“Sit down, Ray,” said Lola in a low voice. “Half Scotland Yard is in the club, watching you.”
He followed the direction of her eyes and saw Dick Gordon regarding him gravely, and the sight and knowledge of that surveillance maddened him. Leaping to his feet, he crossed the room to where they sat.
“Looking for me?” he asked loudly. “Want me for anything?”
Dick shook his head.
“You damned police spy!” stormed the youth, white with unreasoning passion. “Bringing your bloodhounds after me! What are you doing with this gang, Johnson? Are you turned policeman too?”
“My dear Ray,” murmured Johnson.
“My dear Ray!” sneered the other. “You’re jealous, you poor worm—jealous because I’ve got away from the bloodsucker’s clutches! As to you”—he waved a threatening finger in Dick’s face—“you leave me alone—see? You’ve got a whole lot of work to do without carrying tales to my sister.”
“I think you had better go back to your friends,” said Dick coolly. “Or, better still, go home and sleep.”
All this had occurred between the dances, and now the band struck up, but if the attention of the crowded clubroom was in no wise relaxed, there was this change, that Ray’s high voice now did not rise above the efforts of the trap drummer.
Dick looked round for the watchful Hagn. He knew that the manager, or one of the officials of the club, would interfere instantly. It was not Hagn, but a head waiter, who came up and pushed the young man back.