I recalled her voice distinctly. I certainly had made no mistake. She had been actually present in that house of black torture. Therefore, being my friend, there seemed no doubt that, to her, I owed my mysterious salvation. But how? Aye, that was the question.
Suddenly, as I stood there on the crowded pavement, I became conscious that I was attracting attention. I recollected my dusty clothes and dirty, dishevelled face. I must have presented a strange, dissipated, out-all-night appearance. And further, I had lost a thousand pounds.
Up and down before the long range of shop-windows I walked, patiently awaiting her reappearance. I was anxious to know the truth concerning the previous night’s happenings—a truth which I intended she should not conceal from me.
I glanced at my watch. It was already past eleven o’clock. Morning shopping in Regent Street had now commenced in real earnest. The thoroughfare was lined with carriages, for was it not the height of the London season?
In and out of the big drapery establishment passed crowds of well-dressed women, most of them with pet dogs, and others with male friends led like lambs to the slaughter. The spectacle of a man in silk hat out shopping with a lady friend is always a pitiable one. His very look craves the sympathy of the onlooker, especially if he be laden with soft-paper parcels.
My brain was awhirl. My only thought was of Sylvia and of her strange connection with these undesirable persons who had so ingeniously stolen my money, and who had baited such a fatal trap.
Anxious as I was to get to a telephone and ring up Jack, yet I could not leave my post—I had promised to await her.
Nearly an hour went by; I entered the shop and searched its labyrinth of “departments.” But I could not distinguish her anywhere. Upstairs and downstairs I went, inquiring here and there, but nobody seemed to have seen the fair young lady in black; the great emporium seemed to have swallowed her up.
It was now noon. Even though she might have been through a dress-fitting ordeal, an hour was certainly ample time. Therefore I began to fear that she had missed me. There were several other exits higher up the street, and also one which I discovered in a side street.