In the hope of finding out something I dropped in two or three times at the hotel at different hours, but the few guarded inquiries I made led to nothing. The girl and her companions were merely chance customers, quite unknown to the hotel people, who would have been almost as disagreeably surprised as myself if Wyngate's little scheme had succeeded.
Feeling that the air of London was becoming decidedly unwholesome, I went off to my friends at Folkestone, rather unwisely leaving my address, so that letters could be forwarded. Thanks to cheerful surroundings—the society of nice people has a really remarkable effect in changing the current of one's ideas—my enemy's sinister figure began to recede into the background. I was one of a house-party of about a dozen, and they were all intensely interested in my story, though nobody could suggest anything better than going abroad for a year or two.
On the Tuesday after my arrival somebody mentioned that there was to be a ball on the following Monday at one of the hotels on the cliff, and we decided to make up a party and go. Tickets were taken, and, of course, we made no secret of our intention, which was known to the servants, tradespeople, and, in fact, anyone who might have taken an interest in our doings.
On the Monday afternoon, while we were talking and tea-drinking in the drawing-room, Charlie Barbour, one of the party, came in, walked straight up to me, and remarked:—
"Well, old chap, there's some more fun in store for you."
"What on earth do you mean?" I demanded, vaguely uneasy.
"Only that your friend Wyngate is beginning again," he replied.
Then he told us that, happening to stroll into a barber's to get himself smartened up for the evening, he had overheard two men talking confidentially in German while waiting their turn to be shaved. As it happened, Charlie was educated in Germany, and understood the language perfectly well. At first, having no desire to overhear what was not intended for him, he paid no attention, but presently he caught a remark about the ball to which we were going the same evening. Listening more attentively, he made out that somebody at the ball was to be given a letter asking him to come outside for a few minutes on to the terrace at the top of the cliff. This did not at first strike him as suspicious, but when the two men, who looked like innocent commercial travellers, had left the shop it suddenly occurred to Charlie that their conversation might relate to me. It was so very much like Wyngate's style, he thought, to get me on top of a cliff at night, when there would probably be no one to see what happened to me. With this idea in his head, Charlie escaped from the barber's as promptly as possible and spent an hour or two prowling about in search of the two men, but in vain; after which he made for home to tell me his story.
The girls became very much excited, and one of them said I was like the hero of a sensational novel. We held a sort of council of war, and decided that, if any letter of the kind were sent in to me while the dance was going on, I should go outside with a revolver in my pocket, and that Barbour and another man, Carruthers, also armed, should follow close behind.
We were still discussing the affair when a telegram was brought to me. I opened it and read:—