“By James, I believe there’s something in that!” he said, abruptly. “If you get people to talking.... Well, it doesn’t matter, so that he hears—so that he finds out I want him. You ring up the Daily Mail while I’m scratching off an ad. Tell ’em it’s simply got to go in the morning’s issue. I’ll give it to them over the line myself in a minute.”
He lurched over to his desk, drove a pen into the ink pot, and made such good haste in marshalling his straggling thoughts that he had the thing finished before Petrie had got farther than “Yes; Scotland Yard. Hold the line, please; Superintendent Narkom wants to speak to you.”
The Yard’s requests are at all times treated with respect and courtesy by the controlling forces of the daily press, so it fell out that, late as the hour was, “space” was accorded, and, in the morning, half a dozen papers bore this notice prominently displayed:
“Cleek—Where are you? Urgently needed. Communicate at once.—Maverick Narkom.”
The expected came to pass; and the unexpected followed close upon its heels. The daily press, publishing the full account of the latest addition to the already long list of mysterious murders which, for a fortnight past, had been adding nervous terrors to the public mind, screamed afresh—as Narkom knew that it would—and went into paroxysms of the Reporters’ Disease until the very paper was yellow with the froth of it. The afternoon editions were still worse—for, between breakfast and lunch time, yet another man had fallen victim to the mysterious assassin—and sheets pink and sheets green, sheets gray and sheets yellow were scattering panic from one end of London to the other. The police-detective system of the country was rotten! The Government should interfere—must interfere! It was a national disgrace that the foremost city of the civilized world should be terrorized in this appalling fashion and the author of the outrages remain undetected! Could anything be more appalling?
It could, and—it was! When night came and the evening papers were supplanting the afternoon ones, that something “more appalling”—known hours before to the Yard itself—was glaring out on every bulletin and every front page in words like these:
LONDON’S REIGN OF TERROR
APPALLING ATROCITY IN
CLARGES STREET
SHOCKING DYNAMITE
OUTRAGE
Clarges Street! The old “magic” street of those “magic” old times of Cleek, and the Red Limousine, and the Riddles that were unriddled for the asking! Narkom grabbed the report the instant he heard that name and began to read it breathlessly.
It was the usual station advice ticked through to headquarters and deciphered by the operator there, and it ran tersely, thus:
“4:28 P. M. Attempt made by unknown parties to blow up house in Clarges Street, Piccadilly. Partially successful. Three persons injured and two killed. No clue to motive. Occupants, family from Essex. Only moved in two days ago. House been vacant for months previously. Formerly occupied by retired seafaring man named Capt. Horatio Burbage, who——”