“Good,” he exclaimed, again kissing her fondly. “Now I must make all speed to Kensington and there go once more into hiding. When—oh, when will this wearying life be over!”
“You have a friend, as I have, in the mysterious white cavalier,” she said. “I wonder who he really is?”
“The Sparrow—without a doubt—the famous ‘Il Passero’ for whom the police of Europe are ever searching, the man who at one moment lives in affluence and the highest respectability in a house somewhere near Piccadilly, and at another is tearing over the French, Spanish, or Italian roads in his powerful car directing all sorts of crooked business. It’s a strange world in which I find myself, Dorise, I assure you! Good-bye, darling—good-bye!” and he took her in a final embrace. “Good-bye—till Tuesday week.”
Then stepping on to the grass, where his feet fell noiselessly, he disappeared in the dark shadow of the great avenue of beeches.
SIXTEENTH CHAPTER
THE ESCROCS OF LONDON
For ten weary days Hugh Henfrey had lived in the close, frowsy-smelling house in Abingdon Road, Kensington, a small, old-fashioned place, once a residence of well-to-do persons, but now sadly out of repair.
Its occupier was a worthy, and somewhat wizened, widow named Mason, who was supposed to be the relict of an army surgeon who had been killed at the Battle of the Marne. She was about sixty, and suffered badly from asthma. Her house was too large for one maid, a stout, matronly person called Emily, hence the place was not kept as clean as it ought to have been, and the cuisine left much to be desired.
Still, it appeared to be a safe harbour of refuge for certain strange persons who came there, men who looked more or less decent members of society, but whose talk and whose slang was certainly that of crooks. That house in the back street of old-world Kensington, a place built before Victoria ascended the throne, was undoubtedly on a par with the flat of the Reveccas in Genoa, and the thieves’ sanctuary in the shadow of the cathedral at Malines.