“Five men, eh?” said Cleek, glancing up at Mr. Narkom, who for two or three minutes past had been giving him a sketchy outline of the case in hand. “A goodish many that. And all inside of the past six weeks, you say? No wonder the papers have been hammering the Yard, if, as you suggest, they were not accidental deaths. Sure they are not?”

“As sure as I am that I’m speaking to you at this minute. I had my doubts in the beginning—there seemed so little to connect the separate tragedies—but when case after case followed with exactly, or nearly exactly, the same details in every instance, one simply had to suspect foul play.”

“Naturally. Even a donkey must know that there’s food about if he smells thistles. Begin at the beginning, please. How did the affair start? When and where?”

“In the neighbourhood of Hampstead Heath at two o’clock in the morning. The constable on duty in the district came upon a man clad only in pajamas lying face downward under the wall surrounding a corner house—still warm but as dead as Queen Anne.”

“In his pajamas, eh?” said Cleek, reaching for a fresh slice of toast. “Pretty clear evidence that that poor beggar’s trouble, whatever it was, must have overtaken him in bed and that that bed was either in the vicinity of the spot where he was found, or else the man had been carried in a closed vehicle to the place where the constable discovered him. A chap can’t walk far in that kind of a get-up without attracting attention. And the body was warm, you say, when found. Hum-m! Any vehicle seen or heard in the vicinity of the spot just previously?”

“Not the ghost of one. The night was very still, and the constable must have heard if either cab, auto, carriage, or dray had passed in any direction whatsoever. He is positive that none did. Naturally, he thought, as you suggested just now, that the man must have come from some house in the neighbourhood. Investigation, however, proved that he did not—in short, that nobody could be found who had ever seen him before. Indeed, it is hardly likely that he could have been sleeping in any of the surrounding houses, for the neighbourhood is a very good one, and the man had the appearance of being a person of the labouring class.”

“Any marks on the clothing or body?”

“Not one—beyond a tattooed heart on the left forearm, which caused the coroner to come to the conclusion later that the man had at some time been either a soldier or a sailor.”

“Why?”

“The tattooing was evidently of foreign origin, he said, from the skilful manner in which it had been performed and the brilliant colour of the pigments used. Beyond that, the body bore no blemish. The man had not been stabbed, he had not been shot, and a post-mortem examination of the viscera proved conclusively that he had not been poisoned. Neither had he been strangled, etherized, drowned, or bludgeoned, for the brain was in no way injured and the lungs were in a healthy condition. It was noticed, however, that the passages of the throat and nose were unduly red, and that there was a slightly distended condition of the bowels. This latter, however, was set down by the physicians as the natural condition following enteric, from which it was positive that the man had recently suffered. They attributed the slightly inflamed condition of the nasal passage and throat to his having either swallowed or snuffed up something—camphor or something of that sort—to allay the progress of the enteric, although even by analysis they were unable to discover a trace of camphor or indeed of any foreign substance whatsoever. The body was held in the public mortuary for several days awaiting identification, but nobody came forward to claim it; so it was eventually buried in the usual way and a verdict of ‘Found Dead’ entered in the archives against the number given to it. The matter had excited but little comment on the part of the public or the newspapers, and would never have been recalled but for the astonishing fact that just two nights after the burial a second man was found under precisely similar circumstances—only that this second man was clad in boots, undervest, and trousers. He was found in a sort of gulley (down which, from the marks on the side, he had evidently fallen), behind some furze bushes at a far and little frequented part of the heath. An autopsy established the fact that this man had died in a precisely similar manner to the first, but, what was more startling, that he had evidently pre-deceased that first victim by several days; for, when found, decomposition had already set in.”

“Hum-m-m! I see!” said Cleek, arching his brows and stirring his tea rather slowly. “A clear case of what Paddy would term ‘the second fellow being the first one.’ Go on, please. What next?”

“Oh, a perfect fever of excitement, of course; for it now became evident that a crime had been committed in both instances; and the Press made a great to-do over it. Within the course of the next fortnight it was positively frothing, throwing panic into the public mind by the wholesale, and whipping up people’s fears like a madman stirring a salad; for, by that time a third body had been found—under some furze bushes, upward of half a mile distant from where the second had been discovered. Like the first body, this one was wearing night clothes; but it was in an even more advanced state of decomposition than the second, showing that the man must have died long before either of them!”

