"Just waiting for my pal, sir," Rigby explained. "I have never come down this street before, an' I'll take good care never to come down here again. Why, half these houses seem to be empty. Look at that show opposite. 'Ow long since anybody has lived there?"
"Before I came on the beat, anyway," the policeman explained. "Do you want to take one?"
With a laugh at his own pleasantry the policeman stalked off down the street, leaving Rigby easier in his mind and quite satisfied that his disguise would stand any ordinary test.
He leaned against the area railings absolutely undecided as to what to do next. With a certain new caution almost amounting to cowardice--a feeling of which he would be ashamed at any other time--Rigby turned his back upon the man who was advancing down the street. At the same time, so full was he of the horrors that he had lately witnessed, the amateur detective quite forgot the fragrant cigarette so out of keeping with his character. The stranger pulled up and, crossing the pavement, tapped Rigby familiarly on the shoulder.
"You are not so clever as you think you are," the stranger remarked coolly. "You may be a very smart chap, Dick, and I may be a very dull one, but I have certainly sufficient brains to know that the average newspaper tout does not smoke Turkish cigarettes. Besides, after our conversation this morning, I felt pretty certain that you would make an attempt to get inside that house."
Rigby laughed in a way that suggested that his nerves were in a considerably frayed condition.
"So that's you, Jack," he said, with a sigh of relief. "Yes, you are quite right; in fact, I told you I should not rest to-night until I had seen the inside of that house."
"And did the expedition come up to expectations?" Masefield asked eagerly.
"My dear fellow, I have had some weird experiences in my time, but I would not go through the last hour again for the wealth of the Indies. In fact, if I tell you what I've seen, you would set me down for a doddering lunatic."
The look of self-satisfaction on Jack's face faded away. He shivered with a strange weird feeling, that strange presentiment of something dire about to happen. Again, why should he doubt the fact that something terribly out of the common had happened to Rigby after his own amazing experiences?