; and
there you are."

Imagination was never one of Petrie's strong points. His mind moved
always along well-prepared grooves to time-honoured ends. It found
one of those grooves and moved along it now.

"Why don't you advertise for him, then?" he suggested. "Put a
Personal in the morning papers, sir. Chap like that's sure to read
the news every day; and it's bound to come to his notice sooner
or later. Or if it doesn't, why, people will get to knowing that the
Yard's lost him and get to talking about it and maybe he'll learn
of it that way."

Narkom looked at him. The suggestion was so bald, so painfully
ordinary and commonplace, that, heretofore, it had never occurred to
him. To associate Cleek's name with the banalities of the everyday
Agony Column; to connect _him_ with the appeals of the scullery
and the methods of the raw amateur! The very outrageousness of the
thing was its best passport to success.

"By James, I believe there's something in that!" he said, abruptly.
"If you get people to talking.... Well, it doesn't matter, so that
he _hears_--so that he finds out I want him. You ring up the _Daily
Mail_ while I'm scratching off an ad. Tell 'em it's simply got to
go in the morning's issue. I'll give it to them over the line myself
in a minute."

He lurched over to his desk, drove a pen into the ink pot, and made
such good haste in marshalling his straggling thoughts that he had
the thing finished before Petrie had got farther than "Yes; Scotland
Yard. Hold the line, please; Superintendent Narkom wants to speak to
you."

The Yard's requests are at all times treated with respect and
courtesy by the controlling forces of the daily press, so it fell
out that, late as the hour was, "space" was accorded, and, in the
morning, half a dozen papers bore this notice prominently displayed:

"CLEEK--Where are you? Urgently needed. Communicate at
once.--_Maverick Narkom._"

The expected came to pass; and the unexpected followed close upon
its heels. The daily press, publishing the full account of the
latest addition to the already long list of mysterious murders which,
for a fortnight past, had been adding nervous terrors to the public
mind, screamed afresh--as Narkom knew that it would--and went
into paroxysms of the Reporters' Disease until the very paper was
yellow with the froth of it. The afternoon editions were still
worse--for, between breakfast and lunch time, yet another man had
fallen victim to