Cleek of Scotland Yard Part 4

"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 n.o.body, 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 pa.s.sed 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! G.o.d 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 b.u.t.tonhole, 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 pa.s.s! 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 sc.r.a.p 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 antic.i.p.ate," 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 d.i.c.kens 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 ash.o.r.e 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 pa.s.sed 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 d.i.c.kens 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 a.s.sistant 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."