The Riddle of the Frozen Flame, Mary E. Hanshew and Thomas W. Hanshew [reading fiction .txt] 📗

this human fiend should endeavour to shape even this thing to his own ends? The villagers had always been superstitious of these lights, but their notice had never been particularly called to them before the story of the Frozen Flames had been carefully spread from mouth to mouth by Brellier's tools.

"Then one man, braver than the rest, ventured forth—and never came back. The story gained credence, even with the more educated few. Another, unwilling to conform to public opinion, did likewise. And he, too, went into the great unknown. The list of Brellier's victims—supposed, of course, to be burnt up by the Frozen Flames—grew fairly lengthy in the four years that he has been using them as a screen for his underhanded work. A guard—and I've seen one of the men myself during a little midnight encounter that I had with him—went wandering over that part of the district armed with a revolver. The first sight of a stranger caused him to use his weapon. Meanwhile, behind the screen of the lights the bank robbers were bringing in their gold by motor and hiding the sacks down in a network of underground passageways that I also discovered—and traversed. They ran, by devious ways, both to a field in Saltfleet conveniently near the factory, and by another route up to the back kitchen of Merriton Towers.

"You'll admit that, when I discovered this to be the case, I felt pretty uneasy about Sir Nigel's innocence. But a still further search brought to light another passage, which ran straight into the study of Withersby Hall, occupied by the Brelliers, and was hidden under the square rug in front of the fireplace. A nice convenient little spot for our friend here to carry on his good work. Just a few words to say that he didn't want to be disturbed in his study, a locked door, a rug moved, and—there you are! He was free from all prying eyes to investigate the way things were going, and to personally supervise the hiding of the gold. While outside upon the Fens men were being killed like rats, because one or two of them chose to use their intelligence, and wanted to find out what the flames really were. They found out all right, poor devils, and their widows waited for them in vain.

"And what does he do with all this gold, you ask? Why, ship it, by using an electrical factory where he makes tubings and fittings—and a good deal of mischief, to boot. The sovereigns are hidden as you have seen, and are shipped out at night in fishing boats, loaded below the water mark—I've helped with the loading myself, so I know—en route for Belgium, where his equally creditable brother, Adolph, receives the tubes and invariably ships them back as being of the wrong gauge. Look here—" He stopped speaking for a moment and, stepping forward, lifted up another tubing from the table, and unfastened it at one of the joints. Then he held it up for all to see.

"See that stuff in there? That's tungsten. Perhaps you don't all know what tungsten is. Well, it's a valuable commodity that is mined from the earth, and which is used expressly in the making of electric lamps. Our good friend Adolph, like his brother, has the same twist of brain. Instead of keeping the tubes, he returns them with the rather thin excuse that they are of the wrong gauge, and fills them with this tungsten, from the famous tungsten mines for which Belgium holds first place in the world. And so the stuff is shipped in absolutely free of duty, while our friend here unloads it, supplies the raw material to one or two firms in town, trading under the name of Jonathan Brent (you see I've got the whole facts, Brellier), and uses some himself for this factory, which is the 'blind' for his other trading ideas. Very clever, isn't it?"

The judge nodded.

"I thought you would agree so, my Lord. Even crime can have its clever side, and more often than not the criminal brain is the cleverest which the world produces.

"Where was I? Ah, yes! The shipping of the stuff to Belgium. You see, Brellier's clever there. He knows that the sudden appearance of all this gold at his own bank would arouse suspicions, especially as the robberies have been so frequent, so he determines that it is safer out of the country, and as the exchange of British gold is high, he makes money that way. Turns his hand to everything, in fact." He laughed. "But now we're turning our hands to him, and the Law will have its toll, penny for penny, life for life. You've come to the end of your resources, Brellier, when you engaged those two strange workmen. Or, better still, your accomplice did it for you. You didn't know they were Cleek and his man, did you? You didn't know that on that second night after we'd worked there at the factory for you, we investigated that secret passage in the field outside Saltfleet Road? You didn't know that while you walked down that passage in the darkness with your man Jim Dobbs—or 'Dirty Jim,' to give him the sobriquet by which he is known among your employees—that we were hidden against the wall opposite to that first little niche where the bags of sovereigns stood, and that—though I hadn't seen you—something in your voice struck a note of familiarity in my memory? You didn't know that, then? Well, perhaps it's just as well, because I might not be here now to tell this story, and to hand you over to justice."

CHAPTER XXVII THE SOLVING OF THE RIDDLE

"For the sake of le bon dieu, man, cease your cruel mockery!" said Brellier, suddenly, in a husky voice, as the clerk rose to quell the interrupted flow of oratory, and the court banged his mace for quiet.

"You didn't think of the cruel mockery of God's good world, which you were helping so successfully to ruin!" continued the detective, speaking to the court but at Brellier, each word pointed as a barb, each pause more pregnant with scorn than the spoken words had been. "You didn't think of that, did you? Oh, no! You gave no thought to the ruined home and the weeping wife, the broken-hearted mother and the fatherless child. That was outside your reckoning altogether. And, if hearsay be true (and in this case I believe it is) you even went so far as to kill a defenceless woman who had been brave enough to wander out across that particular part of the Fens just to see what those flames really were. And yet,—your lordship, this man howls for mercy."

