We followed. She walked fast, did Miss Manana. And it was queer, how she lit up that grimy God-forsaken street. The way she was walking, you might have taken her for a young gentlewoman “doing” the East End in a hurry. Tall, lithe, quietly dressed—Julian Raphael’s property! And he’d made her scream with pain.
“Now what?” snapped George.
She had been about twenty yards ahead of us. Street darkish, deserted, lined with warehouses, and all closed because it was a Saturday afternoon. Suddenly, no Manana Cohen. We slipped after her quick as you like. She had dived down a narrow passage between the warehouses. We were just in time to see the tail of her skirt whisking through a door in the wall a few yards up—and just in time to cut in after her.
“Oh!” she gasped. We must have looked a couple of cut-throats. And it was dark in there. I was panting—nothing like a sailor’s life for keeping you thoroughly out of training, unless it’s a soldier’s. But George was all there, being a good dancer.
“Miss Cohen, I believe?” he asks. All in whispers. She just stared at us. George didn’t want to scare her any more than I did. He was gay, in that mood of his when he seems to be laughing more at himself than at anyone else. But she just stared at us. She was tall, as women go, but we simply towered over the poor child. Then she recognised me and went as red as a carnation. I couldn’t think why. Tarlyon said comfortingly: “There, there!”
Then she panted all in a jumble: “I’m sorry I was rude to you the other night. Really I am. Please go away now, please!”
“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” I whispered. “We want——”
George, with his foot, gently shut the door behind us. We were in the passage of the house or whatever it was. It was pitch-dark. I lit another match.
“But what is it, what do you want?” the girl moaned.
“We just want to have a word with your young man,” said George, the idiot, in his ordinary voice.