“Ripping, wasn’t it, old chap?” said the superintendent.  “No wonder you are excited, considering what interest you have.  Been looking for you, my dear fellow.  Knew of course, from your telling me, that you would be here to-day, but shouldn’t have been able to identify you but for the presence of young Dollops here.  I say:  you’re not going to stop now that the great race is over, are you?  The rest won’t amount to anything.”

“No, I shall not stop,” said Cleek.  “Why?  Do you want me?”

“Yes.  Lennard’s outside with the limousine.  Hop into it, will you, and meet me at the Fiddle and Horseshoe, between Shepherd’s Bush and Acton?  It’s only half-past three and the limousine can cover the distance in less than no time.  Can’t go with you.  Got to round up my men here, first.  Join you shortly, however.  McTavish has a sixty-horse-power Mercedes, and he’ll rush me over almost on your heels.  Let Dollops go home by train, and you meet me as I’ve asked, will you?”

“Yes,” said Cleek.

And so the joyous holiday came to an unexpected end.

Parting from Dollops, and leaving the boy to journey on to Clarges Street alone, he fared forth to find Lennard and the red limousine, and was whirled away in record time to the inn of the Fiddle and Horseshoe.

CHAPTER XVI

It had but just gone five when Narkom walked into the little bar parlour and found him standing there, looking out on the quaint, old-fashioned bowling green that lay all steeped in sunshine and zoned with the froth of pear and apple blossoms thick piled above the time-stained bricks of an enclosing wall.

“What a model of punctuality you are, old chap,” the superintendent said, nodding approvingly.  “Wait a moment while I go and order tea, and then we will get down to business in real earnest.  Shan’t be long.”

“Pray, don’t hurry yourself on my account, Mr. Narkom,” returned Cleek, “coming down to earth” out of a mental airship.  “I could do with another hour of that”—­nodding toward the view—­“and still wonder where the time had gone.  These quaint old inns, which the march of what we are pleased to call ‘Progress’ is steadily crowding off the face of the land, are always deeply interesting to me; I love them.  What a day!  What a picture!  What a sky!  As blue as what Dollops calls the ’Merry Geranium Sea.’  I’d give a Jew’s eye for a handful of those apple blossoms—­they are divine!”

Narkom hastened from the room without replying.  The strain of poetry underlying the character of this strange, inscrutable man, his amazing love of Nature, his moments of almost womanish weakness and sentiment, astonished and mystified him.  It was as if a hawk had acquired the utterly useless trick of fluting like a nightingale, and being himself wholly without imagination, he could not comprehend it in the smallest degree.