Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/16

 with the stolen key, and busied himself with the telegraph board for half an hour.

Click-clack-clicketty-clack went his nimble fingers, sending a triumphant message across land and sea and land again.

After which, from a mysterious hiding-place about his stout person, he drew a sharp-edged hatchet and smashed the delicate telegraph instruments into a chaotic mass of wooden splinters and twisted copper wires.

Six hours and twenty minutes later, in a dingy, cobwebby office on the top floor of an architectural infamy on Upper Thames Street, just beyond the Fishmongers Hall, in the reeking heart of the City of London, a short, stocky, blue-eyed, sandy-haired man stepped away from the fly-specked window where he had been admiring the deceptively romantic outlines of Poultney's Inn.

“Half a jiff, old cockywax!" he called in answer to the insistent knocking at the door, opened it, and admitted a red-faced, red-capped, impudent messenger boy.

"Cyble, sir,” said the latter, “for—right-oh!—party by name of Gloops!”

“Right you are, young fellow-my-lad. That's our cable address. Hand it over. What you waitin' for? Eh? Tip? Chase yourself!”

“Aw—chyse yer own ruddy self!”

“Out you go!”

And the messenger boy made a hurried and undignified exit propelled by a square-toed, number nine and