CHAPTER VIII.
“This w’y, sir,” said the maid, and Mr Bunker found himself in the little room where this story opened.
The moment he was alone he went to the window and peeped cautiously between the slats of the venetian blind.
The street was quiet, both cabs had disappeared, and for a minute or two he could see nothing even of Moggridge. Then a figure moved carefully from the shelter of a bush a little way down the railings, and, after a quick look at the house, stepped back again.
“He means to play the waiting game,” said Mr Bunker to himself. “Long may you wait, my wary Moggridge!”
He took a rapid survey of the room. He saw the medical library, the rented furniture, and the unlit gas-stove; and at last his eye fell upon a box of cigarettes. To one of these he helped himself and leaned his back against the mantelpiece.
“There must be at least one room at the back,” he reflected; “that room must have a window, and beyond that window there is all London to turn to. Friend Moggridge, I trust you are prepared to spend the evening behind your bush.”
He had another look through the blind and shook his head.
“A little too light yet,—I’d better wait for a quarter of an hour or so.”
To while away the time he proceeded to make a tour of the room, for, as he said to himself, when in an unknown country any information may possibly come in useful. There was nothing whatever from which he could draw even the most superficial deduction till he came to the writing-desk. Here a heap of bills were transfixed by a long skewer, and at his first glance at the uppermost his face assumed an expression of almost ludicrous bewilderment. He actually rubbed his eyes before he looked a second time.