CHAPTER XXXII.

THE MONKEY-GOD

Early one stormy morning, about two o’clock, when the rain beat upon the window-panes, Charlesworth and the smart chauffeur, Budd, were seated together in complete darkness in the long dining-room. They sat but uttered no word. Indeed, the only signs of anyone being present were two red ends of cigarettes, for both were smoking.

Sitting in silence with drawn blinds, they had been there since the house had been closed at eleven, none of the occupants aware that they were keeping a night vigil, or that they had done so for many previous nights.

So as not to show any light, they lit one cigarette by the end of the other, and smoked on without a single word. Continual smoking kept them from dozing, as night after night they had sat there, each with a bottle of beer at his elbow, until dawn, when they would noiselessly retire. This strange procedure had been repeated nightly by the two men ever since they had entered Sibell’s service.

Suddenly there sounded a noise in the farther corner of the dark room--a slight hiss, which caused both men to spring to their feet. The low hiss, as though of some reptile or large insect, was repeated twice.

“Careful!” whispered Charlesworth to his fellow-servant. “Not a sound!”

“Right,” was Budd’s whispered reply, and, opening the well-oiled door, they both crept in their socks out into the hall, where, at the top of the staircase, they saw a small, dull-green light moving very slowly, until it stopped at the head of the stairs. By its light they could distinguish something moving--a gloved human hand, it appeared, holding something that shone--a knife. The hand seemed to be carefully scraping or picking the handsome carved mahogany post which held the heavy balustrade.

For fully three minutes the two watchers, warned of some intrusion by the electrical contrivance which had produced the curious hissing in the dining-room, looked on in surprise. That tiny green light was distinctly weird and uncanny.

Presently the light moved from the head of the staircase slowly along the corridor to an end room, which Sibell had made into her own little den. Its door stood open. The faint, dull light of the night sky, the blind not having been drawn, revealed that the green light was carried by a man bent and short of stature, a man who wore surgical rubber gloves, and evidently also felt slippers, as his feet fell silently. Creeping behind him, the two men watched him advance to Sibell’s writing-table, upon which he placed his little green lamp, with an open penknife. Then, selecting her fountain-pen from the silver tray of the handsome inkstand, he carefully unscrewed the cap. It was a self-filler of unusual type. Taking from his pocket a small phial of some liquid, which appeared to be ink, he inserted the nib of the pen and quickly filled it. Then, with gloved hands, he carefully plunged the whole pen into the inky liquid, and afterwards screwed on the cap, and then replaced it just as he had found it.

Upon the polished silver tray he allowed a few drops of ink to fall, and at the same time he rubbed, with his rubber glove, a quantity of the liquid upon the polished writing-table.

It was as though he was intent upon polishing the whole table with ink.

As the stranger turned, Charlesworth suddenly flashed his bright electric torch full upon his face, causing him to stagger back in fright, while at that same second, Budd switched on the electric light in the room.

“We are officers of the Criminal Investigation Department, and I arrest you, John Dare, _alias_ Bettinson, and lots of other names, upon charges of wilful murder,” Charlesworth said in his deep voice.

“You--you arrest me!” screamed the wily, white-haired old fellow. “Arrest me! And in my own house! I defy you! Touch me if you dare, and from the slightest scratch with this knife you’ll die!” And with a demoniacal grin he held up his little pen-knife, which he had used upon the stairs.

Next instant Detective-Sergeant Budd threw himself upon him, seizing the hand which held the fatal blade, while Inspector Charlesworth strove to get the dangerous knife from his hand. But the old man, in that demented state, screamed and yelled like some wild animal, fighting with the ferocity of a tiger, twisting and swaying as he tried to wound one or the other of his captors.

“This house is mine--mine! You understand?” he shrieked wildly. “My brother Henry should have left it to me! It is mine by law! All these years I’ve waited and have been in it, and now those who usurp what is my property--all who dare enter here--must die. They die mysteriously--of--of heart disease!” And then he gave vent to a most hideous screeching laugh that showed him to have suddenly become raving in his lunacy.

To secure him was nearly impossible, and as Sibell and two maids, awakened in fright, appeared in their dressing-gowns, Charlesworth turned to his mistress, and said:

“Excuse me, miss, we’ve caught a burglar! Will you please telephone to the police-station at once, and simply say that Charlesworth wants immediate assistance here? They’ll know.”

At hearing those words, the homicidal maniac made a renewed and most desperate struggle, still holding the dangerous knife in a grip of steel. Then, of a sudden, Charlesworth, in his efforts to obtain possession of it, drew his hand so close to the prisoner’s neck that the point of the blade entered just beneath his right jaw.

