"It is not," I added with dignity, "that I have any objection to taking off this infernal outfit. But it would appear that I am spending my wedding-eve chiefly in lavatories or in jail, and it's getting to be a nuisance. Besides, no sooner will I climb into Charters's coat than along will come Stone and swear I'm disguised again. It's fate. It's — "
"Now, now," said Evelyn. "Stone has seen that disguise; and, anyway, where's the disguise about a tweed coat? Don't stand there orating, Ken, or they'll be after us… Hurry!"
She was right. I now understand the meaning of the phrase "fully clothed and in his right mind." Once out of that clerical collar, I felt a new man again. In three minutes I had left the lavatory and rejoined her in the breezy square outside the station: and still there was no sign of pursuit. When I bundled Evelyn into the nearest taxi, a clock in the high pointed tower over the station indicated five minutes to two. But on one point I was fiendishly determined. There should be no more disguises or false names that night, with mix-ups of the sort through which we had already floundered. Not ropes or thumb-screws would induce me to give any name other than my own. I explained this to Evelyn, while the cab turned right and then bore to the left, through narrow silent streets in the direction of Bristol Bridge.
"Yes, I know,", Evelyn said thoughtfully, "but don't you think it may be necessary?"
"Necessary? How?"
She brooded. "Well, I mean — first of all, you've got to find out whether Keppel is still out. You can't just walk into the hotel and coolly begin burgling his rooms before you know whether or not he's in, can you? And, if Keppel is as tricky a sort as Stone seems to think, this `out all evening may be a blind. First of all, you'll have to pretend to have an urgent appointment with him. Then, if he's really out, you can get a room on the same floor and crack the crib. Urgent appointment. H'm. Couldn't you be Professor Blake of the University of Edinburgh?"
"No, I could not."
"Yes, but you've got to be something!"
"The `urgent appointment' will do well enough. If we get into a tight corner, I'll tell whatever lie is necessary. But meantime — "
The cab turned up the rise at Bristol Bridge, and then down the long curve of Baldwin Street to the Centre. The great square of the Centre was deserted except for two policemen talking under a clock; a few late electric signs, red and yellow, still flashed away with monotonous gaiety; and the river, winding among buildings as it has done since Bristol was once a city with its streets full of ships, had turned to silver. We went up the slope of College Green, past the Park where Victoria's statue looks out from an eternal whisepering conference of leaves, past the Royal Hotel, past the Cathedral, to the Cabot Hotel some two hundred yards further on.