Now I knew that the woman Leach was still behind the screen, and that she must hear every word that I might have to say, and Bardolph Just knew that also. Yet we must play the game of pretences in such a fashion as to make each believe that we were certain we were the only two persons in the room. More than that, having had a sample of the woman's curiosity that morning, I was in no mood to talk about myself, or of that fellow jail-bird I had met, within her hearing. Yet I could not suggest talking with the doctor elsewhere, because that must at once show him that I knew we had a listener. There was nothing for it but to speak as vaguely as possible, and to try and get him away from that room.
"I've had an adventure to-night, and I rather want to tell you about it," I said. "I've met a man, by the merest accident, whom I know."
He glanced quickly at the screen, and then looked again at me. "Won't your news keep till the morning?" he asked.
"Well, hardly," I replied, with a laugh. "The friend of whom I speak is here now."
"Here?" The doctor looked puzzled.
"Yes," I said. "You see, it happens that he was with me in a certain place of which you know, and he is rather anxious to renew an acquaintance so auspiciously begun."
The doctor whistled softly, and once more glanced at the screen. "We'll go downstairs and talk about this," he said. "This room is intolerably hot."
He opened the door for me to pass out, and as I preceded him murmured an excuse that he had forgotten something, and went quickly back. I went downstairs, and in a moment or two he joined me in the dining-room. I could scarcely refrain from smiling at my secret knowledge of what had taken place in the other room, even though I was agitated by dreadful fears concerning Debora. I had gleaned but a dim notion of what the pair had been talking about, but it had been enough to show me that Bardolph Just had by no means repented of his purpose. I shuddered at the connection of Debora's name with death. Moreover, guessing something of the character of the woman Leach, and adding to that the remembrance of what she had said to me that morning, I saw that matters were indeed desperate. And, to add to my perplexities, there was the man George Rabbit, waiting all this time under the trees for my reappearance.
"Now, what has happened?" asked the doctor sharply.
"I met a man to-night, by the greatest ill-fortune, who worked in the same gang with me in Penthouse prison," I answered him. "A mean dog, who intends to trade on the knowledge, and to get what he can out of me. I tried to shake him off, but he stuck to me like wax."