PROLOGUE
The Affair of the Man Who Vanished
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.
“Well?” rapped out the superintendent, in the sharp staccato of nervous impatience. “Speak up! It was a false alarm, was it not?”
“No, sir. It’s even worse than reported. Quicker and sharper than any of the others. He’s gone, sir.”
“Gone? Good God! you don’t mean dead?”
“Yes, sir. Dead as Julius Cæsar. Total collapse about twenty minutes after my arrival and went off like that” – snapping his fingers and giving his hand an outward fling. “Same way as the others, only, as I say, quicker, sir; and with no more trace of what caused it than the doctors were able to discover in the beginning. That makes five in the same mysterious way, Superintendent, and not a ghost of a clue yet. The papers will be ringing with it to-morrow.”
“Ringing with it? Can they ‘ring’ any more than they are doing already?” Narkom threw up both arms and laughed the thin, mirthless laughter of utter despair. “Can they say anything worse than they have said? Blame any more unreasonably than they have blamed? It is small solace for the overburdened taxpayer to reflect that he may be done to death at any hour of the night, and that the heads of the institution he has so long and so consistently supported are capable of giving his stricken family nothing more in return than the “Dear me! dear me!” of utter bewilderment; and to prove anew that the efficiency of our boasted police-detective system may be classed under the head of “Brilliant Fiction.” That sort of thing, day after day – as if I had done nothing but pile up failures of this kind since I came into office. No heed of the past six years’ brilliant success. No thought for the manner in which the police departments of other countries were made to sit up and to marvel at our methods. Two months’ failure and that doesn’t count! By the Lord Harry! I’d give my head to make those newspaper fellows eat their words – gad, yes!”
“Why don’t you, then, sir?” Petrie dropped his voice a tone or two and looked round over the angle of his shoulder as he spoke; then, recollecting the time and the improbability of anybody being within earshot, took heart of grace and spoke up bolder. “There’s no use blinking the fact, Mr. Narkom; it was none of us – none of the regular force, I mean – that made the record of those years what it was. That chap Cleek was the man that did it, sir. You know that as well as I. I don’t know whether you’ve fallen out with him or not; or if he’s off on some secret mission that keeps him from handling Yard matters these days. But if he isn’t, take my advice, sir, and put him on this case at once.”
“Don’t talk such rot!” flung out Narkom, impatiently. “Do you think I’d have waited until now to do it if it could be done? Put him on the case, indeed! How the devil am I to do it when I don’t know where on earth to find him? He cleared out directly after that Panther’s Paw case six months ago. Gave up his lodgings, sacked his housekeeper, laid off his assistant, Dollops, and went the Lord knows where and why.”
“My hat! Then that’s the reason we never hear any more of him in Yard matters, is it? I wondered! Disappeared, eh? Well, well! You don’t think he can have gone back to his old lay – back to the wrong ’uns and his old ‘Vanishing Cracksman’s’ tricks, do you, sir?”
“No, I don’t. No backslider about that chap, by James! He’s not built that way. Last time I saw him he was out shopping with Miss Ailsa Lorne – the girl who redeemed him – and judging from their manner toward each other, I rather fancied – well, never mind! That’s got nothing to do with you. Besides, I feel sure that if they had, Mrs. Narkom and I would have been invited. All he said was that he was going to take a holiday. He didn’t say why, and he didn’t say where. I wish to heaven I’d asked him. I could have kicked myself for not having done so when that she-devil of a Frenchwoman managed to slip the leash and get off scot free.”
