Cleek of Scotland Yard: Detective Stories

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.

“Tell me,” he said, slipping a shilling into the fellow’s hand, “do you happen to know who that gentleman is, standing on the pier there?”

“Yes, m’sieur. He is equerry to his Majesty King Ulric of Mauravania. He has crossed with us frequently during his Majesty’s sojourn in Paris.”

“Gawd’s truth, sir,” whispered Dollops, plucking nervously at the superintendent’s sleeve as the sailor, after touching his cap with his forefinger, passed on. “Apaches at one end and them Mauravanian johnnies at the other! I tell you they’re a-workin’ hand in hand for some reason – workin’ against him!”

Narkom lifted a silencing hand and turned to move away where there would be less likelihood of anything they might say being overheard; for at that moment a voice had sounded and from a most unusual quarter. Unnoticed until now, a fisher’s boat, which for some time had been nearing the shore, swept under the packet’s stern and grazed along the stone front of the pier.

“Voila, m’sieur,” said, in French, the man who sailed it. “Have I not kept my word and brought your excellency across in safety and with speed?”

“Yes,” replied the passenger whom the fisher addressed. He spoke in perfect French, and with the smoothness of a man of the better class. “You have done well indeed. Also it was better than waiting about at Calais for the morning boat. I can now catch the very first train to London. Fast is she? There is your money. Adieu!”

Then came the sound of some one leaving the boat and scrambling up the water stairs, and hard on the heels of it the first whistle of the coming train. Narkom, glancing round, saw a slouching, ill-clad fellow whose appearance was in distinct contrast with his voice and manner of speaking, come into view upon the summit of the pier. His complexion was sallow, his matted hair seemed to have gone for years uncombed; a Turkish fez, dirty and discoloured, was on his head, and over his arm hung several bits of tapestry and shining stuff which betokened his calling as that of a seller of Oriental draperies.

This much Narkom saw and would have gone on his way, giving the fellow no second thought, but that a curious thing happened. Moving away toward the footpath which led from the pier to the town, the pedler caught sight suddenly of the man standing at the gangplank; he halted abruptly, looked round to make sure that no one was watching, then, without more ado, turned round suddenly on his heel, walked straightway to the gangplank and boarded the boat. The Mauravanian took not the slightest heed of him, nor he of the Mauravanian. Afterward, when the train had arrived, Narkom thought he knew why. For the present he was merely puzzled to understand why this dirty, greasy Oriental pedler who had been at the pains to cross the Channel in a fisher’s boat should do so for the apparent purpose of merely going back on the packet to Calais.

By this time the train had arrived, the pier was alive with people, porters were running back and forth with luggage, and there was bustle and confusion everywhere. Narkom looked along the length of the vessel to the teeming gangway. The Mauravanian was still there, alert as before, his fixed eyes keenly watching.

A crowd came stringing along, bags and bundles done up in gaudy handkerchiefs in their hands, laughing, jostling, jabbering together in low-class French.

“Here they are, guv’ner – the Apaches!” said Dollops in a whisper. “That’s the lot, sir. Keep your eye on them as they come aboard, and if they are with him – Crumbs! Not a sign; not a blessed one!” For the Apaches, stringing up the gangplank by twos and threes and coming within brushing distance of the waiting man, passed on as the Oriental pedler had passed on, taking no notice of him, nor he of them, nor yet of how, as they advanced, the pedler slouched forward and slipped into the thick of them.

“By James! one of them – that’s what the fellow is!” said Narkom, as he observed this. “If during the voyage the Mauravanian speaks to one man of the lot – ”

He stopped and sucked in his breath and let the rest of the sentence go by default. For of a sudden there had come into sight upon the pier a dapper little French dandy, fuzzy of moustache, mincing of gait, with a flower in his buttonhole and a shining “topper” on his beautifully pomaded head; and it came upon Narkom with a shock of remembrance that he had seen this selfsame living fashion plate pass by Scotland Yard twice that very day!

