This being the exact service that I needed, I entered at once upon the question of terms. These were soon settled, and after arranging for the car to call for us the next morning, I emerged again into the roar of Piccadilly.
It was now five and twenty minutes past two. With my heart beating a shade quicker than usual, I crossed back to the corner of Dover Street and took up my position outside the Tube Station. There was another man standing there—a fat, pompous person in a bowler hat, who kept on glancing at his watch. He, too, was evidently expecting somebody, and his impatience struck me as being singularly unreasonable. Whomsoever he was waiting for, he could not possibly want to see them as much as I wanted to see Christine.
Through the open window of one of the neighbouring houses a mellow-toned clock chimed out the half-hour. The sound had hardly died away when the big doors of the lift slid noisily back, and Christine herself stepped out into the sunshine. She was dressed in white, and she looked so deliciously beautiful that I had a sudden frantic impulse to seize her in my arms and kiss her before the whole street. It was a close thing, but fortunately I just managed to recover in time. The next moment I was holding her hand and making a gallant effort to appear more or less in my senses.
"You are as punctual as a cuckoo clock," I said. "You came out exactly as the half-hour struck."
She smiled up at me in the old, delightful way, but there was a troubled expression in her brown eyes that it went to my heart to notice.
"I had to be punctual," she answered quietly. "We can only spend a few minutes together, and there are several things that I must speak to you about."
I let go her hand with some reluctance. "Well, a few minutes are better than nothing," I said as cheerfully as possible.
"Where can we go to?" she asked, with a quick glance up and down the street. "Do you know any place close by where there won't be a lot of people?"
"There's a tea-shop at the corner of Bond Street," I said. "It's not likely to be crowded at this time of day."
She nodded her head. "That will do. I can't stand and talk to you here. Somebody might see us."