“What can I do?”
“Get out of it—and at once,” replied Blythe coolly. “If Dyer discovers and tries to prevent your escape, make a bold fight for it,” and from his hip-pocket he drew a serviceable-looking plated revolver, and handed it to me with the remark that it was fully loaded.
I saw that my position was one of peril. Even now, Dyer might have watched me keeping this appointment with Blythe.
“I shall leave for Leipzig in an hour,” my friend said. “You’d better return to the hotel, get the car, and make a dash for it.”
“Why should I get the car?” I queried “Why not slip away at once?”
“If you tried to you’d probably be ‘pinched’ at the station. Dyer is an artful bird, you know. Once up with you, he isn’t likely to lose sight of you for very long.”
As he was speaking I recognised, seated at a table before the café some distance away, my friend Upton, idly smoking a cigar, and apparently unconscious of my proximity.
“That’s all right,” declared Blythe, when I had pointed him out. “It proves two things—first, that this Mr. Upton is really one of the younger men from the Yard, and, secondly, that Dyer has sent him after you to watch where you went to-night. That’s fortunate, for if Dyer himself had come it’s certain he would have recognised me. I gave him a rather nasty jag when he arrested me four years ago, so it isn’t very likely he forgets. And now let’s part. At all hazards, get away from Dresden. But go back to the hotel first, so as to disarm suspicion. When you are safe, wire to the address in the Tottenham Court Road. So long.”
And without another word the well-dressed jewel-thief turned on his heels, and disappeared in the darkness of the leafy avenue.
My feelings were the reverse of happy as I made my way back to the Europäischer Hof. To obtain the car that night would be to arouse suspicion that I had discovered Mr. Gibbs’s identity. My safety lay in getting away quietly and without any apparent haste. Indeed, when I gained my room and calmly thought it all over, I saw that it would be policy to wait until next day, when I could obtain the car from the garage as usual, and slip away before the crafty pair were aware of my absence.