“No, really, you’re wrong. I am deeply interested in Mrs. Clarke because she is what she is. I want her to win because I’m convinced she’s innocent. Will you come to Mrs. Chetwinde’s next Sunday and meet her?”
“Yes, unless Rosamund wants me.”
“That’s always understood.”
The cab drove away, and the great lawyer was left to think of his case under the stars.
When the cab turned the corner of Great Market Street, Westminster, and came into Little Market Street, Dion saw in the distance before him two large, staring yellow eyes, which seemed to be steadily regarding him like the eyes of something on the watch. They were the lamps of a brougham drawn up in front of No. 5. Dion’s cabman, perforce, pulled up short before the brown door of No. 4.
“A carriage in front of my house at this time of night!” thought Dion, as he got out and paid the man.
He looked at the coachman and at the solemn brown horse between the shafts, and instantly realized that this was the carriage of a doctor.
“Rosamund!”
With a thrill of anxiety, a clutch at his heart, he thrust his latchkey into the door. It stuck; he could not turn it. This had never happened before. He tried, with force, to pull the key out. It would not move. He shook it. The doctor’s coachman, he felt, was staring at him from the box of the brougham. As he struggled impotently with the key his shoulders began to tingle, and a wave of acute irritation flooded him. He turned sharply round and met the coachman’s eyes, shrewd, observant, lit, he thought, by a flickering of sarcasm.
“Has the doctor been here long?” said Dion.