"Sir," he said, moving quickly forward and speaking in the breathless manner of a spent runner--"Sir, I was a-hopin' it was a fake, and to hear you speak like that--Gawd's truth, guv'ner, you don't mean as it's real, sir, do you? That _you_ don't know either?" "Know? Know what?" "Where he is--wot's become of him? Mr. Cleek, the guv'ner, sir. I made sure that you'd know if anybody would. That's wot made me come, sir. I'd 'a' gone off me bloomin' dot if I hadn't--after you a-puttin' in that Personal and him never a-turnin' up like he'd ort. Sir, do you mean to say as you don't know _where_ he is, and haven't seen him even yet?" "No, I've not. Good Lord! haven't you?" "No, sir. I aren't clapped eyes on him since he sent me off to the bloomin' seaside six months ago. All he told me when we come to part was that Miss Lorne was goin' out to India on a short visit to Cap'n and Mrs. 'Awksley--Lady Chepstow as was, sir--and that directly she was gone he'd be knockin' about for a time on his own, and I wasn't to worry over him. I haven't seen hide nor hair of him, sir, since that hour." "Nor heard from him?" Narkom's voice was thick and the hand he laid on the chair-back hard shut. "Oh, yes, sir, I've heard--I'd have gone off my bloomin' dot if I hadn't done _that_. Heard from him twice. Once when he wrote and gimme my orders about the new place he's took up the river--four weeks ago. The second time, last Friday, sir, when he wrote me the thing that's fetched me here--that's been tearin' the heart out of me ever since I heard at Charing Cross about wot's happened at Clarges Street, sir." "And what was that?" "Why, sir, he wrote that he'd jist remembered about some papers as he'd left behind the wainscot in his old den, and that he'd get the key and drop in at the old Clarges Street house on the way 'ome. Said he'd arrive in England either yesterday afternoon or this one, sir; but whichever it was, he'd wire me from Dover before he took the train. And he never done it, sir--my Gawd! he never done it in this world!" "Good God!" Narkom flung out the words in a sort of panic, his lips twitching, his whole body shaking, his face like the face of a dead man. "He never done it, I tell you!" pursued Dollops in an absolute tremble of fright. "I haven't never had a blessed line; and now this here awful thing has happened. And if he done what he said he was a-goin' to do--if he come to town and went to that house----" If he said more, the clanging of a bell drowned it completely. Narkom had turned to his desk and was hammering furiously upon the call gong. A scurry of flying feet came up the outer passage, the door opened in a flash, and the porter was there. And behind him Lennard, the chauffeur, who guessed from that excited summons that there would be a call for _him_.