By this time the storm had completely died down, the sky had cleared, and was now cloudless and studded with stars. Yet, look where I would, I could not catch a trace of his fleeing shadow, although, by all rules of time and distance, he could not then have covered seven or eight yards at the most. It seemed, indeed, as though the pavement must have opened suddenly and swallowed him up.
Just, however, as I was about to turn indoors again another strange thing happened.
Chapter Two.
Lot Eighty-Two.
Just at that moment a man’s form emerged from the darkness on the opposite side of the street, and a familiar voice called to me in a loud but commanding whisper: “Glynn! Glynn! Is that you? You’re here late, aren’t you?” I wheeled round suddenly, and recognised the speaker. It was Detective-Inspector Naylor of Scotland Yard, with whom in times past I had been engaged in several joint investigations in which society and crime played parts of equally unpleasant prominence.
“Hullo!” I said, puzzled to know what to say, and still bewildered by the unexpected climax to my last interview. “What the deuce are you doing here at this ungodly time of night? Got something good professionally on, eh?”
“Oh, rather a queer job,” he answered lightly, bending down and pretending to strike a match on a shop front, wherewith to light the cigar he was carrying. “I’m after a young foreign chap who has just escaped from the monastery where he was a novice, and is accused of the murder of a well-known English nobleman in peculiarly atrocious circumstances. Good-bye. Take care of yourself. I’m a bit late as it is, although I think I’ve got a splendid clue.”
And he, too, vanished just as suddenly into the night.