May had smiled itself out and June had blushed itself in—the most wondrous June, in Cleek’s eyes, the world had ever seen. For the long waiting was over, the old order of things had changed, the little house in the meadowlands had its new tenant, and she was in England again.

It did not fret him, as it otherwise might have done, that he and Dollops had been obliged to go back to the old business of lodging a week here and a week there in the heart of the town, rather than within reach of the green trees and the fragrant meadows he loved, for always there was the chance of stealing out to meet her in the glorious country-lands when the evening came, or of a whole day with her in the woods and fields when a whole day could be spared; and to a nature such as his these things were recompense enough.

Not that many days could be spared at present, for, although nothing had been seen or heard of Waldemar or the Apaches for weeks on end, these were strenuous times for Mr. Narkom and the forces of the Yard, and what with the Coronation of his Majesty close at hand, and every train discharging hordes of visitors into London day in and day out, and crooks of every description—homemade as well as imported—from the swell mobsman down to the common lag making it the Mecca of an unholy pilgrimage—they had their hands filled to overflowing, and were worked to their utmost capacity.

The result, so far as Cleek was concerned, scarcely needs recording. It was not in him to be guilty of that form of snobbishness which is known as “standing on his dignity” at such a time—when the man who had stood his friend was in need of help, indeed, might lose his official head if he were found wanting in such a crisis—so that, naturally, he came to Mr. Narkom’s assistance and took a hand in the “sorting out” process in the manner—yes, and at times, in the uniform, too—of the ordinary constable, and proved of such invaluable aid in the matter of scenting out undesirables and identifying professional crooks that things speedily fell into a more orderly shape, and he had just begun to look forward to a resumption of those happy days of wandering in the woods with Ailsa when out of the lull of coming peace there fell an official bombshell.

It took the form of a cablegram—a belated cipher communication from the police of America to the police of Great Britain—which on being decoded, ran thus:

Now as this little exchange of courtesies relative to the movements of the noted figures of the underworld is of almost daily occurrence between the police systems of the two countries in question, Mr. Narkom had only to consult his Code Book to get at the gist of the matter; and when he did get at it, his little fat legs bent under him like a couple of straws, his round little body collapsed into the nearest chair, and he came within a hair’s breadth of having a “stroke.”

For the Tunisian, as it happened, had docked and discharged her passengers exactly thirteen hours before, so that it was safe to declare that the persons to whom those numerals alluded had unquestionably slipped unchallenged past the guardians of the port, and were safely housed at this minute within the intricacies of that vast brick-and-mortar puzzle, London; yet here they were registered in the Code Book, thus:

Within forty-five minutes after Mr. Narkom had mastered these facts he had rushed with them to Cleek, and there was a vacancy in the list of special constables from that time forth.

“Slipped in, have they?” said Cleek when he heard. “Well, be sure of one thing, Mr. Narkom: they will not have gone to a hotel—at least in the beginning—they are far too sharp for that. Neither will they house themselves in any hole and corner where their sallying forth in fine feathers to make their little clean-up would occasion comment and so lead to a clue. Indeed, I shouldn’t be surprised if they were far too shrewd to remain together in any place, but will elect to operate singly, appear to have no connection whatsoever, while they are here, and to have a sort of ‘happy reunion’ elsewhere after their little job has been pulled off successfully. But in any case, when we find them—if we ever do—depend upon it they will be located in some quiet, respectable, secluded district, one of the suburbs, for instance, and living as circumspectly as the most prudish of prying neighbours could desire.

“Let us then go in for a series of ‘walking tours’ about the outlying districts, Mr. Narkom, and see if we can’t stumble over something that will be worth while. It is true I’ve never met nor even seen Hemmingway, but I fancy I should know if a man were made up or not for the rÔle in which he appears. I did, however, brush elbows with Dutch Ella once. It was that time I went over to New York on that affair of the Amsterdam diamonds. You remember? When I ‘split’ the reward with the fellow from Mulberry Street, whose daughter wanted to study music as a profession and he couldn’t afford to let her. I hobnobbed with some acquaintances of the—er—old days, over there, and went one night to the big French Ball at the Academy of Music, where, my companion of the night told me, there would be ‘a smashing big clean-up, as half the swell crooks in town would be there—for business.’

“They were, I dare say, for he kept pointing out this one and that to me and saying, ‘That’s so and so!’ as they danced past us. I shouldn’t know any of them again, so far as looks are concerned, for the annual French Ball in New York is a masked ball, as you are, perhaps, aware; and I shouldn’t know ‘Dutch Ella’ any better than the rest, but for one thing—although I danced with her.”

“Danced with her, Cleek? Danced?”

