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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