He stepped out into the alley as he spoke and mingled with the gathering crowd.
But Cleek did not stir. The alley was no longer dark for, with the gathering of the crowd, lights had come and he stood for many minutes staring into it and breathing hard and the colour draining slowly out of his face until it was like a thing of wax.
Outside in the narrow alley the gathering of curious ones which the sound of the explosion and the sight of a running policeman had drawn to the place was every moment thickening, and with the latest addition to it there had come hurrying into the narrow space a morbid-minded newsboy with the customary bulletin sheet pinned over his chest.
“The Evening News! Six o’clock edition!” that bulletin was headed, and under that heading there was set forth in big black type:
END OF THE MAURAVANIAN REVOLUTION
FALL OF THE CAPITAL
FLIGHT OF THE DEPOSED KING
OVERWHELMING SUCCESS OF IRMA’S TROOPS.
“Mr. Narkom,” said Cleek, when at the end of ten minutes the superintendent came bustling back, hot and eager to begin the effort to head off Count Waldemar. “Mr. Narkom, dear friend, the days of trouble and distress are over and the good old times you have so often sighed for have come back. Look at that newsboy’s bulletin. Waldemar is too late in all things and—we have seen the last of him forever.”
EPILOGUE
The Affair of the Man Who Was Found
Mr. Maverick Narkom glanced up at the calendar hanging on the office wall, saw that it recorded the date as August 18th, and then glanced back to the sheet of memoranda lying on his desk, and forthwith began to scratch his bald spot perplexedly.
“I wonder if I dare do it?” he queried of himself in the unspoken words of thought. “It seems such a pity when the beggar’s wedding day is so blessed near—and a man wants his last week of single blessedness all to himself, by James—if he can get it! Still, it’s a case after his own heart; the reward’s big and would be a nice little nest egg to begin married life upon. Besides, he’s had a fairly good rest as it is, when I come to think of it. Nothing much to do since the time when that Mauravanian business came to an end. I fancy he rather looked to have something come out of that in the beginning from the frequent inquiries he made regarding what that johnnie Count Irma and the new Parliament were doing; but it never did. And now, after all that rest—and this a case of so much importance——Gad! I believe I’ll risk it. He can’t do any more then decline. Yes, by James! I will.”