“Good heavens! Herrion—Inspector—what’s the meaning of this?” demanded Raife.
“Well,” said Inspector Herrion, for it was he, the immaculate Scarlet Pimpernel of Scotland Yard, “we hardly expected, Sir Raife, to find you here, at this hour of the night.”
Raife laughed, and said: “I couldn’t sleep, so I took a stroll.”
“Rather a long stroll, Sir Raife, from St. James’s to the Mall, Hammersmith, in the middle of the night,” said Herrion with a curious smile. “May I call on you in the morning, sir?” he added.
“Why to be sure, I’ll be delighted to see you. But leave that infernal grip of yours behind,” and they both laughed.
At this moment there was a trampling of bushes in the garden behind, the swinging and slamming of a heavy iron gate, and then a shout: “Stop him!” A cloaked form, with flowing tie, dashed past a few yards from where the trio stood. They joined in hot pursuit, but the Apache, for it was he, was fleet of foot and had a good start. Further, he seemed to know every alley and byway in this maze of wharves and streets.
Taking part in the chase, Raife was handicapped by his ignorance of the neighbourhood, and, at the outset, ran into a post in the dark and placed himself hors de combat in the matter of speed. Raife was a runner, but to charge full tilt into a post was a sore handicap. After a while, Herrion, the dapper, little detective-inspector, was the only one left in the chase, and he ran as well as the Apache, but the Apache had the start, and, with the inherited cunning of his breed, understood the art of doubling. The inspector was unfamiliar with these alleys and slums, and it looked as though the Apache had got clean away. They came to a cul de sac and there was no trace of him. With the consummate skill of his class, he had vanished into space and was gone. The two policemen and Raife retraced their steps and met other officers. Herrion was not the type of man to abandon his quarry without taxing his extraordinary resources to the end. He deployed his men to the best of their knowledge of the locality.
A rat will hide from its pursuer with great cunning, but even a rat will lose its way in a clumsy manner, sometimes. That Apache had reckoned without the state of the tide. He had wormed his way out of the cul de sac, and had intended to hide among some launches in one of the creeks that find their way in shore, if it had not been high tide. He had lost time, and, in his efforts to redouble his tracks, was sighted by Herrion, who at once started in pursuit. The Apache turned and ran. Something caused him to stumble, and over he plunged into the swinging tide, to be sucked under a barge and drowned—or to escape again. They searched in vain.