CHAPTER XIX
TROUBLE BREWING
Saton turned out of Bond Street, and climbed the stairs of a little tea-shop with the depressed feeling of a man who is expiating an offence which he bitterly repents. Violet was waiting for him at one of the tables shut off from the main room by a sort of Japanese matting hanging from the ceiling. He resigned his stick and hat with a sigh to one of the trim waitresses, and sat down opposite her.
“My dear Violet,” he said, “this is an unexpected pleasure. I thought that Wednesday was quite one of your busiest days.”
“It is generally,” she answered. “To tell you the truth,” she added, leaning across the table, “I was jolly glad to get away. I have a kind of fear, Bertrand, that we are going to be a little too busy.”
“What do you mean?” he asked sharply.
She nodded her head mysteriously.
“There have been one or two people in, in the last few days, asking questions which I don’t understand,” she told him. “One of them, I am pretty sure, was a detective. He didn’t get much change out of me,” she added, in a self-satisfied tone, “but there’s someone got their knife into us. You remember the trouble down in the Marylebone Road, when you——”