"I believed, madame, that you were in search of me?" I said, with polite apology.
"I certainly was not. I don't know you in the least," was her reply. "I went to the Tube to meet a friend who did not keep his appointment. Is it possible that you have been sent by him? In any case, it was very injudicious for you to approach me in that crowd. One never knows who might have been watching."
"I come as messenger from my friend, Sir Digby Kemsley," I said in a low voice.
"From him?" she gasped eagerly. "I—ah! I expected him. Is he prevented from coming? It was so very important, so highly essential, that we should meet," she added in frantic anxiety as we stood there in the darkness beneath the bare trees, through the branches of which the wind whistled weirdly.
"I have this letter," I said, drawing it from my pocket. "It is addressed 'For E. P. K.'"
"For me?" she cried with eagerness, as she took it in her gloved hand, and then leaving my side she hurried to a street lamp, where she tore it open and read the contents.
From where I stood I heard her utter an ejaculation of sudden terror. I saw how she crushed the paper in one hand while with the other she pressed her brow. Whatever the letter contained it was news which caused her the greatest apprehension and fear, for dashing back to me she asked:
"When did he give you this? How long ago?"
"On the night of January the sixth," was my reply. "The night when he left Harrington Gardens in mysterious circumstances."
"Mysterious circumstances!" she echoed. "What do you mean? Is he no longer there?"