CHAPTER II
A KISS FOR A LIFE

It was just dusk when the police officials were obliged to give up their quest for the Superintendent and Hammond returned to Scotland Yard to make his report to the Chief Commissioner. Dejected of mien and heavy of heart he stopped mechanically at the door of the Superintendent's room. He would have given worlds if he had never been the unconscious instrument of his superior's disaster. The door stood slightly ajar and he halted with the intention of closing it.

The electric light had been switched on and he stood in the doorway. A figure sat at the familiar desk and as the Inspector gave one brief glance, a cry of half pain, half fear, burst from his shaking lips.

"Mr. Cleek – you, sir! But – "

Cleek – for he it was – switched round in his chair, exclaiming at sight of the man's face, "Why, man! What's wrong?"

"Mr. Narkom, sir – they've got him. He's gone!"

"Got him – who've got him? He's not dead?"

Hammond shivered at that; then hoarsely and somewhat incoherently got out the tale of the afternoon. And as Cleek realized the trap the Superintendent had bravely entered to save him, his friend and associate, from danger, he collapsed into the chair, his face hidden in the palm of his hand.

"God! A friend indeed! They think to hurt me through him," he muttered. "They'll never dare to injure him, surely! God, if only I hadn't lost that train – only by a minute, too! But I'll get him, I swear it. The rats shall pay for this – "

He leapt to his feet, his eyes narrowed down to slits, his lips set in a straight line, as he mentally reviewed once more the facts of Hammond's story.

"Leave me alone, Hammond. You can do nothing more. Keep a lookout at the docks. Tell Dollops I'm all right, and to lie low himself – or he'll be the next."

Hammond saluted and left the room, as Cleek turned to the telephone. A quarter of an hour later, out of the sacred precincts of the Yard itself, slouched one of the most villainous-looking Apaches that Soho or Montmartre itself ever could have seen. It was Cleek the Vanishing Cracksman, Cleek the Man of Forty Faces – the King Rat himself on the warpath. Had Marise of the Twisted Arm, Gustave Merode, or even Margot herself, the Queen of the Apaches, seen him, they would have feared and trembled.

Meanwhile, the barge had transferred its precious if bulky burden to one of the numerous produce boats going up the river and it was well on its way to Havre before police launches or port officials were made aware of the loss.

But it was not until midnight had struck that the cramped, aching body of the Superintendent was hustled out of the boat at a little landing place outside the port itself, and smuggled hastily down into cellars of the Coq d'Or. Officials were too used to drunken sailors being helped in and out of this none too savoury tavern to note one more helpless, stumbling figure, held up between comrades, and a brief second found Mr. Narkom in the midst of an uproarious, shouting crew of Apaches, headed by no less than Margot herself, disguised as a Breton fishwife. She had escaped the eagle eye of her born foes, the French gendarmes, and here reigned supreme, surrounded by her compères in crime and those subject to her sway.

Her shrill cries of delight resounded to the roof as her eyes fell upon the gagged and bound figure of Mr. Narkom.

"Brava, brave Jules; so you succeeded! La! La! but we 'ave the rat himself now. This is the toasted cheese, and Cleek will come after his friend very soon – if we send for him. Eh, mes amis? A splendid plan, and meanwhile the good Duke is being hurt, eh! But it is good!"

Jeering and laughing, she thrust her face close to the drawn one of the Superintendent.

"But not so clever, eh, my friend? We cannot afford to have you and Cleek, the rat!" – she spat the words out – "in England. We want a rest."

"Into the cellar – hark, what's that? All right, an aeroplane – that's all right. Into the cellar with him, lads. All we have to do now is to wait for the rat to come to the trap!"

To the accompaniment of another laugh, Mr. Narkom was pulled down into the vaults below, where, dazed with hunger, pain, and anxiety lest Cleek should indeed be led into fresh danger, he sweated an hour away.

Upstairs all was renewed merriment, and in the midst of it the door opened and a familiar figure slouched in – evil of face, disfigured with scars and bruises. As a shout arose at his appearance, there was no question as to his identity. "Merode. Nom de dieu, Gustave!" cried Margot. "But a pretty picture you cut!"

"Sacré nom!" he growled through his clenched teeth. "So would you, if you had been fighting for your life! The pigs of police are after me. Give me a drink and take me down through the cellar. The boat goes back to-night, doesn't it?"

"It does," said Margot. "Here's your drink – and drink to Jules there for he caught the turkey gobbler. Cleek the Rat's man – Narkom!"

"Nonsense – impossible!" cried Merode with an oath.

"But not so, my friend, you shall see him," cried half a dozen voices.

"See him? I'll mark him for life, the devil. Someone go for the vitriol – here!"

With dirty, scratched, and bloodstained hands, Merode threw a coin to one of the Apaches who vanished in the blue fumes of smoke and wine, while Merode slouched deeper into the shadows as there came the sound of a gendarme's clattering sword on the cobbles outside.

"Mon dieu, Margot, I mustn't be caught."

Margot gave orders swiftly. "Down with him, Jeannette, into the vaults, while I hold the fort."

Jeannette clutched Merode's arm. "Come, mon ami, through here! You know the way!"

Stumbling, cursing, praying all in one breath, Merode followed down the rickety wooden ladder, down, it seemed, into the very bowels of the earth.

Thrusting open another door, Jeannette grumblingly lighted a torch stuck in the woodwork, and as Merode's eyes fell upon the figure of Mr. Narkom an oath of triumph burst from his lips.

