On our journey she gave me an address in the Vauxhall Bridge Road, where, she said, a letter would find her. She refused to tell me her destination or to allow me to see her into a hansom. This latter fact caused me considerable reflection. Why had she so suddenly made up her mind to come to London? and why should I not know whither she went, when she had told me so many details concerning herself?
Of one fact I felt quite convinced—namely, that she had lied to me. She was not a governess, as she pretended. Besides, I had been seized by suspicion that a tall, thin-faced elderly man, rather shabbily dressed, whom I had noticed idling in the Rue Royale, had followed us by rail. I thought I saw him outside the Tivoli, in the Strand, where she descended.
His reappearance there recalled to me that he had watched us in the Rue Royale, and had appeared intensely interested in all our movements. Whether my pretty travelling-companion noticed him I do not know. I, however, watched her as she walked along the Strand carrying her dressing-bag, and saw the tall man striding after her. Adventurer was written upon the fellow’s face. His grey moustache was upturned, and his keen grey eyes looked out from beneath shaggy brows, while his dark threadbare overcoat was tightly buttoned across his chest for greater warmth.
Without approaching her, he stood back in the shadow, and saw her enter a hansom and drive towards Charing Cross. It was clear that she was not going to the address she had given me, for she was driving in the opposite direction.
My duty was to drive direct to Clifford Street and report to Bindo, but so interested was I in the thin-faced watcher that I turned the car into the courtyard of the Cecil in the Strand and left it there, in order to keep further observation upon the stranger.
Had not mademoiselle declared herself to be in danger of her life? If so, was it not possible that this fellow, whoever he was, was a secret assassin?
I did not like the aspect of the affair at all. I ought to have warned her against him, and I now became filled with regret. She was a complete mystery, and as I dogged the footsteps of the unknown foreigner—for that he undoubtedly was—I became more deeply interested in what was in progress.
He walked to Trafalgar Square, where he hesitated in such a manner as to show that he was not well acquainted with London. He did not know which of the converging thoroughfares to take. At last he inquired of the constable on point duty, and then went up St. Martin’s Lane.
As soon as he had turned I approached the policeman and asked what the stranger wanted, explaining that he was a suspicious character whom I was following.