“That’s it, precisely.  Only I must tell you that, in the instance when the victim was held in the arms of the person watching him, it was not a man that was killed, but a boy.  There had been a man killed, however, four weeks previously in the same house, in the same mysterious manner, and by the same unknown agency.  A month earlier a woman, too, had been done to death there in the same way.  The man was the brother of that boy, and the woman was the mother of both.”

Cleek moved so quickly that he might fairly have been said to flash from a sitting to a standing position, and then began to feel round in his pockets for his cigarette case with a nervous sort of haste, which Narkom knew and understood.

“Ah,” he said, in a tone of satisfaction, “I thought the case would interest you.  You’ve been down in the dumps lately and needed something to buck you up a bit.  I told Captain Morford that this would be sure to do it.  Heard of him, haven’t you?  Extremely nice chap.  Home on leave from Bombay.  Only recently got his captaincy.  Grandson and heir to that fine old snob, Sir Gilbert Morford, who’s known everywhere as ’The Titled Teapot.’  You know, ‘Morford & Morford’s Unrivalled Tea.’  Knighted for something or other—­the Lord knows what or why—­and puts on more side over his tin-plate title than Royalty itself.  The Captain is a decent sort, however.  He’ll give you the full particulars of this astounding case.  Wait a bit.  I’ll call him”—­pausing a moment to put the first two fingers of each hand into his mouth and blow out a shrill, ear-splitting whistle.  “That’ll fetch him!  He’ll be here before you can say Jack Robinson!”

He wasn’t, of course; but you couldn’t have said it half a hundred times before he was; or, at least, before Cleek, startled by a rustling of the boughs, glanced round and saw a tall, fairish young man who had no more the appearance of a soldier than a currant has of a gooseberry.  He looked more like a bank clerk than anything else that Cleek could think of at the minute, and a none too prepossessing bank clerk at that, for Nature had not been any too lavish of her gifts as regards personal attractiveness, seeming to prefer to make up for her miserliness in the bestowal of good looks by an absolute prodigality in the gifts of ears—­ears as big as an oyster-shell and so prominent that they seemed even larger than they were, and that is saying a great deal.

Still, unprepossessing as the man was, there was a certain charm of manner about him and a certain attractiveness in his voice Cleek discovered when he was introduced to him and found himself being “sized up,” so to speak, by a pair of keen grey eyes.