“Well, you’ll be able to rest yourself as much as you like this evening, Mr. Lake,” he said, lightly, trying the muscles of his right arm with his left hand, and nodding as he felt them ride up, smooth and firm as ivory, under his coat-sleeve.  “I’m not in such bad fettle for an amateur, if anything in the nature of a scrap comes along, after all.  Though I’m not anticipating any fighting, I can assure you.  There’s the morning’s papers, and the local rag with various lurid—­and inaccurate—­accounts of the whole ghastly affair.  Merriton seems to have a good many friends in these parts, and the local press is strong in his favour.  But that’s as far as it goes.  At any rate, they’ll keep you interested until we come home again.  By the way, you might drop a hint to Borkins that I shall be writing some letters in my room to-night, and don’t want to be disturbed, and that if he wants to go out, Dollops will post them for me and see to my wants; will you?  I don’t want him to ‘suspicion’ anything.”

Mr. Narkom nodded.  He snapped his note-book to, and bound the elastic round it, as Cleek crossed to the door and threw it open.

“I’ll be going up to my room now, Lake,” he said, in clear, high tones that carried down the empty hallway to whatever listener might be there to hear them.  “I’ve some letters to write.  One to my fiancee, you know, and naturally I don’t want to be disturbed.”

“All right,” said Mr. Narkom, equally clearly.  “So long.”

Then the door closed sharply, and Cleek mounted the stairs to his room, whistling softly to himself meanwhile, just as Borkins rounded the corner of the dining-room door and acknowledged his friendly nod with one equally friendly.

A smile played about the corners of the man’s mouth, and his eyes narrowed, as he watched Cleek disappear up the stairs.

“Faugh!” he said to the shadows.  “So much for yer Lunnon policeman, eh?  Writin’ love-letters on a night like this!  Young sap’ead!”

Then he swung upon his heel, and retraced his steps to the kitchen.  Upstairs in the dark passageway, Cleek stood and laughed noiselessly, his shoulders shaking with the mirth that swayed him.  Borkins’s idea of a ‘Lunnon policeman’ had pleased him mightily.

CHAPTER XIX

WHAT TOOK PLACE AT “THE PIG AND WHISTLE”

It was a night without a moon.  Great gray cloud-banks swamped the sky, and there was a heavy mist that blurred the outline of tree and fence and made the broad, flat stretches of the marshes into one impenetrable blot of inky darkness.

Two men, in ill-fitting corduroys and soiled blue jerseys, their swarthy necks girt about by vivid handkerchiefs, and their big-peaked caps pulled well down over their eyes, made their way along the narrow lane that led from Merriton Towers to Saltfleet Bay.  At the junction with Saltfleet Road, two other figures slipped by them in the half-mist, and after peering at then from under the screen of dark caps, sang out a husky “Good-night, mates.”  They answered in unison, the bigger, broader one whistling as he swung along, his pace slackening a trifle so that the two newcomers might pass him and get on into the shadows ahead.