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CLEEK OF SCOTLAND YARD


[Illustration: "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 Caesar. 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 fete_, 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