“That is what I propose to find out to-night,” answered Hugh. “We have staged a little comedy for Peterson’s especial benefit, and we are hoping for the best.’”
“Oh, boy, do be careful!” She looked at him anxiously. “I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you. I’d feel it was all due to me, and I just couldn’t bear it.”
“Dear little girl,” he whispered tenderly, “you’re simply adorable when you look like that. But not even for you would I back out of this show now.” His mouth set in a grim line. “It’s gone altogether too far, and they’ve shown themselves to be so completely beyond the pale that it’s got to be fought out. And when it has been,” he caught both her hands in his ... “and we’ve won ... why, then girl o’ mine, we’ll get Peter Darrell to be best man.”
Which was the cue for the commencement of the last and longest interlude, terminated only by the sudden and unwelcome appearance of a motor-’bus covered within and without by unromantic sightseers, and paper-bags containing bananas.
They drove slowly back to Guildford, and on the way he told her briefly of the murder of the American’s secretary in Belfast, and his interview the preceding afternoon with the impostor at the Carlton.
“It’s a tough proposition,” he remarked quietly. “They’re absolutely without scruple, and their power seems unlimited. I know they are after the Duchess of Lampshire’s pearls: I found the beautiful Irma consuming tea with young Laidley yesterday—you know, the Duke’s eldest son. But there’s something more in the wind than that, Phyllis—something which, unless I’m a mug of the first water, is an infinitely larger proposition than that.”
The car drew up at the station, and he strolled with her on to the platform. Trivialities were once more banished: vital questions concerning when it had first happened—by both; whether he was quite sure it would last for ever—by her; what she could possibly see in him—by him; and wasn’t everything just too wonderful for words—mutual and carried nem. con.
Then the train came in, and he put her into a carriage. And two minutes later, with the touch of her lips warm on his, and her anxious little cry, “Take care, my darling!—take care!” still ringing in his ears, he got into his car and drove off to an hotel to get an early dinner. Love for the time was over; the next round of the other game was due. And it struck Drummond that it was going to be a round where a mistake would not be advisable.
IV
At a quarter to ten he backed his car into the shadow of some trees not far from the gate of The Elms. The sky was overcast, which suited his purpose, and through the gloom of the bushes he dodged rapidly towards the house. Save for a light in the sitting-room and one in a bedroom upstairs, the front of the house was in darkness, and, treading noiselessly on the turf, he explored all round it. From a downstairs room on one side came the hoarse sound of men’s voices, and he placed that as the smoking-room of the gang of ex-convicts and blackguards who formed Peterson’s staff. There was one bedroom light at the back of the house, and thrown on the blind he could see the shadow of a man. As he watched, the man got up and moved away, only to return in a moment or two and take up his old position.