"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 bore the words "Taverne Maladosie Quai des Anges, Boulogne," printed upon it in rather ornate script. "A bit of rag, a scrap of newspaper, a fowl's feather--anything? Look sharp!" "No, sir, not a thing of any sort that I can see from here. Shall I nip over and make sure?" "Yes. Only don't give away the fact that you are examining it in case there should be anybody on the lookout. If you find the smallest thing--even a carpet tack--attached to the post, get back into your seat at once and cut off townward as fast as you can make the car travel." "Right you are, sir," said Lennard, and forthwith did as he had been bidden. In less than ninety seconds, however, he was back with word that the post's surface was as smooth as your hand and not a thing of any sort attached to it from top to bottom.