He stood up and stared at the table. No diary was there. Yet he seemed to remember—He set to work to search the flat.
Suddenly, in the midst of his work, a flood of light broke in upon him. He thought that, if the letter which he had written to Violet, telling her that he had the diary, had already fallen into Van Hupfeldt’s hands, then Van Hupfeldt knew that he had the diary; in which case, it was Van Hupfeldt who had put back the clock’s hand in the farmhouse at Pangley! Van Hupfeldt knew all the time that David was shadowing him, had put back the clock, and now held the diary, for which both he and David would have given all that they were worth, and all is everything, whether ten pounds or a million.
“Is that it?” thought David to himself. “Oh, is that it? All right, let it be like that.”
He lost not two minutes in thought, but with a lowering brow went out into the streets, high-strung, his fingers cramped together.
An hour before this he had said to himself that the hour was too late for action. Now, an hour later, such a thought did not occur to him in the high pitch of his soul. That night, and not any other night or day, he would have it out with Van Hupfeldt.
He jumped into a cab, and drove to the flat in King-St., Chelsea.
“But what on earth can the man mean,” said Miss L’Estrange, peeping through the slit of her slightly-opened door, “coming to a lady’s flat at this hour of the morning?”
In reality it was about half-past twelve.
“No, it’s no use talking,” said David, “you must let me in. I know you have a right good heart, and I rely upon its action when I tell you that it is a matter of life and death this time.”