“Perhaps, when we have the letter,” he replied, “I shall be able to answer that question!”
Then he lit a cigarette, gave the boy his hand, and a minute later Bruce Wright, watching through the chink of the curtain from the window of Robin Greve’s chambers, saw a lanky form shuffle across the court and follow Robin round the angle of the house.
Robin strode quickly through the maze of narrow passages and tranquil, echoing courts into the Sabbath stillness of the Strand. An occasional halt at a shop-window was sufficient to assure him that the watcher of the Temple was still on his heels. The man, he was interested to see, played his part very unobtrusively, shambling along in nonchalant fashion, mostly hugging the sides of the houses, ready to dart out of sight into a doorway or down a side turning, should he by any mischance arrive too close on the heels of his quarry.
As he walked along, Robin turned over in his mind the best means for getting rid of his shadow. Should he dive into a Tube station and plunge headlong down the steps? He rejected this idea as calculated to let the tracker know that his presence was suspected. Then he reviewed in his mind the various establishments he knew of in London with double entrances, thinking that he might slip in by the one entrance and emerge by the other.
In Pall Mall he came upon Tony Grandell, whom he had last seen playing bridge in the company dugout on the Flesquieres Ridge. Then he had been in “battle order,” camouflaged as a private soldier, as officers were ordered to go over the top in the latter phases of the war. Now he was resplendent in what the invitation cards call “Morning Dress” crowned by what must certainly have been the most relucent top-hat in London.
“Hullo, hullo, hullo!” cried Tony, on catching sight of him; “stand to your kits and so forth! And how is my merry company commander? Robin, dear, come and relieve the medieval gloom of lunch with my aunt at Mart’s!”
He linked his arm affectionately in Robin’s.
Mart’s! Robin’s brain snatched at the word. Mart’s! most respectable of “family hotels,” wedged in between two quiet streets off Piccadilly with an entrance from both. If ever a man wanted to dodge a sleuth, especially a grimy tatterdemalion like the one sidling up Pall Mall behind them ...
“Tony, old son,” said Robin, “I won’t lunch with you even to set the board in a roar at your aunt’s luncheon-party. But I’ll walk up to Mart’s with you, for I’m going there myself ...”
They entered Mart’s together and parted in the vestibule, where Tony gravely informed his “dear old scream” that he must fly to his “avuncular luncheon.” Robin walked quickly through the hotel and left by the other entrance. The street was almost deserted. Of the man with the dingy neckerchief there was no sign. Robin hurried into Piccadilly and hopped on a ’bus which put him down at his club facing the Green Park.