In the short silence that fell between them the knocking became insistent.
"Better let them in," said Rackham, "I'm going."
Barnaby pulled himself together and turned the key. His locking the door had been an instinctive action. And Rackham passed out, ignoring the insignificant person waiting on the threshold, who met Barnaby's look of blank interrogation with an apologetic reminder of his own orders. He had said if a message came it was to be brought up at once. And a message it was;—from the shipping office.
*****
Rackham swung out of the place like a conqueror. The knowledge that Susan had run away was to him the knowledge that he had won.
He never doubted that he would find her, and inspiration helped him, as it will the man whose blood runs quicker under the stimulus of his belief in his luck. What was the shop she had flown into to escape him and Kilgour, and the embarrassment of their ignorant questions? He had stayed long enough outside to know it again, waiting till he had no excuse for loitering any longer. She must have made purchases. He went straight there.
How simple it was, with luck on his side, to call in and say that a lady who had been that morning was afraid she had forgotten to leave her name and address.... This was no big emporium, but a little exclusive shop where it was possible to describe a customer's appearance with a chance of finding it remembered by saleswomen who recognized his standing and were sympathetically amused. In the hat-shop they directed him upstairs, and there he found an equal appreciation of his attitude of comical despair, as he tried helplessly to run through a list of feminine furbelows that the careless lady was supposed to have ordered to be sent home. How should a man succeed?—Smiling they reassured him. They recollected the lady perfectly from his description, and she had made no mistake in that establishment; the parcel was already packed and waiting to be despatched. To satisfy him an assistant was bidden to read out the address on the label, and as she glanced up at him, expecting him to verify it, Rackham checked himself just in time. For the name she slurred over was strange to him.
Why, he had thought of that,—since naturally the runaway was no longer masquerading as his cousin's wife;—and yet he had been about to deny that it was she. What had it sounded like? Grant, or Grand?—And was it indeed Susan, or a stranger? He had no means of knowing; the only thing possible was to go blindly forward, trusting in his luck and fixing that address in his head.
"Yes, yes, that's all right," he acknowledged, and laughed good-naturedly at the apparent futility of his mission as he sauntered out of the shop.
*****