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[Illustration: "My only kingdom is here ... in this dear woman's arms. Walk with me, Ailsa ... as my queen _and_ my wife."]
Author of "Cleek the Master Detective", "Cleek's Government Cases" etc.
Copyright, 1912, 1913, 1914, by Doubleday, Page & Company
All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian.
Mr. Maverick Narkom, Superintendent at Scotland Yard, flung aside the paper he was reading and wheeled round in his revolving desk-chair, all alert on the instant, like a terrier that scents a rat.
He knew well what the coming of the footsteps toward his private office portended; his messenger was returning at last.
Good! Now he would get at the facts of the matter, and be relieved from the sneers of carping critics and the pin pricks of overzealous reporters, who seemed to think that the Yard was to blame, and all the forces connected with it to be screamed at as incompetents if every evildoer in London was not instantly brought to book and his craftiest secrets promptly revealed.
Gad! Let them take on his job, then, if they thought the thing so easy! Let them have a go at this business of stopping at one's post until two o'clock in the morning trying to patch up the jumbled fragments of a puzzle of this sort, if they regarded it as such child's play--finding an assassin whom nobody had seen and who struck with a method which neither medical science nor legal acumen could trace or name. _Then_, by James....
The door opened and closed, and Detective Sergeant Petrie stepped into the room, removing his hat and standing at attention.