He laughed again, a happy, schoolboyish laugh which brought a positively shocked expression to Mr. Narkom’s round face.

“My dear Cleek!” he expostulated.  “Really, one might think that you actually enjoyed this sort of thing!  One of these fine days, if you’re not careful, you’ll be caught napping, and it’ll take all Dollops’s and my ingenuity to get you out of the clutches.  I do beg of you to be careful—­for Ailsa’s sake, if not for mine.”

At mention of the name, for a second the whole look upon Cleek’s face altered.  Something came into his eyes that softened their keenness, something settled down over his countenance, wiping away the mirth and the grim lines together.  He sighed.

“Heigho!” he said, softly, spinning round upon his heel and surveying Mr. Narkom with a half-smile upon his lips.  “I will be careful, dear friend.  I promise.  And I have given my word to—­her—­as well.  And that the life of Hamilton Cleek should be so precious to any such angel as that—­well, it ‘fair beats me’, as Dollops would say....  I’ll be careful, all right.  You may depend upon it.  But Dollops and I are going to have a little outing on our own.  We’ll ransack the ‘make-up’ box after lunch and see what it can produce.  And if we don’t bring back something worth hearing to you on our return to-night, then I’ll retire from Scotland Yard altogether and take a kindergarten class....  Gad!  I feel sorry for young Merriton.  But there’s no other course open to us at present but to keep him where he is.  Coroner’s inquest takes place to-morrow afternoon, and a lot may happen in the meantime.”

Mr. Narkom gravely shook his head.

“Don’t like the thing at all, Headland,” he supplemented slowly, lighting a fresh cigarette from the stump of the other one, and blowing a cloud of smoke into the air.  “There’s something here that we haven’t got at.  Something big.  I feel it.”

“Well, you’ll have that feeling further augmented before many more days are over, my friend,” returned Cleek, meaningly.  “What did the letter from Headquarters say?  I noticed you got one this morning, and recognized it by the way the stamp was set on the envelope—­though I must say your secretary is more than discreet.  It looked for all the world like a love-letter, which no doubt your curious friend Borkins thought it was.”

But if Cleek appeared in fine fettle at the prospect of a possible exciting evening with Dollops, Mr. Narkom’s barometer did not register the same comforting high altitude.  He did not smile.

“Oh, it had to do with these continual bank robberies,” he replied with a sigh.  “They’re enough to wear a man right out.  Seem so simple, and all that, and yet—­never a trace left.  Fellowes reports that another one took place, at Ealing.  As usual, only gold stolen.  Not a bank-note touched.  They’ll be holding us up in the main road, like Dick Turpin, if the robbers are allowed to continue on their way like this.  It’s damnable, to say the least!  The beggars seem to get off scot-free every time.  If this case here wasn’t so difficult and important, I’d be off up to London to have a look into things again.  Frankly, it worries me.”