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CLEEK OF SCOTLAND YARD

“My only kingdom is here ... in this dear woman’s arms. Walk with me, Ailsa ... as my queen and my wife.”

THE INTERNATIONAL
ADVENTURE LIBRARY

THREE OWLS EDITION

CLEEK OF
SCOTLAND YARD

Detective Stories

BY

T. P. HANSHEW

Author of “Cleek the Master Detective”,
“Cleek’s Government Cases” etc.

W. R. CALDWELL & CO.
NEW YORK

Copyright, 1912, 1913, 1914, by

Doubleday, Page & Company

All rights reserved, including that of
translation into foreign languages,
including the Scandinavian.

Cleek of Scotland Yard

PROLOGUE
The Affair of the Man Who Vanished

Mr. Maverick Narkom, Superintendent at Scotland Yard, flung aside the paper he was reading and wheeled round in his revolving desk-chair, all alert on the instant, like a terrier that scents a rat.

He knew well what the coming of the footsteps toward his private office portended; his messenger was returning at last.

Good! Now he would get at the facts of the matter, and be relieved from the sneers of carping critics and the pin pricks of overzealous reporters, who seemed to think that the Yard was to blame, and all the forces connected with it to be screamed at as incompetents if every evildoer in London was not instantly brought to book and his craftiest secrets promptly revealed.

Gad! Let them take on his job, then, if they thought the thing so easy! Let them have a go at this business of stopping at one’s post until two o’clock in the morning trying to patch up the jumbled fragments of a puzzle of this sort, if they regarded it as such child’s play—finding an assassin whom nobody had seen and who struck with a method which neither medical science nor legal acumen could trace or name. Then, by James....

The door opened and closed, and Detective Sergeant Petrie stepped into the room, removing his hat and standing at attention.

“Well?” rapped out the superintendent, in the sharp staccato of nervous impatience. “Speak up! It was a false alarm, was it not?”

“No, sir. It’s even worse than reported. Quicker and sharper than any of the others. He’s gone, sir.”

“Gone? Good God! you don’t mean dead?”

“Yes, sir. Dead as Julius Cæsar. Total collapse about twenty minutes after my arrival and went off like that”—snapping his fingers and giving his hand an outward fling. “Same way as the others, only, as I say, quicker, sir; and with no more trace of what caused it than the doctors were able to discover in the beginning. That makes five in the same mysterious way, Superintendent, and not a ghost of a clue yet. The papers will be ringing with it to-morrow.”

“Ringing with it? Can they ‘ring’ any more than they are doing already?” Narkom threw up both arms and laughed the thin, mirthless laughter of utter despair. “Can they say anything worse than they have said? Blame any more unreasonably than they have blamed? It is small solace for the overburdened taxpayer to reflect that he may be done to death at any hour of the night, and that the heads of the institution he has so long and so consistently supported are capable of giving his stricken family nothing more in return than the “Dear me! dear me!” of utter bewilderment; and to prove anew that the efficiency of our boasted police-detective system may be classed under the head of “Brilliant Fiction.” That sort of thing, day after day—as if I had done nothing but pile up failures of this kind since I came into office. No heed of the past six years’ brilliant success. No thought for the manner in which the police departments of other countries were made to sit up and to marvel at our methods. Two months’ failure and that doesn’t count! By the Lord Harry! I’d give my head to make those newspaper fellows eat their words—gad, yes!”

“Why don’t you, then, sir?” Petrie dropped his voice a tone or two and looked round over the angle of his shoulder as he spoke; then, recollecting the time and the improbability of anybody being within earshot, took heart of grace and spoke up bolder. “There’s no use blinking the fact, Mr. Narkom; it was none of us—none of the regular force, I mean—that made the record of those years what it was. That chap Cleek was the man that did it, sir. You know that as well as I. I don’t know whether you’ve fallen out with him or not; or if he’s off on some secret mission that keeps him from handling Yard matters these days. But if he isn’t, take my advice, sir, and put him on this case at once.”

“Don’t talk such rot!” flung out Narkom, impatiently. “Do you think I’d have waited until now to do it if it could be done? Put him on the case, indeed! How the devil am I to do it when I don’t know where on earth to find him? He cleared out directly after that Panther’s Paw case six months ago. Gave up his lodgings, sacked his housekeeper, laid off his assistant, Dollops, and went the Lord knows where and why.”

“My hat! Then that’s the reason we never hear any more of him in Yard matters, is it? I wondered! Disappeared, eh? Well, well! You don’t think he can have gone back to his old lay—back to the wrong ’uns and his old ‘Vanishing Cracksman’s’ tricks, do you, sir?”

“No, I don’t. No backslider about that chap, by James! He’s not built that way. Last time I saw him he was out shopping with Miss Ailsa Lorne—the girl who redeemed him—and judging from their manner toward each other, I rather fancied—well, never mind! That’s got nothing to do with you. Besides, I feel sure that if they had, Mrs. Narkom and I would have been invited. All he said was that he was going to take a holiday. He didn’t say why, and he didn’t say where. I wish to heaven I’d asked him. I could have kicked myself for not having done so when that she-devil of a Frenchwoman managed to slip the leash and get off scot free.”

“Mean that party we nabbed in the house at Roehampton along with the Mauravanian baron who got up that Silver Snare fake, don’t you, sir? Margot, the Queen of the Apaches. Or, at least, that’s who you declared she was, I recollect.”

“And that’s who I still declare she was!” rapped in Narkom, testily, “and what I’ll continue to say while there’s a breath left in me. I never actually saw the woman until that night, it is true, but Cleek told me she was Margot; and who should know better than he, when he was once her pal and partner? But it’s one of the infernal drawbacks of British justice that a crook’s word’s as good as an officer’s if it’s not refuted by actual proof. The woman brought a dozen witnesses to prove that she was a respectable Austrian lady on a visit to her son in England; that the motor in which she was riding broke down before that Roehampton house about an hour before our descent upon it, and that she had merely been invited to step in and wait while the repairs were being attended to by her chauffeur. Of course such a chauffeur was forthcoming when she was brought up before the magistrate; and a garage-keeper was produced to back up his statement; so that when the Mauravanian prisoner ‘confessed’ from the dock that what the lady said was true, that settled it. I couldn’t swear to her identity, and Cleek, who could, was gone—the Lord knows where; upon which the magistrate admitted the woman to bail and delivered her over to the custody of her solicitors pending my efforts to get somebody over from Paris to identify her. And no sooner is the vixen set at large than—presto!—away she goes, bag and baggage, out of the country, and not a man in England has seen hide nor hair of her since. Gad! if I could but have got word to Cleek at that time—just to put him on his guard against her. But I couldn’t. I’ve no more idea than a child where the man went—not one.”

“It’s pretty safe odds to lay one’s head against a brass farthing as to where the woman went, though, I reckon,” said Petrie, stroking his chin. “Bunked it back to Paris, I expect, sir, and made for her hole like any other fox. I hear them French ’tecs are as keen to get hold of her as we were, but she slips ’em like an eel. Can’t lay hands on her, and couldn’t swear to her identity if they did. Not one in a hundred of ’em’s ever seen her to be sure of her, I’m told.”

“No, not one. Even Cleek himself knows nothing of who and what she really is. He confessed that to me. Their knowledge of each other began when they threw in their lot together for the first time, and ceased when they parted. Yes, I suppose she did go back to Paris, Petrie—it would be her safest place; and there’d be rich pickings there for her and her crew just now. The city is en fête, you know.”

“Yes, sir. King Ulric of Mauravania is there as the guest of the Republic. Funny time for a king to go visiting another nation, sir, isn’t it, when there’s a revolution threatening in his own? Dunno much about the ways of kings, Superintendent, but if there was a row coming up in my house, you can bet all you’re worth I’d be mighty sure to stop at home.”

