“Go on,” he said again.
“I couldn't understand how it came to be there, but as I'd been in the kitchen most of the evening except when I was seeing my pal outside to tell him the job was off for that night, it might have been there before you came. I opened the letter. There were only a few words on it and I can tell you those few words made my heart jump up into my mouth, and made me go cold all over.”
“What were they!” asked T. X.
“I shall not forget them, sir. They're sort of permanently fixed in my brain,” said the man earnestly; “the note started with just the figures 'A. C. 274.'”
“What was that!” asked T. X.
“My convict number when I was in Dartmoor Prison, sir.”
“What did the note say?”
“'Get out of here quick'—I don't know who had put it there, but I'd evidently been spotted and I was taking no chances. That's the whole story from beginning to end. I accidentally happened to meet the young lady, Miss Holland—Miss Bartholomew as she is—and followed her to her house in Portman Place. That was the night you were there.”
T. X. found himself to his intense annoyance going very red.
“And you know no more?” he asked.