. These ladies wish to see you
with reference to a most extraordinary case, an inexplicable
mystery, which both they and I believe no man but yourself can
satisfactorily probe.

Yours in haste,

MAVERICK NARKOM.

So, then, he was to see her again, to touch her hand, hear her voice,
look into the eyes that had lighted him back from the path to
destruction! Cleek's heart began to hammer and his pulses to drum.
Needless to say, he took extraordinary care with his toilet that
evening, with the result that when the ladies arrived there was nothing
even vaguely suggestive of the detective about him.

"Oh, Mr. Cleek, do help us!" implored Ailsa, after the first greetings
were over. "Lady Chepstow is almost beside herself with dread and
anxiety over the inexplicable thing, and I have persuaded her that if
anybody on earth can solve the mystery of it, avert the new and
appalling danger of it, it is you! Oh, say that you will take the case,
say that you will solve it, say that you will save little Lord Chepstow
and put an end to this maddening mystery!"

"Little Lord Chepstow?" repeated Cleek, glancing over at the countess,
who stood, a very Niobe in her grief and despair, holding out two
imploring hands in silent supplication. "That is your ladyship's son, is
it not?"

"Yes," she answered, with a sort of wail; "my only son--my only child.
All that I have to love, all that I have to live for in this world."

"And you think the little fellow is in peril?"

"Yes--in deadly peril."

"From what source? From whose hand?"

"I don't know! I don't know!" she answered distractedly. "Sometimes I am
wild enough to suspect even Captain Hawksley, unjust and unkind as it
seems."

"Captain Hawksley? Who is he?"

"My late husband's cousin; heir, after my little son, to the title and
estates. He is very poor, deeply in debt, and the inheritance would put
an end to all his difficulties. But he is fond of my son; they seem
almost to worship each other. I, too, am fond of him. But, for all that,
I have to remember that he and he alone would benefit by Cedric's death,
and--and--wicked as it seems---- Oh, Mr. Cleek, help me! Direct me!
Sometimes I doubt him. Sometimes I doubt everybody. Sometimes I think of
those other days, that other mystery, that land which reeks of them; and
then--and then---- Oh, that horrible Ceylon! I wish I had never se