“Now, make up your mind, sir.”
I made up my mind and went on to Chancery Lane. I must keep my word to O’Rane. Had I wished to break it, I could not; and, with this sense of impotence, something of my old anxiety returned. Raney would not have summoned me for a trifle; if he needed me, there was danger; yet I had told Barbara that I should be as safe with him as if I stayed in Seymour Street. . . .
From Chancery Lane I stumbled to my office at a pace that left no time for morbid fancies. O’Rane was in my room, sitting by the fire and slapping a stick lazily against his boot. I have never seen any one less like a figure of destiny, urging me to an unknown doom. At the vaguest hint, he would have insisted on my going back to Barbara.
“Is there any more news?,” I asked. “I came as soon as I could.”
“It’s very good of you. No, I’ve heard nothing since that first rumour,” he answered. “If I had, I wouldn’t have bothered you; but I’ve been trying for two hours to get through to my secretary, and the girl at the exchange tells me every time that there’s no answer. I expect the hunger-march has disorganized everything; and I can smell a pretty thick fog even if I can’t see it. . . . Shall we start, or is there anything you want to do here first?”
As we set out, I realized that in the darkness of night or the greater darkness of a fog the blind man has an advantage over those who are guided by their eyes. With a murmured “Chancery Lane Tube; and then change at Tottenham Court Road”, O’Rane piloted me more surely and far more quickly than I could have found my way unaided. The contents-bills outside the station proclaimed—rather superfluously—“Fog-Pall over London”; but, beyond one or two collisions and an accident with a runaway horse on the Embankment, I could find no news. “Griffiths’ Armies” were given a headline of no more than medium size; and their progress had been followed less far than Philip Hornbeck had carried it that morning. The peaceful encounter with the police in Regent’s Park was briefly described; but of the barricades which Sonia had seen at Westminster there was no mention.
“By the way, you know Griffiths has turned up again?,” I said. “Your wife was lunching with us; and I gathered that he’d called on you at The Sanctuary. That was just before lunch.”
“What’s happened to him?,” O’Rane asked.
“Sonia told him you weren’t at home.”
“Did she send him to the office?”