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DETECTIVE CLEEK'S GOVERNMENT CASES (Vintage Mystery Series). Thomas W. Hanshew
a trick, and I knew the kind I was dealing with. But it was warm under that seat, I can tell you! What's that, Lennard? Got the tires on already? Bully boy! Bully boy!" He sprang into the limousine, followed by a puffing, breathless, somewhat incoherent Mr. Narkom. Then, with a bound like a mad thing, the car plunged forward, and proceeded upon its journey without further mishap.
But there was no sign of Ailsa Lorne when they reached the cottage, and Cleek's heart sank within him when Mrs. Condiment related how her young mistress had gone off "in a grand motor, with a splendid gentleman, with medals all over him, sir, just like my friend, the sergeant."
"Count Irma himself!" rapped out Cleek in answer to this. "He's tricked her somehow. I might have guessed they would hit at me through her." He turned on his heel, and crossed over to the latticed window, looking out with anguished eyes. A minute passed in silence, then a tapping sound attracted his attention. There was a pigeon outside the casement window. He threw open the window with a cry of delight.
"It's a message, a message from her dear self!" he cried, as he pounced upon the bird and whipped a tiny fold of paper tied with yellow silk from its leg. "It's from Ailsa, Mr. Narkom, from Ailsa! Listen!" The words "imprisoned — Sir Lionel Calmount — safe," he read; then looked up into the Superintendent's face with thankful eyes.
But the Superintendent was not so grateful. "Yes, but where is that?" he bleated despairingly, scanning the paper eagerly.
"Wait!" rapped out Cleek. "Calmount, Calmount," he gave a little yap of pleasure, like a terrier that has just seen a rat — "Calmount! Lionel Calmount, Irma's English chum! I've heard of him often; one of the old school — noblesse oblige, and all that sort of thing. And as for letting a poor devil of a monarch marry anything but a princess of the Royal blood — oh, dear, no! Yes, our friend Count Irma knew his man when he sought Calmount's help. But we'll be even with the lot yet. He's got a place in Hampshire, Calmount Castle, I think; that will be it, or else the pigeon couldn't have done the journey." He rushed over to the bookcase. "Here's a road map. Come, let's see! I don't doubt that Lennard will do it all right."
And Lennard did "do it," for in a few minutes the limousine was once more upon its way, with Cleek and Mr. Narkom seated inside it, and the road map in Cleek's hands. Now and again he gave hasty instructions to Lennard through the tube, watching with eager eyes how the distances fell away.
The Superintendent laid a hand upon his arm. "I say, dear chap," said he doubtfully, "but isn't it a bit risky putting your head into the lion's mouth like this, eh?"
"I'd risk fifty lives for her dear sake!" snapped out Cleek sharply, his eyes upon the fleeting vista of fields that swept by the window, "but it's all right, Mr. Narkom. Down with the blinds, and switch on the electrics, and we'll see what Lieutenant Arthur Deland from the Embassy can do with the matter. That'll be best, I think."
Mr. Narkom thought so, too, and said so. For the next half hour the two men worked feverishly, and so it was that Lieutenant Arthur Deland stepped out upon the stage, and found himself playing as strange a part in the drama of existence as had ever fallen to his lot.
CHAPTER III.
IT WAS exactly five o'clock in the afternoon, and the sun was beginning to think of retiring from business, when a dusty, travel-stained limousine drew up at the lodge gates of Calmount Castle like a snorting, puffing horse, and demanded entrance.
"Who are you and what do you want?" demanded the shambling old gatekeeper, in a cracked voice.
"We want Sir Lionel Calmount," threw in Mr. Narkom excitedly. "Open the gates, my good fellow, as quickly as you can. The matter is urgent, cannot be delayed." But the "good fellow" was in no great hurry to accede to this demand. He hemmed and hawed for some moments, scratching his thatch of white hair with a horny hand, so that Cleek felt, in the unnecessary delay, a strong desire to leap out and shake the sense into him. But at sight of the flash of gold in Mr. Narkom's palm his actions quickened. The transferring of that same gold piece to his hand caused immediate obedience, and the limousine was soon gliding comfortably up the long drive toward Calmount Castle, and the fulfilment of at least one part of the quest that had brought them here.
The great front door stood wide open, and in the frame of it was a tall, erect, white-haired gentleman staring down at them blankly from beneath shaggy eyebrows. Cleek stepped forward, and removed his hat.
"Sir Lionel Calmount?" he said politely. "We come on account of Maurevania. Will you give us a hearing?" He thrust out the Maurevanian ring, and at sight of it the old man changed colour.
"If you have much to say," said he, leading the way to a small drawing-room at the rear of the building. "What do you want with me, sir? And what is the business you have come upon?"
"I want the release of your prisoner, Miss Ailsa Lorne," rapped out Cleek sharply, meeting the keen eyes with his own. "She is under the protection of the British Government, and Scotland Yard has come to take possession of her and bring her safely back home."
Sir Lionel clicked his teeth together.
"Impossible! Miss Lorne is . . . well, to speak perfectly plainly, she is not in possession of her senses, sir. She is mad."
"Mad! Not unless you have driven her insane with your atrocities. For God's sake, let us see her, lest I do you an unjust injury, Sir Lionel. I beg of you to take me to her at once!"
The old man switched round and looked at him keenly.
"Who are you, that you ask this of me?"
"Deland, Lieutenant Deland," Cleek made answer, "and responsible for the safety of the lady you have so foully injured!"
Sir Lionel's ruddy face went dough white; he shut his hands together and breathed hard. "Injured?" he bleated incredulously. "Injured, my dear sir? I have done Miss Lorne no personal injury, I assure you. She has greatly endeared herself to my wife and to me by her gentleness of disposition, and we feel only a great grief at the terrible thing that has deprived her of her mind. But as for any personal injury; you speak in riddles."
Mr. Narkom looked at Cleek; Cleek looked at Mr. Narkom. The old man's words rang true. There was a great light shining in Cleek's eyes.
"If you will come this way," went on Sir Lionel, and the two men followed him silently through a long hallway, into what was probably the music room, for at one end of it stood an organ and at the other a piano. Seated before it, playing softly to herself, was Ailsa, with her dear hand unblemished, but bare of the ring that Cleek had first put upon her finger many months before. She looked up, and seeing Cleek dressed as she had seen him so often, rose to her feet and came running toward him.
"Lieutenant Deland!" she cried, putting out her hands impulsively, "this is indeed a surprise. So you discovered me, and come to take me back home again? Why, and you, too, Mr. Narkom? Ah, but this is too good to be true!"
With a little ejaculation of relief Cleek caught the small hands in his.
Mr. Narkom drew the attention of Sir Lionel, and tactfully contrived to leave the two together.
"Count Irma came for me," whispered Ailsa, under cover of the conversation. "He told me you had sent for me to come to the Embassy, and I was to send on your ring as a sign that I was well; an officer in another car took my message to you while I packed. Luckily they never noticed my new leather-covered travelling basket for the pigeons that you gave me. Dear things! They did not know of what invaluable use they were to prove, otherwise they would have taken it from me. But I smuggled it into the back of the car, and contrived to get it out when no one was looking. Then I was driven straight here, and Sir Lionel and his wife were told I was mad! Mad, mind you!"
Cleek pressed her hands in his, too thankful at her escape to care aught for his own danger.
"Come, let us get away," he said. And Narkom turned at the same time. "I must get back to London, Sir Lionel. I think I have convinced you that you have been fooled