Here he pulled himself up abruptly, as if remembering something, and, before Mr. Narkom could put in a word, launched into the subject of the case in hand and set him thinking and talking of other things. CHAPTER XVII It had gone nine by all the reliable clocks in town when the wild race to the coast came to an end, and after darting swallowlike through the wind-swept streets of Portsmouth, the limousine, mud splashed and disreputable, rushed up to the guarded entrance of the suspended dock master's house at Portsea; and precisely one and a quarter minutes thereafter Cleek stood in the presence of the three men most deeply concerned in the clearing up of this mystifying affair. He found Sir Charles Fordeck, a dignified and courtly gentleman of polished manners and measured speech, although now, quite naturally, labouring under a distress of mind which visibly disturbed him. He found Mr. Paul Grimsdick, his secretary, a frank-faced, straight-looking young Englishman of thirty; Mr. Alexander MacInery, a stolid, unemotional Scotsman of middle age, with a huge knotted forehead, eyebrows like young moustaches, and a face like a face of granite; and he found, too, reason to believe that each of these was, in his separate way, a man to inspire confidence and respect. "I can hardly express to you, Mr. Cleek, how glad I am to meet you and to have you make this quick response to my appeal," said the Admiral Superintendent, offering him a welcoming hand. "I feel that if any man is likely to get to the bottom of this mysterious business you are that man. And that you should get to the bottom of it--quickly, at whatever cost, by whatever means--is a thing to be desired not only in the nation's interest, but for the honour of myself and my two colleagues." "I hardly think that your honour will be called into question, Sir Charles," replied Cleek, liking him the better for the manliness which prompted him in that hour of doubt and difficulty to lay aside all questions of position, and by the word "colleague" lift his secretary to the level of himself, so that they might be judged upon a common plane as men, and men alone. "It would be a madman indeed who would hint at anything approaching treason with regard to Sir Charles Fordeck."