§ 2
The treatment was instantaneously effective. The male member of the combination, receiving several gallons of the Valley Fields Water Company’s best stuff on the side of his head and then distributed at random over his person, seemed to understand with a lightning quickness that something in the nature of reinforcements had arrived. Hastily picking up his hat, which had fallen off, he stood not upon the order of his going, but ran. The darkness closed upon him, and Sam, with a certain smug complacency inevitable in your knight errant who has borne himself notably well in a difficult situation, turned off the hose and stood waiting while Kay crossed the lawn.
“Who was our guest?” he asked.
Kay seemed a little shaken. She was breathing quickly.
“It was Claude Bates,” she said, and her voice quivered. So did Sam’s.
“Claude Bates!” he cried distractedly. “If I had known that, I would have chased him all the way back to London, kicking him violently.”
“I wish you had.”
“How on earth did that fellow come to be here?”
“I met him outside Victoria Station. I suppose he got into the train and followed me.”
“The hound!”