"Dieu, but Margot spoke the truth. It's the pig himself. I've half a mind to take him with me and make him dance with a hot iron or two! Better than vitriol – " He gave vent to a hoarse, chuckling laugh, at the sound of which the Superintendent shivered, even though the confined space was close enough on the hot summer's night.

"Margot will never stand that," said Jeannette. "She means to keep him here till Cleek the Rat comes – "

"Margot! Nom du pipe! If she is Queen, I am King. Leave him to me and give me the key of the door."

Jeannette wheeled suddenly on him.

"What key – what door?" she asked. Then without waiting for an answer she snatched the torch from the wall and thrust it in Merode's face.

He drew back from her piercing gaze.

"Hola!" she cried in triumph. "I was right – it is not Merode!" For Merode knew of the trap-door. And as the man followed her glance toward it he realized his mistake.

"And you, who are you?" she cried.

As the man shrank back she advanced, and with a swift gesture plucked at the matted hair. It came away in her hand, and her own cry of triumph as it revealed the smooth head beneath drowned the Superintendent's cry of "Cleek!" even as he realized the double peril of himself and the man whose friendship was dearer to him even than life itself.

"Aha, I know you now," cried Jeannette. "The great Cleek himself! And it is I who have got you —moi– whom she laughed at."

"And will again, ma petite," said Cleek, for he indeed it was. "Jeannette, be merciful, as you hope for mercy. Let me get my friend here through the door into the boat and you shall deliver me up to Margot. I will come back – I swear it – if you set him free."

"Free to bring the gendarmes on us —pas si bête. No, my friend," laughed the girl.

"He will not do that, I swear it. Did Cleek the Cracksman ever break his oath?"

"No, but Cleek of what do you call your quarters – eh – ah – Scot-land Yard – eh – yes, he might!" said the girl.

Swiftly, in a torrent of French patois that Narkom could not follow, Cleek pleaded, disregarding the Superintendent's own pleas to exchange his life for that of Cleek himself.

Minutes passed and the girl remained obdurate. Suddenly she looked up.

"They say you have a white-and-gold lady to be your woman over on the other side – is it not so?"

Cleek shivered and shut his eyes in a veritable agony of spirit at this reference to Ailsa Lorne – his adored Ailsa who awaited him in the rose-clad riverside home, and who within a few brief days was to have been his wife.

A low, sibilant laugh burst from Jeannette's painted lips.

"Eh, but she would not like to know of this little meeting, my friend? She would scorn the poor Jeannette, eh? But it is Jeannette who holds you like that!" She snapped her finger and thumb in triumph, and as the bursts of merriment above them seemed to roll nearer, Cleek grew very, very still. This was indeed the end, and though he would die for the sake of his friend, the blow would be none the less bitter.

Jeannette stood silent, too, looking at him. One, two, perhaps three minutes passed before she turned again.

"Well, mon ami, I don't know that I owe anything to Margot up there. What happens to me if I let you go? How do you pay me – eh?"

"Jeannette, you will? You have only to tell me what to do in return."

Cleek's voice trembled despite himself at this shadow of renewed hope, and Jeannette flushed in the dark.

"Bah, but I am the fool she calls me," she muttered, "But death comes soon enough. Pay me – " She came close to him, thrusting her face close to his. "No lover have I. I am old and plain; you are Cleek, once the lover of Margot the Queen. Kiss me! Nay, as you value your life and that of your friend there, kiss me as you would your woman over there – that is the price you shall pay!"

For one brief second Cleek's soul revolted. The thought of offering his lips – which he held sacred to the one fair woman who had led him up from depths such as these to her own pure level – sickened him. He would sooner yield life itself. Yet Narkom's life depended on his own, and with a secret prayer for forgiveness he bent over, took the thin, shaking figure literally into his arms, and kissed the painted lips, not once, but thrice. "God bless you, Jeannette!" he murmured. "He alone can reward you."

With a little moan of pain Jeannette clung to him as if indeed he were the lover she craved; then, slipping from his arms, she turned, sped across the room, and tugged at a small, half-hidden trap-door.

"Quick," she panted. "Slash his ropes and go – before I repent! I'll tell them you've gone!"

Without another look or sound she disappeared up the staircase, leaving Cleek to make good the escape of them both, in his heart a prayer of gratitude, and a resolution to save Jeannette from this den of crime if he but lived to escape into safety.

Hardly daring to breathe, he and Narkom stumbled down another foul-laden ladder and into a noisome passage, which eventually brought them onto the little landing stage.

"I have the 'plane here," said Cleek, with a little happy laugh. "Be brave, my friend, but a few more minutes."

He vanished in the darkness, and though it seemed ages to the aching Superintendent, it was barely three minutes before the shadowy, whirring body of a War Office hydroplane hovered over him. Not more than five minutes later they were once more on the way to safety and to London, there to unravel the riddle which had been propounded to the Superintendent by his chief but a few hours before.

"What's that, my friend – how did I find you?" said Cleek, later, when Mr. Narkom had got through a meal which would have done justice to Dollops himself.

"Well, I 'phoned for the use of one of our sea-planes, and scouted over every likely boat and barge in the Channel. When I saw one pass by Havre and stop just beyond, I remembered the old Coq d'Or and determined to risk it. And now, my friend, all you have to do is to rest. What's that? A case? Not to-night, Mr. Narkom, nor this morning. We both want rest and a quiet hour to offer up thanks to le bon dieu and Jeannette for our escape."

And that is why the case of the Mysterious Light, the riddle which was terrifying a whole village, was given no thought until many hours later. It had been a time too fraught with danger to be thought of lightly, and both men realized perhaps even more clearly the bond of friendship which had prompted both to walk into the very shadow of death in each other's service.