Onward he came, this pretty monsieur, with his jaunty air and his lovely “wine-glass waist,” onward, and up the gangway and aboard the packet; and there the Mauravanian still stood, looking out over the crowd and taking no more heed of him than he had taken of anybody else. But with the vanishing of this exquisite, to whom he had paid no heed, his alertness and his interest seemed somehow to evaporate; for he turned now and again to watch the sailors and the longshoremen at their several duties, and strolled leisurely aboard and stood lounging against the rail of the lower deck when the call of “All ashore that’s going!” rang through the vessel’s length, and was still lounging there when the packet cast off her mooring, and swinging her bows round in the direction of France, creamed her way out into the Channel and headed for Calais.

A wind, unnoticed in the safe shelter of the harbour, played boisterously across the chopping waves as the vessel forged outward, sending clouds of spray sweeping over the bows and along the decks, and such passengers as refrained from seeking the shelter of the saloon and smoke-room sought refuge by crowding aft.

“Come!” whispered Narkom, tapping Dollops’ arm. “We can neither talk nor watch here with safety in this crowd. Let us go ‘forrard.’ Better a drenching in loneliness than shelter with a crowd like this. Come along!”

The boy obeyed without a murmur, following the larger and heavier built “curate” along the wet decks to the deserted bows, and finding safe retreat with him there in the dark shadow cast by a tarpaulin-covered lifeboat. From this safe shelter they could, by craning their necks, get a half view of the interior of the smoke-room through its hooked-back door; and their first glance in that direction pinned their interest, for the pretty “Monsieur” was there, smoking a cigarette and sipping now and again at a glass of absinthe which stood on a little round table at his elbow. But of the Mauravanian or the Apaches or of the Oriental pedler, there was neither sight nor sound, nor had there been since the vessel started.

“What do you make of it?” queried Narkom, when at the end of an hour the dim outlines of the French coast blurred the clear silver of the moonlit sky. “Have we come on a wild goose chase, do you think? What do you suppose has become of the Apaches and of the pedler chap?”

“Travellin’ second class,” said Dollops, after stealing out and making a round of the vessel and creeping back into the shadow of the lifeboat unseen. “Pallin’ with ’em, he is, sir. Makin’ a play of sellin’ ’em things for their donahs – for the sake of appearances. One of ’em, he is; and if either that Frenchy or that Mauravanian johnny is mixed up with them – lay low! Smeller to the ground, sir, and eyes and ears wide open! We’ll know wot’s wot now!”

For of a sudden the Mauravanian had come into view far down the wet and glistening promenade deck and was whistling a curious, lilting air as he strolled along past the open door of the smoke-room.

Just the mere twitch of “Monsieur’s” head told when he heard that tune. He finished his absinthe, flung aside his cigarette, and strolled leisurely out upon the deck. The Mauravanian was at the after end of the promenade – a glance told him that. He set his face resolutely in the direction of the bows and sauntered leisurely along. He moved on quietly, until he came to the very end of the covered promenade where the curving front of the deckhouse looked out upon the spray-washed forward deck, then stopped and planted his back against it and stood silently waiting, not ten feet distant from where Narkom and Dollops crouched.

A minute later the Mauravanian, continuing what was to all appearances a lonely and aimless promenade round the vessel, came abreast of that spot and of him.

And then, the deluge!

“Monsieur” spoke out – guardedly, but in a clear, crisp tone that left no room for doubt upon one point, at least.

“Mon ami, it is done – it is accomplished,” that crisp voice said. “You shall report that to his Majesty’s ministers. Voila, it is done!”

“It is not done!” replied the Mauravanian, in a swift, biting, emphatic whisper. “You jump to conclusions too quickly. Here! take this. It is an evening paper. The thing was useless – he was not there!”

“Not there! Grande Dieu!”

“Sh-h! Take it – read it. I will see you when we land. Not here – it is too dangerous. Au revoir!”

Then he passed on and round the curve of the deckhouse to the promenade on the other side; and “Monsieur,” with the paper hard shut in the grip of a tense hand, moved fleetly back toward the smoke-room.

But not unknown any longer.

“Gawd’s truth – a woman!” gulped Dollops in a shaking voice.

“No, not a woman – a devil!” said Narkom through his teeth. “Margot, by James! Margot, herself! And what is he – what is Cleek? – that a king should enter into compact with a woman to kill him? Margot, dash her! Well, I’ll have you now, my lady – yes, by James, I will!”

“Guv’ner! Gawd’s truth, sir, where are you going?”