“Diplomacy, Petrie, diplomacy! he may be safer where he is. Rumours are afloat that Prince What’s-his-name, son and heir of the late Queen Karma, is not only still living, but has, during the present year, secretly visited Mauravania in person. I see by the papers that that ripping old royalist, Count Irma, is implicated in the revolutionary movement and that, by the king’s orders, he has been arrested and imprisoned in the Fort of Sulberga on a charge of sedition. Grand old johnny, that—I hope no harm comes to him. He was in England not so long ago. Came to consult Cleek about some business regarding a lost pearl, and I took no end of a fancy to him. Hope he pulls out all right; but if he doesn’t—oh, well, we can’t bother over other people’s troubles—we’ve got enough of our own just now with these mysterious murders going on, and the newspapers hammering the Yard day in and day out. Gad! how I wish I knew how to get hold of Cleek—how I wish I did!”

“Can’t you find somebody to put you on the lay, sir? some friend of his—somebody that’s seen him, or maybe heard from him since you have?”

“Oh, don’t talk rubbish!” snapped Narkom, with a short, derisive laugh. “Friends, indeed! What friends has he outside of myself? Who knows him any better than I know him—and what do I know of him, at that? Nothing—not where he comes from; not what his real name may be; not a living thing but that he chooses to call himself Hamilton Cleek and to fight in the interest of the law as strenuously as he once fought against it. And where will I find a man who has ‘seen’ him, as you suggest—or would know if he had seen him—when he has that amazing birth gift to fall back upon? You never saw his real face—never in all your life. I never saw it but twice, and even I—why, he might pass me in the street a dozen times a day and I’d never know him if I looked straight into his eyes. He’d come like a shot if he knew I wanted him—gad, yes! But he doesn’t; and there you are.”

Imagination was never one of Petrie’s strong points. His mind moved always along well-prepared grooves to time-honoured ends. It found one of those grooves and moved along it now.

“Why don’t you advertise for him, then?” he suggested. “Put a Personal in the morning papers, sir. Chap like that’s sure to read the news every day; and it’s bound to come to his notice sooner or later. Or if it doesn’t, why, people will get to knowing that the Yard’s lost him and get to talking about it and maybe he’ll learn of it that way.”

Narkom looked at him. The suggestion was so bald, so painfully ordinary and commonplace, that, heretofore, it had never occurred to him. To associate Cleek’s name with the banalities of the everyday Agony Column; to connect him with the appeals of the scullery and the methods of the raw amateur! The very outrageousness of the thing was its best passport to success.

“By James, I believe there’s something in that!” he said, abruptly. “If you get people to talking.... Well, it doesn’t matter, so that he hears—so that he finds out I want him. You ring up the Daily Mail while I’m scratching off an ad. Tell ’em it’s simply got to go in the morning’s issue. I’ll give it to them over the line myself in a minute.”

He lurched over to his desk, drove a pen into the ink pot, and made such good haste in marshalling his straggling thoughts that he had the thing finished before Petrie had got farther than “Yes; Scotland Yard. Hold the line, please; Superintendent Narkom wants to speak to you.”

The Yard’s requests are at all times treated with respect and courtesy by the controlling forces of the daily press, so it fell out that, late as the hour was, “space” was accorded, and, in the morning, half a dozen papers bore this notice prominently displayed:

“Cleek—Where are you? Urgently needed. Communicate at once.—Maverick Narkom.”

The expected came to pass; and the unexpected followed close upon its heels. The daily press, publishing the full account of the latest addition to the already long list of mysterious murders which, for a fortnight past, had been adding nervous terrors to the public mind, screamed afresh—as Narkom knew that it would—and went into paroxysms of the Reporters’ Disease until the very paper was yellow with the froth of it. The afternoon editions were still worse—for, between breakfast and lunch time, yet another man had fallen victim to the mysterious assassin—and sheets pink and sheets green, sheets gray and sheets yellow were scattering panic from one end of London to the other. The police-detective system of the country was rotten! The Government should interfere—must interfere! It was a national disgrace that the foremost city of the civilized world should be terrorized in this appalling fashion and the author of the outrages remain undetected! Could anything be more appalling?

It could, and—it was! When night came and the evening papers were supplanting the afternoon ones, that something “more appalling”—known hours before to the Yard itself—was glaring out on every bulletin and every front page in words like these:

LONDON’S REIGN OF TERROR
APPALLING ATROCITY IN
CLARGES STREET
SHOCKING DYNAMITE
OUTRAGE

Clarges Street! The old “magic” street of those “magic” old times of Cleek, and the Red Limousine, and the Riddles that were unriddled for the asking! Narkom grabbed the report the instant he heard that name and began to read it breathlessly.

It was the usual station advice ticked through to headquarters and deciphered by the operator there, and it ran tersely, thus:

“4:28 P. M. Attempt made by unknown parties to blow up house in Clarges Street, Piccadilly. Partially successful. Three persons injured and two killed. No clue to motive. Occupants, family from Essex. Only moved in two days ago. House been vacant for months previously. Formerly occupied by retired seafaring man named Capt. Horatio Burbage, who——”

Narkom read no farther. He flung the paper aside with a sort of mingled laugh and blub and collapsed into his chair with his eyes hidden in the crook of an upthrown arm, and the muscles of his mouth twitching.

“Now I know why he cleared out! Good old Cleek! Bully old Cleek!” he said to himself; and stopped suddenly, as though something had got into his throat and half choked him. But after a moment or two he jumped to his feet and began walking up and down the room, his face fairly glowing; and if he had put his thoughts into words they would have run like this:

“Margot’s crew, of course. And he must have guessed that something of the sort would happen some time if he stopped there after that Silver Snare business at Roehampton—either from her lot or from the followers of that Mauravanian johnnie who was at the back of it. They were after him even in that little game, those two. I wonder why? What the dickens, when one comes to think of it, could have made the Prime Minister of Mauravania interest himself in an Apache trick to ‘do in’ an ex-cracksman? Gad! she flies high, sometimes, that Margot! Prime Minister of Mauravania! And the fool faced fifteen years hard to do the thing and let her get off scot free! Faced it and—took it; and is taking it still, for the sake of helping her to wipe off an old score against a reformed criminal. Wonder if Cleek ever crossed him in something? Wonder if he, too, was on the ‘crooked side’ once, and wanted to make sure of its never being shown up? Oh, well, he got his medicine. And so, too, will this unknown murderer who’s doing the secret killing in London, now that this Clarges Street affair is over. Bully old Cleek! Slipped ’em again! Had their second shot and missed you! Now you’ll come out of hiding, old chap, and we shall have the good old times once more.”

His eye fell upon the ever-ready telephone. He stopped short in his purposeless walking and nodded and smiled to it.

“We’ll have you singing your old tune before long, my friend,” he said, optimistically. “I know my man—gad, yes! He’ll let no grass grow under his feet now that this thing’s over. I shall hear soon—yes, by James! I shall.”

His optimism was splendidly rewarded. Not, however, from the quarter nor in the manner he expected. It had but just gone half-past seven when a tap sounded, the door of his office swung inward, and the porter stepped into the room.

“Person wanting to speak with you, sir, in private,” he announced. “Says it’s about some Personal in the morning paper.”

“Send him in—send him in at once!” rapped out Narkom excitedly. “Move sharp; and don’t let anybody else in until I give the word.”

Then, as soon as the porter had disappeared, he crossed the room, twitched the thick curtains over the window, switched on the electric light, wheeled another big chair up beside his desk and, with face aglow, jerked open a drawer and got out a cigarette box which had not seen the light for weeks.

Quick as he was, the door opened and shut again before the lid of the box could be thrown back, and into the room stepped Cleek’s henchman—Dollops.

“Hullo! You, is it, you blessed young monkey?” said Narkom gayly, as he looked up and saw the boy. “Knew I’d hear to-day—knew it, by James! Sent you for me, has he, eh? Is he coming himself or does he want me to go to him? Speak up, and—Good Lord! what’s the matter with you? What’s up? Anything wrong?”

