“So he is. Perhaps he is wondering who I am. He is sheering off now—but who is this trying to catch your eye on the other side, Harry?”
“Oh, that’s Warner; he comes from the palace, where I am wanted, most likely. However, I will introduce you to the young lady.—Miss Chain, may I introduce to you an old friend of mine, Captain Link?” added Harry, as she came up to speak to him.
“I feel it a great honour, Captain Link, to become acquainted with a friend of my esteemed employer,” said Miss Chain.
“I shall have to leave you, Link, for a short time,” said Mr Goodall, “as the general manager wishes to see me. You will be back in time to ascend, Miss Chain?”
“I shall not be gone long, Mr Goodall,” was the reply.
Captain Link strolled on with Miss Chain, listening with delight to her conversation, and did not observe that they had passed the turnstiles and were going down the Anerley Road, towards where Mrs Chain lived. Presently, when close to the Thicket Hotel, they noticed two men coming towards them, whom Miss Chain at once recognised as her tormentors, and, strange to say, their faces seemed also familiar to Captain Link. This coincidence puzzled the young lady greatly, as she had thought at first that there was some personal resemblance between the taller one and her escort. When the men caught sight of Captain Link, they hurried away, much to his annoyance, as he wished that they had stopped long enough for him to remember their names and where he had seen them before.
Whilst talking on this subject, Miss Chain observed her mother, who was on the lookout for her return, and wished that Captain Link would say good-bye; but in that respect she was disappointed, as he presently remarked that he should very much like to be introduced to Mrs Chain, and after that he would go to the Thicket Hotel and try to find out who those men were, and would return in half an hour’s time to walk back to the palace with Miss Chain and her mother, if agreeable to them.
On this understanding, Captain Link exchanged a few words with Mrs Chain and then went on to the hotel, where he met Warner, who had himself been looking for the two spies, as there had been a police rumour that Hawksworth was expecting the arrival of some such men, and Warner inferred that they had actually been in the palace before, but that Hawksworth had failed to spot them. However, not finding them at the Thicket as he expected, Warner remarked that they might possibly have popped over the palings, or through a side gate, into the palace grounds, and he asked the captain, if he saw him at the entrance turnstile, not to take any notice of him, as he might be on the lookout for suspicious visitors.
On returning to the Chains, Captain Link remarked that it had flashed across his mind that the two men must have been passengers on board the Neptune, the last ship he came to England in, but he could not recall their names, being a bad hand at that sort of thing.
“Do you know,” asked Miss Chain, “if Filcher was the name of the more gentlemanly one of the two men?”