She was laughing at some words her companion had uttered, and brushing past me unnoticed took his arm as she descended the stairs, worn slippery by the tramp of the million wearied feet.
I hesitated in amazement. This shabby scoundrel was her lover. She had preferred him to me. A great jealousy arose within me, and next moment I rushed after them down the stairs.
Chapter Seventeen.
After Business Hours.
Almost at the same instant a train emerged from the tunnel and stopped at the platform. Following close behind Muriel and her companion, unnoticed among the crowd of foot-passengers, I saw them enter a third-class compartment; therefore in order to discover my love’s hiding-place, I sprang into another compartment a little farther off.
At King’s Cross they alighted, and it suddenly occurred me that the woman whom Ash had been sent by his master to meet at the Great Northern terminus might have been Muriel herself.
The pair ascended to the street, and after standing on the kerb for a few moments entered a tram car, while I climbed on top. I had been careful that Muriel should not detect me, and now felt a certain amount of satisfaction in tracking her to her abode, although I confess to a fierce jealousy of this shabby, miserable specimen of manhood who accompanied her. Up the Caledonian Road to the junction of Camden Road with Holloway Road they travelled, alighting in the latter road, and walking slowly along, still deep in earnest conversation, until they came to the row of shops owned by Spicer Brothers, a firm of drapers of that character known in the trade as a “cutting” house, or one who sold goods at the lowest possible price. It was, of course, closed at that hour, but its exterior was imposing, one of those huge establishments which of late years have sprung up in the various residential centres of London.
Before the private door a couple of over-dressed young men lounged, smoking cheap cigars, and within a watchman sat in a small box, like the stage-door keeper of a theatre.