“You must come with me, please.”
“Mr Balm!” she exclaimed in astonishment. “Do you know what you say?”
“Perfectly,” he answered, quite self-possessed. “By your own showing you invite your ultimate ruin by staying here. The man is obviously a villain, and if we cannot expose, we can defy him. I will make it my business to discover his whereabouts, and to pay-off your debt to him. In the meanwhile a lady member of our staff will procure you suitable lodgings near the Agency, and any obligation you may owe to us it shall be in your power to discharge by way of services to our office. To-morrow, one of our agents shall visit here to make such arrangements with your landlord as are necessary for acquitting you of your agreement with him, and to dismiss your servant. You can trust to my absolute honour and sincerity in the whole matter. It is for such purposes that we exist. You will greatly oblige me by consenting.”
She appeared genuinely moved and perplexed. She could find no answer for some moments.
“I don’t know what to say,” she murmured at last.
“Say nothing,” he answered; “but, if I may venture to suggest, make a little bag of your immediate necessaries, and come straight away with me. The rest can follow.”
While she was gone from the room a thing or two relative to the unreasoned extravagances of women did occur to him. “Thus,” he thought, “they will, when in dire distress and within sight of absolute penury, rent a neat little furnished house and hire a servant, when cheap lodgings would have served all their purpose.” But he dismissed the reflection as bearing too hardly upon the small worldly-wisdom of one bred in comparative luxury, without experience, and very young in years—probably not much over twenty. And, for the rest, he contemplated with serene gratification his return from his first romantic quest in company with this visible beautiful earnest of its success.
CHAPTER III.
THE QUEST OF THE EMPTY HOUSE
Man wanted immediately to assist in practical refutation of calumny. Apply Judex: Raxe’s Private Hotel, Aldwych.
The above advertisement met Gilead’s eyes a day or two after his adventure with the beautiful lepidopterist. He fastened upon it at once.