"Dix mille pardons, m'sieur," it commenced, then pulled itself up as if the owner of it had suddenly recollected himself--and added abruptly in a farcical attempt to imitate the jargon of the fast-disappearing London cabby. "Keep of the 'air on, ole coq! Only wantin' to arsk of the question civile. Lost my bloomin' way. Put a cove on to the short cut to the 'Igh Street will yer, like a blessed Christian? I dunno where I are."
Mr. Narkom was not suffered to make reply. Before he had more than grasped the fact that the speaker was undeniably a Frenchman, Lennard--out of the range of that dazzling light--had made the discovery that he was yet more undeniably a Frenchman of that class from which the Apaches are recruited, and stepped into the breach with astonishing adroitness.
"Oh, that's the trouble, is it?" he interposed. "My hat! Why, of course we'll put you on the way. Wot's more, we'll take you along and show you--won't we, guv'ner, eh?--so as you won't go astray till you gets there. 'Eads in and door shut, Superintendent," bringing the limousine around until it pointed in the same direction as the taxicab. "Now then, straight ahead, and foller yer nose, Jules; we'll be rubbin' shoulders with you the whole blessed way. And as the Dook of Wellington said to Napoleon Bonaparte, 'None of your larks, you blighter--you're a-comin' along with me!'"
That he was, was a condition of affairs so inevitable that the chauffeur made no attempt to evade it; merely put on speed and headed straight for the distant High Street for the purpose of getting rid of his escort as soon as possible; and Lennard, putting on speed, likewise, and keeping pace with him, ran him neck and neck, until the heath was left far and away behind, the darkness gave place to a glitter of street lamps, the lonely roads to populous thoroughfares, and the way was left clear for Cleek to get off unfollowed and unmolested.
Screened by that darkness, and close sheltered by the matted gorse which fringed and dotted the expanse of the nearby heath, he had been an interested witness to the entire proceeding.
"Played, my lad, played!" he commented, putting his thoughts into mumbled words of laughing approval, as Lennard, taking the taxicab under guard, escorted it and its occupants out of the immediate neighbourhood; then, excessive caution prompting him to quell even this little ebullition, he shut up like an oyster and neither spoke, nor moved, nor made any sound until the two vehicles were represented by nothing but a purring noise dwindling away into the distance.