Dick was sleeping so heavily that he hardly stirred when I picked him up, carried him into my bedroom, laid him on my bed and loosened his clothes; I had decided to sleep on the settee in the room adjoining. Soon after seven next morning I was awakened by hearing him moving about. He had made himself quite at home, I found, for he had had a bath and used my towels and hair-brushes and found his way into a pair of my slippers.
"I hope you don't mind," he said apologetically, after telling me what he had done. "And now shall I tell you how I come to be here, Mike?" he added, clambering up on to my bed and lying down beside me.
I told him I wanted to know everything, and at once, and, speaking in his rapid, vivacious way, he went on to explain exactly what had occurred.
It seemed that when he went and stood by Doris Lorrimer under the clock at Paddington station, she had, as I had told him she probably would, asked him if he were Dick Challoner. Upon his telling her that he was, she said that she had been sent to meet him, and asked him to come with her. She had not told him where they were going, but when she got out at Baker Street station and he got out after her, a man had suddenly come up to her and said he wished to speak to her privately. She had told Dick to wait, and had then walked a little way away with the man, and for about ten minutes they had stood together, conversing in undertones.
"What was the man like?" I interrupted.
Dick described him rather minutelyhe said he had taken special notice of his appearance "because he was such a hairy man"and before he had done I felt practically certain the man who had met Doris Lorrimer was the foreign-looking man who had shadowed Preston, Jack, and myself the night before.
"I think," Dick went on, "the lady altered her plans after meeting that man; because for some moments after he had gone she seemed undecided what to do. Finally she went out of the station, hailed a taxi in Baker Street, told me to get into it, and then said something to the driver that I couldn't hear. We went straight down Baker Street, down Orchard StreetI noticed the names of both streetsthen turned to the right and stopped at a house in Cumberland Place. As you had disappeared, I was beginning to feel a bit frightened, Mike,I didn't much like the woman, who had spoken hardly a word to me all the time,so just as she got out of the taxi on the left side, I quickly opened the door on the right side, popped out while her back was still turned, and ran away as hard as I could, leaving my suit-case in the taxi. It was very dark, and I believe that until after she had paid the driver she can't have missed me, as nobody came after me."
"Well, and what did you do then?"
"As soon as I had got well away, I went up to a policeman and asked him the way to South Molton Street. He explained clearly, and I came straight on here and asked for you. Your man, Simon, said you weren't in, and that he didn't know when you would be, so I asked if I might come in and wait, as I said I had something important to say to you. Of course he knew me by sight from seeing me with you sometimes, so he said 'Certainly,' and put me into your sitting-room. It was past eight when I got here. I was awfully hungry, so I ate all the cake and all the biscuits I found in the sideboard in your dining-room, and then I sat down in your big chair to wait for youand I suppose I then fell asleep."
This report interested me a good deal, and I was still pondering it when my man came in with my letters and the newspaper, which he always brought to me before I got up. After reading my letters I picked up the newspaper, telling Dick to lie still and not disturb me until I had glanced through it. I had read the principal items of news, when suddenly my attention became centred upon an article which was headed: