"Yes, sir. But there'll be no harm in watching the trains, will there?" my man remarked. "If he went in a taxi he might leave by train."
"True," I said, and after a few seconds' reflection, added, "Yes. We'll try the trains."
So, on the night of the twenty-ninth, at about nine o'clock in the evening, I took up my post in the small arcade which formed the exit of the station and there waited patiently.
I was in a shabby tweed suit, with patched boots, and a cloth golf-cap, presenting the appearance of a respectable workman, as I smoked my short briar-pipe and idled over the Evening News.
As each train arrived I eagerly scanned the emerging passengers, while pretending to look in the shop window, but I saw nobody whom I knew.
The expression, "Where the two C's meet," kept running through my mind as I stood there in impatient inactivity. It was already past nine, and, in three-quarters of an hour, the fateful meeting, for somehow I felt that it was a fateful meeting, would be held.
The two "C's." The idea suddenly flashed across my mind, whether the spot indicated could be the junction of two roads, or streets, the names of which commenced with "C." Yet, how could I satisfy myself? If I searched Ealing again for roads commencing with a "C," I could only do so in daylight, too late to learn what I so dearly wished.
Of a porter I inquired the time of arrival of the next underground train and found that I had eight minutes. So I dashed along to the Feathers Hotel, where I obtained a map of the Ealing district and eagerly scanned it to find streets commencing with "C."
For some minutes I was unsuccessful, until of a sudden I noticed Castlebar Road, and examining the map carefully saw, to my excitement, that at an acute angle it joined another road, called Carlton Road, a triangular open space lying between the two thoroughfares.
It was the spot in Ealing where the two C's met!