Dollops had turned the colour of an under-baked biscuit and was looking at him with eyes of absolute despair.

“Sir,” he said, moving quickly forward and speaking in the breathless manner of a spent runner—“Sir, I was a-hopin’ it was a fake, and to hear you speak like that—Gawd’s truth, guv’ner, you don’t mean as it’s real, sir, do you? That you don’t know either?”

“Know? Know what?”

“Where he is—wot’s become of him? Mr. Cleek, the guv’ner, sir. I made sure that you’d know if anybody would. That’s wot made me come, sir. I’d ’a’ gone off me bloomin’ dot if I hadn’t—after you a-puttin’ in that Personal and him never a-turnin’ up like he’d ort. Sir, do you mean to say as you don’t know where he is, and haven’t seen him even yet?”

“No, I’ve not. Good Lord! haven’t you?”

“No, sir. I aren’t clapped eyes on him since he sent me off to the bloomin’ seaside six months ago. All he told me when we come to part was that Miss Lorne was goin’ out to India on a short visit to Cap’n and Mrs. ’Awksley—Lady Chepstow as was, sir—and that directly she was gone he’d be knockin’ about for a time on his own, and I wasn’t to worry over him. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him, sir, since that hour.”

“Nor heard from him?” Narkom’s voice was thick and the hand he laid on the chair-back hard shut.

“Oh, yes, sir, I’ve heard—I’d have gone off my bloomin’ dot if I hadn’t done that. Heard from him twice. Once when he wrote and gimme my orders about the new place he’s took up the river—four weeks ago. The second time, last Friday, sir, when he wrote me the thing that’s fetched me here—that’s been tearin’ the heart out of me ever since I heard at Charing Cross about wot’s happened at Clarges Street, sir.”

“And what was that?”

“Why, sir, he wrote that he’d jist remembered about some papers as he’d left behind the wainscot in his old den, and that he’d get the key and drop in at the old Clarges Street house on the way ’ome. Said he’d arrive in England either yesterday afternoon or this one, sir; but whichever it was, he’d wire me from Dover before he took the train. And he never done it, sir—my Gawd! he never done it in this world!”

“Good God!” Narkom flung out the words in a sort of panic, his lips twitching, his whole body shaking, his face like the face of a dead man.

“He never done it, I tell you!” pursued Dollops in an absolute tremble of fright. “I haven’t never had a blessed line; and now this here awful thing has happened. And if he done what he said he was a-goin’ to do—if he come to town and went to that house——”

If he said more, the clanging of a bell drowned it completely. Narkom had turned to his desk and was hammering furiously upon the call gong. A scurry of flying feet came up the outer passage, the door opened in a flash, and the porter was there. And behind him Lennard, the chauffeur, who guessed from that excited summons that there would be a call for him.

“The limousine—as quick as you can get her round!” said Narkom in the sharp staccato of excitement. “To the scene of the explosion in Clarges Street first, and if the bodies of the victims have been removed, then to the mortuary without an instant’s delay.”

He dashed into the inner room, grabbed his hat and coat down from the hook where they were hanging, and dashed back again like a man in a panic.

“Come on!” he said, beckoning to Dollops as he flung open the door and ran out into the passage. “If they’ve ‘done him in’—him!—if they’ve ‘got him’ after all——Come on! come on!”

Dollops “came on” with a rush; and two minutes later the red limousine swung out into the roadway and took the distance between Scotland Yard and Clarges Street at a mile-a-minute clip.

Arrival at the scene of the disaster elicited the fact that the remains—literally “remains,” since they had been well-nigh blown to fragments—had, indeed, been removed to the mortuary; so thither Narkom and Dollops followed them, their fears being in no wise lightened by learning that the bodies were undeniably those of men. As the features of both victims were beyond any possibility of recognition, identification could, of course, be arrived at only through bodily marks; and Dollops’s close association with Cleek rendered him particularly capable of speaking with authority regarding those of his master. It was, therefore, a source of unspeakable delight to both Narkom and himself, when, after close and minute examination of the remains, he was able to say, positively, “Sir, whatever’s become of him, praise God, neither of these here two dead men is him, bless his heart!”

“So they didn’t get him after all!” supplemented Narkom, laughing for the first time in hours. “Still, it cannot be doubted that whoever committed this outrage was after him, since the people who have suffered are complete strangers to the locality and had only just moved into the house. No doubt the person or persons who threw the bomb knew of Cleek’s having at one time lived there as ‘Captain Burbage’—Margot did, for one—and finding the house still occupied, and not knowing of his removal—why, there you are.”

“Margot!” The name brought back all Dollops’ banished fears. He switched round on the superintendent and laid a nervous clutch on his sleeve. “And Margot’s ‘lay’ is Paris. Sir, I didn’t tell you, did I, that it was from there the guv’ner wrote those two letters to me?”

“Cinnamon! From Paris?”

“Yes, sir. He didn’t say from wot part of the city nor wot he was a-doin’ there, anyways, but—my hat! listen here, sir. They’re there—them Mauravanian johnnies—and the Apaches and Margot there, too, and you know how both lots has their knife into him. I dunno wot the Mauravanians is got against him, sir (he never tells nothin’ to nobody, he don’t), but most like it’s summink he done to some of ’em that time he went out there about the lost pearl; but they’re after him, and the Apaches is after him, and between the two!... Guv’ner!”—his voice rose thin and shrill—“guv’ner, if one lot don’t get him, the other may; and—sir—there’s Apaches in London this very night. I know! I’ve seen ’em.”

“Seen them? When? Where?”

“At Charing Cross station, sir, jist before I went to the Yard to see you. As I hadn’t had no telegram from the guv’ner, like I was promised, I went there on the off chance, hopin’ to meet him when the boat train come in. And there I see ’em, sir, a-loungin’ round the platform where the Dover train goes out at nine to catch the night boat back to Calais, sir. I spotted ’em on the instant—from their walk, their way of carryin’ of theirselves, their manner of wearin’ of their bloomin’ hair. Laughin’ among themselves they was and lookin’ round at the entrance every now and then like as they was expectin’ some one to come and join ’em; and I see, too, as they was a-goin’ back to where they come from, ’cause they’d the return halves of their tickets in their hatbands. One of ’em, he buys a paper at the bookstall and sees summink in it as tickled him wonderful, for I see him go up to the others and point it out to ’em, and then the whole lot begins to larf like blessed hyenas. I spotted wot the paper was and the place on the page the blighter was a-pointin’ at, so I went and bought one myself to see wot it was. Sir, it was that there Personal of yours. The minnit I read that, I makes a dash for a taxi, to go to you at once, sir, and jist as I does so, a newsboy runs by me with a bill on his chest tellin’ about the explosion; and then, sir, I fair went off me dot.”

They were back on the pavement, within sight of the limousine, when the boy said this. Narkom brought the car to his side with one excited word, and fairly wrenched open the door.

“To Charing Cross station—as fast as you can streak it!” he said, excitedly. “The last train for the night boat leaves at nine sharp. Catch it, if you rack the motor to pieces.”

“Crumbs! A minute and a half!” commented Lennard, as he consulted the clock dial beside him; then, just waiting for Narkom and Dollops to jump into the vehicle, he brought her head round with a swing, threw back the clutch, and let her go full tilt.

But even the best of motors cannot accomplish the impossible. The gates were closed, the signal down, the last train already outside the station when they reached it, and not even the mandate of the law might hope to stay it or to call it back.

“Plenty of petrol?” Narkom faced round as he spoke and looked at Lennard.

“Plenty, sir.”

“All right—beat it! The boat sails from Dover at eleven. I’ve got to catch it. Understand?”

“Yes, sir. But you could wire down and have her held over till we get there, Superintendent.”