“Yes. For the purpose of ‘getting a line on her shape,’ so to speak, for possible future reference. I couldn’t see her face, for she was masked to the very chin; but there’s a curious, tumor-like lump, as big as a hen’s egg, just under her right shoulder-blade, and there’s the scar of an acid burn on the back of her left hand that she’ll carry to her grave. I shall know that scar if ever I see it again. And if by any chance I should run foul of a woman bearing one like it, and that woman should prove to have also a lump under the right shoulder-blade——Come along! Let’s get out and see if we can find one. ‘Time flies,’ as the anarchist said when he blew up the clock factory. Let’s toddle.”They “toddled” forthwith, but on a fruitless errand, as it proved. Nevertheless, they “toddled” again the next day as hopefully as ever; and the next after that, and the next again, yet at the end of the fourth they were no nearer any clue to the whereabouts of Dutch Ella and Diamond Nick than they had been in the beginning. If, as Cleek sometimes fancied, they had not merely passed through England on their way to the Continent, but were still here, housed like hawks in a safe retreat from which they made predatory excursions under the very noses of the police, there was nothing to signalize it. No amazing jewel theft, no affair of such importance as one engineered by them would be sure to be, had as yet been reported to the Yard; and for all clue there was to their doings or their whereabouts one might as well have set out to find last summer’s roses or last winter’s snow as hope to pick it up by any method as yet employed.

Thus matters stood when on the morning of the fifth day Cleek elected to make Hampstead Heath and its environments the scene of their operations, and at nine o’clock set forth in company with the superintendent to put them into force in that particular locality, with the result that by noontime they found themselves in the thick of as pretty a riddle as they had fallen foul of in many a day.

It came about in this way:

Turning out of St. Uldred’s road into a quiet, tree-shaded avenue running parallel with the historic heath, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Vale of Health district, they looked up to discover that there was but one building in the entire length of the thoroughfare—a large, imposing residence set back from the road proper, and encircled by a high stone wall with curiously wrought iron gates leading into the enclosure—and that before that building two copper-skinned, turbaned, fantastically clothed Hindus were doing sentry duty in a manner peculiar unto themselves—the one standing as motionless as a bronze image before the barred gateway, and the other pacing up and down before him like a clockwork toy that had been well wound up.

“The Punjab for a ducat!” declared Cleek as he caught sight of them. “And the insignia of the Ranee of Jhang, or I’m a Dutchman. I knew the old girl was over here for the coronation, to be sure, but I’d no idea of stumbling over some of her attendants in this quarter, by Jip! Not putting up out here of late, is she, Mr. Narkom?”

“No. She’s still at Kensington. And what the dickens those johnnies are keeping guard over that place for beats us. Know it, don’t you? It’s the residence of Sir Mawson Leake—Leake & Leake, you know: Jewellers, Bond Street. Fine old place, isn’t it? Inherited it from his father, as he did the business, and——What’s that? No, not a young man—not a young man by any means. Grown children—two sons. One by his first wife, and——Hullo! that’s a rum trick, by James! See that, did you, old chap?”

“See what? The manner in which that clockwork johnnie stopped in his tracks and eyed us as we passed?”

“No. The woman. All muffled up to the eyes—and in weather like this. Just stepped out of the house door, saw those two niggers, and then bolted back indoors as if the Old Boy was after her.”

“Caught sight of us, very likely. You know what high-class Brahmans are where Europeans are concerned. It will be the old Ranee herself, three to one, paying a morning visit to the jeweller in reference to some of her amazing gems. That would explain the presence of the sentries. She travels nowhere without a guard.”

“To be sure,” admitted the superintendent, and walked on, dropping the matter from his mind entirely.

Ten minutes later, however, it was brought back to it in a rather startling manner; for, upon rounding the end of the thoroughfare along which they had been walking, and coming abreast of an isolated building (which was clearly the stable of the house they had recently passed), they were surprised to hear the sound of a muffled cry within, to catch a whiff of charcoal smoke as the door was flung wildly open by the same muffled female Mr. Narkom had observed previously, and something more than merely startled to have her rush at them the instant she caught sight of them, crying out distractedly:

“I was afraid of it, I knew it! I knew that he would! Oh, help me, gentlemen—help me for the love of God! I can’t lift him. I can’t drag him out—he is too heavy for me! My husband! In there! In there! He’ll die if you don’t get him out!”

They understood then, and for the first time, what she was driving at, and rushed past her into the stable—into what had once been designed for a coachman’s bedroom—to find an apartment literally reeking with the fumes that poured out from a charcoal furnace on the floor, and beside that the body of a man—inert, crumpled up, fast sinking into that hopeless state of unconsciousness which precedes asphyxiation by charcoal.

