"Good egg!" cried Wimsey. "Now we're gettin' down to it. Stay here, there's a good man, in case anything turns up. I'll run round to the Yard now. They'll send you up dinner, and tell Bunter to give you a bottle of the Chateau Yquem—it's rather decent. So long."
He leapt out of the flat, and a moment later his taxi buzzed away up Piccadilly.
CHAPTER VII
The Club and the Bullet
He is dead, and by my hand. It were better that I were dead myself, for the guilty wretch I am.
ADVENTURES OF SEXTON BLAKE
Hour after hour Mr. Parker sat waiting for his friend's return. Again and again he went over the Riddlesdale Case, checking his notes here, amplifying them there, involving his tired brain in speculations of the most fantastic kind. He wandered about the room, taking down here and there a book from the shelves, strumming a few unskillful bars upon the piano, glancing through the weeklies, fidgeting restlessly. At length he selected a volume from the criminological section of the bookshelves, and forced himself to read with attention that most fascinating and dramatic of poison trials—the Seddon Case. Gradually the mystery gripped him, as it invariably did, and it was with a start of astonishment that he looked up at a long and vigorous whirring of the doorbell, to find that it was already long past midnight.
His first thought was that Wimsey must have left his latchkey behind, and he was preparing a facetious greeting when the door opened—exactly as in the beginning of a Sherlock Holmes story—to admit a tall and beautiful young woman, in an extreme state of nervous agitation, with a halo of golden hair, violet-blue eyes, and disordered apparel all complete; for as she threw back her heavy traveling-coat he observed that she wore evening dress, with light green silk stockings and heavy brogue shoes thickly covered with mud.
"His lordship has not yet returned, my lady," said Mr. Bunter, "but Mr. Parker is here waiting for him, and we are expecting him at any minute now. Will your ladyship take anything?"