Chapter Five.
The Sign of the Gloves.
Those moments of security seemed hours as I sat there with the pistol turned upon me.
Truly his was a strange greeting.
At length, however, daylight showed again as we commenced to descend the incline towards Newton Abbot, yet I saw that his hand—practised, no doubt, with a weapon by the manner he had whipped it forth—was still uplifted against me.
“Really, sir, you have no cause for alarm,” I assured him, with a laugh. “I could not approach; you openly, so I adopted the ruse of travelling with you in order to speak. You came to Totnes to-day in order to meet me, did you not?”
“No, I certainly did not,” he said, the expression upon his countenance showing him to be much puzzled by my words.
“Then perhaps you came to meet Mr Melvill Arnold?” I suggested.
“And why do you wish to know that, pray?” he asked, in the refined voice of a gentleman, still regarding me with antagonism. His small, closely set eyes peered forth at me with a ferret-like expression, while about his clean-shaven mouth was a curious hardness as his hand still held the weapon pointed in my direction.
“Because you are wearing the signs—the scarlet tie, the carnation, and I see that you carry the ebony walking-stick,” was my cool reply. I was trying to prevent myself from flinching before that grim, business-like weapon of his.