“Oho!” said Cleek, with a strong rising inflection. “What a blundering idiot! Our assassin is evidently a raw hand at the game, Mr. Narkom, and not, as I had begun to fancy, either a professional or the appointed agent of some secret society following a process of extermination against certain marked men. Neither the secret agent nor the professional bandit would be guilty of the extreme folly of operating several times in the same locality, be assured; and here is this muddling amateur letting himself be lulled into a feeling of security by the failure of anybody to discover the bodies of the first victims, and then going at it again in the same place and the same way. For it is fair to assume, I daresay, that the fourth man was discovered under precisely similar circumstances to the first.”

“Not exactly—very like them, but not exactly like them, Cleek. As a matter of fact, he was alive when found. I didn’t credit the report when I first heard it (a newspaper man brought it to me), and sent Petrie to investigate the truth of it.”

“Why didn’t you believe the report?”

“Because it seemed so wildly improbable. And, besides, they had hatched up so many yarns, those newspaper reporters, since the affair began. According to this fellow, a tramp, crossing the heath in quest of a place to sleep, had been frightened half out of his wits by hearing a voice which he described as being like the voice of some one strangling, calling out in the darkness, ‘Sapphires! Sapphires!’ and a few moments later, when, as the reporter said, the tramp told him, he was scuttling away in a panic, he came suddenly upon the figure of a man who was dancing round and round like a whirling dervish, with his mouth wide open, his tongue hanging out, and the forefinger of each hand stuck in his nostril as if——”

“What’s that? What’s that?” Cleek’s voice flicked in like the crack of a whip. “Good God! Dancing round in circles? His mouth open? His tongue hanging out? His fingers thrust into his nostrils? Was that what you said?”

“Yes. Why? Do you see anything promising in that fact, Cleek? It seems to excite you.”

“Never mind about that. Stick to the subject. Was that report found to be correct, then?”

“In a measure, yes. Only, of course, one had to take the tramp’s assertion that the man had been calling out ‘Sapphires’ upon faith, for when discovered and conveyed to the hospital, he was in a comatose condition and beyond making any sound at all. He died, without recovering consciousness, about twenty minutes after Petrie’s arrival; and, although the doctors performed a post-mortem immediately after the breath had left his body, there was not a trace of anything to be found that differed in the slightest from the other cases. Heart, brain, liver, lungs—all were in a healthy condition, and beyond the reddened throat and the signs of recent enteric there was nothing abnormal.”

“But his lips—his lips, Mr. Narkom? Was there a smear of earth upon them? Was he lying on his face when found? Were his fingers clenched in the grass? Did it look as if he had been biting the soil?”

“Yes,” replied Narkom. “As a matter of fact there was both earth and grass in the mouth. The doctors removed it carefully, examined it under the microscope, even subjected it to chemical test in the hope of discovering some foreign substance mixed with the mass, but failed utterly to discover a single trace.”“Of course, of course! It would be gone like a breath, gone like a passing cloud if it were that.”

“If it were what? Cleek, my dear fellow! Good Lord! you don’t mean to tell me you’ve got a clue?”

“Perhaps—perhaps—don’t worry me!” he made answer testily; then rose and walked over to the window and stood there alone, pinching his chin between his thumb and forefinger and staring fixedly at things beyond. After a time, however:

“Yes, it could be that—assuredly it could be that,” he said in a low-sunk voice, as if answering a query. “But in England—in this far land. In Malay, yes; in Ceylon, certainly. And sapphires, too—sapphires! Hum-m-m! They mine them there. One man had travelled in foreign parts and been tattooed by natives. So that the selfsame country——Just so! Of course! Of course! But who? But how? And in England?”

His voice dropped off. He stood for a minute or so in absolute silence, drumming noiselessly with his finger tips upon the window-sill, then turned abruptly and spoke to Mr. Narkom.

“Go on with the story, please,” he said. “There was a fifth man, I believe. When and how did his end come?”

“Like the others, for the most part, but with one startling difference: instead of being undressed, nothing had been removed but his collar and boots. He was killed on the night I started with Dollops for the Continent in quest of you; and his was the second body that was not actually found on the heath. Like the first man, he was found under the wall which surrounds Lemmingham House.”

“Lemmingham House? What’s that—a hotel or a private residence?”

“A private residence, owned and occupied by Mr. James Barrington-Edwards.”

“Any relation to that Captain Barrington-Edwards who was cashiered from the army some twenty years ago for ‘conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman’?”

