With bated breath I stood motionless, watching in eager wonder.
From the arrival, whoever it might be, these men intended to preserve some secret.
Chapter Twenty One.
I Make a Bold Move.
For a moment I lost the two men in the excited crowd of alighting passengers, but when I gained another sight of them, my heart stood still.
Talking with the pair was a well set-up, alert man whose back was turned to me—a man in a soft grey felt hat and heavy travelling coat with beaver collar. Both men were speaking quickly, eagerly, telling the new-comer something of an urgent nature, being hustled at the same time by the bustling passengers eager to claim their luggage from the Customs barriers, and get away.
I moved a little distance along, recognising in the man just returned from the Continent the grey, thin, sinister face of Kershaw Kirk.
My first impulse was to rush forward and demand of him the truth; indeed, to charge him with a secret crime, and to insist on knowing the whereabouts of my beloved Mabel. But it struck me at that instant that the two men who had met him had agreed between themselves upon a course of secrecy, and that they were therefore misleading him. Had not Ethelwynn already told me of Langton’s suspicion of this man, who was to me and mine such a mystery?