Chapter VIII.

"—are not The Mucker," continued the Chief.

S.A.C.D.D.D.S. Dagg righted his chair and slumped into it weakly.

"Lummy, Chief, you gave me a turn," he muttered, wiping his brow. "You've got a slow-motion style of speaking sometimes that gets my Angora."

The Chief permitted himself a wintry smile.

"Leave The Mucker to me, Dagg," he advised. "Kant and I must have the honour of his arrest. Kant—because The Mucker is his first case and, consequently, the only criminal that has baffled him and got away. I—for several reasons, the only one of which you need know is that he killed Angelica."

"But—but," stammered Dagg, "you said just now that you had killed Angelica."

"My exact words, I think," said the Honourable Citron Peale coldly, "were 'Let us assume that I killed Angelica.' Now, carry out your orders and assume that I killed Angelica."

He watched Dagg closely as the latter assumed a satisfactory appearance of assumption.

"That's right," he approved. "There's no need for a subordinate Police officer to know too much. Understand?"

"Yessir," said Dagg promptly.

The Chief transferred his attention to the two men lying on the floor.

"Some people will do anything for a rest," he commented. "I suppose we'll have to coddle them a bit now. Give me a hand, Dagg, and we'll stick them in the cells until they see fit to wake up. I'll take Kant. You take Drift. When that young blighter is on his feet again, he'll join the army, if I know anything. There's too much of the lady-killer about him for my taste."

They passed through the doorway, each with an unconscious man slung over his shoulder.

As the sound of their footsteps receded, the concealed door behind the High Chief Commissioner's desk opened and there stepped into the room—the Honourable Citron Peale!

A Citron, however, whose face was distorted with rage, whose lips were drawn back in a ferocious snarl, whose demoniacal eyes revolved in their sockets, showing now green, now grey, now, red, white and blue.

This gentleman closed his remarkable eyes, lifted his tightly clenched page 48 fists in the air, and vented a string of remarks in agonising silence. The atmosphere of the room rapidly assumed a purple tinge.

The telephone rang.

"Well," snarled the intruder, snatching up the receiver.

A voice asked a question.

"This," spat out the mysterious creature, "is The Mucker."

Producing a syringe, he filled it from the bottle of red ink and squirted the contents into the mouthpiece of the telephone. Diabolical satisfaction showed in his features as sounds of dismay came over the wire. Then he sighed and dropped the receiver.

"Can't get a kick out of it any more," he muttered, with an evil sadness. "Anyway, I got their darned old pussy."

He opened the window, took an aeroplane from his pocket, and seated himself in it. The sudden whirr of a propellor. Then silence.

The Mucker had escaped!