“The same man!”

“Oho! the same man, eh?” Cleek’s tone was full of sudden interest. “Stop a bit! Let me put my thinking box into operation. Captain Barrington-Edwards—hum-m-m! That little military unpleasantness happened out in Ceylon, did it not? The gentleman had a fancy for conjuring tricks, I believe; even went so far as to study them firsthand under the tutelage of native fakirs, and was subsequently caught cheating at cards. That’s the man, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Narkom, “that’s the man. I’ll have something startling to tell you in connection with him presently, but not in connection with that card-cheating scandal. He always swore that he was innocent of that. In fact, that it was a put-up job by one of the other officers for the sake of ruining him.”

“Yes, I know—they all say that. It’s the only thing they can say.”

“Still, I always believed him, Cleek. He’s been a pretty straightforward man in all my dealings with him, and I’ve had several. Besides which, he is highly respected these days. Then, too, there’s the fact that the fellow he said put up the job against him for the sake of blackening him in the eyes of his sweetheart, eventually married the girl, so it does look rather fishy. However, although it ruined Barrington-Edwards for the time being, and embittered him so that he never married, he certainly had the satisfaction of knowing that the fellow who had caused this trouble turned out an absolute rotter, spent all his wife’s money and brought her down to absolute beggary, whereas, if she’d stuck to Barrington-Edwards she’d have been a wealthy woman indeed, to-day. He’s worth half a million at the least calculation.”“How’s that? Somebody die and leave him a fortune?”

“No. He had a little of his own. Speculated, while he was in the East, in precious stones and land which he had reason to believe likely to produce them; succeeded beyond his wildest hopes, and is to-day head of the firm of Barrington-Edwards, Morpeth & Firmin, the biggest dealers in precious stones that Hatton Garden can boast of.”

“Oho!” said Cleek. “I see! I see!” and screwed round on his heel and looked out of the window again. Then, after a moment: “And Mr. Barrington-Edwards lives in the neighbourhood of Hampstead Heath, does he?” he asked quite calmly. “Alone?”

“No. With his nephew and heir, young Mr. Archer Blaine, a dead sister’s only child. As a matter of fact, it was Mr. Archer Blaine himself who discovered the body of the fifth victim. Coming home at a quarter to one from a visit to an old college friend, he found the man lying stone dead in the shadow of the wall surrounding Lemmingham House, and, of course, lost no time in dashing indoors for a police whistle and summoning the constable on point duty in the district. The body was at once given in charge of a hastily summoned detachment from the Yard and conveyed to the Hampstead mortuary, where it still lies awaiting identification.”

“Been photographed?”

“Not as yet. Of course it will be—as were the other four—prior to the time of burial should nobody turn up to claim it. But in this instance we have great hopes that identification will take place on the strength of a marked peculiarity. The man is web-footed and——”

“The man is what?” rapped in Cleek excitedly.

“Web-footed,” repeated Narkom. “The several toes are attached one to the other by a thin membrane, after the manner of a duck’s feet; and on the left foot there is a peculiar horny protuberance like——”“Like a rudimentary sixth toe!” interrupted Cleek, fairly flinging the eager query at him. “It is, eh? Well, by the Eternal! I once knew a fellow—years ago, in the Far East—whose feet were malformed like that; and if by any possibility——Stop a bit! A word more. Is that man a big fellow—broad shouldered, muscular, and about forty or forty-five years of age?”

“You’ve described him to a T, dear chap. There is, however, a certain other peculiarity which you have not mentioned, though that, of course, maybe a recent acquirement. The palm of the right hand——”

“Wait a bit! Wait a bit!” interposed Cleek, a trifle irritably. He had swung away from the window and was now walking up and down the room with short nervous steps, his chin pinched up between his thumb and forefinger, his brows knotted, and his eyes fixed upon the floor.

“Saffragam—Jaffna—Trincomalee! In all three of them—in all three!” he said, putting his running thoughts into muttered words. “And now a dead man sticks his fingers in his nostrils and talks of sapphires. Sapphires, eh? And the Saffragam district stuck thick with them as spangles on a Nautch girl’s veil. The Bareva for a ducat! The Bareva Reef or I’m a Dutchman! And Barrington-Edwards was in that with the rest. So was Peabody; so was Miles; and so, too, were Lieutenant Edgburn and the Spaniard, Juan Alvarez. Eight of them, b’gad—eight! And I was ass enough to forget, idiot enough not to catch the connection until I heard again of Jim Peabody’s web foot! But wait! Stop—there should be another marked foot if this is indeed a clue to the riddle, and so——”

He stopped short in his restless pacing and faced round on Mr. Narkom.

