And so, at long last, the ponderous, inert, uncanny thing lay balanced across the balustrade and sill, the legs sticking into the room. Breathing hard, Bullard grasped the ankles. A heave, a jerk, a twist, a push…. Hands pressed hard over his ears, Bullard waited for an age of thirty seconds. Then action once more. He closed the window, switched on the lights, and inspected the floor. Finally he rang up the police station.
"I'm Bullard, Aasvogel Syndicate, Manchester House. A man attempting to enter by the window has fallen to the street. I'll remain here till you come."
CHAPTER XXIII
The spiritual glow in which Alan left Earl's Gate had cooled considerably by the time he reached the Midland Hotel. It was not that he actually regretted his actions of an hour ago; rather was it as though an inward voice kept repeating, "Why aren't you happier, now that you have lifted a crushing load from an exhausted fellow-creature? Why aren't you in the seventh heaven since you are going to marry that most desirable girl?" There was never yet human exaltation without its reaction, but in Alan's case the latter had followed cruelly fast.
In the smoke-room, almost empty at so early an hour, he dropped into a chair and lit a cigarette. "What the deuce is wrong with me?" By the time the cigarette was finished he could, with a little more courage, have answered the question. For he could not deny that his thoughts had gone straying, not back to the brightly lighted drawing-room and the beautiful hostess, but to a dark garden and a terrified girl with a little revolver in her hand. Ordering himself not to be a cad as well as a fool, he removed to one of the writing-tables. There he set himself to compose a nicely worded note of invitation to Mrs. Lancaster. After that was done he drew a couple of cheques for the same amount and wrote the following letter to Mr. Bullard:
"Dear Mr. Bullard:
"You will no doubt be surprised to see my writing again, and I take this way of announcing my return home lest you should hear of it before I can find time to call upon you, which, however, I hope to do before long. To-night, on my arrival here, I called upon Mr. Lancaster, and was sorry to learn that he was too ill to receive me. But I do not wish to delay an hour longer than necessary the settlement of my debt to you both, and so I ask you kindly to receive on his behalf and your own, the enclosed two cheques in payment of the amounts of, and interests on, the advances which you and he so generously made to me in April of last year. I daresay you have almost forgotten the incident which meant so much to me, and still does. Until we meet,
"Faithfully yours,
"Alan Craig."
"A bit stiff and formal," was his comment after rereading it several times, "but I don't think it gives much away."