Chapter Twenty Five.
The Girl and the Man.
Gwen Griffin had appointed half-past eight as the hour to meet her mysterious friend “Red Mullet” outside the “Tube” station at the corner of Queen’s Road, Bayswater.
Immediately after dinner she had slipped up to her room, exchanging her silk blouse for a stuff one, and putting on her hat and fur jacket, went out, leaving her father alone in the study. He was—as now was his habit every evening—busy making those bewildering calculations, as he tested the various numerical ciphers upon the original Hebrew text of Ezekiel.
Through the damp misty night she hurried along the Bayswater Road, until she came within the zone of electricity around the station, where she saw the tall figure of her friend, wearing a heavy overcoat and dark green felt hat, awaiting her.
“This is really a most pleasant surprise, Miss Griffin,” he cried cheerily, as he raised his hat, and took her little gloved hand. “But—well, we can’t walk about the street in order to talk, can we? Why not drive to my rooms? You’re not afraid of me now—are you?” he laughed.
“No, Mr Mullet,” was her quick answer. “I trust you, because you have already proved yourself my good friend.”
Truth to tell, however, she was not eager to go to that place where she had spent those anxious never-to-be-forgotten days, yet, as he suggested it, she could not very well refuse. One thing was quite certain, she was as safe in his hands as in her own home.
Therefore, he hailed a “taxi” from the rank across the way, and they at once drove in the direction of the Marble Arch.