THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF ELTON CARLYLE
"Won't 'old another blessed thing, sir," said Dollops, regretfully, trying hard to stuff a bundle of highly coloured ties and a cocoa-nut into a Gladstone bag already filled to overflowing.
Cleek, shirt-sleeves turned up, kneeling before a similar bag, looked up with a quizzical smile on his face.
"It certainly won't hold any more cocoanuts, you voracious young monkey," he said with an amused laugh. "I should say you've got enough things in there to last for a month at the Pole, instead of a couple of days on a houseboat. Hurry and get strapped up, or—who knows?—we shall have Mr. Narkom popping in with another case."
Dollops hurried up at once, gasping as he did so, "If he does, I'll eat my 'at. Lor' lumme, sir! but we ain't goin' to be done out of this 'oliday, are we?"
Cleek shook his head. But even as he opened his mouth to speak there came a sound which caused Dollops to assume a most dejected expression—a very ordinary sound, too, a hastily driven motor being sharply drawn up to the curb.
Cleek sprang to his feet.
"Lennard! A ducat to a guinea but it's Lennard!" he muttered under his breath, as Dollops, with the ease of an acrobat, took a flying leap over both bags to the window and peeped through the curtains.
It did not need his heartfelt groan of despair to tell Cleek that his conjecture was right, and the sound of hurried footsteps in the passage outside warned him of Mr. Narkom's approach only a minute before the door was thrown open and that gentleman stood in the doorway, breathless, but beaming complacently.