“Not for the world! She must sail on time; I must get aboard without being noticed—without some persons I’m following having the least cause for suspicion. Beat that train—do you hear me?—beat it! I want to get there and get aboard that boat before the others arrive. Do you want any further incentive than that? If so, here it is for you: Mr. Cleek’s in Paris! Mr. Cleek’s in danger!”

“Mr. Cleek? God’s truth! Hop in sir, hop in! I’ll have you there ahead of that train if I dash down the Admiralty Pier in flames from front to rear. Just let me get to the open road, sir, and I’ll show you something to make you sit up.”

He did. Once out of the track of all traffic, and with the lights of the city well at his back, he strapped his goggles tight, jerked his cap down to his eyebrows, and leaned over the wheel.

“For Mr. Cleek—do you hear?” he said, addressing the car as if it were a human being. “Now, then, show what you’re made of! There! Take your head! Now go, you vixen! GO!”

There was a sudden roar, a sudden leap; then the car shot forward as though all the gales of all the universe were sweeping it on, and the wild race to the coast began.

Narkom jerked down the blinds, turned on the light, and flung open the locker, as they pounded on.

“Dip in. Get something that can be made to fit you,” he said to Dollops. “We can’t risk any of those fellows identifying you as the chap who was hanging round the station to-night. Toss me over that wig—the gray one—in the far corner there. God knows what we’re on the track of, but if it leads to Cleek I’ll follow it to the end of time!” Then, lifting his voice until it sounded above the motor’s roar, “Faster, Lennard, faster!” he called. “Give it to her! give it to her! We’ve got to beat that train if it kills us!”

They did beat it. The engine’s light was not even in sight when the bright glare of the moon on the Channel’s waters flashed up out of the darkness before them; nor was the sound of the train’s coming even faintly audible as yet, when, a few minutes later, the limousine swung down the incline and came to a standstill within a stone’s throw of the entrance to the pier, at whose extreme end the packet lay, with gangways down and fires up and her huge bulk rising and falling with the movements of the waves.

“Beat her, you see, sir,” said Lennard, chuckling as he got down and opened the door for the superintendent to alight. “Better not go any nearer, sir, with the car. There’s a chap down there standing by the gangplank and he seems interested in us from the way he’s watching. Jumped up like a shot and came down the gangplank the instant he heard us coming. Better do the rest of the journey afoot, sir, and make a pretence of paying me—as if I was a public taxi. What’ll I do? Stop here until morning?”

“Yes. Put up at a garage; and if I don’t return by the first boat, get back to town. Meantime, cut off somewhere and ring up the Yard. Tell ’em where I’ve gone. Now then, Dollops, come on!”

A moment later the limousine had swung off into the darkness and disappeared, and what might properly have been taken for a couple of English curates on their way to a Continental holiday moved down the long pier between the glimmering and inadequate lamps to the waiting boat. But long before they reached it the figure at the gangplank—the tall, erect figure of a man whom the most casual observer must have recognized as one who had known military training—had changed its alert attitude and was sauntering up and down as if, when they came nearer and the light allowed him to see what they were, he had lost all interest in them and their doings. Narkom gave the man a glance from the tail of his eye as they went up the gangplank and boarded the boat, and brief as that glance was, it was sufficient to assure him of two things: First, that the man was not only strikingly handsome but bore himself with an air which spoke of culture, birth, position; second, that he was a foreigner, with the fair hair and the slightly hooked nose which was so characteristic of the Mauravanians.

With Dollops at his side, Narkom slunk aft, where the lights were less brilliant and the stern of the boat hung over the dark, still waters, and pausing there, turned and looked back at the waiting man.

A French sailor was moving past in the darkness. He stopped the man and spoke to him.

“Tell me,” he said, slipping a shilling into the fellow’s hand, “do you happen to know who that gentleman is, standing on the pier there?”

“Yes, m’sieur. He is equerry to his Majesty King Ulric of Mauravania. He has crossed with us frequently during his Majesty’s sojourn in Paris.”

“Gawd’s truth, sir,” whispered Dollops, plucking nervously at the superintendent’s sleeve as the sailor, after touching his cap with his forefinger, passed on. “Apaches at one end and them Mauravanian johnnies at the other! I tell you they’re a-workin’ hand in hand for some reason—workin’ against him!”

Narkom lifted a silencing hand and turned to move away where there would be less likelihood of anything they might say being overheard; for at that moment a voice had sounded and from a most unusual quarter. Unnoticed until now, a fisher’s boat, which for some time had been nearing the shore, swept under the packet’s stern and grazed along the stone front of the pier.

“Voila, m’sieur,” said, in French, the man who sailed it. “Have I not kept my word and brought your excellency across in safety and with speed?”

“Yes,” replied the passenger whom the fisher addressed. He spoke in perfect French, and with the smoothness of a man of the better class. “You have done well indeed. Also it was better than waiting about at Calais for the morning boat. I can now catch the very first train to London. Fast is she? There is your money. Adieu!”

Then came the sound of some one leaving the boat and scrambling up the water stairs, and hard on the heels of it the first whistle of the coming train. Narkom, glancing round, saw a slouching, ill-clad fellow whose appearance was in distinct contrast with his voice and manner of speaking, come into view upon the summit of the pier. His complexion was sallow, his matted hair seemed to have gone for years uncombed; a Turkish fez, dirty and discoloured, was on his head, and over his arm hung several bits of tapestry and shining stuff which betokened his calling as that of a seller of Oriental draperies.

This much Narkom saw and would have gone on his way, giving the fellow no second thought, but that a curious thing happened. Moving away toward the footpath which led from the pier to the town, the pedler caught sight suddenly of the man standing at the gangplank; he halted abruptly, looked round to make sure that no one was watching, then, without more ado, turned round suddenly on his heel, walked straightway to the gangplank and boarded the boat. The Mauravanian took not the slightest heed of him, nor he of the Mauravanian. Afterward, when the train had arrived, Narkom thought he knew why. For the present he was merely puzzled to understand why this dirty, greasy Oriental pedler who had been at the pains to cross the Channel in a fisher’s boat should do so for the apparent purpose of merely going back on the packet to Calais.

By this time the train had arrived, the pier was alive with people, porters were running back and forth with luggage, and there was bustle and confusion everywhere. Narkom looked along the length of the vessel to the teeming gangway. The Mauravanian was still there, alert as before, his fixed eyes keenly watching.

A crowd came stringing along, bags and bundles done up in gaudy handkerchiefs in their hands, laughing, jostling, jabbering together in low-class French.

“Here they are, guv’ner—the Apaches!” said Dollops in a whisper. “That’s the lot, sir. Keep your eye on them as they come aboard, and if they are with him—Crumbs! Not a sign; not a blessed one!” For the Apaches, stringing up the gangplank by twos and threes and coming within brushing distance of the waiting man, passed on as the Oriental pedler had passed on, taking no notice of him, nor he of them, nor yet of how, as they advanced, the pedler slouched forward and slipped into the thick of them.

“By James! one of them—that’s what the fellow is!” said Narkom, as he observed this. “If during the voyage the Mauravanian speaks to one man of the lot——”

He stopped and sucked in his breath and let the rest of the sentence go by default. For of a sudden there had come into sight upon the pier a dapper little French dandy, fuzzy of moustache, mincing of gait, with a flower in his buttonhole and a shining “topper” on his beautifully pomaded head; and it came upon Narkom with a shock of remembrance that he had seen this selfsame living fashion plate pass by Scotland Yard twice that very day!

