E-text prepared by Darleen Dove, Suzanne Shell, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries (http://www.archive.org/details/americana) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 32198-h.htm or 32198-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/32198/pg32198-images.html) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32198/32198-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/American Libraries. See http://www.archive.org/details/cleekofscotlandy00hansrich CLEEK OF SCOTLAND YARD [Illustration: "My only kingdom is here ... in this dear woman's arms. Walk with me, Ailsa ... as my queen _and_ my wife."] The International Adventure Library Three Owls Edition CLEEK OF SCOTLAND YARD Detective Stories by T. P. Hanshew Author of "Cleek the Master Detective", "Cleek's Government Cases" etc. W. R. Caldwell & Co. New York Copyright, 1912, 1913, 1914, by Doubleday, Page & Company All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian. Cleek of Scotland Yard _PROLOGUE_ The Affair of the Man Who Vanished Mr. Maverick Narkom, Superintendent at Scotland Yard, flung aside the paper he was reading and wheeled round in his revolving desk-chair, all alert on the instant, like a terrier that scents a rat. He knew well what the coming of the footsteps toward his private office portended; his messenger was returning at last. Good! Now he would get at the facts of the matter, and be relieved from the sneers of carping critics and the pin pricks of overzealous reporters, who seemed to think that the Yard was to blame, and all the forces connected with it to be screamed at as incompetents if every evildoer in London was not instantly brought to book and his craftiest secrets promptly revealed. Gad! Let them take on his job, then, if they thought the thing so easy! Let them have a go at this business of stopping at one's post until two o'clock in the morning trying to patch up the jumbled fragments of a puzzle of this sort, if they regarded it as such child's play--finding an assassin whom nobody had seen and who struck with a method which neither medical science nor legal acumen could trace or name. _Then_, by James.... The door opened and closed, and Detective Sergeant Petrie stepped into the room, removing his hat and standing at attention. "Well?" rapped out the superintendent, in the sharp staccato of nervous impatience. "Speak up! It was a false alarm, was it not?" "No, sir. It's even worse than reported. Quicker and sharper than any of the others. He's gone, sir." "Gone? Good God! you don't mean _dead_?"