“To the operator in charge of the wireless – to send a message to the chief of the Calais police to meet me on arrival!” said Narkom in reply. “Stop where you are. Lay low! Wait for me. We’ll land in a dozen minutes’ time. I’ll have that Jezebel and her confederates and I’ll rout out Cleek and get him beyond the clutches of them if I tear up all France to do it.”

“Gawd bless you, sir, Gawd bless you and forgive me!” said Dollops with a lump in his throat and a mist in his eyes. “I said often you was a sosidge and a muff, sir, but you aren’t – you’re a man!”

Narkom did not hear. He was gone already – down the deck to the cabin of the wireless operator. In another moment he had passed in, shut the door behind him, and the Law at sea was talking to the Law ashore through the blue ether and across the moonlit waves.

It was ten minutes later. The message had gone its way and Narkom was back in the lifeboat’s shadow again, and close on the bows the lamps of Calais pier shone yellow in the blue-and-silver darkness. On the deck below people were bustling about and making for the place where the gangplank was to be thrust out presently, and link boat and shore together. On the quay, customs officials were making ready for the coming inspection, porters were scuttling about in their blue smocks and peaked caps, and, back of all, the outlines of Calais Town loomed, shadowy and grim through the crowding gloom.

The loneliness of the upper deck offered its attractions to the Mauravanian and to Margot, and in the emptiness of it they met again – within earshot of the lifeboat where Narkom and the boy lay hidden – for one brief word before they went ashore.

“So, you have read: you understand how useless it was?” the Mauravanian said, joining her again at the deckhouse, where she stood with the crumpled newspaper in her hand. “His Majesty’s purse cannot be lightened of all that promised sum for any such bungle as this. Speak quickly; where may we go to talk in safety? I cannot risk it here – I will not risk it in the train. Must we wait until we reach Paris, mademoiselle? Or have you a lair of your own here?”

“I have ‘lairs,’ as you term them, in half the cities of France, Monsieur le Comte,” she answered with a vicious little note of resentment in her voice. “And I do not work for nothing – no, not I! I paid for my adherence to his Majesty’s Prime Minister and I intend to be paid for my services to his Majesty’s self, even though I have this once failed. It must be settled, that question, at once and for all – now – to-night.”

“I guessed it would be like that,” he answered, with a jerk of his shoulders. “Where shall it be, then? Speak quickly. They are making the landing and I must not be seen talking with you after we go ashore. Where, then?”

“At the Inn of the Seven Sinners – on the Quai d’Lorme – a gunshot distant. Any cocher will take you there.”

“Is it safe?”

“All my ‘lairs’ are safe, monsieur. It overhangs the water. And if strangers come, there is a trap with a bolt on the under side. One way: to the town and the sewers and forty other inns. The other: to a motor boat, always in readiness for instant use. You could choose for yourself should occasion come. You will not find the place shut – my ‘lairs’ never are. A password? No, there is none – for any but the Brotherhood. Nor will you need one. You remember old Marise of the ‘Twisted Arm’ in Paris? Well, she serves at the Seven Sinners now. I have promoted Madame Serpice to the ‘Twisted Arm’. She will know you, will Marise. Say to her I am coming shortly. She and her mates will raise the roof with joy, and – la! la! The gangway is out. They are calling all ashore. Look for me and my lads close on your heels when you arrive. Au revoir.”

“Au revoir,” he repeated, and slipping by went below and made his way ashore.

She waited that he might get well on his way – that none might by any possibility associate them – then turning, went down after him and out to the pier, where her crew were already forgathering; and when or how she passed the word to them that it was not Paris to-night but the Inn of the Seven Sinners, neither Narkom nor Dollops could decide, close as they came on after her, for she seemed to speak to no one.

“No Inn of the Seven Sinners for you to-night, my lady, if my friend M. Ducroix has attended to that wireless message properly,” muttered Narkom as he followed her. “Look sharp, Dollops, and if you see a Sergeant de Ville let me know. They’ve no luggage, that lot, and, besides, they are natives, so they will pass the customs in a jiffy. Hullo! there goes that pedler chap – and without his fez or his draperies, b’gad! Through the customs like a flash, the bounder! And there go the others, too. And she after them – she, by James! God! Where are Ducroix and his men? Why aren’t they here?” – looking vainly about for some sign of the Chief of Police. “I can’t do anything without him– here, on foreign soil. Why in heaven’s name doesn’t the man come?”

