that Cleek could think
of nothing to which to liken it but a red streak whizzing across a
background of leaf-green with splatters of mud flying about it and an
owl-eyed demon for pilot.

It pulled up with a jerk when it came abreast of him, but so
great was Lennard's excitement, so deep seated his patriotic
interest in the business he had in hand, he seemed to begrudge
even the half-minute it took to get his man aboard; and before
you could have turned around twice the car was rocketing on again at
a demon's pace.

"Gad! but he's full of it, the patriotic beggar!" said Cleek with
a laugh, as he found himself deposited in Narkom's lap instead of
on the seat beside him, so sudden was the car's start the instant
he was inside. "It might give our German friends pause, don't you
think, Mr. Narkom, if they could get an insight into the spirit of
the race as a fighting unit?"

"It'll give 'em hell if they run up against it--make no blooming
error about that!" rapped out the superintendent too "hot in the
choler" to be choice of words. "It's a nasty little handful to fall
foul of when its temper is up; and this damned spy business, done
behind a mask of friendship in times of peace----Look here, Cleek!
If it comes to the point, just give me a gun with the rest. I'll
show the Government that I can lick something beside insurance stamps
for my country's good--by James, yes!"

"Just so," said Cleek, with one of his curious, crooked smiles.
He was used to these little patriotic outbursts on the part of Mr.
Narkom whenever the German bogey was dragged out by the Press. "But
let us hope it will not come to that. It would be an embarrassment
of riches so far as our friends the editors are concerned, don't
you think, to have two wars on their hands at the same time? And
I see by papers that the long-threatened Mauravanian revolution
has broken out at last. In short, that our good friend Count Irma
has made his escape from Sulberga, put himself at the head of the
Insurgents, and is organizing a march on the capital----"

Here he pulled himself up abruptly, as if remembering something, and,
before Mr. Narkom could put in a word, launched into the subject of
the case in hand and set him thinking and talking of other things.

CHAPTER XVII

It had gone nine by all the reliable clocks in town when the wild
race to the coast came to an end, and after darting swallowlike
through the wind-swept streets of Portsmouth, the limou