Then he hastened hungrily to the dining-room.
After a hearty meal he felt considerably better, and when he presently pushed back his chair and strolled over to the open window he was ready and eager for more work. His mind, which had been busy during the meal with attempts to devise a plan that should bring him to closer quarters with the person he most desired to meet, that should cause the phantom figure of Mr. West of the black beard to materialise and become a solid form discernible to the naked eye and capable of wearing handcuffs, had not yet furnished him with a method by which this desirable object might be attained.
“Surely,” he said to himself, “I must be able to trace Madame Querterot’s meetings with this man. It is impossible that she can have been on such terms of intimacy with him without some one knowing it.”
He looked at his watch, helped himself to a sweet from a box which stood on the shelf, and decided to go down to Pimlico and see if he could not find out something more from Julie. It was half-past nine, but she was not likely to have gone to bed yet, and he wanted a specimen of her mother’s handwriting.
He went out and took a taxi to Warwick Square, where he dismissed it, and pursued his way on foot.
It was quite dark by now, with the soft blue darkness of summer, for the weather had turned warm again and the sun had gone down in a clear sky. There were plenty of people about, as it was Saturday night; many a small coin was being carried snug in its earner’s pocket that would no longer be lying there in a couple of hours’ time, and the tills of the publicans were already flooded with the rise of the weekly tide.
As he drew near the little shop in the gloomy, sordid little street, the door of it opened suddenly and a man came out and walked rapidly away. After a few steps he paused; and, turning, gazed for a moment longingly back at the window—from which a pale light shone forth, so that the pavement beneath it was bathed in a gentle radiance—before he swung round once more and made off up the street. It happened that, as he stood for that instant, hesitating perhaps whether or no to return and make a final appeal to the girl he worshipped, the light of the street lamp fell full upon his white, haggard face; and Gimblet, with a start, experienced the surprise of his life, as he realised that he and Bert had met before.
Everything was clear to him now, and, with a sigh of something between relief and regret, he abandoned his proposed visit to Julie and went about the ordering of more important business.
. . . . .