a lot of business on hand, I'll wish you a very good morning and good luck."

"Thank you." She got to her feet and put her gloved hand into his. "You have been very, very kind. And I hope, too, that you are right concerning my intuition. But I am afraid not. Thank you so much for – everything. And you, too, Mr. Deland. Shall I expect you to-night, then, by the midnight express, or would you prefer to travel alone?"

Cleek bowed.

"Certainly not. I shall be glad of your company, if you will permit me to travel with you, Miss Duggan," he responded gallantly – feeling, however that he would have preferred to travel alone, if politeness permitted him to say so. "There will be a good deal of reading that I shall have to do, but if you'll pardon that… To-night, then, by the midnight express. I shall look for you outside the Third booking-office, at 11:40. And I shall already have secured two corner seats. Back to the engine, or not?"

"Back, please," she made answer, giving his hand a grateful squeeze on parting. "How kind you are! I feel hopeful already! Somehow, you inspire me with confidence, Mr. Deland. In your hands I know things will not go amiss. If we can only get there in time – "

She shrugged her shoulders, and let the rest of the sentence go by default, and then, bowing slightly to each in turn, took her departure, a graceful, elegant figure, bearing in every line and look the mark of the noble ancestors of one of Scotland's noblest families.

As the door closed behind her, Cleek wheeled round, and striding over to Mr. Narkom set a hand upon each of his podgy shoulders, and stood a moment looking down into his face. Then he gave a short, sharp laugh, and let his hands drop.

"A dollar to a ducat but there's more in that than meets the eye," he said, with a lift of the shoulders and a twitch of the lip. "There's a woman who has sincerity written upon her soul, but hasn't a jot or tittle of actual evidence to offer us. Your method would be to send her home again, until she brought you the poison bottle or the cork of it, or the bread-and-milk into which the stuff had been poured – eh, old chap?.. And mine – what?" He spread out his hands, and shrugged his shoulders, and swung upon his heel with a laugh for the rueful expression upon Mr. Narkom's face.

"Oh, I say, old fellow – " began the Superintendent excitedly; but Cleek's uplifted hand silenced him.

"Familiarity breeds – the best of comradeship! – my friend. And a little dig in the ribs now and then should never be read amiss. I owe all I have to you, Mr. Narkom. You know the deeps of my gratitude. And if I am not permitted sometimes to tease… Oh, you silly old booby! You'll never be a policeman to the end of your days. There are too many sensitive nerves running round underneath that plump and portly exterior of yours. And your heart's too soft! But don't let us stray from our business in this ridiculous fashion, for time slips by and the hour isn't half long enough for what must be done in it. Tell me briefly what she told you, and in as near her own words as you can remember, and then I'll be off and away to make arrangements for to-night's journey. If there's nothing in this thing, I'll send you a wire: 'Empty.'

"You'll understand. If there is, then the word 'Full' will answer quite satisfactorily, without giving away our plans to any interested persons. As for the whisky-still business, what more perfect harbour for it than those craggy, heather-covered hills of Scotland? I'll have news for you, my friend, never fear; and immediately I hit upon anything, Dollops shall send it travelling over the wire in our own special code to you."

"What a man you are, Cleek! What a fund of restlessness, untiring interest and intelligence!" said Mr. Narkom, as he laid a fond hand upon Cleek's sleeve and looked up into his smiling face. "Gad! The Yard would go to pieces without you nowadays. You saved us from collapse in the old days of that Maurevanian business, when the whole country seemed to have run amuck – and blamed the police for it! And you're saving us every time now. What we'd do without your brains and your pluck and your wonderful birthright, which disguises you so successfully that even I, your best friend, don't know you, when you choose – well, I can't say. But my blessing with you, Cleek, and the best of luck! You'll find what you're looking for, I haven't a doubt."

