The epithet was happily chosen, if the remark was a trifle callous.
"Yes," I replied carelessly. "I suppose I shall have to engage someone else."
I had seen enough of Northcote to realise that if I wanted to preserve my identity, or rather his, I must guard myself against the grosser forms of sentimentalism.
"I tell you what it is," said Maurice, "you'd better stroll round to Seagrave's with me now. I've got to go to Hanover Square anyway, and we can drop in and fix things straight away. They're sure to have plenty of decent men on their books."
The suggestion seemed a sensible one; and although I fully shared Northcote's lack of confidence in his cousin, I had no wish to quarrel with the latter for the present. That was a luxury which I must postpone until I was a little more certain of my ground.
"Very good," I said. "I'll be ready in a minute. I must just go upstairs and get some papers."
"Right you are," he drawled. "Don't be too long."
I mounted the stairs feeling in anything but an amiable temper. Open danger one can face with calmness, but this back-door assassination business was beginning to get on my nerves. I understood why Northcote had been driven to such a desperate step, and I cursed my folly in not having insisted on a fuller explanation from him before tackling the business. The fact probably was that he wanted me to be killed; thus ridding himself for ever of the danger that threatened him. For all I knew, he might even have lied to me in what he did say.
However, there was no getting out of it now. Apart from going back on my word (a useful habit that has never particularly appealed to me), I was determined to see the thing through for my own satisfaction. I object to being murdered, even in mistake for someone else, and it was my ardent wish to bring that objection home very forcibly to my unknown friends. Besides, there was Mercia. What precisely she was doing in that galley I couldn't say, but, like the hero in a play, I felt certain that it was "no place for her." I pictured her in an altogether different environment, a pleasant phase of thought which restored me to a more harmonious frame of mind.
What I had really come upstairs for was Northcote's pocket-book. I had promised him to keep any engagements he had made for the first few days, and I wanted to see if I had a programme mapped out for that afternoon. When I turned up the page, I found two entries: one an appointment with his tailor in Sackville Street at 12.30, and the other a directors' meeting of the London General Traffic Company at the Cannon Street Hotel after lunch. Neither sounded particularly important, but for lack of anything better to do I decided to attend them both. I was becoming quite interested in Northcote's private affairs.