Without waiting for Campbell’s contradiction to this statement, Lady Molly flounced out of the house.
Miss Campbell hardly spoke during the next ten minutes that she and I were left alone together. She lay on the sofa with eyes wide open, staring up at the ceiling, evidently still in a great state of fear.
I had just got tea ready when Lady Molly came back. She had an evening paper in her hand, but threw this down on the table directly she came in.
“I could only get an early edition,” she said breathlessly, “and the silly thing hasn’t got anything in it about the matter.”
She drew near to the sofa, and, subduing the shrillness of her voice, she whispered rapidly, bending down towards Campbell:
“There’s a man hanging about at the corner down there. No, no; it’s not the police,” she added quickly, in response to the girl’s sudden start of alarm. “Trust me, my dear, for knowing a ’tec when I see one! Why, I’d smell one half a mile off. No; my opinion is that it’s your man, my dear, and that he’s in a devil of a hole.”
“Oh! he oughtn’t to come here,” ejaculated Campbell in great alarm. “He’ll get me into trouble and do himself no good. He’s been a fool!” she added, with a fierceness wholly unlike her usual demure placidity, “getting himself caught like that. Now I suppose we shall have to hook it—if there’s time.”
“Can I do anything to help you?” asked the pseudo Mrs. Stein. “You know I’ve been through all this myself, when they was after Mr. Stein. Or perhaps Mary could do something.”
“Well, yes,” said the girl, after a slight pause, during which she seemed to be gathering her wits together; “I’ll write a note, and you shall take it, if you will, to a friend of mine—a lady who lives in the Cromwell Road. But if you still see a man lurking about at the corner of the street, then, just as you pass him, say the word ‘Campbell,’ and if he replies ‘Rosie,’ then give him the note. Will you do that?”
“Of course I will, my dear. Just you leave it all to me.”