"Yes, I'll find what I'm looking for, Mr. Narkom; I'm certain of that," said Cleek quietly, the queer little one-sided smile travelling up his cheek once more. "I don't wish to sound egotistical, but there are few things can beat your humble when his mind's made up. Else how would I have travelled back from the underworld into such a position of trust and uniqueness as this? Only that a woman's eyes lit the way for me, and a man's great heart opened the door – and the crook determined to become the gentleman, and pitched into it forthwith all he was worth. Cussed – that's me!"

"And clean! And with those two attributes Hercules was enabled to clean out the Augean Stables and prove himself ready for anything that came," supplemented Mr. Narkom, with a noisy sigh. "Cussed and clean! That's your motto. I'll back it every time… Now, then, to business. We've thrown enough bouquets at each other to last for a lifetime! There's a dickens of a cipher case which is tying me into knots at present, so I need all my faculties to untie myself again! Here are the facts, Cleek. Nothing much, but you will make more than I can of them; so here goes."

And so it came about that when Cleek left the offices in Scotland Yard that afternoon, and strolled leisurely down toward his diggings in Clarges Street, he was in possession of the full story, just as Maud Duggan had told it to Mr. Narkom, and had gleaned therewith one or two incidental conclusions upon his own account.

The journey to Scotland was likely to prove a fruitful one. And he was to see the gaunt crags of that most majestic and rugged country under more interesting conditions than he had at first bargained for.

But how interesting and how tragically enthralling, even Cleek himself was not able to foresee.

CHAPTER III

THE CASTLE O' DREAMS

To say that Cragnorth – that little unknown village of the Highlands which lies like an eagle's aerie upon the crest of the hills, scattering its few dwelling-places like seed over the hillside and down into the valley below – stood half-an-hour's distance from the station was to underestimate the fact. For it took Cleek and Dollops and Miss Duggan two mortal hours of driving in the station hack before they came in sight of it.

And it was just as they reached a bend in the hill-road and came out upon a deep ravine, moss-covered and still wreathed with the mists of the morning, that Cleek saw Aygon Castle for the first time, and felt the whole true meaning of what it meant to these lairds of the Highlands to live here, generation after generation, giving to their children the right of ownership in the ancestral homes; it was just then that Miss Duggan turned in her seat and pointed with one arm out-thrown toward it.

"That's the Castle. Isn't it too magnificently beautiful for words, Mr. Deland?" she said, with a suggestion of a catch in her voice at sight of it. "With those mists wreathing it about, and all its dear, gaunt, worn turrets piercing the top of the world like that! Now you can imagine how I feel toward the – the woman who would wrest all this from Ross, take what is his rightful inheritance from him and give it to a boy who is only half a Scotsman, and with the blood of another country running in his veins! Now you can understand why I came all the way to London to see Mr. Narkom. Look on it, Mr. Deland, and drink in its beauty. The sight of it is like heaven itself to me."

Cleek did look on it to his heart's fill, and drank so deep of its majestic beauty as to be well-nigh intoxicated with it. The artist's soul of the man was afire with the chill grandeur of the place. From turreted towers rising through the gray mists, like the towers and the turrets of the Holy City itself, Aygon Castle was like some enchanter's palace, like some figment of the mind's weaving in those hours of day-dreams which lie between the dark and the day.

To the left of it a huge watch-tower reared its monstrous head to the blue-flecked Highland sky, set atop of which stood the figure of a man, gigantic and wrought in bronze, with the plaid of the Duggans sweeping across his shoulder and eddying out into a marvellous real billow behind him, one huge forearm raised in the hand of which was a battle-axe, standing out black and menacing against the early morning sky.

Cleek swept a hand out to it, while Dollops, silent up to the present, gave forth the feeling of his Cockney soul in one long-drawn "S'welp me!" of utter enthusiasm.

"Who is the gentleman of the axe, Miss Duggan?" said Cleek, turning toward her, his face alight with interest. "What a magnificent thing it is! And how he stands out against this Highland sky of yours – menacing, victorious, utterly sublime! Some ancestor, no doubt?"

