is
lips as he clanged the great front door to behind him.

CHAPTER XI

THE SECRET OF THE FLAMES

Fetchworth, as everybody knows, lies in that part of the Fen district
of Lincolnshire that borders on the coast, and in the curve of its
motherlike arm Saltfleet Bay, a tiny shipping centre with miniature
harbour, drowses its days in pleasant idleness.

And so it was that upon the morning of Cleek's and Mr. Narkom's arrival
at Merriton Towers. They came disguised as two idlers interested in the
surrounding country, after having satiated themselves at the fountain of
London's gaieties, and bore the pseudonyms of "George Headland" and "Mr.
Gregory Lake" respectively. Cleek himself was primed, so to speak, on
every point of the landscape. He knew all about Fetchworth that there was
to know--saving the secret of the Frozen Flames, and that he was expected
to know very soon--and the traffic of Saltfleet Bay and its tiny harbour
was an open book to him.

Even Withersby Hall and its environs had had the same close intensive
study, and everything that was to be learnt from guide-books, tourists'
enquiry offices and the like, was hidden away in the innermost recesses
of his remarkable brain.

Borkins, standing at the smoking-room window--a favourite haunt of his
from which he was able to see without too ostensibly being seen--noted
their coming up the broad driveway, with something of disfavour in his
look. Merriton had given him certain directions only the night before,
and Borkins was a keen-sighted man. Also, the little fat johnny at any
rate, didn't quite look the type of man that the Merriton's were in the
habit of entertaining at the Towers.

However, he opened the door with a flourish, and told the gentlemen that
"Sir Nigel is in the drorin'-room," whither he led them with much pomp.

Cleek took in the place at a glance. Noted the wide, deep hallway; the
old-fashioned outlines of the house, smartened up freshly by the hands of
modern workmen; the set of each door and window that he passed, and
stowed away these impressions in the pigeon-holes of his mind. As he
proceeded to the drawing-room he set out in his mind's eye the whole
scene of that night's occurrence as had been related to him by Sir Nigel.
There was the smoking-room door, open and showing the type of room behind
it; there the hall-stand from which Dacre Wynne had fatefully wrenched
his coat and hat, to go lurching out into oblivion, half-drunk and