LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

head round with a swing, threw back the clutch, and let her go full tilt.

      But even the best of motors cannot accomplish the impossible. The gates were closed, the signal down, the last train already outside the station when they reached it, and not even the mandate of the law might hope to stay it or to call it back.

      “Plenty of petrol?” Narkom faced round as he spoke and looked at Lennard.

      “Plenty, sir.”

      “All right —beat it! The boat sails from Dover at eleven. I’ve got to catch it. Understand?”

      “Yes, sir. But you could wire down and have her held over till we get there, Superintendent.”

      “Not for the world! She must sail on time; I must get aboard without being noticed – without some persons I’m following having the least cause for suspicion. Beat that train – do you hear me? —beat it! I want to get there and get aboard that boat before the others arrive. Do you want any further incentive than that? If so, here it is for you: Mr. Cleek’s in Paris! Mr. Cleek’s in danger!”

      “Mr. Cleek? God’s truth! Hop in sir, hop in! I’ll have you there ahead of that train if I dash down the Admiralty Pier in flames from front to rear. Just let me get to the open road, sir, and I’ll show you something to make you sit up.”

      He did. Once out of the track of all traffic, and with the lights of the city well at his back, he strapped his goggles tight, jerked his cap down to his eyebrows, and leaned over the wheel.

      “For Mr. Cleek – do you hear?” he said, addressing the car as if it were a human being. “Now, then, show what you’re made of! There! Take your head! Now go, you vixen! GO!”

      There was a sudden roar, a sudden leap; then the car shot forward as though all the gales of all the universe were sweeping it on, and the wild race to the coast began.

      Narkom jerked down the blinds, turned on the light, and flung open the locker, as they pounded on.

      “Dip in. Get something that can be made to fit you,” he said to Dollops. “We can’t risk any of those fellows identifying you as the chap who was hanging round the station to-night. Toss me over that wig – the gray one – in the far corner there. God knows what we’re on the track of, but if it leads to Cleek I’ll follow it to the end of time!” Then, lifting his voice until it sounded above the motor’s roar, “Faster, Lennard, faster!” he called. “Give it to her! give it to her! We’ve got to beat that train if it kills us!”

      They did beat it. The engine’s light was not even in sight when the bright glare of the moon on the Channel’s waters flashed up out of the darkness before them; nor was the sound of the train’s coming even faintly audible as yet, when, a few minutes later, the limousine swung down the incline and came to a standstill within a stone’s throw of the entrance to the pier, at whose extreme end the packet lay, with gangways down and fires up and her huge bulk rising and falling with the movements of the waves.

      “Beat her, you see, sir,” said Lennard, chuckling as he got down and opened the door for the superintendent to alight. “Better not go any nearer, sir, with the car. There’s a chap down there standing by the gangplank and he seems interested in us from the way he’s watching. Jumped up like a shot and came down the gangplank the instant he heard us coming. Better do the rest of the journey afoot, sir, and make a pretence of paying me – as if I was a public taxi. What’ll I do? Stop here until morning?”

      “Yes. Put up at a garage; and if I don’t return by the first boat, get back to town. Meantime, cut off somewhere and ring up the Yard. Tell ’em where I’ve gone. Now then, Dollops, come on!”

      A moment later the limousine had swung off into the darkness and disappeared, and what might properly have been taken for a couple of English curates on their way to a Continental holiday moved down the long pier between the glimmering and inadequate lamps to the waiting boat. But long before they reached it the figure at the gangplank – the tall, erect figure of a man whom the most casual observer must have recognized as one who had known military training – had changed its alert attitude and was sauntering up and down as if, when they came nearer and the light allowed him to see what they were, he had lost all interest in them and their doings. Narkom gave the man a glance from the tail of his eye as they went up the gangplank and boarded the boat, and brief as that glance was, it was sufficient to assure him of two things: First, that the man was not only strikingly handsome but bore himself with an air which spoke of culture, birth, position; second, that he was a foreigner, with the fair hair and the slightly hooked nose which was so characteristic of the Mauravanians.

      With Dollops at his side, Narkom slunk aft, where the lights were less brilliant and the stern of the boat hung over the dark, still waters, and pausing there, turned and looked back at the waiting man.

      A French sailor was moving past in the darkness. He stopped the man and spoke to him.

      “Tell me,” he said, slipping a shilling into the fellow’s hand, “do you happen to know who that gentleman is, standing on the pier there?”

      “Yes, m’sieur. He is equerry to his Majesty King Ulric of Mauravania. He has crossed with us frequently during his Majesty’s sojourn in Paris.”

      “Gawd’s truth, sir,” whispered Dollops, plucking nervously at the superintendent’s sleeve as the sailor, after touching his cap with his forefinger, passed on. “Apaches at one end and them Mauravanian johnnies at the other! I tell you they’re a-workin’ hand in hand for some reason – workin’ against him!”

      Narkom lifted a silencing hand and turned to move away where there would be less likelihood of anything they might say being overheard; for at that moment a voice had sounded and from a most unusual quarter. Unnoticed until now, a fisher’s boat, which for some time had been nearing the shore, swept under the packet’s stern and grazed along the stone front of the pier.

      “Voila, m’sieur,” said, in French, the man who sailed it. “Have I not kept my word and brought your excellency across in safety and with speed?”

      “Yes,” replied the passenger whom the fisher addressed. He spoke in perfect French, and with the smoothness of a man of the better class. “You have done well indeed. Also it was better than waiting about at Calais for the morning boat. I can now catch the very first train to London. Fast is she? There is your money. Adieu!”

      Then came the sound of some one leaving the boat and scrambling up the water stairs, and hard on the heels of it the first whistle of the coming train. Narkom, glancing round, saw a slouching, ill-clad fellow whose appearance was in distinct contrast with his voice and manner of speaking, come into view upon the summit of the pier. His complexion was sallow, his matted hair seemed to have gone for years uncombed; a Turkish fez, dirty and discoloured, was on his head, and over his arm hung several bits of tapestry and shining stuff which betokened his calling as that of a seller of Oriental draperies.

      This much Narkom saw and would have gone on his way, giving the fellow no second thought, but that a curious thing happened. Moving away toward the footpath which led from the pier to the town, the pedler caught sight suddenly of the man standing at the gangplank; he halted abruptly, looked round to make sure that no one was watching, then, without more ado, turned round suddenly on his heel, walked straightway to the gangplank and boarded the boat. The Mauravanian took not the slightest heed of him, nor he of the Mauravanian. Afterward, when the train had arrived, Narkom thought he knew why. For the present he was merely puzzled to understand why this dirty, greasy Oriental pedler who had been at the pains to cross the Channel in a fisher’s boat should do so for the apparent purpose of merely going back on the packet to Calais.

      By this time the train had arrived, the pier was alive with people, porters were running back and forth with luggage, and there was bustle and confusion everywhere. Narkom looked along the length of the vessel to the teeming gangway. The Mauravanian was still there, alert as before, his fixed eyes keenly watching.

      A crowd came stringing along, bags and bundles done up in gaudy handkerchiefs in their hands, laughing, jostling, jabbering together in low-class French.

      “Here they are, guv’ner

Скачать книгу