“What do you mean?” I demanded, hotly enough.
“Well, I also dined at the Cecil to-night, though not with the ‘Savages,’ and I happened to hear that you and Cassavetti—we’ll call him that—were looking daggers at each other, and that the lady, who was remarkably handsome, appeared to enjoy the situation! Who is she, Wynn? Do I know her?”
I watched him closely, but his face betrayed nothing.
“I think your informant must have been a—journalist, Lord Southbourne,” I said very quietly. “And we seem to have strayed pretty considerably from the point. I came here to take your instructions, and if I’m to start at nine on Monday I shall not see you again.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“All right; we’ll get to business. Here’s the new code; get it off by heart between now and Monday, and destroy the copy. It’s safer. Here’s your passport, duly viséd, and a cheque. That’s all, I think. I don’t need to teach you your work. But I don’t want you to meet with such a fate as Carson’s; so I expect you to be warned by his example. And you are not to make any attempt to unravel the mystery of his death. I tell you that for your own safety! The matter has been taken up from the Embassy, and everything possible will be done to hunt the assassin down. Good-bye, and good luck!”
We shook hands and I went out into the night. It was now well past midnight, and the streets were even quieter than usual at that hour, for there had been a sharp storm while I was with Southbourne. I had heard the crash of thunder at intervals, and the patter of heavy rain all the time. Now the storm was over, the air was cool and fresh, the sky clear. The wet street gleamed silver in the moonlight, and was all but deserted. The traffic had thinned down to an occasional hansom or private carriage, and there were few foot-passengers abroad. I did not meet a soul along the whole of Whitehall except the policemen, their wet mackintoshes glistening in the moonlight.
But, as I reached the corner of Parliament Square, I saw, just across the road, a man and woman walking rapidly in the direction of Westminster Bridge. I glanced at them casually, then looked again, more intently. The man looked like a sailor; he wore a pea-jacket and a peaked cap, while the woman was enveloped in a long dark cloak, and had a black scarf over her head. I saw a gleam of jewelled shoe-buckles as she picked her way daintily across the wet roadway to the further corner by the Houses of Parliament.
My heart seemed to stand still as I watched her. At any other time or place I would have sworn that I knew the tall, slender figure, the imperial poise of the head, the peculiarly graceful gait, swift but not hurried. I inwardly jeered at myself for my idiocy. My mind was so full of Anne Pendennis that I must imagine every tall, graceful woman was she! This lady was doubtless a resident in the southern suburbs, detained by the storm, and now on her way to one of the all-night trams that start from the far side of Westminster Bridge. There was quite a suburban touch in a woman in evening dress being escorted by a man in a pea-jacket. She might be an artiste, too poor to afford a cab home.
Nevertheless, while these thoughts ran through my mind, I was following the couple. They walked so swiftly that I did not decrease the distance between us. Half-way across the bridge I was intercepted by a beggar, who whined for “the price of a doss” and kept pace with me, till I got rid of him with the bestowal of a coin; but when I looked for the couple I was stalking they had disappeared.