“I’m bothered if I know,” returned Narkom helplessly. “Gad! I’m at my wits’ end. We seem to be as far as ever from any clue to that devilish pair and unless you can suggest something——” He finished the sentence by taking off his hat, and looking up at Cleek hopefully, and patting his bald spot with a handkerchief which diffused a more or less agreeable odour of the latest Parisian perfume.

“H’m!” said Cleek, reflectively. “We might cross the Heath and have a look round Gospel Oak, if you like. It’s a goodish bit of a walk and I’ve no idea that it will result in anything, I frankly admit, but it is one of the few places we have not tried, so we might have a go at that if you approve.”

“By James! yes. The very thing. There’s always a chance, you know, so long as it’s a district we’ve never done. Gospel Oak it is, then. And look here—I’ll tell you what. You just stop here a bit and wait for me, old chap, while I nip back to the house and ask Sir Mawson’s permission to use his telephone—to ring up the Yard as usual, you know, and tell them in what quarter we’re operating, in case there should be reason to send anybody out to find me in a hurry. Back with you in no time and then we’ll be off to Gospel Oak like a shot.”

“Right you are. I’ll stop here under the trees and indulge in a few comforting whiffs while you are about it. Get along!”

Narkom paused a moment to grip his cuff between finger tips and palm, and run his coat sleeve round the shiny surface of his “topper,” then shook out his handkerchief and returned it to his pocket, jerked down his waistcoat and gave it one or two sharp flicks with the backs of his nails, and before a second diffusion of scent had evaporated, or the whimsical twist it called to Cleek’s lips had entirely vanished, the scene presented nothing more striking than an ordinary man leaning back against a tree and engaged in scratching a match on the side of an ordinary wooden matchbox. The Yard’s Gentleman had gone.

It was full ten minutes later when he lurched into view again, coming down the garden path at top speed, with one hand on his hat’s crown and the other holding the flapping skirts of his frock coat together, and Cleek could tell from the expression of his round, pink face that something of importance had occurred.

It had—and he blurted it out in an outburst of joyous excitement the moment they again stood together. The search for Dutch Ella and Diamond Nick was at an end. The police of Paris had cabled news of their location and arrest that very morning in the French capital, and would hold them under lock and key until the necessary preliminaries were over, relative to their deportation as undesirables, and their return to Canada.

“The news arrived less than an hour ago,” he finished, “and that wideawake young beggar, Lennard, thought it was so important that I ought to know it as soon as possible, so he hopped on to the limousine and put off as fast as he could streak it. He’s up here in this district now—this minute—hunting for us. Come on! let’s go and find him. By James! it’s a ripping end to the business—what?”

“That depends,” replied Cleek without much enthusiasm. “Which limousine is Lennard using to-day? The new blue one?”

“Cinnamon, no! That won’t be delivered until the day after to-morrow. So it will be the good old red one, of course. Will it matter?”

“Come and see!” said Cleek, swinging out of the grounds into the public highway again, and walking fast. “At all events, an ounce of certainty is worth a pound of suspicion, and this little faux pas will decide the question. They are no fools, those Apaches; and Waldemar knows how to wait patiently for what he wants.”

“Waldemar? The Apaches? Good lud, man, what are you talking about? You are not worrying over that business again, I hope. Haven’t I told you over and over again that we couldn’t find one trace of them anywhere in London—that they cleared out bag and baggage after that fruitless trip to Yorkshire? The whole truth of the matter, to my way of thinking, is that they awoke then to the fact that you had ‘dropped’ to their being after you, and knowing you weren’t to be caught napping, gave it up as a bad job.”

“Or altered their tactics and set out to follow some one else.”

“Some one else? Good lud, don’t talk rubbish. What good would following some one else do if they were after you?”

“Come and see,” said Cleek again, and would say no more, but merely walked on faster than ever—up one thoroughfare and down another—flicking eager glances to right and to left in search of the red limousine.

In the thick of the High Street they caught sight of it at last, tooling about aimlessly, while Lennard kept constant watch on the crowd of shoppers that moved up and down the pavement.

“Cut ahead and stop it and we shall see what we shall see, Mr. Narkom. I’ll join you presently,” said Cleek, and he stood watching while the superintendent forged ahead in the direction of the limousine; and continued watching even after he saw him reach it and bring it to a halt, and stand at the kerb talking earnestly with Lennard.

But of a sudden the old crooked smile looped up the corner of his mouth; he stood at attention for a moment or two, breathing hard through his nostrils, and moving not at all until, abruptly starting into activity, he walked rapidly down the pavement and joined Narkom.

“Well?” queried the superintendent, looking up at him quizzically. “Come to any decision, old chap?”

“Yes—and so will you in a second. Don’t turn—don’t do anything hastily. Just look across the street, at the jeweller’s window, opposite, and tell me what you think of it.”

Narkom’s swift, sidelong glance travelled over the distance like a gunshot, arrowed through the small collection of persons gathered about the shop window inspecting the display of trinkets, and every nerve in his body jumped.

