It was an odd drive to my chambers. My client talked, Miss Purvis talked, I only dropped a boobyish remark at intervals. The idea that such a girl as that should only have fifteen shillings between her and starvation, and that to keep herself alive she should have to seek another situation in such a den of roguery, servitude, humiliation, as that from which she had just escaped, was to me most horrible. I was irritated, illogically enough, because Benjamin Batters had not left her a portion of the income which was derived from those bonds of his. I was conscious of the fact that he had had no cognisance of her existence. But, at the moment, that was not the point.
Two incidents marked our progress.
The first was when Miss Blyth, putting her head out of the cab window, recognised, with every appearance of surprise, a man standing on the pavement whom she called Isaac Rudd. I observed that he saw us, and the keenness with which his gaze was fastened on us. There was a seafaring air about the fellow which recalled Max Lander to my mind. Although I said nothing of it to the ladies, I had a shrewd suspicion that he was following us in another cab, which he had hailed as soon as we had passed. Two or three times when I looked out I noticed that a second four-wheeler seemed to be keeping us in sight. In view of my recent experiences, had I been alone I should have lost no time in putting the question to the proof. Not only, however, just then, were my wits a good deal wanting, but I felt a not unnatural disinclination to cause my companions uneasiness. Especially as I more than suspected that Miss Blyth might have enough of that a little later on.
The second incident was a trifle startling.
Shortly after catching sight of the man she called Isaac Rudd, she gave a sudden exclamation. She was staring at something with wide-open eyes. I looked to see what it was.
There, on her knee, was my God of Fortune.
Her surprise at its appearance was unmistakably genuine. How it had come there she was unable to explain. It might have been “materialised,” as the Theosophists have it, out of the intangible air. But it seemed that it was not the first time she had encountered it.
It had been slipped into her hand the night before by a fantastically attired individual who was evidently my length without breadth visitor, whom I had interrupted in his pseudo service, and who had dropped out of my office window with my God of Fortune in his hand. Although I made no reference to that occurrence, I was none the less struck by the fashion in which he had chosen to introduce himself to the niece of Mr. Benjamin Batters. The singularity of the thing went further. When the doll was slipped into the lady’s hand it was cased in a piece of paper, as it was when it was slipped into mine, from, which, again exactly as had happened with me, it forced itself apparently of its own volition.
I made no comment, but, with Miss Blyth’s permission, I put the doll into my waistcoat pocket; concluding that it might prove worthy of more minute examination than I had yet bestowed on it—even to the breaking of it open to discover “the works.”
This is a sober chronicle. I trust I am a sober chronicler. I wish to set down nothing which suggests the marvellous. I have an inherent dislike to wonders, being without faith. When men speak of the inexplicable I think of trickery, and of some quality which is not perception. Therefore I desire it to be understood that the following lines are written without prejudice; and that of what happened there may be a perfectly simple explanation which escaped my notice.