Jimmy turned to the lady.
“May I borrow this book?” he asked. “It will be returned. Thank you. Now, Angel,” he looked at his watch and made a move for the door, “we have two hours. We will take the Tonbridge Road by daybreak.”
Only one other person did they disturb on that eventful night, and that was a peppery old Colonel of Marines, who lived at Blackheath.
There, before the hastily-attired old officer, as the dawn broke, Angel explained his mission, and writing with feverish haste, subscribed to the written statement by oath. Whereupon the Justice of the Peace issued a warrant for the arrest of Joseph James Spedding, Solicitor, on a charge of felony.
CHAPTER XII
WHAT HAPPENED AT FLAIRBY MILL
Kathleen very naturally regarded the lawyer in the light of a disinterested friend. There was no reason why she should not do so; and if there had been any act needed to kindle a kindly feeling for the distant legal adviser it was this last act of his, for no sooner, as he told her, had he discovered by the merest accident a clue to the hidden word, than he had rushed off post-haste to put her in possession of his information. He had naturally advised immediate action, and when she demurred at the lateness of the hour at which to begin a hunt for the book, he had hinted vaguely at difficulties which would beset her if she delayed. She wanted to let Angel know, and Jimmy, but this the lawyer would not hear of, and she accounted for the insistence of his objection by the cautiousness of the legal mind.
Then the excitement of the midnight adventure appealed to her—the swift run in the motor-car through the wild night, and the wonderful possibilities of the search at the end of the ride.
So she went, and her appetite for adventure was all but satisfied by a narrowly-averted collision with another car speeding in the opposite direction. She did not see the occupants of the other car, but she hoped they had had as great a fright as she.
As a matter of fact, neither of the two men had given a second thought to their danger; one’s mind was entirely and completely filled with her image, and the other was brooding on telephones.
She had no time to tire of the excitement of the night—the run across soaking heaths and through dead villages, where little cottages showed up for a moment in the glare of the headlights, then faded into the darkness. Too soon she came to a familiar stretch of the road, and the car slowed down so that they might not pass the tiny grass lane that led to Flairby Mill. They came to it at last, and the car bumped cautiously over deep cart ruts, over loose stones, and through long drenched grasses till there loomed out of the night the squat outlines of Flairby Mill.