Releasing her hand, I stepped back on to the pavement. I saw the driver raise the flap and bend down to catch her directions. Then he wheeled his horse round, and the cab jogged away steadily in the direction of Oxford Street.
"And here," I said to myself, "endeth the first lesson."
As the words rose in my mind, something caught my attention on the farther side of the road. There was a clump of trees exactly opposite, just inside the railings of the Park, and in the thick shadow beneath them I could have sworn that I had detected a movement.
My nerves must have been pretty badly on edge, for I as nearly as possible jumped for the area. Fortunately, I pulled myself together just in time. Taking out a cigarette, I lit it with some deliberation, and then in a leisurely and dignified fashion mounted the steps, latchkey in hand, and let myself into the house. All the time I had a horrible presentiment that at the next second a bullet would crash into the small of my back; but like most presentiments it failed to materialise. Still, it was with a feeling of considerable relief that I closed the door and shot home the bolts at the top and bottom.
When I reached my study, the first thing I did was to mix myself a pretty stiff brandy-and-soda. I wanted it badly.
"If I keep this job going for three weeks," I reflected, "I shall probably end up as a confirmed dipsomaniac."
By the time I had got well into a cigarette, however, my natural good spirits had begun to reassert themselves. After all, I was still alive, and, apparently, so far quite unsuspected, which was about as favourable a situation as I had any right to expect.
Northcote, however, had plainly been speaking in good faith when he described his offer as one for which the competition would be scant if the truth about it were known. Granted that my first evening's experiences were a fair sample of what I might expect, my chances of survival seemed quite unhealthily remote. If Mercia had been a man, I reflected grimly, by this time I should most certainly have been a ghost.
Who was she, and what had her relations been with Northcote? That the ruffian was responsible for her father's death was fairly obvious, but as to the circumstances of the tragedy I was still utterly in the dark. They must have been pretty bad to drive a young girl to such a desperate step, unless in some way or other she was being made a cat's-paw of by others.
Anyhow, I made no attempt to disguise from myself the fact that I was extremely anxious to see her again. Her beautiful face lingered in my memory as clearly as though I were looking at a picture, and somehow or other I still seemed to feel the thrill that had gone through me when she laid her hand in mine.