“Because Dad foolishly sent him upon an errand to somebody in Paris.”
“He is a friend of your father’s, I suppose?”
“Yes, a great friend. He was once in the London detective police, but on his retirement he found his present post a very lucrative one—the personal guardian of one for whom the police are ever in search! You saw him on his cycle on the afternoon I overtook you in the car—the first time we met?” and she smiled as she spoke. “His vigilance is never relaxed,” she added, “and his true métier never suspected. No doubt he is near my father now on his journey back to Lydford.”
“Then he would not allow him to go if he were still being watched by Tramu?”
“Certainly not. We can, I think, after all, make our minds quite easy upon that score,” she replied.
And as I sat at the steering-wheel I found myself wondering whether any other man had loved in circumstances so curious and so unusual.
At the hotel in Bournemouth we had carefully concealed our destination, telling the hall-porter we were going to London, lest any inquiry be made after our departure. We had tea at the Randolph at Oxford, and it was nearly half-past seven before we drew up before the grey stone front of Lydford Hall, where the butler threw open the door.
The sound of the car brought Shaw out in surprise, and as soon as we had washed we all three sat down to dinner in the fine old dining-room.
About Shaw there was no trace of the least anxiety, yet when the man had gone and I told him in a whisper of what I had seen when watching in the park at Ridgewell, he started, and his face underwent a change.
“I was a fool to have gone there,” he said. “But it was unfortunately of necessity. Surridge was in Bath, but did not know that I went out to Ridgehill.”