The man shook his head, but not smilingly.
“Has he gone?”
“Yes, sah.”
“No one knows at the village where he’s gone?”
Spats shook his head.
“Wiggins,” said Carpentaria. “Is this the man who brought you the note?”
Wiggins hesitated.
“No, sir,” he said at length’, resentfully. “But they’re all alike, them folk are.”
“H’m!” murmured Carpentaria. “Since there is nothing to guard here, you may as well go, Wiggins. You, too, Spats.”
Two minutes later he was crossing the Oriental Gardens in the direction of the Thames. And when he had travelled two hundred yards or so he heard footsteps behind him, light, rapid, irregular. He turned quickly, his hand on the revolver in his pocket, to face his pursuer. His pursuer, however, was Pauline Dartmouth and no other. So he left the revolver where it was.