ollops, rushing up to him like a girl to a lover.

"Yes, it is really I," he answered with one of his easy laughs. Then
he rose and held out his hand as Narkom advanced; and for a moment
or two they stood there palm in palm, saying not one word, making
not one sound.

"Nearly did for me, my overzealous friend," said Cleek, after a
time. "I could have kicked you when you turned up with that lot at
the Seven Sinners. Another ten minutes and I'd have had that in my
hands which would have compelled his Majesty of Mauravania to give
Irma his liberty and to abdicate in his consort's favour. But you
came, you dear old blunderer; and when I looked up and recognized
you--well, let it pass! I was on my way back to London when I chanced
to see Count Waldemar on watch beside the gangway of the Calais
packet--he had slipped me, the hound, slipped me in Paris--and I saw
my chance to run him down. Gad! it was a close squeak that, when
you let those Apaches know that I had just crossed over from this
side and had gone aboard the packet because I saw Waldemar. They
guessed then. I couldn't speak there, and I dared not speak in the
court. They were there, on every hand--inside the building and
out--waiting to knife me the instant they were sure. I had to get
out--I had to get past them, and--voila."

He turned and laid an affectionate hand on Dollops' shoulder and
laughed softly and pleasantly.

"New place all right, old chap? Garden doing well, and all my traps
in shipshape order, eh?"

"Yes, sir, Gawd bless you, sir. Everything, sir, everything."

"Good lad! Then we'll be off to them. My holiday is over, Mr. Narkom,
and I'm going back into harness again. You want me, I see, and I
said I'd come if you did. Give me a few days' rest in old England,
dear friend, and then--out with your riddles and I'm your man again."

CHAPTER I

"This will be it, I think, sir," said Lennard, bringing the limousine
to a halt at the head of a branching lane, thick set with lime and
chestnut trees between whose double wall of green one could catch a
distant glimpse of the river, shining golden in the five o'clock
light.

"Look! see! There's the sign post--'To the Sleeping Mermaid'--over
to the left there."

"Anything pinned to it or hanging on it?" Mr. Narkom spoke from the
interior of the vehicle without making even the slightest movement
toward alighting, merely glancing at a few memoranda scribbled on
the back of a card whose reverse