Cleek, once in the train, pulled out the crumpled slip of paper he had found near the telephone in the Desmond home and reread it with knitted brows. It was, to all appearances, a bridge score, and a heavy one at that, but on the back was pencilled in a woman's handwriting:
"Bring pearl to old place, 14 Ratcliff Highway," and the signature beneath it was the one word, "Margot."
His first step on reaching London again was to make his way by devious cuts and many doublings and twistings to his rooms in Portman Square. To his immense surprise, there was a light burning there and when, having run swiftly and silently up the stairs, he advanced suddenly into the room, both he and its occupant had the surprise of their lives. It was Dollops, sitting disconsolately before the remains of a supper qualified to disturb the digestion of an ostrich.
"Dollops!" gasped his master, shutting the door behind him and facing the lad with astonished eyes. "Why, I thought you were at Hampton Court!"
"Lor' lumme sir, but I jest couldn't stop there 'aving a 'oliday without you, so I just bunked my things into the blooming boat, and 'ad a scrap of somefin' to eat, me feeling as holler as a sandwich-board, and back I comes," he explained, disjointedly, not meeting Cleek's keen eyes. "I meant to go down to the Yard in the morning for to try and cade your address out of Lennard."
"A pretty tough job that, my boy, even if he knew," said Cleek with a little smile. "Well, since you're here, Dollops, all the better. I've got a ticklish job ahead of me, and so, if I'm not back here before nine o'clock to-morrow morning, you can wire to Mr. Narkom to come on to me. These are the two addresses." He scribbled rapidly in his note-book. "But mind, not a single syllable before. You understand me?"
"Not 'arf, guv'nor. I'll stay 'ere as mum as a mouse," was the fervent reply.
"Good!" Cleek crossed to his locked medicine chest and drew from it a little phial containing some dark, thick-looking liquid, and put it into his breast-pocket. Then he whipped out his make-up box, twisted a short thick black beard about his chin; grew, in some mysterious manner, a choppy little moustache upon his upper lip; threw off his clothing, threw on some others, and lo! in the twinkling of an eye he stood before the amazed and admiring Dollops, as perfect a representation of a typical Paris Apache as ever was.
Dollops gave a gasp of amazement, and stepped back a foot or two.