He felt in a reflective mood. Belligerency would follow this mood as certain as the dawn would rise on foggy London. He recalled the ancient vows of getting square with the police of the world. The five years of cell life—of waiting and watching—had not shaken him from his purpose to gain a little place in the sun, and there bask with the smiles of those he cared for and understood.
The cipher mission had not gripped him in the manner it should. He did not see the great commercial war which was settling upon a torn world. The factories of London, Manchester, Leeds and the Scotch districts might be pouring their smoke into the English air in an attempt to stem the tide of imports from over the North Sea. They were building the last battlements of a people who would be free. He did not care! Had not England penned him for five long years in a living hell? Was that punishment to be forgotten lightly? Was it a reason for falling in with the plans of Sir Richard and the hounds of the Yard?
He smiled bitterly. He wanted freedom of action. He had the wherewithal to gain this desire. The money in his pocket, the open road to the south through Surrey, and a change of costume would effect an escape. There was no way to prove that the Yard
would not send him back to Dartmoor if he failed in the Holland mission.
He turned away from the stone rail and stared through the gloom to where arc lights were stretched in an unending row. They shone blurred and torch-like in the murky air. Beneath them, pedestrians and lorries moved, like a procession of sad mourners. It was the tide of London folk pouring home at the day’s end.
Tapping his heel against the black bag at his feet, he saw from the corner of his right eye the arched bridges which spanned the Thames. They, also, were thronged with a dark mass of outpouring humanity.
He seemed alone. He was in the backwater of strife and bustle. An open space was between his position at the rail and the nearest sidewalk. This space was shimmered over with damp mist. Across it, flashing eastward, there passed a smart, black motor car, with a driver bent at the wheel and a single figure in the tonneau.
Fay heard, as distinctly as if the voice had been at his side, a call and a warning. It rang in his ears after the car had vanished in the shadowy street on his left hand. He repeated the words: “Look out, Chester!�
“Now, who in the devil was that?� he asked himself, standing erect and glancing after the car like a thoroughbred who had scented danger.
The mystery of anyone in London knowing his name or figure, gripped with strength. He wondered if the voice that struck across the night had been a guilty tug at his own brain. It could hardly have been