Onward he came, this pretty monsieur, with his jaunty air and his lovely “wine-glass waist,” onward, and up the gangway and aboard the packet; and there the Mauravanian still stood, looking out over the crowd and taking no more heed of him than he had taken of anybody else. But with the vanishing of this exquisite, to whom he had paid no heed, his alertness and his interest seemed somehow to evaporate; for he turned now and again to watch the sailors and the longshoremen at their several duties, and strolled leisurely aboard and stood lounging against the rail of the lower deck when the call of “All ashore that’s going!” rang through the vessel’s length, and was still lounging there when the packet cast off her mooring, and swinging her bows round in the direction of France, creamed her way out into the Channel and headed for Calais.

A wind, unnoticed in the safe shelter of the harbour, played boisterously across the chopping waves as the vessel forged outward, sending clouds of spray sweeping over the bows and along the decks, and such passengers as refrained from seeking the shelter of the saloon and smoke-room sought refuge by crowding aft.

“Come!” whispered Narkom, tapping Dollops’ arm. “We can neither talk nor watch here with safety in this crowd. Let us go ‘forrard.’ Better a drenching in loneliness than shelter with a crowd like this. Come along!”

The boy obeyed without a murmur, following the larger and heavier built “curate” along the wet decks to the deserted bows, and finding safe retreat with him there in the dark shadow cast by a tarpaulin-covered lifeboat. From this safe shelter they could, by craning their necks, get a half view of the interior of the smoke-room through its hooked-back door; and their first glance in that direction pinned their interest, for the pretty “Monsieur” was there, smoking a cigarette and sipping now and again at a glass of absinthe which stood on a little round table at his elbow. But of the Mauravanian or the Apaches or of the Oriental pedler, there was neither sight nor sound, nor had there been since the vessel started.

“What do you make of it?” queried Narkom, when at the end of an hour the dim outlines of the French coast blurred the clear silver of the moonlit sky. “Have we come on a wild goose chase, do you think? What do you suppose has become of the Apaches and of the pedler chap?”

“Travellin’ second class,” said Dollops, after stealing out and making a round of the vessel and creeping back into the shadow of the lifeboat unseen. “Pallin’ with ’em, he is, sir. Makin’ a play of sellin’ ’em things for their donahs—for the sake of appearances. One of ’em, he is; and if either that Frenchy or that Mauravanian johnny is mixed up with them—lay low! Smeller to the ground, sir, and eyes and ears wide open! We’ll know wot’s wot now!”

For of a sudden the Mauravanian had come into view far down the wet and glistening promenade deck and was whistling a curious, lilting air as he strolled along past the open door of the smoke-room.

Just the mere twitch of “Monsieur’s” head told when he heard that tune. He finished his absinthe, flung aside his cigarette, and strolled leisurely out upon the deck. The Mauravanian was at the after end of the promenade—a glance told him that. He set his face resolutely in the direction of the bows and sauntered leisurely along. He moved on quietly, until he came to the very end of the covered promenade where the curving front of the deckhouse looked out upon the spray-washed forward deck, then stopped and planted his back against it and stood silently waiting, not ten feet distant from where Narkom and Dollops crouched.

A minute later the Mauravanian, continuing what was to all appearances a lonely and aimless promenade round the vessel, came abreast of that spot and of him.

And then, the deluge!

“Monsieur” spoke out—guardedly, but in a clear, crisp tone that left no room for doubt upon one point, at least.

“Mon ami, it is done—it is accomplished,” that crisp voice said. “You shall report that to his Majesty’s ministers. Voila, it is done!”

“It is not done!” replied the Mauravanian, in a swift, biting, emphatic whisper. “You jump to conclusions too quickly. Here! take this. It is an evening paper. The thing was useless—he was not there!”

“Not there! Grande Dieu!”

“Sh-h! Take it—read it. I will see you when we land. Not here—it is too dangerous. Au revoir!”

Then he passed on and round the curve of the deckhouse to the promenade on the other side; and “Monsieur,” with the paper hard shut in the grip of a tense hand, moved fleetly back toward the smoke-room.

But not unknown any longer.

“Gawd’s truth—a woman!” gulped Dollops in a shaking voice.

“No, not a woman—a devil!” said Narkom through his teeth. “Margot, by James! Margot, herself! And what is he—what is Cleek?—that a king should enter into compact with a woman to kill him? Margot, dash her! Well, I’ll have you now, my lady—yes, by James, I will!”

“Guv’ner! Gawd’s truth, sir, where are you going?”

“To the operator in charge of the wireless—to send a message to the chief of the Calais police to meet me on arrival!” said Narkom in reply. “Stop where you are. Lay low! Wait for me. We’ll land in a dozen minutes’ time. I’ll have that Jezebel and her confederates and I’ll rout out Cleek and get him beyond the clutches of them if I tear up all France to do it.”

“Gawd bless you, sir, Gawd bless you and forgive me!” said Dollops with a lump in his throat and a mist in his eyes. “I said often you was a sosidge and a muff, sir, but you aren’t—you’re a man!”

Narkom did not hear. He was gone already—down the deck to the cabin of the wireless operator. In another moment he had passed in, shut the door behind him, and the Law at sea was talking to the Law ashore through the blue ether and across the moonlit waves.

It was ten minutes later. The message had gone its way and Narkom was back in the lifeboat’s shadow again, and close on the bows the lamps of Calais pier shone yellow in the blue-and-silver darkness. On the deck below people were bustling about and making for the place where the gangplank was to be thrust out presently, and link boat and shore together. On the quay, customs officials were making ready for the coming inspection, porters were scuttling about in their blue smocks and peaked caps, and, back of all, the outlines of Calais Town loomed, shadowy and grim through the crowding gloom.

The loneliness of the upper deck offered its attractions to the Mauravanian and to Margot, and in the emptiness of it they met again—within earshot of the lifeboat where Narkom and the boy lay hidden—for one brief word before they went ashore.

“So, you have read: you understand how useless it was?” the Mauravanian said, joining her again at the deckhouse, where she stood with the crumpled newspaper in her hand. “His Majesty’s purse cannot be lightened of all that promised sum for any such bungle as this. Speak quickly; where may we go to talk in safety? I cannot risk it here—I will not risk it in the train. Must we wait until we reach Paris, mademoiselle? Or have you a lair of your own here?”

“I have ‘lairs,’ as you term them, in half the cities of France, Monsieur le Comte,” she answered with a vicious little note of resentment in her voice. “And I do not work for nothing—no, not I! I paid for my adherence to his Majesty’s Prime Minister and I intend to be paid for my services to his Majesty’s self, even though I have this once failed. It must be settled, that question, at once and for all—now—to-night.”

“I guessed it would be like that,” he answered, with a jerk of his shoulders. “Where shall it be, then? Speak quickly. They are making the landing and I must not be seen talking with you after we go ashore. Where, then?”

“At the Inn of the Seven Sinners—on the Quai d’Lorme—a gunshot distant. Any cocher will take you there.”

“Is it safe?”

“All my ‘lairs’ are safe, monsieur. It overhangs the water. And if strangers come, there is a trap with a bolt on the under side. One way: to the town and the sewers and forty other inns. The other: to a motor boat, always in readiness for instant use. You could choose for yourself should occasion come. You will not find the place shut—my ‘lairs’ never are. A password? No, there is none—for any but the Brotherhood. Nor will you need one. You remember old Marise of the ‘Twisted Arm’ in Paris? Well, she serves at the Seven Sinners now. I have promoted Madame Serpice to the ‘Twisted Arm’. She will know you, will Marise. Say to her I am coming shortly. She and her mates will raise the roof with joy, and—la! la! The gangway is out. They are calling all ashore. Look for me and my lads close on your heels when you arrive. Au revoir.”

“Au revoir,” he repeated, and slipping by went below and made his way ashore.

She waited that he might get well on his way—that none might by any possibility associate them—then turning, went down after him and out to the pier, where her crew were already forgathering; and when or how she passed the word to them that it was not Paris to-night but the Inn of the Seven Sinners, neither Narkom nor Dollops could decide, close as they came on after her, for she seemed to speak to no one.

