What was the motive of the baronet’s sudden departure? Of course, he would have learned from Mrs. Morrice or Alma Buckley that his game was up in that direction. Did he dread the vengeance of the financier, or were other causes at work?
MacKenzie received him with his accustomed cordiality. “Well, how are you getting on with the case you told me about?”
Lane informed him that it had ended successfully from a professional point of view: he had proved his client’s innocence and found the real criminal. Lane did not proffer the name of that real criminal, nor did MacKenzie ask it. They were confidential with each other up to a point, but a certain etiquette was always preserved.
“I went round to the flat of our friend, Sir George Clayton-Brookes, this morning and learned that he had left in a violent hurry. I was sorry, as I wanted to have a little talk with him. Seems something ‘fishy’ about this sudden flight.”
The keen Scotchman smiled and tapped his broad chest with his finger. “Scotland Yard has got something to do with that. We have been years trying to get him, as I told you, but he was so devilish cunning that we might have gone on for years longer but for a lucky accident. We got one of his gang and the fellow split. We have plenty of evidence against the gentleman now. I suppose he got wind of it before we could get a warrant out. It’s astonishing what a freemasonry there is among these scoundrels. But he won’t escape us now. Clever as he is, we shall have him by the heels before he is much older.”
“Have you found any evidence that involves the young man known as Archie Brookes?” queried Lane.
“No, we can’t find that he has any connection with this particular ‘stunt’—I shouldn’t say Sir George was a man to share more than he could help with anybody.”
MacKenzie’s prophecy was fulfilled. Within three weeks from that date the baronet was arrested in Italy, and brought back to England after the observance of the usual formalities.
As he now disappears from these pages, it is only necessary to say that he was put upon his trial, found guilty, and awarded an exemplary sentence.
It was a nine days’ wonder in Clubland and the circles in which he had been a prominent figure; and then other startling events occurred and drove him out of the public mind, and the plausible, well-mannered, smartly-groomed baronet who had led such a chequered existence became a memory.