"Yes. Young beggar!—he was on tenterhooks. Afraid some ghostly lady had caught you last night and hugged you to death, or some such rubbish. Until I assured him that your biceps were equal to all the ghosts in the world. Yes, I saw Dollops, all right. And he said he'd got work to do for you, or something. Some constable had called with a note early in the morning...."
Cleek looked up quickly from a survey of the window-sill.
"Yes—yes. Had he discovered what I asked him to?"
There was a sort of dumb tolerance in the Superintendent's unimaginative countenance. He shrugged his shoulders off-handedly.
"My dear chap," he responded, "here's his identical message, only I can't imitate his inimitable accent. 'Tell the Guv'ner, sir, as that there "Crahn and Anchor" wot he wants ter know abaht is an inmate of the post-office!...' Now, if you can make any sense out of that, Cleek...."
"Deland, my dear chap, Deland, I beg of you!" interposed Cleek hastily, whirling about with upraised hands. "Not a soul in the place knows who I really am. Even Highland fastnesses, you know, have their leaking spots—and I'll show you one of 'em by-and-by that'll make you sit up!... But he did get it, the young beggar! Well, well, well! that points nearer home, anyway, and it'll be something to go on.... What's that? A clue? Well, perhaps, and perhaps not. Anyhow, it's not clue enough at present to hang any ideas on. But the stiletto's done the thing in one instance, and the air-pistol in the other. But how?—but where?—but——" Then he whirled around suddenly and stood a moment looking at the spinning wheel as though, of a sudden, it had actually come to life of its own accord, and then darting forward scanned the spindle. "H'm. Perhaps not the stiletto—perhaps this, and the peasant-girl story to make a cloak of! The points are much the same—stiletto or spindle? But—which?"
"What the dickens are you mumbling over?" threw in Mr. Narkom at this juncture, as Cleek stood surveying this instrument of a by-gone year, and pinching his chin between thumb and forefinger thoughtfully the while. "Spindle? You don't suppose the spindle of that thing could have anything to do with it, eh?"
"Stranger things have happened, my dear friend, though I'm inclined to think that in this case they have not!" responded Cleek serenely. "The spindle theory is thin—deuced thin. But it's often in the thinnest material that the thickest things are hid.... Now, if we could only find the bloodstained article with which the stiletto was wiped, we'd settle that question once and for all. I— Gad! yes, I remember now! I'll ask her later on what they were. H'm—ah! That's possibly where it is."
But Mr. Narkom's patience was running a close race with his curiosity, and both in the same direction. He gave an exasperated sigh and rubbed the top of his bald head disconsolately.
"You're the most amazin' beggar," he gave out finally, in a tense voice. "Mumbling away like a lunatic, of laundry-bills and spinning wheels and 'crowns and anchors' which are 'inmates of village post-offices,' and I don't know what all! If I didn't know something about you, I'd say you'd gone suddenly balmy, and light out for little old London before you turned your hand on me! But you might let a chap have an inkling——"