"On the contrary," he replied, "I'm just beginning to enjoy myself."
"Well, well, there's no accounting for tastes. But I should have thought you'd have had enough of railway stations. Better go home and stay there."
Richard shook his head sympathetically.
"Try taking a little more soda in it," he suggested. "You'd be a different man inside a week. So long."
The watcher by the gate was smiling pleasantly to himself as Richard turned away.
It was nearly one o'clock when his wanderings brought him back to the neighbourhood of Piccadilly. He had spent the intervening hours, with little enough success, at the labour bureau in Westminster. From there he had walked across the Mall and found an empty bench under the trees in Green Park looking up Park Lane. He had hardly seated himself when he saw a man come out of a big doorway opposite and hurry eastward in the direction of Piccadilly Circus. Even at the distance Richard had no difficulty in recognising the diner who overnight had nodded to him at the Berkeley.
"Half a mind to give him a shout," he thought, but on reflection "I don't know though, he seems in the deuce of a hurry and I can't imagine he's any work to give away."
It would have saved Cranbourne a lot of trouble if he had followed his first inclination.