His non-arrival confirmed my suspicions. What, I wondered, could have been the purport of that mysterious message in German that he had listened to on the telephone just before we had parted?
At two o’clock I called at his house and rang the door-bell. There was no response. Both Kirk and his sister were out.
So I returned to the garage, and with Dick Drake, my stout, round-faced, dare-devil driver, who held two records at Brooklands, and was everlastingly being fined for exceeding the speed limit, I worked hard upon the refractory engine of a car which had been sent to me for repair.
All day it was misty, but towards evening the fog increased, until it became thick even in Chiswick, therefore I knew that it must be a regular “London particular” in the West End. One driver, indeed, who had come in from Romford, said he had taken four hours to cross London. Hence I resolved to possess my soul in patience and spend a quiet evening at home with my wife and her young sister, who lived with us.
Curiously enough, however, I found myself, towards six o’clock, again seized by a sudden and uncontrollable desire to return to Sussex Place in search of my mysterious neighbour. I felt within me a keen, irrepressible anxiety to fathom the curious problem which that shabby man, who declared himself immune from trial in a criminal court, had placed before me. Who could he be, that, like the King himself, he could not be brought before a judge?
At times I found myself laughing at his absurd statements, and regarding them as those of a lunatic; but at others I was bound to admit that his seriousness showed him to be in deadly earnest.
Well, to cut a long story short, at eight o’clock I took Dick Drake and managed to creep over in the fog to Regent’s Park on one of the small cars.
The door was opened, as before, by Antonio, who perceptibly started when he recognised me.
Yes, Mr Kirk was there, he admitted, and a few seconds later he came to me in the hall.
He was a changed man. His face was thinner, sallower, more haggard, and the lines about his mouth deeper and more marked; yet he greeted me affably, with many apologies for not keeping his appointment.