“Good God! Waldemar!” he said, under his breath.

“Exactly. I told you he knew how to wait. Now look farther along the kerb on this side. The closed carriage waiting there. It was dawdling along and keeping pace with him when I saw it first. The man on the box is a fellow named Serpice—an Apache. Chut! Be still, will you?—and look the other way. They will do me no harm—here. It isn’t their game, and, besides, they daren’t. It is too public, too dangerous. It will be done, when it is done, in the dark—when I’m alone, and none can see. And Waldemar will not be there. He will direct, but not participate. But it won’t be to-day nor yet to-night, I promise you. I shall slip them this time if never again.”

The superintendent spoke, but the hard hammering of his heart made his voice scarcely audible.

“How?” he asked. “How?”

“Come and see!” said Cleek for yet a third time. Then with an abruptness and a swiftness that carried everything before it, he caught Narkom by the arm, swept him across the street, and without hint or warning tapped Waldemar upon the shoulder.

“Ah, bon jour, Monsieur le Comte,” he said airily, as the Mauravanian swung round and looked at him, blanching a trifle in spite of himself. “So you are back in England, it seems? Ah, well, we like you so much—tell his Majesty when next you report—that this time we shall try to keep you here.”

Taken thus by assault, the man had no words in which to answer, but merely wormed his way out of the gathering about him and, panic stricken, obliterated himself in the crowd of pedestrians teeming up and down the street.

“You reckless devil!” wheezed Narkom as he was swept back to the limousine in the same cyclonic manner he had been swept away from it. “You might have made the man savage enough to do something to you, even in spite of the publicity, by such a proceeding as that.”

“That is precisely what I had hoped to do, my friend, but you perceive he is no fool to be trapped into that. We should have had some excuse for arresting him if he had done a thing of that sort, some charge to prefer against him, whereas, as matters stand, there’s not one we can bring forward that holds good in law or that we could prove if our lives depended upon it. You see now, I hope, Mr. Narkom, why you have seen nothing of him lately?”

“No—why?”

“You have not used the red limousine, and he has been lying low ready to follow that, just as I suspected he would. If he couldn’t trace where Cleek goes to meet the red limousine, clearly then the plan to be adopted must be to follow the red limousine and see where it goes to meet Cleek, and then to follow that much-wanted individual when he parts from you and makes his way home. That is the thing the fellow is after. To find out where I live and to ‘get’ me some night out there. But, my friend, ‘turn about is fair play’ the world over, and having had his inning at hunting me, I’m going in for mine at hunting him. I’ll get him; I’ll trap him into something for which he can be turned over to the law—make no mistake about that.”

“My hat! What do you mean to do?”

“First and foremost, make my getaway out of the present little corner,” he replied, “and then rely upon your assistance in finding out where the beggar is located. We’re not done with him even for to-day. He will follow—either he or Serpice: perhaps both—the instant Lennard starts off with us.”

“You are going back with us in the limousine, then?”

“Yes—part of the way. Drive on, Lennard, until you can spot a plain-clothes man, then give him the signal to follow us. At the first station on the Tube or the Underground, pull up sharp and let me out. You, Mr. Narkom, alight with me and stand guard at the station entrance while I go down to the train. If either Waldemar or an Apache makes an attempt to follow, arrest him on the spot, on any charge you care to trump up—it doesn’t matter so that it holds him until my train goes—and as soon as it has gone, call up your plain-clothes man, point out Serpice to him, and tell him to follow and to stick to the fellow until he meets Waldemar, if it takes a week to accomplish it, and then to shadow his precious countship and find out where he lives. Tell him for me that there’s a ten-pound note in it for him the moment he can tell me where Waldemar is located; and to stick to his man until he runs him down. Now, then, hop in, Mr. Narkom, and let’s be off. The other chap will follow, be assured. All right, Lennard. Let her go!”

Lennard ‘let her go’ forthwith, and a quarter of an hour later saw the programme carried out in every particular, only that it was not Waldemar who made an attempt to follow when the limousine halted at the Tube station and Cleek jumped out and ran in (the count was far too shrewd for that); it was a rough-looking Frenchman who had just previously hopped out of a closed carriage driven by a fellow countryman, only to be nabbed at the station doorway by Narkom, and turned over to the nearest constable on the charge of pocket picking.

The charge, however, was so manifestly groundless that half a dozen persons stepped forward and entered protest; but the superintendent was so pig-headed that by the time he could be brought to reason, and the man was again at liberty to take his ticket and go down in the lift to the train, the platform was empty, the train gone, and Cleek already on his way.

A swift, short flight under the earth’s surface carried him to another station in quite another part of London; a swift, short walk thence landed him at his temporary lodgings in town, and four o’clock found him exchanging his workaday clothes for the regulation creased trousers and creaseless coat of masculine calling costume, and getting ready to spend the rest of the day with her.