Cleek of Scotland Yard: Detective Stories

“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.