“No Inn of the Seven Sinners for you to-night, my lady, if my friend M. Ducroix has attended to that wireless message properly,” muttered Narkom as he followed her. “Look sharp, Dollops, and if you see a Sergeant de Ville let me know. They’ve no luggage, that lot, and, besides, they are natives, so they will pass the customs in a jiffy. Hullo! there goes that pedler chap—and without his fez or his draperies, b’gad! Through the customs like a flash, the bounder! And there go the others, too. And she after them—she, by James! God! Where are Ducroix and his men? Why aren’t they here?”—looking vainly about for some sign of the Chief of Police. “I can’t do anything without him—here, on foreign soil. Why in heaven’s name doesn’t the man come?”

“Maybe he hasn’t had time, guv’ner—maybe he wasn’t on hand when the message arrived,” hazarded Dollops. “It’s not fifteen minutes all told since it was dispatched. So if——”

“There she goes! there she goes! Passed, and through the customs in a wink, the Jezebel!” interposed Narkom, in a fever of excitement, as he saw Margot go by the inspector at the door and walk out into the streets of the city. “Lord! if she slips me now——”

“She shan’t!” cut in Dollops, jerking down his hat brim and turning up his collar. “Wait here till the cops come. I’ll nip out after her and see where she goes. Like as not the cops’ll know the place when you mention it; but if they don’t—watch out for me; I’ll come back and lead ’em.”

Then he moved hurriedly forward, passed the inspector, and was gone in a twinkling.

For ten wretched minutes after he, too, had passed the customs and was at liberty to leave, Narkom paced up and down and fretted and fumed before a sound of clanking sabres caught his ear and, looking round, he saw M. Ducroix enter the place at the head of a detachment of police. He hurried to him and in a word made himself known.

“Ten million pardons, m’sieur; but I was absent when the message he shall be deliver,” exclaimed Ducroix in broken English. “I shall come and shall bring my men as soon as he shall be receive. M’sieur, who shall it be this great criminal you demand of me to arrest? Is he here?”

“No, no. A moment, Ducroix. Do you know a place called the Inn of the Seven Sinners?”

“Perfectly. It is but a stone’s throw distant—on the Quai d’Lorme.”

“Come with me to it, then. I’ll make you the most envied man in France, Ducroix: I’ll deliver into your hands that witch of the underworld, Margot, the Queen of the Apaches!”

Ducroix’s face lit up like a face transfigured.

“M’sieur!” he cried. “That woman? You can give me that woman? You know her? You can recognize her? But, yes, I remember! You shall have her in your hands once in your own country, but she shall slip you, as she shall slip everybody!”

“She won’t slip you, then, I promise you that!” said Narkom. “Reward and glory, both shall be yours. I have followed her across the channel, Ducroix. I know where she is to be found for a certainty. She is at the Inn of the Seven Sinners. Just take me there and I’ll turn the Jezebel over to you.”

Ducroix needed no urging. The prospect of such a capture made him fairly beside himself with delight. In twenty swift words he translated this glorious news to his men—setting them as wild with excitement as he was himself—then with a sharp, “Come, m’sieur!” he turned on his heel and led the breathless race for the goal.

Halfway down the narrow, ink-black street that led to the inn they encountered Dollops pelting back at full speed.

“Come on, guv’ner, come on, all of you!” he broke out as he came abreast of them. “She’s there—they’re all there—kickin’ up Meg’s diversions, sir, and singin’ and dancin’ like mad. And, sir, he’s there, too—the pedler chap! I see him come up and sneak in with the rest. Come on! This way, all of you.”

If they had merely run before, they all but flew now; for this second assurance that Margot, the great and long-sought-for Margot, was actually within their reach served to spur every man to outdo himself; so that it was but a minute or two later when they came in sight of the inn and bore down upon it in a solid phalanx. And then—just then—when another minute would have settled everything—the demon of mischance chose to play them a scurvy trick.

All they knew of it was that an Apache coming out of the building for some purpose of his own looked up and saw them, then faced round and bent back in the doorway; that of a sudden a very tornado of music and laughter and singing and dancing rolled out into the night, and that when they came pounding up to the doorway, the fellow was lounging there serenely smoking; and, inside, his colleagues were holding a revel wild enough to wake the dead.

In the winking of an eye he was carried off his feet and swept on by this sudden inrush of the law; the door clashed open, the little slatted barrier beyond was knocked aside, and the police were pouring into the room and running headlong into a spinning mass of wild dancers.

The band ceased suddenly as they appeared, the dancers cried out as if in a panic of alarm, and at Ducroix’s commanding “Surrender in the name of the Law!” a fat woman behind the bar flung up her arms and voiced a despairing shriek.

“Soul of misfortune! for what, m’sieur—for what?” she cried. “It is no sin to laugh and dance. We break no law, my customers and I. What is it you want that you come in upon us like this?”

Ah, what indeed? Not anything that could be seen. A glance round the room showed nothing and no one but these suddenly disturbed dancers, and of Margot and the Mauravanian never a sign.

“M’sieur!” began Ducroix, turning to Narkom, whose despair was only too evident, and who, in company with Dollops, was rushing about the place pushing people here and there, looking behind them, looking in all the corners, and generally deporting themselves after the manner of a couple of hounds endeavouring to pick up a lost scent. “M’sieur, shall it be an error, then?”

Narkom did not answer. Of a sudden, however, he remembered what had been said of the trap and, pushing aside a group of girls standing over it, found it in the middle of the floor.

“Here it is—this is the way she got out!” he shouted. “Bolted, by James! bolted on the under side! Up with it, up with it—the Jezebel got out this way.” But though Ducroix and Dollops aided him, and they pulled and tugged and tugged and pulled, they could not budge it one inch.

“M’sieur, no—what madness! He is not a trap—? no, he is not a trap at all!” protested old Marise. “It is but a square where the floor broke and was mended! Mother of misfortune, it is nothing but that.”

What response Narkom might have made was checked by a sudden discovery. Huddling in a corner, feigning a drunken sleep, he saw a man lying with his face hidden in his folded arms. It was the pedler. He pounced on the man and jerked up his head before the fellow could prevent it or could dream of what was about to happen.

“Here’s one of them at least!” he cried, and fell to shaking him with all his force. “Here’s one of Margot’s pals, Ducroix. You shan’t go empty-handed after all.”

A cry of consternation fluttered through the gathering as he brought the man’s face into view. Evidently they were past masters of the art of acting, these Apaches, for one might have sworn that every man and every woman of them was taken aback by the fellow’s presence.

“Mother of Miracles! who shall the man be?” exclaimed Marise. “Messieurs, I know him not. I have not seen him in all my life before. Cochon, speak up! Who are you, that you come in like this and get a respectable widow in trouble, dog? Eh?”

The man made a motion first to his ears, then to his mouth, then fell to making movements in the sign language, but spoke never a word.

“La, la! he is a deaf mute, m’sieur,” said Ducroix. “He hears not and speaks not, poor unfortunate.”

“Oh, doesn’t he?” said Narkom with an ugly laugh. “He spoke well enough a couple of hours back, I promise you. My young friend here and I heard him when he paid off the fisherman who had carried him over to Dover just before he sneaked aboard the packet to come back with Margot and the Mauravanian.”

The eyes of the Apaches flew to the man’s face with a sudden keen interest which only they might understand; but he still stood, wagging his great head either drunkenly or idiotically, and pointing to ears and mouth.

“Lay hold of him—run him in!” said Narkom, whirling him across into the arms of a couple of stalwart Sergeants de Ville. “I’ll go before the magistrate and lay a charge against him in the morning that will open your eyes when you hear it. One of a bloodthirsty, dynamiting crew, the dog! Lay fast hold of him! don’t let him get away on your lives! God! to have lost that woman! to have lost her after all!”

