I slipped the case in my pocket, locked the drawer and locked the safe again. I switched off the lights and let myself quietly out of the flat.
I decided to go to the Thespis club as if nothing had happened. I was not at all anxious to meet Roland until I knew where I stood, but I reflected that if I failed him it might rouse his suspicions and precipitate a catastrophe before I was ready for it. There was not much danger that he would look in his safe that night if I kept him late. His housekeeper would tell him I had been there, but I could explain that. In the morning I would have him watched.
Roland was at the club when I arrived. "I've been at your rooms," I said instantly. "I had an idea I was to wait for you there. But I got thinking it over and decided I had made a mistake."
"You've got a memory like a colander," he said good-naturedly. "Better do something about it."
We sat down to our supper. Roland was in for him, extraordinary spirits. All the while we ate, drank and joked I was wondering in the back of my head what kind of a change would come over his grim, dark, laughing face if he knew what I had in my pocket.
9
Few would envy me my task next morning. I called up Miss Hamerton merely saying that I would come to the hotel half an hour later. Sadie came in, but having kept from her what had already happened, I could not tell her this. I was not obliged to tell her all the developments of the case, of course, but she had a moral right to my confidence, and so I felt guilty and wretched every way. Sadie I knew would be terribly cut up by the way things were tending, and I had not the heart to face it, with what I had to go through later.
Miss Hamerton received me with great bright eyes that looked out of her white face like stars at dawn. The instant she caught sight of my face she said: "You have news?"
I nodded.