If he had hoped to move her from her gust of passion, he quickly learned his mistake. Her lips curled in contempt, and, drawing her skirts aside as she passed him as though a touch might contaminate her, she swept to the doorway. For one instant she stood posed.
"You call yourself a spy. It is a good name. For a police spy there is no room in this house."
With that she was gone. The man had flushed under the biting contempt in her voice and words, and now stood for a little with hands tightly clenched, gazing after her. He felt that, from her point of view at least, there was some truth in her words. He was—whatever his motives—a police spy. And yet he was but concerned to clear up the horrible tangle in which his friend and the girl had become involved.
He did not know that he was watched from behind the curtains as he walked blindly into the street. Eileen, with lips firmly set and face tense, was concealed behind curtains. No sooner had he gone than she hurriedly dressed herself and ordered an electric brougham. She had come to believe that her lover's safety depended on her actions that day. Foyle knew the secret of the cipher, and Grell's advertisement told her that he intended communicating something to her by that method the next day. At all costs she must prevent him betraying himself.
Only one course occurred to her. She must go to the office of the Daily Wire and prevent his advertisement from appearing. How she was to do it she had not the slightest idea. That she left for later reflection.
The car rolled smoothly towards Fleet Street, but no inspiration came to her. She alighted at the advertisement office, with its plate glass and gilded letters, and was attended by an obsequious clerk. Outwardly calm, but with her heart beating quickly beneath her furs, she put her inquiry to a sleek-haired clerk. He
was polite but firm. It was quite possible that such an advertisement as she mentioned had been sent for insertion the following day, and again it might not. In any case he was forbidden to give any information. It would be quite out of the question to stop any advertisement unless she held the receipt.
"But if the advertisement has not already been given in, can you give a note to whoever brings it?" she asked, in a flash of inspiration.
"Yes, that could be done." She tore off her glove, and with slim, nervous fingers wrote hurriedly. The sleek clerk supplied her with an envelope, and as she placed her message in it and handed it to him she felt it was a forlorn hope. There was only one other way of outwitting the detectives. Should Grell give any address in his message, she must reach him early in the morning before the police could act. A couple of questions elicited the fact that the paper would be on sale by four the next morning. That would mean another journey to Fleet Street, for the ordinary news-agents' shops would not be open at that time. The brougham turned about and began the homeward journey.