rintendent, looking up at him quizzically.
"Come to any decision, old chap?"

"Yes--and so will you in a second. Don't turn--don't do anything
hastily. Just look across the street, at the jeweller's window,
opposite, and tell me what you think of it."

Narkom's swift, sidelong glance travelled over the distance like a
gunshot, arrowed through the small collection of persons gathered
about the shop window inspecting the display of trinkets, and every
nerve in his body jumped.

"Good God! Waldemar!" he said, under his breath.

"Exactly. I told you he knew how to wait. Now look farther along the
kerb on this side. The closed carriage waiting there. It was dawdling
along and keeping pace with him when I saw it first. The man on the
box is a fellow named Serpice--an Apache. _Chut!_ Be still, will
you?--and look the other way. They will do me no harm--_here_. It
isn't their game, and, besides, they daren't. It is too public,
too dangerous. It will be done, when it is done, in the dark--when
I'm alone, and none can see. And Waldemar will not be there. He will
direct, but not participate. But it won't be to-day nor yet to-night,
I promise you. I shall slip them this time if never again."

The superintendent spoke, but the hard hammering of his heart made
his voice scarcely audible.

"How?" he asked. "How?"

"Come and see!" said Cleek for yet a third time. Then with an
abruptness and a swiftness that carried everything before it, he
caught Narkom by the arm, swept him across the street, and without
hint or warning tapped Waldemar upon the shoulder.

"Ah, bon jour, Monsieur le Comte," he said airily, as the Mauravanian
swung round and looked at him, blanching a trifle in spite of
himself. "So you are back in England, it seems? Ah, well, we like
you so much--tell his Majesty when next you report--that this time we
shall try to keep you here."

Taken thus by assault, the man had no words in which to answer,
but merely wormed his way out of the gathering about him and, panic
stricken, obliterated himself in the crowd of pedestrians teeming
up and down the street.

"You reckless devil!" wheezed Narkom as he was swept back to the
limousine in the same cyclonic manner he had been swept away from it.
"You might have made the man savage enough to do something to you,
even in spite of the publicity, by such a proceeding as that."

"That is precisely what I had hoped to do, my friend, but you
perceive he is no fool to be tra