He paused a moment and passed a hand wearily over his forehead. The telling of the tale was not easy, and the expression of 'Toinette Brellier's tear-misted eyes added to the difficulty of it. But he knew he must spare no detail; in fairness to the man who stood in the dock, in fairness to the Law he served, and in whose service he had unravelled this riddle which at first had seemed so inexplicable.

Then the judge spoke.

"The court must congratulate you, Mr. Cleek," he said in his fine, metallic voice, "upon the very excellent and intricate work you have done on this case. Believe me, the Law appreciates it, and I, as one of its humble exponents, must add my admiration to the rest. Permit me, however, to ask one or two questions. In the first place, before we proceed further with the case, I should like you to give me any explanation that you can relative to the matter of what the prisoner here has told us with regard to the story of the Frozen Flame. This gentleman has said that the story goes that whenever a new victim had been claimed by the flames, that he completely vanishes, and that another flame appears in amongst its fellows. The prisoner has declared this to be true; in fact, has actually sworn upon oath, that he has seen this thing with his own eyes the night that Dacre Wynne was killed. I confess that upon hearing this, I had my strong suspicions of his veracity. Can you explain it any clearer?"

Cleek smiled a trifle whimsically, then he nodded.

"I can. Shortly after I made my discovery of the secret passage that led out upon the Fens—the entrance to it, by the way, was marked by a patch of charred grass about the size of a small round table (you remember, Dollops, I asked you if you noticed anything then?), that lifted up, if one had keen enough eyes to discover it, and revealed the trap-door beneath—Dollops and I set out on another tour of investigation. We were determined to take a sporting chance on being winged by the watchful guards and have a look round behind those flames for ourselves. We did this. It happened that we slipped the guard unobserved, having knowledge, you see, of at least part of the whole diabolical scheme, and getting within range of the flames without discovery, or, for that matter, seeing any one about, we got down on our hands and knees and dug into the earth with our penknives."

"What suggested this plan to you?"

Cleek smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

"Why, I had a theory, you see. And, like you, I wanted to find out if Merriton were telling the truth about that other light he had seen or not. This was the only way. Marsh-gas was there in plenty, though there is no heat from the tiny flames, as you know, from which fact, no doubt, our friend Brellier derived the very theatrical name for them, but the light of which Merriton spoke I took to be something bigger than that. And I had noticed, too, that here and there among the flames danced brilliant patches that seemed, well—more than natural. So our penknives did the trick. Dollops was digging, when something suddenly exploded, and shot up into our faces with a volume of gassy smoke. We sprang back, throwing our arms up to shield our eyes, and after the fumes had subsided returned to our task. The penknife had struck a bladder filled with gas, which, sunk into the ground, produced the larger lights, one of which Sir Nigel had seen upon the night that Wynne disappeared. Even more clever, isn't it? I wonder whose idea it originally was."

He spun round slowly upon his heel and faced the line of seated witnesses. His eyes once more travelled over the group, face to face, eye to eye, until he paused suddenly and pointed at Borkins's chalk-white countenance.

"That's the man who probably did the job," he said casually. "Brellier's right-hand man, that. With a brain that might have been used for other and better things."

The judge leaned forward upon his folded elbows, pointing his pen in Borkins's direction.

"Then you say this man is part and parcel of the scheme, Mr. Cleek?" he queried.

"I do. And a very big part, too. But, let me qualify that statement by saying that if it hadn't been for Borkins's desire for revenge upon the man he served, this whole ghastly affair would probably never have been revealed. Wynne would have vanished in the ordinary way, as Collins vanished afterward, and the superstitious horror would have gone on until there was not one person left in the village of Fetchworth who would have dared to venture an investigation of the flames. Then the work at the factory would have continued, with a possibly curtailed payroll. No need for high-handed pirates armed with revolvers then. That was the end the arch-fiend was working for. The end that never came."

"H'm. And may I ask how you discovered all this, before going into the case of Borkins?" put in the judge.

Cleek bowed.

"Certainly," he returned. "That is the legal right. But I can vouch for my evidence, my lord. I received it, you see, at first-hand. This man Borkins engaged both the lad Dollops and myself as new hands for the factory. We therefore had every opportunity of looking into the matter personally."

"Gawdamercy! I never did!" ejaculated Borkins, at this juncture, his face the colour of newly-baked bread. "You're a liar—that's what you are! A drorin' an innocent man into the beastly affair. I never engaged the likes of you!"

"Didn't you?" Cleek laughed soundlessly. "Look here. Remember the man Bill Jones, and his little pal Sammie Robinson, from Jamaica?" He writhed his features for a moment, slipped his hand into his pocket, and producing the black moustache that had been Dollops's envy and admiration, stuck it upon his upper lip, pulled out a check cap from the other pocket, drew that upon his head, and peered at Borkins under the peak of it. "What-o, matey!" he remarked in a harsh cockney voice.

"Merciful 'Eavens!" gasped out