"All right," I said, unsuspectingly, and, emptying my glass, I prepared to go upstairs.
The billiard-players led the way, the others following. The girl who had been looking at me was the last except myself to leave the bar. The door-handle apparently slipped from her fingers and the door, which had an ordinary spring, closed in her face with a slam, thus momentarily cutting us off from the others. To my intense surprise she turned and whispered, hurriedly:—
"Don't go upstairs; they will throw you down!"
In another instant she had pulled the door open and was ascending the stairs.
"Wyngate again!" was the thought that flashed through my mind.
At first I was inclined to disregard the warning, but a moment's reflection showed me that there was no disgrace in declining an unequal combat, and that, even if I were not knocked downstairs by some cleverly-contrived "accident," I could be sure of being dealt some underhand blow by agents of so unscrupulous a person as my late guest.
I went up three or four steps, and then—exclaiming, "Forgotten my stick; I'll be back in a moment!"—I returned to the bar, went out quickly by another door, jumped into a hansom, and made good my retreat.
"Two not out, captain!" I remarked, with satisfaction; but, as I was soon to discover, the game was not by any means finished.
I wrote to Hunter at once, asking him if he had wired me to meet him. He replied that he had not done so, and that someone must have been using his name.
The more I thought over the situation the less I liked it. It was evident that I had become the object of a sort of vendetta on the part of a very clever scoundrel, who would stick at nothing to obtain his revenge and was always ready to strike at me when I least expected it. To apply to the police would have been useless, as I had not a scrap of evidence against him. I had slipped through his fingers twice, but I could hardly count upon another such timely warning as I received in the hotel bar. The girl must have known that there was a plot against me, but why did she interfere? Was it caprice or a good instinct?