‘If I don’t make haste I shall lose him. I’ll do as you suggest—dispatch the first individual I come across to hold watch and ward with you.’
‘That’ll be all right.’
He started off at a run,—shouting to me as he went.
‘It won’t be five minutes before somebody comes!’
I waved my hand to him. I watched him till he reached the end of the road. Turning, he waved his hand to me. Then he vanished, as Mr Holt had done.
And I was alone.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE TERROR BY DAY
My first impulse, after Sydney’s disappearance, was to laugh. Why should he display anxiety on my behalf merely because I was to be the sole occupant of an otherwise empty house for a few minutes more or less,—and in broad daylight too! To say the least, the anxiety seemed unwarranted.
I lingered at the gate, for a moment or two, wondering what was at the bottom of Mr Holt’s singular proceedings, and what Sydney really proposed to gain by acting as a spy upon his wanderings. Then I turned to re-enter the house. As I did so, another problem suggested itself to my mind,—what connection, of the slightest importance, could a man in Paul Lessingham’s position have with the eccentric being who had established himself in such an unsatisfactory dwelling-place? Mr Holt’s story I had only dimly understood,—it struck me that it would require a deal of understanding. It was more like a farrago of nonsense, an outcome of delirium, than a plain statement of solid facts. To tell the truth, Sydney had taken it more seriously than I expected. He seemed to see something in it which I emphatically did not. What was double Dutch to me, seemed clear as print to him. So far as I could judge, he actually had the presumption to imagine that Paul—my Paul!—Paul Lessingham!—the great Paul Lessingham!—was mixed up in the very mysterious adventures of poor, weak-minded, hysterical Mr Holt, in a manner which was hardly to his credit.
Of course, any idea of the kind was purely and simply balderdash. Exactly what bee Sydney had got in his bonnet, I could not guess. But I did know Paul. Only let me find myself face to face with the fantastic author of Mr Holt’s weird tribulations, and I, a woman, single-handed, would do my best to show him that whoever played pranks with Paul Lessingham trifled with edged tools.