“Ah won’t listen to it!  Ah will stop here—­Ah will!  Ah will!” he cried out in a passion.  “Who comes ull find Ah here waitin’ to come to grips with un.  Ah won’t stop out—­Ah won’t!  Don’t un listen to Lunnon Mister, Sir Henry—­for God’s sake, don’t!”

“I am afraid I must in this instance, Logan.  You are far too suspicious, my good fellow.  Mr. Cleek doesn’t want to ‘get at’ the mare; he wants to protect her; to keep anybody else from getting at her, so—­join the guard outside if you are so eager.  You must let him have his way.”  And, in spite of all Logan’s pleading, Cleek did have his way.

Protesting, swearing, almost weeping, the trainer was turned out and the doors closed, leaving Cleek alone in the stable; and the last Logan and Sir Henry saw of him until he came out and rejoined them he was standing in the middle of the floor, with his hands on both hips, staring fixedly at the impromptu bed in front of the steel-room door.

“Put on the guard now and see that nobody goes into the place until morning, Sir Henry,” he said when he came out and rejoined them some minutes later.  “Logan, you silly fellow, you’ll do no good fighting against Fate.  Make the best of it and stop where you are.”

CHAPTER XIV

That night Cleek met Lady Wilding for the first time.  He found her what he afterwards termed “a splendid animal,” beautiful, statuesque, more of Juno than of Venus, and freely endowed with the languorous temperament and the splendid earthy loveliness which grows nowhere but under tropical skies and in the shadow of palm groves and the flame of cactus flowers.  She showed him but scant courtesy, however, for she was but a poor hostess, and after dinner carried her cousin away to the billiard-room, and left her husband to entertain the Rev. Ambrose and the detective as best he could.  Cleek needed but little entertaining, however, for in spite of his serenity he was full of the case on hand, and kept wandering in and out of the house and upstairs and down until eleven o’clock came and bed claimed him with the rest.

His last wakeful recollection was of the clock in the lower corridor striking the first quarter after eleven; then sleep claimed him, and he knew no more until all the stillness was suddenly shattered by a loud-voiced gong hammering out an alarm and the sound of people tumbling out of bed and scurrying about in a panic of fright.  He jumped out of bed, pulled on his clothing, and rushed out into the hall, only to find it alive with people, and at their head Sir Henry, with a dressing-gown thrown on over his pyjamas and a bedroom candle in his shaking hand.

“The stable!” he cried out excitedly.  “Come on, come on, for God’s sake!  Someone has touched the door of the steel room; and yet the place was left empty—­empty!”

But it was no longer empty, as they found out when they reached it, for the doors had been flung open, the men who had been left on guard outside the stables were now inside it, the electric lights were in full blaze, the shotgun still hanging where Sharpless had left it, the impromptu bed was tumbled and tossed in a man’s death agony, and at the foot of the steel door Logan lay, curled up in a heap and stone dead!