Peeping cautiously through the doorway he saw Miss Mercy alone in the bar, perfunctorily at work upon a task of supererogation which the paternal wisdom had set her.
"Hist!" he signalled, and when she looked up in disdain he beckoned mysteriously and withdrew.
Miss Popkiss, in no amiable humour, was forced as a matter of business to follow him. "What is your order, sir?" she inquired, with a toss of the head. But the man signed to her to come nearer still with such an air of mysterious importance that she was forced to drop something of her haughty manner. "I did not see you come in, sir," she remarked casually, as a first step toward affability.
For reply the man gave a knowing jerk of the head and indicated the window with his thumb. "Hope you are well this morning, my dear," he observed inconsequentially. "It is quite a pleasure to see any one looking so pretty and blooming."
Ignoring the incongruity between the guest's mysterious prelude and his crudely outspoken appreciation of her charms, Miss Popkiss was not above accepting the tribute to her good looks. "Oh, sir," she said with a touch of protest just sufficient to maintain her propriety; and so waited for the order to which the compliment would have been a natural preamble.
The guest pursed his lips and kept his small eyes on her with business-like admiration. "Very busy, eh?" he suggested, absurdly enough, since he appeared to be the only customer in the house. "Any one fresh staying here?" he asked with an obvious affectation of indifference.
"No, we've had no one fresh to-day, sir," Miss Popkiss answered, beginning to lose interest in the colloquy.
"Oh," said the man, blinking his eyes suspiciously. "Are you quite sure? No one been here to-day?"
His manner was so exaggerated in its significance that Miss Popkiss, with Mr. Sparrow's clandestine visit fresh in her mind, grew uneasy under it. "No, sir," she answered, a trifle unconvincingly. "Who should there have been?"
A triumphant gleam shot through her questioner's eyes. He dropped his cross-examiner's manner and said confidentially, "I thought I saw some one come in just now."