off. The other chap will
follow, be assured. All right, Lennard. Let her go!"

Lennard 'let her go' forthwith, and a quarter of an hour later saw
the programme carried out in every particular, only that it was not
Waldemar who made an attempt to follow when the limousine halted
at the Tube station and Cleek jumped out and ran in (the count was
far too shrewd for that); it was a rough-looking Frenchman who had
just previously hopped out of a closed carriage driven by a fellow
countryman, only to be nabbed at the station doorway by Narkom, and
turned over to the nearest constable on the charge of pocket picking.

The charge, however, was so manifestly groundless that half a dozen
persons stepped forward and entered protest; but the superintendent
was so pig-headed that by the time he could be brought to reason,
and the man was again at liberty to take his ticket and go down in
the lift to the train, the platform was empty, the train gone, and
Cleek already on his way.

A swift, short flight under the earth's surface carried him to
another station in quite another part of London; a swift, short
walk thence landed him at his temporary lodgings in town, and four
o'clock found him exchanging his workaday clothes for the regulation
creased trousers and creaseless coat of masculine calling costume,
and getting ready to spend the rest of the day with _her_.

CHAPTER XXV

The sky was all aflame with the glory of one of late June's gorgeous
sunsets when he came up over the long sweep of meadowland and saw
her straying about and gathering wild flowers to fill the vases in
the wee house's wee little drawing-room, and singing to herself the
while in a voice that was like honey--thin but very, very sweet--and
at the sight something seemed to lay hold of his heart and quicken
its beating until it interfered with his breathing, yet brought with
it a curious sense of joy.

"Good afternoon, Mistress of the Linnets!" he called out to her as
he advanced (for she had neither seen nor heard his coming) with the
big sheaf of roses he had brought held behind him and the bracken
and kingcups smothering him in green and gold up to the very thighs.

She turned at the sound, her face illumined, her soft eyes very
bright--those wondrous eyes that had lit a man's way back from
perdition and would light it onward and upward to the end--and
greeted him with a smile of happy welcome.

"Oh, it is you at last," she said, looking at him