“Folly? What folly?”
“‘What folly?’ What? Good heavens, man, use your wits! Isn’t it enough for me to be a blockhead without you entering the lists along with me?” said Cleek, irritably. “Or, no! Forgive that, dear friend. My nerves were speaking, not my heart. But in moments like this—when we had built a safe bridge, and my own stupidity has hacked it down—Faugh! I tell you I could kick myself. Didn’t you hear? Didn’t you see?”
“I saw that for some special reason you were suddenly obsessed with a desire to get out of the house in the midst of your talking with Miss Renfrew, if that’s what you refer to—is it?”
“Not altogether. It’s part of it, however. But not the worst part, unfortunately. It was at that moment then the recollection of my indiscretion came to me and I realized what a dolt I had been—how completely I had destroyed our splendid security, wrecked what little still remains of this glorious holiday—when I couldn’t let ‘George Headland’ have the centre of the stage, but needs must come in like the hero of a melodrama and announce myself as Cleek. To Nosworth and his wife! To Nippers! To all that gaping crowd! You remember that incident, surely?”
“Yes. Of course I do. But what of it?”
“What of it? Man alive, with a chap like that Nippers, how long do you suppose it will remain a secret that Cleek is in Yorkshire? In the West Riding of it? In this particular locality? Travelling about with Mr. Maverick Narkom in a caravan—a caravan that can’t cover five miles of country in the time a train or a motor car is able to get over fifty!”
“Good lud! I never thought of that. But wait a bit. There’s a way to overcome that difficulty, of course. Stop here a minute or two and I’ll run back and pledge that Nippers fool to keep his mouth shut about it. He’ll give me his promise, I know.”
“To be sure he will. But how long do you suppose he will keep it? How long do you suppose that an empty-headed, gabbling old fool like that fellow will refrain from increasing his own importance in the neighbourhood by swaggering about and boasting of his intimacy with the powers at Scotland Yard and—the rest of it? And even if he shouldn’t, what about the others? The gathering of rustics that heard what he heard? The gamekeepers from the Droger estate? The Nosworths, as well as they? Can their mouths, too, be shut? They will not love me for this night’s business, be sure. Then, too, they have lived in Paris. The woman is French by birth. Of Montmartre—of the Apache class, the Apache kind—and she will know of the ‘Cracksman,’ be assured. So will her husband. And they won’t take their medicine lying down, believe me. An accused man has the right to communicate with counsel, remember; and a wire up to London will cost less than a shilling. So, as between Margot’s crew and our friend Count Waldemar—la, la! There you are.”
Mr. Narkom screwed up his face and said something under his breath. He could not but follow this line of reasoning when the thing was put before him so plainly.
“And we had been so free from all worry over the beggars up to this!” he said, savagely. “But to get a hint—to pick up the scent—out here—in a wild bit of country like this! Cinnamon, it makes me sweat! What do you propose to do?”