He was off again like a shot, and Cleek could hear his light steps running down the hallway and up the stairs, like the big child he was.
"Funny thing," he said to Mr. Narkom as the two left the room together and walked down the corridor toward the servants' quarters, "but that young gentleman always seems to turn up in the most unforeseen moments. Notice his fingers, did you, Mr. Narkom? No? Well, they are as delicate as a woman's and as strong as a man's. Curiously strong for a fifteen-year-old, I must say. Now, if I didn't know better, I'd lay a ducat to a dollar that that lad is a good sight cleverer than either you or I give him credit for, and with his mother's blood in him and a portion of his rascally grandfather's, too, there's no telling just exactly where he will end up.... Hello! is that you, Jarvis? I'm told my man wants to see me very particularly. Know where he is by any chance? It's probably about that blue suit of mine. He worries more over my clothes than any woman. In the courtyard? Thanks, very much. You coming along, too, Mr. Narkom?"
"Don't mind if I do," returned the Superintendent off-handedly, "seeing that there is nothing more to be discovered to-night. My man's in charge, so we might go over to the Three Fishers and have a quiet smoke in your rooms. That is, if you'd care about it?"
"Love to, my dear chap, love to. Through this door, eh, Jarvis? Nice snug place you've got here, I must say. Family do you well, I suppose?"
"Yessir," Jarvis's voice bordered upon the confidential. "Tight-fisted where the money is, sir, but—that's Scotch, you know."
"And you're London, eh?—and naturally generous! I understand. Well, here's something to buy yourself a drink with." And Cleek dropped half-a-crown into the butler's hands.
As the two men disappeared through the kitchen door and out into the courtyard, the highly elated Jarvis turned to his fellow servants with a genuine sigh of admiration.
"Amachoor detective or not," he apostrophized the absent gentleman, "an' queer in the top story though 'e may be, that's what I calls a right-down Lunnon gentleman!"