"Those were not her exact words, I mean?"
"They wos her exact words, governor," replied the cabman, with a solemnity befitting the witness-box, "so help me! 'There's a gentleman a-follerin' o' me,' she says, 'an admirer of mine pestering me with his attentions, and I want to get rid of him. Will you help me?' 'If I can, miss,' I says. 'Well, then,' she says, 'drive fast, and the moment you have turned the corner of Long Acre, draw up sharp. I shall get out there and then you drive on at once to Euston. He'll follow you, thinking I am still in the cab. Will you do this, and I'll give you a sovereign?' Of course I says, 'Yes.' She give me the quid, and directly I turned the corner at Long Acre she was out like a shot, almost afore I'd time to draw up. She darted down a side-street like winking, and I drove on according to orders."
I could not refrain from smiling at my own discomfiture. She had guessed that I would follow her, and in the long interval occupied by our railway journey she had marked out her plan of action, and had devised a pretty little stratagem into which I had readily fallen. Why should she act thus? Could this lady really be George in disguise? This idea was inspired by the belief that she had come from the same house in which he had taken refuge.
"What sort of a voice had she?" I asked. "Was it at all masculine?"
"Oh, jest!"
"Just what?"
"Maskyline."
"Do you know what masculine means?"
"Frightened-like, I expex you mean."
"You're a f— Was it at all like a man's voice?"