When we were alone together with our cigars, he suddenly said:
“I want you to go out for a run to-night—to Bristol.”
“To Bristol! To-night?” I echoed.
“Yes. I want you to take the new ‘A. C.’ and get to the Clifton Suspension Bridge by two o’clock to-morrow morning. There, in the center of the bridge, you will await a stranger—an elderly hunchback whose name is Morley Tarrant. He’ll give you, as bonâ fides, the word ‘Mask.’ When you meet him act upon his instructions. He is to be trusted.”
The tryst seemed full of suspicion, and I certainly did not like it. The evening was bright and clear, and the run in the fast two-seater would be enjoyable. But to meet a man who would give a password savored too much of crookdom.
He quickly saw my hesitation, and added:
“Now, Hargreave, I ought not to conceal from you the fact that there may be a trap. If so, you must evade it and escape at all costs. I have enemies, you know—pretty fierce ones.”
Again, for the hundredth time, I debated within myself whether I dare cast myself adrift from the round-faced, prosperous-looking cosmopolitan who sat before me so full of good humor and so fearless.
I had been cleverly inveigled into accepting the situation he had offered me, but I had never dreamed that by accepting, I was throwing in my lot with the most marvelously organized gang of evil-doers that that world had ever known.
Other similar gangs blundered at one time or another and left loopholes through which the police were able to attack them and break them up. But Rudolph Rayne had flung his octopus-like tentacles so far afield that he had actually attached to him—by fear of blackmail—an eminent Counsel who appeared for the defense of any member of the circle who happened to make a slip. That well-known member of the Bar I will call Mr. Henry Moyser, a lawyer whose fame was of world-wide repute, and who was employed for the defense in most of the really great criminal trials.