It was a sore blow, certainly, but there was nothing to do but to grin and bear it; for to seek Margot at any of the inns which might communicate with the sewer trap, or to hunt for her and a motor boat on the dark water’s surface, was in very truth like looking for a needle in a haystack, and quite as hopeless. He therefore, decided to go, for the rest of the night, to the nearest hotel; and waiting only to see the pedler carried away in safe custody, and promising to be on hand when he was brought up before the local magistrate in the morning, took Dollops by the arm and dejectedly went his way.

The morning saw him living up to his promise; and long before the arrival of the magistrate or, indeed, before the night’s harvest of prisoners was brought over from the lockup and thrust into the three little “detention rooms” below the court, he was there with Dollops and Ducroix, observing with wonder that groups of evil-looking fellows of the Apache breed were hanging round the building as he approached, and that later on others of the same kidney slipped in and took seats in the little courtroom and kept constantly whispering one to the other while they waited for the morning session to begin.

“Gawd’s truth, guv’ner, look at ’em—the ’ole blessed place is alive with the bounders,” whispered Dollops. “Wot do you think they are up to, sir? Makin’ a rush and settin’ the pedler free when he comes up before the Beak? There’s twenty of ’em waitin’ round the door if there’s one.”

Narkom made no reply. The arrival of the magistrate focussed all eyes on the bench and riveted his attention with the rest.

The proceedings opened with all the trivial cases first—the night’s sweep of the dragnet: drunks and disorderlies, vagrants and pariahs. One by one these were brought in and paid their fines and went their way, unheeded; for this part of the morning’s proceedings interested nobody, not even the Apaches. The list was dragged through monotonously; the last blear-eyed sot—a hideous, cadaverous, monkey-faced wretch whose brutal countenance sickened Narkom when he shambled up in his filthy rags—had paid his fine, and gone his way, and there remained now but a case of attempted suicide to be disposed of before the serious cases began. This latter occupied the magistrate’s time and attention for perhaps twenty minutes or so, then that, too, was disposed of; and then a voice was heard calling out for the unknown man arrested last night at the Inn of the Seven Sinners to be brought forward.

In an instant a ripple of excitement ran through the little court. The Apache fraternity sat up within and passed the word to the Apache fraternity without, and these stood at attention—close-lipped, dark-browed, eager, like human tigers waiting for the word to spring. Every eye was fixed on the door through which that pretended mute should be led in; but although others had come at the first call, he came not even at the second, and the magistrate had just issued an impatient command for the case to be called yet a third time, when there was a clatter of hasty footsteps and the keeper of the detention rooms burst into the court pale as a dead man and shaking in every nerve.

“M’sieur le Juge!” he cried out, extending his two arms. “Soul of Misfortunes, how shall I tell? He is not there—he is gone—he is escape, that unknown one. When I shall unlock the room and call for Jean Lamareau, the drunkard, at the case before the last, there shall come out of the dimness to me what I shall think is he and I shall bring him here and he shall be fine and dismissed. But, m’sieur, he shall not be Jean Lamareau after all! I shall go now and call for the unknown and I shall get no answer; I shall go in and make of the place light, and there he shall be, that real Jean Lamareau—stripped of his clothes, choked to unconsciousness, alone on the floor, and the other shall have paid his fine and gone!”

A great cry went up, a wild confusion filled the court. The Apaches within rose and ran with the news to the Apaches without; and these, joining forces, scattered and ran through the streets in the direction the escaped prisoner had been seen to take.

But through it all Narkom sat there squeezing his hands together and laughing in little shaking gusts that had a heart throb wavering through them; for to him this could mean but one thing.

“Cleek!” he said, leaning down and shrilling a joyous whisper into Dollops’ ear. “But one man in all the world could have done that thing—but one man in all the world would have dared. It was he—it was Cleek! God bless his bully soul!”

“Amen, sir,” said Dollops, swallowing something; then he rose at Narkom’s bidding and followed him outside.

A minute later a gamin brushing against them put out a grimy hand and said whiningly:

“Boulogne, messieurs. Quai des Anges. Third house back from the waterside; in time for the noon boat across to Folkestone. Give me two francs, please. The monsieur said you would if I said that to you when you came out.”

The two francs were in his hand almost as he ceased speaking, and in less than a minute later a fiacre was whirling Narkom and Dollops off to the railway station and the next outgoing train to Boulogne. It was still short of midday when they arrived at the Quai des Anges and made their way to the third house back from the waterside—a little tavern with a toy garden in front and a sort of bowered arcade behind—and there under an almond tree, with a cigarette between his fingers and a bunch of flowers in his buttonhole, they came upon him at last.

“Guv’ner! Oh, Gawd bless you, guv’ner, is it really you again?” said Dollops, rushing up to him like a girl to a lover.

“Yes, it is really I,” he answered with one of his easy laughs. Then he rose and held out his hand as Narkom advanced; and for a moment or two they stood there palm in palm, saying not one word, making not one sound.

“Nearly did for me, my overzealous friend,” said Cleek, after a time. “I could have kicked you when you turned up with that lot at the Seven Sinners. Another ten minutes and I’d have had that in my hands which would have compelled his Majesty of Mauravania to give Irma his liberty and to abdicate in his consort’s favour. But you came, you dear old blunderer; and when I looked up and recognized you—well, let it pass! I was on my way back to London when I chanced to see Count Waldemar on watch beside the gangway of the Calais packet—he had slipped me, the hound, slipped me in Paris—and I saw my chance to run him down. Gad! it was a close squeak that, when you let those Apaches know that I had just crossed over from this side and had gone aboard the packet because I saw Waldemar. They guessed then. I couldn’t speak there, and I dared not speak in the court. They were there, on every hand—inside the building and out—waiting to knife me the instant they were sure. I had to get out—I had to get past them, and—voila.”

He turned and laid an affectionate hand on Dollops’ shoulder and laughed softly and pleasantly.

“New place all right, old chap? Garden doing well, and all my traps in shipshape order, eh?”

“Yes, sir, Gawd bless you, sir. Everything, sir, everything.”

“Good lad! Then we’ll be off to them. My holiday is over, Mr. Narkom, and I’m going back into harness again. You want me, I see, and I said I’d come if you did. Give me a few days’ rest in old England, dear friend, and then—out with your riddles and I’m your man again.”

CHAPTER I

“This will be it, I think, sir,” said Lennard, bringing the limousine to a halt at the head of a branching lane, thick set with lime and chestnut trees between whose double wall of green one could catch a distant glimpse of the river, shining golden in the five o’clock light.

“Look! see! There’s the sign post—‘To the Sleeping Mermaid’—over to the left there.”

“Anything pinned to it or hanging on it?” Mr. Narkom spoke from the interior of the vehicle without making even the slightest movement toward alighting, merely glancing at a few memoranda scribbled on the back of a card whose reverse bore the words “Taverne Maladosie Quai des Anges, Boulogne,” printed upon it in rather ornate script.

“A bit of rag, a scrap of newspaper, a fowl’s feather—anything? Look sharp!”

“No, sir, not a thing of any sort that I can see from here. Shall I nip over and make sure?”

“Yes. Only don’t give away the fact that you are examining it in case there should be anybody on the lookout. If you find the smallest thing—even a carpet tack—attached to the post, get back into your seat at once and cut off townward as fast as you can make the car travel.”

“Right you are, sir,” said Lennard, and forthwith did as he had been bidden. In less than ninety seconds, however, he was back with word that the post’s surface was as smooth as your hand and not a thing of any sort attached to it from top to bottom.

Narkom fetched a deep breath of relief at this news, tucked the card into his pocket, and got out immediately.

“Hang round the neighbourhood somewhere and keep your ears open in case I should have to give the signal sooner than I anticipate,” he said; then twisted round on his heel, turned into the tree-bordered lane, and bore down in the direction of the river.

