“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!”