'I have only just finished my lunch, but I am perfectly ready for the talk, Mr. Hawtrey.'
'Where were you going now?'
'I think I was principally going to smoke a cigar. I have been in all the morning, and on a day like this one gets restless after a time.'
'Then you shall take a turn for twenty minutes, Ned. There is nothing more unpleasant than looking on at people eating, unless it is eating with people looking on; besides, we could not begin our talk now. What do you say, Hawtrey? Shall we join him, say, at the foot of the Duke of York's steps, turn in to St. James's Park and sit down, if we can find a bench free of nursemaids? as I daresay we shall, as they won't come out till later. At any rate, we don't want to be overheard, and we can never make sure of that in a club smoking-room.'
'That will suit me very well, Mr. Singleton, but don't hurry over your lunch; you will see me somewhere about when you are coming down the steps. I have just time to stroll down the Mall and back by Birdcage Walk.'
'Well, we will say in half-an-hour from the time you leave us.'
'This is another proof, Mr. Hawtrey, that our suspicion that Truscott is at the bottom of it all is well founded,' Captain Hampton said, when he had heard the story. 'It must have been somebody who was accurately acquainted with your affairs; some one who knew that Mr. Singleton was an intimate friend; so intimate that your daughter would be likely to go to him were she in any trouble, and that he would be likely to assist her.'
'It is certainly another link in the chain,' Mr. Hawtrey agreed.
'I would give a thousand pounds if we could lay our hands on the fellow,' Mr. Singleton exclaimed fiercely.
'But if we could find him, Singleton, we could not touch him; you and I, Ned, may be morally certain that he is at the bottom of all this, but we have not the remotest shadow of evidence on which a magistrate would grant a warrant for his arrest. If we found him, he would snap his fingers in our face.'