Babs uttered a shrill scream, and her father told her fiercely to hold her tongue.
“Where are you off to, Mr. Candover?” asked the man roughly.
Shaken as he was by the fall from the effects of which he was still suffering, Mr. Candover had been considerably startled by the unexpected appearance of this man; but after a pause of a few seconds he recovered himself, laughed, and leaning back against the wall, said:—
“Gossett! What are you doing here?”
The young man, frowning sullenly, looked for a moment somewhat confused by the question, which was put quite quietly and without apparent discomposure.
“Well, I—I want to have a talk with you. We all do,” he said sullenly, as Pamela, who had pressed forward behind her sister, recognised the man as one of the “friends” who had been waiting at her father’s flat in Victoria Street that morning.
“Certainly. But not here. Didn’t I tell you to be at my flat this morning?”
“Yes. You said twelve o’clock, and we’ve been waiting there ever so long, all of us,” returned Gossett, who appeared to have been drinking. “And then these young ladies came, and they waited. And when they came off after you, we thought we might as well follow them and see where they were coming to. And we’ve run you to earth right enough!”
“Run me to earth!” repeated Mr. Candover, in a tone of extreme astonishment. “What do you mean?”
“Well, we mean we want to speak to you—all by ourselves. We will come up.”