whole world was interested in his movements. Even if the man had travelled by the Central Line, what was there to prove that he had not got on at Ealing Broadway?
A dark, slender person in a faultlessly cut tweed overcoat pushed at the bronze door of the gallery with a gloved hand that held a ball-top cane. Mr. Hinckleigh?
Andrew became uneasy again about Ruth Meriden. It was nearly half past ten, and, even while he looked along the street for her and watched the approach of every taxi, he was convinced that she would not come. All the fears of the night were on him again, and growing with every minute. He turned restlessly, looking up and down the street, and no longer glanced in the direction of the arcade.
Fool, he was! He should have rushed out to Cheriton Shawe when the thought first struck him. Or he should have called up Stock at Scotland Yard. There might have been time then, but now…
She was crossing the roadway, punctual to the minute.
He felt such a lift of relief, he could think of nothing to say to her. He stammered over words that were absurdly formal.
“Oh dear,” she said, “I meant it when I said I had a busy day ahead of me. Is it really very important, Dr. Maclaren?”
She was looking very chic in a tweed suit and a minute hat.
“I’m glad you’re all right,” he said.
“You sound most anxious. Why shouldn’t I be all right?”
“Well, of course… I had to come along. I hope you don’t mind. I found a lot about the yawl in the diaries.”
“Oh, that yawl! I wonder if you’re not taking it too seriously. Have you found out where it is?”
He told her what he had found out. Her interest seemed more polite than real, as if she had been merely humouring him. There was a change in her. Town, or the proximity of the Blandish Gallery! She was now very much Brussels airport in her manner.
“We can’t stand out here on the pavement all day,” she said. “Let’s go inside.” Inside there were only the two of them and the water colours of Christophe Chambord. The long room, unlighted, dwindled away from the show window into the dimness of back premises.
Andrew produced the notes he had made from the diaries, and read them over quickly, from the first report of the agent F. about the finding of the yawl in Calabria to the references to E.J. and the repair of the landing stage.
Miss Meriden thought the F. referred to an Italian lawyer named Ferrani. She was quite certain that E.J. could be none but Ernest Jansen, formerly carpenter and mechanic in the Moonlight and latterly an old man of the sea on Meriden’s back. It seemed Ernest had been the one retainer who could wheedle what he wanted out of his master. He might have been able to tell where the yawl was lying, but he had in fact taken his wife to Algiers and Ruth Meriden had no idea of how to get in touch with him. By now he was probably in Mauritius or Tristan da Cunha.
“What about the mill and this landing stage?” Andrew asked urgently.
“I really don’t know,” the girl told him. “I never heard of anything of the sort, but that doesn’t mean that there mightn’t be a whole collection of mills somewhere.”
“And all your property. Surely the lawyers must know if there’s a mill. It sounds a likely place: stream, water wheel, landing stage.”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to-”
She turned at a sound of footsteps. The dark, slender person who had arrived in the beautiful tweed overcoat came quickly from the back premises. He was immaculate in Oxford grey. Behind him the decorative young lady paused to press switches, as if to give him an adequate lighting effect, but possibly she had just remembered Mr. Chambord’s water colours.
The immaculate Mr. Hinckleigh swooped down.
“Ruth darling, why didn’t you come through to the office?” he demanded. “I had no idea you were here. How is the new conception working out?” “Not too well, Percy.” She seemed happy to see him, and that was something beyond comprehension to Andrew. “I’m having trouble with the inward planes,” she added.
“My poor darling,” said Mr. Hinckleigh perfunctorily. “I don’t have to tell you how I feel for you, but I have complete confidence. Everything will work out. The important thing now is Alec Foster. The plan has been changed. He is not coming here. We are going to see him.”
“Well, let me introduce Dr. Maclaren. This is Mr. Hinckleigh, Dr. Maclaren.”
Andrew was short in response, but Mr. Hinckleigh was shorter.
He nodded vaguely and turned back to the girl.
“Now, darling, we’ve no time to spare. I want you to glance at the letters we’ve exchanged, then we’ll dash round the corner to the hotel. Foster’s most impatient to meet you. If he can arrange his appointments, he wants to go out to Cheriton Shawe with us this afternoon. Now come along to the office, darling. We don’t want to keep the great man waiting.”
He hurried her off with an arm round her waist. Halfway down the avenue of water colours, he swung his head round and shot an “excuse me” at Andrew, but Ruth darling had not even this much grace. Andrew glowered. She had, it was true, given him a “look” before yielding to the caressing guidance of Mr. Hinckleigh. It was, in a way, an acknowledgement that he still existed; otherwise it might have been interpreted as an imperious order to wait.
Andrew waited. He had spent a sleepless night worrying about this girl; he had been up in the bright morning, trudging the street, waiting for her. And now, Percy Hinckleigh! He might have known it. When he cast his mind back to the reception room at the Brussels airport, he could almost say he had known it.
He was angry. He was sad and depressed. He was as depressed as if all the future had suddenly clouded over. There was nothing ahead, nothing but glaucoma and xerophthalmia and operations for the relief of intraocular pressure, and these things no longer interested him. He had wanted to spend the rest of his life tracking down yawls and confuting Belgian detective-inspectors, all with the ardent co-operation of red-haired girls, or, to put it bluntly, Miss Ruth Meriden. Perhaps he needed an operation himself, for the correction of cockeyed vision. Or a good healthy whack over the head to bring him to his senses. This business of murdered Yugoslavs and hidden yawls and insolvent heiresses had nothing to do with him. There was still time to walk out on it. Now. This minute. None of the others cared a brass farthing about it. Ruth Meriden, absorbed in her work, was completely indifferent. Why, then, should he care?
The decorative young lady was at his elbow, offering him a piece of paper.
“Would you like a catalogue?”
“No,” he answered sadly. “No, thank you.”
He turned and gazed out into the melancholy street over the top of the draped curtain that separated the window from the rest of the gallery. A man had halted on the pavement to peer in at the small Dufy: the tall man in the cap and the overlong grey raincoat who had recently gone into the arcade on the opposite side of the street.
Andrew started, drew back, then looked again, cautiously. The man was staring at the Dufy as if he wanted to hypnotise it. Dark eyes seemed deep-set under the peak of the cap, a thin nose projected, the lower part of the face had an effect of hard immobility as if it had been carved by a bad hand. There was an odd, animal sharp familiarity about the features, but the fellow was a type, of course. That was it: a type!
The singular deadness of the face was relieved only by the eyes. They were like currants. The man hated that little picture by Dufy. He stood in front of it for more than a minute, then he moved off in the direction of Oxford Street, a brown paper parcel tucked under one arm, the overlong raincoat flapping above his trouser cuffs.
Mentally Andrew shrugged. The fellow had done his shopping in the arcade, had taken a look at the painting, and passed on. Now there was a stout man examining the Dufy through a monocle, and he gave place to a lean youth in a blue denim boiler suit. One might as well suspect all as suspect one, and the absurdity of that was only too manifest.
Ruth Meriden touched his elbow. “I’m sorry I have to go off,” she said. “This American dealer is most important. I’ll see the lawyers and find out about the mill as soon as I can. I may be able to arrange it tomorrow. I don’t know. I’ll phone you when I get the information.”
“All right,” he said, with an attempt at indifference. “I’ve been thinking too. Perhaps we are taking it all too
