“I like anything when I’m with you,” she said, and they held hands foolishly, till the house lights dimmed and the curtain rose upon a lawyer’s office.
The lawyer was of the underworld: a man everlastingly on the verge of being struck off the rolls. He had betrayed a client with whom he had had dealings, and the man had gone to prison for a long term, but had escaped. Now the news had come that he had left Australia and was in London, waiting his opportunity to destroy the man whose treachery was responsible for his capture.
Here was a note to which the heart of the girl responded. Even Monty found himself leaning forward, as the old familiar cant terms of his trade came across the footlights.
“It is quite all right,” he said at the second interval, “only”—he hesitated—“isn’t it a bit too near the real thing? After all, one doesn’t come to the theatre to see . . .”
He stopped, realizing that conditions and situations familiar to him were novel enough to a fashionable audience which was learning for the first time that a “busy” was a detective, and that a police informer went by the title of “nose.”
The lights up, he glanced round the house, and suddenly he started and caught her arm.
“Don’t look for a moment,” he said, averting his eyes, “then take a glance at the front row. Do you see anybody you know?”
Presently she looked.
“Yes, that is the fellow you hate so much, isn’t it—Gonsalez?”
“They’re all there—the three of them,” said Monty. “I wonder,”—he was troubled at the thought—“I wonder if they’re looking for you?”