"That is odd," thought Philip, who had witnessed both incidents in the course of a six yards' walk. He glanced at the cabman, and fancied the man gave a peculiar look of intelligence toward a couple of fashionably dressed loungers who stood in the shadow of the closed public entrance.
The two men, without exchanging a word to Philip's hearing, went to a brougham standing at some little distance. They entered. The coachman, who received no instructions, drove off in the same direction as the hansom, and, as if to make sure he was being followed, the cab driver turned to look behind him.
Once, in Naples, Philip saw a man stealthily following a woman down an unlighted alley. Without a moment's hesitation he went after the pair, and was just in time to prevent the would-be assassin from plunging an uplifted stiletto into the woman's back. The recollection of that little drama flashed into his mind now; there was a suggestion of the Neapolitan bravo's air in the manner in which these men stalked a girl who was quite unaware of their movements.
He asked himself why a cabman should refuse one fare and pick up another in the same spot. The affair was certainly odd. He would see further into it before he dismissed it from his thoughts. The distance to Maida Crescent was not great.
While thinking he was acting. He sprang into the nearest hansom.
"A brougham is following a hansom up Langham Place," he said to the driver. "Keep behind them. If they separate, follow the brougham. When it stops, pull up at the best place to avoid notice."
The man nodded. Nothing surprises a London cabman. Soon the three vehicles were spinning along the Outer Circle.
It was not a very dark night, the sky being cloudless and starlit. Away in front, at a point where the two lines of lamps curved sharply to the right and vanished amidst the trees, a row of little, red lights showed that the road was up.
The leading hansom drove steadily on. There was nothing remarkable in this. When the driver reached the obstruction, he would turn out of the park by the nearer gate—that was all.
But he did nothing of the kind. There was a sudden crash of wood, a woman's scream, and the horse was struggling wildly amidst a pile of loose, wooden blocks, while one wheel of the cab dropped heavily into a shallow trench.