DETECTIVE HAMILTON CLEEK: 8 Thriller Classics in One Premium Edition. Thomas W. Hanshew

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      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’ СКАЧАТЬ