"That is Mr Parsloe's address. You will find my name in the corner as representing him. I may mention that I also am an admitted solicitor."
"It is possible that you will hear from me. In the meantime, thank you very much for taking so much trouble in bringing me this note. Any expenses which may have been incurred I shall be happy to defray."
"At present no expenses have been incurred. I need hardly say that any instructions with which you may honour us will receive our instant and most careful attention."
Again Mr Adams's cap came off. He turned his bicycle round, and presently was speeding back the way he had come. Miss Arnott stood looking after him, the "note" in her hand.
Jim Baker's "note," as the solicitor's clerk had more than hinted, was distinctly unusual as to form. It was represented by an oblong scrap of paper, perhaps two inches long by an inch broad. Nothing was written on the outside; on the exterior there was nothing whatever to show for what destination it was designed. As Mr Adams had said, where one end had been slipped into the other three seals had been affixed. On each seal was a distinct impression of what probably purported to be Mr Adams's own crest; with, under the circumstances, a sufficiently apposite motto--for once in a way in plain English--"Fear Nothing."
CHAPTER XXI
[THE "NOTE"]
Miss Arnott displayed somewhat singular unwillingness to break the seals. She watched Mr Adams retreating on his bicycle; not only till the machine itself was out of sight, but the cloud of dust which marked its progress had vanished also. Then she turned the scrap of paper over and over in her fingers, possessed by an instinctive reluctance to learn what it contained. It seemed ridiculous to suppose that Jim Baker could have anything to cause her disturbance, yet she had an eerie feeling that there was something disagreeable inside his "note," something which she would much rather not come into contact with. Had she followed her own inclination she would have shredded it into pieces, and scattered the pieces over the roadway. In some indescribable fashion she was actually afraid of the scrap of paper which she held between her fingers.
It was the sudden realisation that this was so which stung her into action. Afraid of anything Jim Baker might have to say? She? Nonsense! The idea! Could anything be more absurd!
There and then she broke the seals, unfolded the sheet of paper. But when she had got so far again she hesitated. The thing was fresh from a prison; had about it, she fancied, a prison atmosphere, a whiff of something sordid which it had borne with it out of gaol. It was that, she told herself, which she did not relish. Why should she read the scrawl? What interest could it have for her? Better instruct Mr Parsloe, or that eminent practitioner in the conduct of criminal cases with whose name Mr Stacey had furnished her, to undertake Baker's defence, and spare no expense in doing so, and so have done with it. Let her keep her own fingers out of the mire; leave the whole thing to the lawyers; that would be better for everyone concerned. So it would not be necessary for her to spell her way through the man's ill-written scribble.