“Tell me something,” he said in a sharp staccato. “The four other dead men—did any among them have an injured foot—the left or the right, I forget which—from which all toes but the big one had been torn off by a crocodile’s bite, so that in life the fellow must have limped a little when he walked? Did any of the dead men bear a mark like that?”

“No,” said Narkom. “The feet of all the others were normal in every particular.”

“Hum-m-m! That’s a bit of a setback. And I am either on the wrong track or Alvarez is still alive. What’s that? Oh, it doesn’t matter; a mere fancy of mine, that’s all. Now let us get back to our mutton, please. You were going to tell me something about the right hand of the man with the web foot. What was it?”

“The palm bore certain curious hieroglyphics traced upon it in bright purple.”

“Hieroglyphics, eh? That doesn’t look quite so promising,” said Cleek in a disappointed tone. “It is quite possible that there may be more than one web-footed man in the world, so of course——Hum-m-m! What were these hieroglyphics, Mr. Narkom? Can you describe them?”

“I can do better, my dear chap,” replied the superintendent, dipping into an inner pocket and bringing forth a brown leather case. “I took an accurate tracing of them from the dead hand this morning, and—there you are. That’s what’s on his palm, Cleek, close to the base of the forefinger running diagonally across it.”

Cleek took the slip of tracing paper and carried it to the window, for the twilight was deepening and the room was filling with shadows. In the middle of the thin, transparent sheet was traced this:

He turned it up and down, he held it to the light and studied it for a moment or two in perplexed silence, then of a sudden he faced round, and Narkom could see that his eyes were shining and that the curious one-sided smile, peculiar unto him, was looping up his cheek.

“My friend,” he said, answering the eager query in the superintendent’s look, “this is yet another vindication of Poe’s theory that things least hidden are best hidden, and that the most complex mysteries are those which are based on the simplest principles. With your permission, I’ll keep this”—tucking the tracing into his pocket—“and afterward I will go to the mortuary and inspect the original. Meantime, I will go so far as to tell you that I know the motive for these murders, I know the means, and if you will give me forty-eight hours to solve the riddle, at the end of that time I’ll know the man. I will even go farther and tell you the names of the victims; and all on the evidence of your neat little tracing. The web-footed man was one, James Peabody, a farrier, at one time attached to the Blue Cavalry at Trincomalee, Ceylon. Another was Joseph Miles, an Irishman, bitten early with the ‘wanderlust’ which takes men everywhere, and in making rolling stones of them, suffers them to gather no moss. Still another—and probably, from the tattoo mark on his arm, the first victim found—was Thomas Hart, ablebodied seaman, formerly in service on the P & O line; the remaining two were Alexander McCurdy, a Scotchman, and T. Jenkins Quegg, a Yankee. The latter, however, was a naturalized Englishman, and both were privates in her late Majesty’s army and honourably discharged.”

“Cleek, my dear fellow, are you a magician?” said Narkom, sinking into a chair, overcome.

“Oh, no, my friend, merely a man with a memory, that’s all; and I happen to remember a curious little ‘pool’ that was made up of eight men. Five of them are dead. The other three are Juan Alvarez, a Spaniard, that Lieutenant Edgburn who married and beggared the girl Captain Barrington-Edwards lost when he was disgraced, and last of all the ex-Captain Barrington-Edwards himself. Gently, gently, my friend. Don’t excite yourself. All these murders have been committed with a definite purpose in view, with a devil’s instrument, and for the devil’s own stake—riches. Those riches, Mr. Narkom, were to come in the shape of precious stones, the glorious sapphires of Ceylon. And five of the eight men who were to reap the harvest of them died mysteriously in the vicinity of Lemmingham House.”

“Cleek! My hat!” Narkom sprang up as he spoke, and then sat down again in a sort of panic. “And he—Barrington-Edwards, the man that lives there—deals in precious stones. Then that man——”

“Gently, my friend, gently—don’t bang away at the first rabbit that bolts out of the hole—it may be a wee one and you’ll lose the buck that follows. Two men live in that house, remember; Mr. Archer Blaine is Mr. Barrington-Edwards’ heir as well as his nephew and—who knows?”