"The ancestor. The greatest of all that great line of Duggans, or Macduggans, as it was then," she responded in a hushed, exultant voice. "Chief of the greatest and most powerful clan of all Scotland, in those days when Scotland was a country apart, and the Scottish chiefs were little kings in their own dominion, ruling in absolute monarchy over their subjects. Rhea du Macduggan. That was his name, Mr. Deland. A great and powerful and just man. And when this Castle was built over the spot where his camp had been in those by-gone glorious days, the Macduggan who had it built caused that statue to be erected, and had it wrought in finest bronze, to endure throughout the centuries. You can see for yourself how well Rhea has withstood the bludgeoning of time. And, too, you may understand a little, at sight of him, what this place means to my brother and me, and how loath we are even to entertain the thought of letting it get out of the family."

"And is the estate not entailed?"

"Unfortunately not this portion of it. That part which follows the entail comprises a couple of the adjacent villages and a lot of farmsteads out there across the valley. But the Castle – no. In olden days each son of the family fought for it against the surviving holder of it, fought a personal battle of strength to prove himself worthy of it, and then, upon victory – or proved worthiness – the will was made. The line has never been broken, Mr. Deland. And to-day my brother and I are as willing to fight for it as were our ancestors of old."

"And I don't blame you, either," said Cleek with alacrity, sighing a little, as though some thought of all this magnificence awakened an echo in his heart that would not immediately be stilled. "I know a little of that feeling, too. When a man loves his ancestral home, and his country, he will fight for it and die for it rather than that an alien hand shall take possession of either. That is the gift of Race, the inherent something that Family breeds in us. The clanship which belongs to an old and unbroken line. I know – I know… Heigho! But it is an inheritance indeed. I am more in sympathy with you than ever before, Miss Duggan, for I, too, would fight for this against the hand of an enemy, and die fighting rather than that it should slip out of my reach… And you mean to tell me that your brother Ross has installed electric lighting here?"

She smiled a little, and nodded her head as one might smile at thought of some child's deliciously childish and foolish action. One could see that she worshipped her brother.

"Yes, Mr. Deland. A complete installation, which is both the envy and the desire of every other landowner for miles around."

"And why the envy, may I ask?"

"Because the fortunes of many are lower than ours. The Duggans were always the wealthiest clan in this part of the country. The other clans were poor. They are still poor. And we, too, are poorer than we were. The land takes nearly all our income to wrest something from its wildness besides the heather and the stretches of gorse-covered moor. We herd the flocks on those parts, Mr. Deland, but cultivation of the rest is very difficult. It is too wild, too barren. And the other big houses are indeed envious of our wonderful lighting arrangements. It has been the root of much friendly quarrelling among us. But the villagers are terrified!"

"I can well understand that – in this uncivilized quarter," put in Cleek with a smile. "Many, I have no doubt, still use the old rushlight of former days… Ah, here is the village. My man and I had better put up at the local hotel, Miss Duggan, as a couple of fishermen – I'll be bound your salmon is wonderful in these parts, and I for one love the sport – and then we can effect an introduction by the aid of our mutual friend, Miss Lorne, and perhaps to-morrow I might be permitted to call upon you. How does that satisfy your mind?"

She put out a hand to him with an impetuosity that was foreign to her.

"It satisfies me splendidly. You are more than kind to take such an interest. Put up at the Three Fishers, by all means, Mr. Deland. The landlord is a kindly soul, and will give you every attention, I know. And then, if you will be good enough, call to-morrow morning – unless I have to send for you before then. And if so, how shall I do that?"

The hack drew up in front of the Inn of the Three Fishers and Cleek and Dollops dismounted, the latter entering the inn with their baggage, while Cleek stood at the side of the carriage, leaning over the edge of it to speak to its sole occupant. Beyond him, directly opposite to them, the village street broke off into a slope that led down into the valley, rock-bound and lichened over with heather-bells and the outstretched arms of prickly gorse-bushes. While on an adjacent hill directly in front and rising out of the valley itself up a steep mountainside stood Aygon Castle, its many windows commanding a distant view of the village, and practically upon a level with it, so that some of those same windows faced upon those of the inn, with the street and then the valley and the hillside on which it stood between.