't ask questions, come!" rapped in Cleek, then whirled out of the
room and flew down the passage to the partition door, and pounded
heavily upon it. "Doctor Fordyce, Doctor Fordyce, open the door, come
quickly. Something has happened to Captain Bridewell," he called. "He's
not in his room, not in the house, and it looks as if somebody had
spirited him away!"

A clatter of footsteps on the other side of the partition door answered
this; then the bolt flashed back, the door whirled open, two
figures--one on the very heels of the other--came tumbling into sight,
and then there was mischief!

Cleek sprang, and a click of steel sounded. The doctor, caught in a sort
of throttle-hold, went down with him upon the floor; the colonel, unable
to check himself in time, sprawled headlong over them, and by the time
he could pull himself to his knees young Bridewell was upon him, and
there were gyves upon his wrists as well as upon the doctor's.

"Got you, you pretty pair!" said Cleek, as he rose to his feet and shut
a tight hand upon the collar of the manacled doctor; "got you, you dogs,
and your little game is up. Oh, you needn't bluster, doctor; you needn't
come the outraged innocence, Colonel. You'll, neither of you, bolster up
the rascally claim of your worthy confederate, the Tackbun Claimant; and
your game with the X-rays, your devil's trick of rotting away a man's
arm to destroy tattooed evidence of a rank imposter's guilt is just so
much time wasted and just so many pounds sterling thrown away."

"What's that?" blustered the colonel. "What do you mean? What are you
talking about? Tackbun Claimant? Who's the Tackbun Claimant? Do you
realize to whom you are speaking? Fordyce, who and what is this
infernally impudent puppy?"

"Gently, gently, Colonel. Name's Cleek, if you are anxious to know it."

"Cleek? Cleek?"

"Precisely, doctor. Cleek of Scotland Yard, Cleek of the Forty Faces, if
you want complete details. And if there are more that you feel you would
like to know, I'll give them to you when I hand you over to the
Devonshire police for your part in this rascally conspiracy to cheat the
late Lady Tackbun's nephew out of his lawful rights and to rot off the
arm of the man who constitutes the living document which will clearly
establish them. The lost Sir Aubrey Tackbun is dead, my friend, dead as
Julius Caesar, dead beyond the hopes of you and your confederates to
revive even the ghost of him now. He died on a coral r