When still short, by thirty yards or so, of its flowered and willow-fringed brim, he came upon a quaint little diamond-paned, red-roofed, low-eaved house set far back from the shore, with a garden full of violets and primroses and flaunting crocuses in front of it, and a tangle of blossoming things crowding what once had been a bower-bordered bowling green in the rear.

“Queen Anne, for a ducat!” he commented as he looked at the place and took in every detail from the magpie in the old pointed-topped wicker cage hanging from a nail beside the doorway to the rudely carved figure of a mermaid over the jutting, flower-filled diamond-paned window of the bar parlour with its swinging sashes and its oak-beam sill, shoulder high from the green, sweet-smelling earth.

“How the dickens does he ferret out these places, I wonder? And what fool has put his money into a show like this in these days of advancement and enterprise? Buried away from the line of traffic ashore and shut in by trees from the river. Gad! they can’t do a pound’s worth of business in a month at an out-of-the-way roost like this!”

Certainly, they were not doing much of it that day; for, as he passed through the taproom, he caught a glimpse of the landlady dozing in a deep chair by the window, and of the back of a by-no-means-smartly-dressed barmaid—who might have been stone deaf for all notice she took of his entrance—standing on a stool behind the bar dusting and polishing the woodwork of the shelves. The door of the bar parlour was open, and through it Narkom caught a glimpse of a bent-kneed, stoop-shouldered, doddering old man shuffling about, filling match-boxes, wiping ash trays, and carefully refolding the rumpled newspapers that lay on the centre table. That he was not the proprietor, merely a waiter, the towel over his arm, the shabby old dress coat, the baggy-kneed trousers would have been evidence enough without that added by the humble tasks he was performing.

“Poor devil! And at his age!” said Narkom to himself, as he noted the pale, hopeless-looking, time-worn face and the shuffling, time-bent body; then, moved by a sense of keen pity, he walked into the room and spoke gently to him.

“Tea for two, uncle—at a quarter-past five to the tick if you can manage it,” he said, tossing the old man a shilling. “And say to the landlady that I’d like to have exclusive use of this room for an hour or two, so she can charge the loss to my account if she has to turn any other customers away.”

“Thanky, sir. I’ll attend to it at once, sir,” replied the old fellow, pocketing the coin, and moving briskly away to give the order. In another minute he was back again, laying the cloth and setting out the dishes, while Narkom improved the time of waiting by straying round the room and looking at the old prints and cases of stuffed fishes that hung on the oak-panelled walls.

It still wanted a minute or so of being a quarter-past five when the old man bore in the tea tray itself and set it upon the waiting table; and, little custom though the place enjoyed, Narkom could not but compliment it upon its promptness and the inviting quality of the viands served.

“You may go,” he said to the waiter, when the man at length bowed low and announced that all was ready; then, after a moment, turning round and finding him still shuffling about, “I say you may go!” he reiterated, a trifle sharply. “No, don’t take the cosy off the teapot—leave it as it is. The gentleman I am expecting has not arrived yet, and—look here! will you have the goodness to let that cosy alone and to clear out when I tell you? By James! if you don’t——Hullo! What the dickens was that?”

“That” was undoubtedly the tingle of a handful of gravel against the panes of the window.

“A sign that the coast is quite clear and that you have not been followed, dear friend,” said a voice—Cleek’s voice—in reply. “Shall we not sit down? I’m famishing.” And as Narkom turned round on his heel—with the certainty that no one had entered the room since the door was closed and he himself before it—the tea cosy was whipped off by a hand that no longer shook, the waiter’s bent figure straightened, his pale, drawn features writhed, blent, settled into placid calmness and—the thing was done!

“By all that’s wonderful—Cleek!” blurted out Narkom, delightedly, and lurched toward him.

“Sh-h-h! Gently, gently, my friend,” he interposed, putting up a warning hand. “It is true Dollops has signalled that there is no one in the vicinity likely to hear, but although the maid is both deaf and dumb, recollect that Mrs. Condiment is neither; and I have no more wish for her to discover my real calling than I ever had.”

“Mrs. Condiment?” repeated Narkom, sinking his voice, and speaking in a tone of agitation and amazement. “You don’t mean to tell me that the old woman you employed as housekeeper when you lived in Clarges Street is here?”

“Certainly; she is the landlady. Her assistant is that same deaf and dumb maid-of-all-work who worked with her at the old house, and is sharing with her a sort of ‘retirement’ here. ‘Captain Burbage’ set the pair of them up in business here two days after his departure from Clarges Street and pays them a monthly wage sufficient to make up for any lack of ‘custom.’ All that they are bound to do is to allow a pensioner of the captain’s—a poor old half-witted ex-waiter called Joseph—to come and go as he will and to gratify a whim for waiting upon people if he chooses to do so. What’s that? No, the ‘captain’ does not live here. He and his henchman, Dollops, are supposed to be out of the country. Mrs. Condiment does not know where he lives—nor will she ever be permitted to do so. You may, some day, perhaps——that is for the future to decide; but not at present, my dear friend; it is too risky.”

“Why risky, old chap? Surely I can come and go in disguise as I did in the old days, Cleek? We managed secret visits all right then, remember.”

“Yes—I know. But things have changed, Mr. Narkom. You may disguise yourself as cleverly as you please, but you can’t disguise the red limousine. It is known and it will be followed; so, until you can get another of a totally different colour and appearance I’ll ring you up each morning at the Yard and we can make our appointments over your private wire. For the present we must take no great risks. In the days that lie behind, dear friend, I had no ‘tracker’ to guard against but Margot, no enemies but her paltry crew to reckon with and to outwit. In these, I have many. They have brains, these new foes; they are rich, they are desperate, they are powerful; and behind them is the implacable hate and the malignant hand of——No matter! You wouldn’t understand.”

“I can make a devilish good guess, then,” rapped in Narkom, a trifle testily, his vanity a little hurt by that final suggestion, and his mind harking back to the brief enlightening conversation between Margot and Count Waldemar that night on the spray-swept deck of the Channel packet. “Behind them is ‘the implacable hate and the malignant hand’ of the King of Mauravania!”

“What utter rubbish!” Cleek’s jeering laughter fairly stung, it was so full of pitying derision. “My friend, have you taken to reading penny novelettes of late? A thief-taker and a monarch! An ex-criminal and a king! I should have given you credit for more common sense.”

“It was the King of Mauravania’s equerry who directed that attempt to kill you by blowing up the house in Clarges Street.”

“Very possibly. But that does not incriminate his royal master. Count Waldemar is not only equerry to King Ulric of Mauravania, but is also nephew to its ex-Prime Minister—the gentleman who is doing fifteen years’ energetic labour for the British Government as a result of that attempt to trap me with his witless ‘Silver Snare.’”

“Oh!” said Narkom, considerably crestfallen; then grasped at yet another straw with sudden, breathless eagerness. “But even then the head of the Mauravanian Government must have had some reason for wishing to ‘wipe you out,’” he added, earnestly. “There could be no question of avenging an uncle’s overthrow at that time. Cleek!”—his voice running thin and eager, his hand shutting suddenly upon his famous ally’s arm—“Cleek, trust me! Won’t you? Can’t you? As God hears me, old chap, I’ll respect it. Who are you? What are you, man?”

“Cleek,” he made answer, calmly drawing out a chair and taking his seat at the table. “Cleek of Scotland Yard; Cleek of the Forty Faces—which you will. Who should know that better than you whose helping hand has made me what I am?”

“Yes, but before, Cleek? What were you, who were you, in the days before?”

“The Vanishing Cracksman—a dog who would have gone on, no doubt, to a dog’s end but for your kind hand and the dear eyes of Ailsa Lorne. Now give me my tea—I’m famishing—and after that we’ll talk of this new riddle that needs unriddling for the honour of the Yard. Yes, thanks, two lumps, and just a mere dash of milk. Gad! It’s good to be back in England, dear friend; it’s good, it’s good!”

CHAPTER II

“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.”