“Maybe he hasn’t had time, guv’ner – maybe he wasn’t on hand when the message arrived,” hazarded Dollops. “It’s not fifteen minutes all told since it was dispatched. So if – ”

“There she goes! there she goes! Passed, and through the customs in a wink, the Jezebel!” interposed Narkom, in a fever of excitement, as he saw Margot go by the inspector at the door and walk out into the streets of the city. “Lord! if she slips me now – ”

“She shan’t!” cut in Dollops, jerking down his hat brim and turning up his collar. “Wait here till the cops come. I’ll nip out after her and see where she goes. Like as not the cops’ll know the place when you mention it; but if they don’t – watch out for me; I’ll come back and lead ’em.”

Then he moved hurriedly forward, passed the inspector, and was gone in a twinkling.

For ten wretched minutes after he, too, had passed the customs and was at liberty to leave, Narkom paced up and down and fretted and fumed before a sound of clanking sabres caught his ear and, looking round, he saw M. Ducroix enter the place at the head of a detachment of police. He hurried to him and in a word made himself known.

“Ten million pardons, m’sieur; but I was absent when the message he shall be deliver,” exclaimed Ducroix in broken English. “I shall come and shall bring my men as soon as he shall be receive. M’sieur, who shall it be this great criminal you demand of me to arrest? Is he here?”

“No, no. A moment, Ducroix. Do you know a place called the Inn of the Seven Sinners?”

“Perfectly. It is but a stone’s throw distant – on the Quai d’Lorme.”

“Come with me to it, then. I’ll make you the most envied man in France, Ducroix: I’ll deliver into your hands that witch of the underworld, Margot, the Queen of the Apaches!”

Ducroix’s face lit up like a face transfigured.

“M’sieur!” he cried. “That woman? You can give me that woman? You know her? You can recognize her? But, yes, I remember! You shall have her in your hands once in your own country, but she shall slip you, as she shall slip everybody!”

“She won’t slip you, then, I promise you that!” said Narkom. “Reward and glory, both shall be yours. I have followed her across the channel, Ducroix. I know where she is to be found for a certainty. She is at the Inn of the Seven Sinners. Just take me there and I’ll turn the Jezebel over to you.”

Ducroix needed no urging. The prospect of such a capture made him fairly beside himself with delight. In twenty swift words he translated this glorious news to his men – setting them as wild with excitement as he was himself – then with a sharp, “Come, m’sieur!” he turned on his heel and led the breathless race for the goal.

Halfway down the narrow, ink-black street that led to the inn they encountered Dollops pelting back at full speed.

“Come on, guv’ner, come on, all of you!” he broke out as he came abreast of them. “She’s there – they’re all there – kickin’ up Meg’s diversions, sir, and singin’ and dancin’ like mad. And, sir, he’s there, too – the pedler chap! I see him come up and sneak in with the rest. Come on! This way, all of you.”

If they had merely run before, they all but flew now; for this second assurance that Margot, the great and long-sought-for Margot, was actually within their reach served to spur every man to outdo himself; so that it was but a minute or two later when they came in sight of the inn and bore down upon it in a solid phalanx. And then – just then – when another minute would have settled everything – the demon of mischance chose to play them a scurvy trick.

All they knew of it was that an Apache coming out of the building for some purpose of his own looked up and saw them, then faced round and bent back in the doorway; that of a sudden a very tornado of music and laughter and singing and dancing rolled out into the night, and that when they came pounding up to the doorway, the fellow was lounging there serenely smoking; and, inside, his colleagues were holding a revel wild enough to wake the dead.

In the winking of an eye he was carried off his feet and swept on by this sudden inrush of the law; the door clashed open, the little slatted barrier beyond was knocked aside, and the police were pouring into the room and running headlong into a spinning mass of wild dancers.

The band ceased suddenly as they appeared, the dancers cried out as if in a panic of alarm, and at Ducroix’s commanding “Surrender in the name of the Law!” a fat woman behind the bar flung up her arms and voiced a despairing shriek.