DETECTIVE CLEEK'S GOVERNMENT CASES (Vintage Mystery Series). Thomas W. Hanshew
deceived. How serious the consequences might have been I need scarcely say. But if Count Irma returns "
"He will be refused admittance," said Sir Lionel sternly. "I am not to be made a catspaw, as he will see. You and your friend are as safe here as in the King's palace itself. It is late. I beg you to stay, if only for the night."
Narkom looked at his ally dubiously, but Cleek was gazing in turn at Ailsa, and it seemed to him as if her eyes signalled "Yes." And accordingly, some five minutes later, the dazed but delighted Lennard was being led off for a welcome meal and rest, while a party of five were soon seated round the dining table, Cleek laughing as happily as if Maurevania and all its troubles were at the bottom of the sea, now that he knew Ailsa was safe, and that the whole thing was but a malicious plot to entrap him.
An onlooker would have deemed it the most commonplace of country dinners, for it was not until dessert was reached that anything untoward occurred.
Just as the door opened to admit the butler with this course, the house rang from end to end with the sound of laughter, harsh, malicious, utterly mad. Lady Calmount looked at her husband with blanched cheeks. Then she sprang to her feet; she was shaking as if with the ague.
"Lionel, Lionel, that dreadful laughter again!" she cried hysterically, forgetting all else but her terror, her unutterable fear. "Oh, my boy, my boy! God help us all! What is to be done?"
Sir Lionel laid a steadying hand upon her arm. His own face was pale, but he remembered the presence of strangers, and sought to calm her.
"Hush, hush, my dear!" he said persuasively, pressing her back. "It is some servant, some trick. You must not pay any attention to it. What's that, Miss Lorne? Smelling salts? Oh, thank you very much. That will be best. There, there!" He smoothed Lady Calmount's pale cheeks with a tender hand, his own face as white as hers.
Ailsa looked up at Cleek. Then she nodded her head.
"Tell him, dear Lady Calmount, tell the lieutenant. He can help you, if any one can," she said softly in her low, sweet voice. "What is the meaning of that awful laughter? I heard it last night, and I really thought you had a mad person under your roof. So if there is anything to tell. . . ."
"Oh, there is, there is!" broke in Lady Calmount despairingly. "You tell them, Lionel; I can't. I can only think of my boy's danger; he is coming to his death, I know he is, and it is too late to stop him! Oh, it is cruel, cruel! What shall I do? What shall I do?"
There was a pregnant silence; then, with a look of mute pity at his wife, Sir Lionel cleared his throat.
"This must be all inexplicable to you, Lieutenant Deland," he began haltingly, wiping his face with a silk handkerchief, "but I will try to explain. We are in very great trouble. Within the year both my younger sons have been killed, I might say murdered, in some mysterious, diabolical manner by some agent that works by supernatural powers; there is no other possible explanation. They have been done to death, though showing no sign of wound or poison, just as that laughing gypsy swore that the sons of our house should die, when she cursed them root and branch."
"Hallo! Hallo! what's that?" said Cleek, sitting up sharply, and dropping his table napkin. "A gypsy's curse and the sons of the family dying mysteriously ! That's melodramatic, surely!"
"God help us! It is indeed," said Sir Lionel. "There is only my eldest son left now. He has been abroad, or else Heaven knows but what he, too, might now be lying with his ill-fated brothers. It is all so inexplicable, and yet so appallingly true! You can understand how I dread to see Edward enter the castle gates."
Cleek pulled down his brows and pinched up his chin.
"Hum-m-m! I can quite believe it," said he. "But what has the curse to do with that sound we have just heard? For I presume that you have no insane inmate. "
"No, no! That is the forerunner of death — her gypsy ladyship's laughter. I will try to explain. As you, perhaps, know, we are a very old family, one of the first to bear arms with King Richard the Lion-hearted in the Holy War, and we have been settled here in this castle more generations than I can count upon my fingers. Our menfolk have always married women of their own class."
"Noblesse oblige" murmured Cleek, with a whimsical smile, as he met Mr. Narkom's eye.
"Exactly," murmured Sir Lionel approvingly. "All except one. Sir Humphry Calmount, in seventeen-sixty-something, made a second marriage, and mated with a beautiful gypsy girl. It was believed that she was of Spanish descent, but, as a matter of fact, she was one of a travelling band of gypsies who settled on the waste lands just outside the castle gates. Well, to cut a long story short, Humphry Calmount fell in love with her and married her. For a time all went well. Her portrait was painted by "
"Sir Peter Lely," interposed Cleek. "Of course, of course! I remember now. 'The Laughing Girl' was the title he gave it. I saw a print of it only a short time ago."
"Yes," said Sir Lionel, with a shudder. "Her laughter rang incessantly through the old walls, and he got to hate it, just as we do to this day. Well, one day, in a fit of rage, he struck her, and I believe a fearful scene followed. It ended in the lady pulling out a dagger and stabbing herself. Just before she died she cursed the house up and down and ended by declaring that whenever her laughter rang through the castle some disaster should befall one of its sons."
"Hum-m-m!" said Cleek, "am I right in presuming that at different times a wild death, that is to say, a sudden death, has occurred, Sir Lionel?"
"At least once in every generation."
"But a coincidence, surely," threw in Ailsa, her eyes on Cleek's face. "I cannot believe that a dying woman's utterance could have any effect, after all these hundreds of years. Can you, Lieutenant?"
"That's what Wentworth says," moaned Lady Calmount, wiping her eyes with a wisp of real lace, gossamer as a fairy's cobweb. "He is my nephew, you know, Lieutenant Deland, and our heir, after Edward, to the family estates. He has had trouble, poor fellow, and is staying with us for the present, until his plans are more settled."
Cleek's mouth grew grim. Yes, he had heard of the "poor fellow's" trouble. It had something to do with card playing, with a prompt resignation from the army following shortly after.
"Tell me," said he quietly, addressing Sir Lionel, who was watching him with great intentness,"was he here when your two sons died? I do not wish to probe into family affairs, but only, if you will permit me, to help you to unravel this strange affair. And a few facts are necessary. Was Captain Calmount here with you at that time?"
Sir Lionel bowed his head.
"He was. But why do you ask? He was our great prop and comfort."
"You called in the police, of course?" said Cleek, apparently ignoring the last sentence.
"Well, no," admitted Sir Lionel, turning scarlet. "The fact is, as Wentworth said, neither of the lads was over-strong, and Dr. Marsh had advised them to be kept quiet; for that reason they were allowed the run of the house, and spent a great deal of their time in the picture gallery." Cleek lifted his chin. His face wore a curious look.
"Tell me," said he, "did they er — meet their death in the picture gallery — at the same time?"
"Within six months of each other. Harold fretted terribly, and he must have had a fatal attack of heart failure, for his heart was naturally weak; he probably just managed to crawl to the picture when death overtook him. Dr. Marsh was very good to us, and Wentworth did what we all considered to be for the best. I see you are suspecting my nephew of having some connection with that foul deed. I tell you it is impossible. He cared more for those two younger lads than Edward himself; indeed, that is what they quarrelled about." He stopped short, as if regretting having spoken.
"What's that? They quarrelled? What about?" Cleek demanded imperatively.
"Wentworth never did get on with Edward, from boyhood upward," put in Lady Calmount. "But he did care for my poor darlings, and in his brusque way he blamed Edward for going abroad on a pleasure trip, the very one, in fact, from which he is now returning. If anything happens to him -" She stopped abruptly, and let the