Grant knew the topography of the house. Without asking permission, he tore through yet a third door leading to a kitchen and scullery, nearly upsetting a tiny maid who had her ear or eye to the key-hole, and raced into the garden in which the postmaster kept his bees.
Doris, standing with her hands behind her back, was looking at The Hollies, and deep in conversation with an alert and natty little man who was evidently absorbed in what she was saying.
Grant, in a whirl of fury, was only conscious that Doris’s companion was slight, almost diminutive, of frame, very erect, and dressed in a well-fitting blue serge suit, neat brown boots and straw hat, when the two heard his footsteps.
Doris was flustered. Her Romney face held a look of scare.
“Oh, here is Mr. Grant!” she said, striving vainly to speak with composure.
The little man pierced Grant with an extraordinarily penetrating glance from very bright and deeply-recessed black eyes.
“Ah, Mr. Grant, is it!” he chirped pleasantly. “Good morning! So you’re the villain of the piece, are you?”
Chapter VI.
Scotland Yard Takes a Hand
It was a singular greeting, to say the least, and the person who uttered it was quite as remarkable as his queer method of expressing himself seemed to indicate.
Grant, though in a fume of hot anger, had the good sense to choke back the first impetuous reprimand trembling on his lips. In fact, wrath quickly subsided into blank incredulity. He saw before him, not the conventional detective who might be described as a superior Robinson—not even the sinewy, sharp-eyed, and well-spoken type of man whom he had once heard giving evidence in a famous jewel-robbery case—but rather one whom he would have expected to meet in the bar of a certain well-known restaurant in Maiden Lane, a corner of old London where literally all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.