He saw Heloise that afternoon. She was a being exalted at the prospect of the trip, and his last desperate appeal to her that it should be cancelled was unmade. They were to meet at a quarter to eleven on the platform at Victoria, and were to travel as strangers until they reached Ostend. The passage looked likely to be a good one; the weather bureau reported a smooth sea and light easterly winds.
Trenter had packed his big carry-all, and had included one of the new suits—that grey check with a little red in it—which had arrived belatedly from the tailor. The case had been secretly transported to a hotel in the neighbourhood of Victoria, where Gordon had to change. Nothing remained to be done but to prepare the telegrams which Trenter was to send. He could do this with a light heart, for it had occurred to him that if, taking advantage of his absence, the criminal impersonator should call (he regarded this as the least likely of any happening) the wires would confound and expose him. He felt almost as if he were doing a worthy deed.
The first he marked in the corner “Euston,” and inscribed “Just leaving, Gordon.” He wrote a number of “Good journey, all wells” for York, Edinburgh and Inverness.
Surprisingly, Diana came to him that day for some money.
“I arranged the transfer of my money to the London branch of the Bank of Australasia, but there has been some sort of hitch. I called to-day and the transfer has not arrived. Save me from penury, Gordon—I’m a ruined woman.”
She displayed dramatically the empty inside of a notecase. Gordon felt a queer satisfaction in signing a cheque for her, recovered a little of the kind-fatherly feeling appropriate to their relationship.
“And to think that, if you had really turned me out, I should have starved!” taking the slip from his hand. “Gordon, behind a rugged and unprepossessing exterior, you hide a heart of gold.”
“I sometimes wish you were a little more serious,” he said in good humour.
“I’m always wishing that you weren’t,” she said.
Gordon was temporarily deprived of the full use of The Study in the afternoon. There could be no more remarkable proof of Diana’s dynamic qualities than the arrival of post office linesmen to move the telephone from the hall to Gordon’s room—and that within forty-eight hours of her notifying the Postmaster General of her desires. Gordon demurred at first. The telephone was an invasion of his privacy. Diana was flippant and he was in no spirit for a fight.