In the winking of an eye Cleek had caught up the deadly little firebrick furnace and sent it crashing through the plugged-up window into the grounds behind, letting a current of pure air rush through the place; then, while Narkom, with one hand over his mouth and nostrils, and the other swinging a pair of handcuffs by their chain, was doing a like thing with another window in the front wall, he gathered up the semi-conscious man, swung him sacklike over his shoulder, carried him out into the roadway, and propped him up against the side of the stable, while he chafed his hands and smacked his cheeks and, between times, fanned him with his hatbrim and swore at him for a “weak-backed, marrowless thing to call itself a man, and yet go in for the poltroon’s trick of suicide!”

The woman was still there, squeezing her hands and sobbing hysterically, but although she had not as yet uncovered her face, it did not need that to attest the fact that she was no Hindu, but white like the man she had spoken of as her husband, and at the very first words she uttered when she saw that he was beyond danger, both Cleek and Narkom knew them for what they were—Sir Mawson and Lady Leake.

“Mawson, how could you!” she said reproachfully, going to him the very instant he was able to get on his feet, and folding him to her in an agonized embrace. “I suspected it when you left the house—but, oh, how could you?”

“I don’t know,” he made answer, somewhat shamefacedly yet with a note of agony in his voice that made one pity him in spite of all. “But it seemed too horrible a disgrace to be lived through. And now I shall have to face it! Oh, my God, Ada, it is too much to ask a man to bear! They are there, on guard, those Hindus, protecting me and mine until the Ranee’s steward comes to receive the Ladder of Light, as promised, at——”

“Sh-h!” she struck in warningly, remembering the presence of the others, and clapping her hand over his mouth to stay any further admission; for she had heard Cleek repeat after her husband—but with a soft significant whistle—“The Ladder of Light!” and supplement that with, “Well, I’m dashed!” and turned round on him instantly with a forced smile upon her lips but the look of terror still lingering in her fast-winking eyes.

“It is rude of me, gentlemen, to forget to thank you for your kind assistance, and I ask your forgiveness,” she said. “I owe you many, many thanks and I am endeavouring to express them. But as this is merely a little family affair I am sure you will understand.”It was a polite dismissal. Narkom pivoted his little fat body on his heel, and prepared to take it. Cleek didn’t.

“Your pardon, but the Ladder of Light can never be regarded as a family affair in any English household whatsoever,” he said, blandly. “I can give you its exact history if you wish it. It is a necklace said to have once been the property of the Queen of Sheba and worn by her at the court of King Solomon. It is made up of twelve magnificent steel-white diamonds, cut semi-square, and each weighing twenty-eight and one half carats. They are joined together by slender gold links fitting into minute holes pierced through the edge of each stone. It is valued at one million pounds sterling and is the property of the Ranee of Jhang, who prizes it above all other of her marvellous and priceless jewels. She is not a pleasant old lady to cross, the Ranee. She would be a shrieking devil if anything were to happen to that necklace, your ladyship.”

She had been slowly shrinking from him as the history of the Ladder of Light proceeded; now she leaned back against her husband, full of surprise and despairing terror, and stared and stared in a silence that was only broken by little fluttering breaths of alarm.

“It is uncanny!” she managed to say at last. “You know of that? Of the necklace? You know even me?—us?—and yet I have not uncovered my face nor given you my name. Are you then gifted with clairvoyance, Mr.—Mr.——”

“Cleek,” he gave back, making her a polite bow. “Cleek is the name, Lady Leake. Cleek of Scotland Yard.”

“That man? Dear God! that amazing man?” she cried, her whole face lighting up, her drooping figure springing erect, revitalized.

“At your ladyship’s service,” he replied. “We are out this morning—Superintendent Narkom and I—in quest of what is probably the most skilful and audacious pair of jewel thieves in the world—just the one particular pair in all the universe to whom a loot so valuable as the Ladder of Light would offer the strongest kind of an appeal. So, if by any chance, something has occurred which threatens the safety of that amazing necklace—and you and Sir Mawson are in a position to know the facts——Come! Take me into your confidence, and—perhaps! Who knows?”

Before he had fairly finished speaking, Lady Leake caught up his hand, and, holding it fast squeezed in both her own, looked up at him with bright, wet eyes.

“It must have been heaven itself that sent you to us this morning,” she cried. “If any man in the world can help us, I believe in my soul that you are the man. Mawson, you hear, dearest? It is Mr. Cleek. The wonderful Mr. Cleek. Why didn’t we think of him before? Tell him, Mawson—tell him everything, my dear.”

Sir Mawson acted upon the suggestion instantly.

“Mr. Cleek, I beg, I implore you to come to our assistance!” he exclaimed in a very transport of excitement. “Lady Leake is right. If any man can, you are he! You ask if anything has happened with regard to that accursed necklace and if I can give you any information on the subject? To both questions, yes! It is gone! It is lost! It is stolen!”

“What’s that? Stolen? The Ladder of Light? Good heavens! When? Where? How?”

“Yesterday—from my keeping! From my house! And God have mercy on me, I have every reason to believe that the thief is my eldest son!”