He sat forward in his hansom, leaning out, gripping the front, ready to dash it open. It did not matter to him how many fools were about, how many frivolous idiots, men and women, stopped short in their idle progress and stared at him. Down Old Bond Street, along New Bond Street, right to the end he went, raking the narrow thoroughfare with a searching gaze. The shop signs mocked him. Milliners, jewellers, palmists, druggists, picture-sellers: a fantastic jumble. She might be anywhere, within two or three yards of him, and he not know it. She might have just gone in at that door yonder that was closing. She might be just coming out.
Half an hour ago. One chance in a hundred.... More likely she was miles off, whizzing in one of these cursed taxis—!
Well, he could hunt down Rackham. He would drive to that old barrack of his in Marylebone. No,—that was let or shut up or something. Where the devil did he go when he was in town?
It was late in the afternoon before he ran him down. He had been heard of, or seen, in most of his ordinary haunts. One man had come across him in a saddler's shop, another had passed him ten minutes ago in the Haymarket. And at last Barnaby found him coming out of his tailors'. He stopped the hansom.
"Get in," he said.
"Hullo!" said Rackham, staring at him. "What's wrong with you?" But he obeyed mechanically, and the hansom started off. "What d'you mean by kidnapping a fellow like this? Where on earth are we going?"
"I've told him to drive to my hotel," said Barnaby curtly. There was a controlled fury in his voice.
"But why the deuce——"
"I'm not going to have a row in a cab."
"Whew!" said Rackham, twisting round and regarding the grim outline of his cousin's profile, his stubbornly closed mouth. Unless Barnaby were stark mad there was something serious in the wind, something he could not trust himself to utter without losing his hold on himself.