“God!” he shrieked, realizing what had happened. “I--I’ll die! You damned fiends--you--you----” But slowly, a few seconds later, he collapsed, while the knife fell from his nerveless fingers. “This place is mine!--mine by inheritance!” he wailed. “Henry had no right to it--never had,” he went on. “I was born here, and--and I--I die here! But I’ve cheated you all. Of the Malays I learnt of their wonderful _ipoh gadong_, the poison of which, by a tiny scratch, or a little beneath the finger-nails, causes certain death--the time-poison which no Western doctor can yet detect--how its effect can be delayed for a day, a week, or a month. I know! I alone hold the secret of the old Bomor Enche Jalal of Kelentan. I brought the ingredients to England with me. And you sha’n’t know them--no, never shall know them. Their secret is mine, and I alone will hold it!”

In the arms of the two detectives the old fellow became limp and inert, so that they placed him upon the couch, where he lay until Sibell, naturally very excited, ran back from the telephone.

Suddenly old John Dare started, and with his thin, upraised hands began a series of wild incantations which, though nobody understood, were undoubtedly in Malay, for he called upon the langsuir, which is, to the natives, a terrible female vampire who afflicts only brides. He imitated the repulsive laugh--“_haw-haw haw-ho_”--of the Malayan fish-owl, or “ghost-bird,” while time after time he invoked the anger of Hantu Doman, his deity, the Monkey-God.

To those present it was only gibberish, but apparently he made use of the same incantations as he did in the presence of poor Farmer before his mysterious death.

“Did you hear that?” asked Inspector Charlesworth to Budd. “Take a note of the name of that poison--_ipoh gadong_.” Then he turned to Sibell, and warned her not to touch her fountain-pen or the balustrade of the stairs.

“Later I’ll explain all to you, miss,” the police officer added. “It is a great consolation to us that, after all, we’ve caught ‘The Chameleon.’ We know that they called him that in France, where he committed at least two murders by means of his poison secret, and, after trial at the Assizes of the Seine, he was confined in the French criminal lunatic asylum at Toulouse for life. But he escaped, and arrived in London, where he’s been earning a precarious living in the City on account of his knowledge of the Malay language. And so----”

His explanation was suddenly interrupted by the entrance of the inspector from Hampton and two constables.

“Fixed up ‘The Chameleon’ all right, sir?” asked the rosy-faced officer, taking in the situation at a glance.

“Yes, Fowler. All is O.K. Caught him red-handed, and he’s poisoned himself. I don’t expect he’ll live long. Good job for him if he doesn’t, eh?”

“You swine!” whined the prostrate man suddenly. “Live long! I don’t care how long I live! This house is mine. They sold its contents, but those who helped to do it suffered!” And he yelled like a maniac. “The man in charge dared to lay a hand upon me, and he died. The doctor who was to marry the girl who took my inheritance from me had a narrow escape, because--because I timed it wrong. I was a fool to do so--a fool--_fool_!”

The police officers looked at each other in silence, while Charlesworth in a kind voice suggested that Sibell and the maids might return to their rooms.

This they did, when, a quarter of an hour later, the prisoner was removed on the ambulance to the police-station, but on the way his heart failed, so that on arrival he was found to be dead.

Before midday the fountain-pen, with its infected ink, and some fine splinters of mahogany from the carved head-post of the banisters, were in the hands of the Home Office pathologist, who, after careful analysis extending over the next four days, certified that the most dangerous and most virulent poison had been applied.

A most scrupulous examination was afterwards made of the house of evil, where it was discovered that “The Chameleon,” a nickname given him in the asylum at Toulouse because of his amazingly clever disguises, his strange adventures, and his sound knowledge of medicine, and as such registered in the criminal archives at the Paris Sûreté, had, even before the death of his brother Henry, been in the habit of entering the house at night with his green light, and in his demented state he had often sat and enjoyed himself through the night hours in those long-closed rooms, imagining himself the possessor of the long-closed-up house.

His mode of entry into the place was discovered on the evening of the day of his death.

When Inspector Charlesworth was faced with the puzzling problem, he most naturally thought of the shut-up wine-cellar. The door of this they found ajar, and, with Budd, they struggled past a number of well-filled bins of old port and sherry to an exit which consisted of a rotting wooden lattice covered by brambles. They struggled through these, to find themselves ascending some moss-grown stone steps, after which, after another struggle, and tearing their clothes, they found themselves in a thicket on the other side of the adjoining garden!

By such means had the lunatic brother of Henry Dare--who for years lodged with a dear, deaf old widow at Molesey--gained access to the old house that had once been his home, and of which he still, in his demented state, felt that he held possession.

To the public the actual truth never leaked out. It was better so. The coroner, after a consultation at the Home Office, held his inquiry without the aid of a jury, and all the world was told was that at a house at Hampton Court a burglar had been captured by the police, and that the shock to him proved so great that, on being conveyed to the police-station, he had died of heart disease.