“That’s a point, certainly. Thanks for the tip. Where do you recommend staying in Paris?”
If Pyke recognised that French was merely pumping him he gave no sign, but replied, readily:
“We stayed at the Regina and found it quite good. But we just broke the journey for a night. Next day we came on here.”
“To these rooms?”
“No. I hadn’t taken them then. We stayed a night at the Houston. That’s the night I had such a joke on Stanley.”
“That sounds interesting.”
“I don’t know how he did it, but while he was dressing he knocked the basin off the stand and it broke and soaked his shoes and deluged the room. You know they have old-fashioned separate basins there, not running water as you get abroad. I imagine he must have set the basin down on a corner of the towel, and when he picked up the towel it twitched the basin off. The wretched thing must have been cracked, for it went into two pieces. But they charged him for it, all right.”
“Rough luck, Mr. Pyke. And after that you both thought one night enough to stay?”
Pyke laughed.
“I wanted rooms,” he explained. “Next day I found these and moved in.”
“I suppose your late cousin went back to Ashburton at the same time?”
“Not quite directly, I think. He went to see some people near Bath. I believe he said for two days only, but I’m not sure.”
“Do you soon return to the Argentine, Mr. Pyke?”
“I’ve not made up my mind. I like this country and I’m half thinking of settling down here and growing flowers for the London market. I’m sick of ranching, anyway, and I’ve instructed my solicitors to begin negotiations for the sale of my property. Of course I’ll have to go out to see to that, but I think I’ll come back very soon.”
They continued chatting about the Roman remains in Provence until at last French looked at his watch and said he must go.
He was jubilant as to his progress. He believed that he had accounted for his presence and that Pyke suspected nothing. He had also obtained enough information to check practically the whole of the man’s movements from his departure with Stanley for his holiday down to the present time. The end of the affair was in sight. And that evening, he promised himself, should see him a step farther on his road.
XVIII
On Hampstead Heath
French telephoned for a relief to take over the shadowing of Pyke during the afternoon, but by he was back in Kepple Street, with the intention of being, if possible, present at the rendezvous of his new suspects.
“He’s not shown up since,” Sergeant Harvey explained. “No one called, but one person left the house, a girl of about twenty. She returned in about two hours.”
“Tall, good-looking girl, fair hair and blue eyes?” French suggested. “I know her—the landlady’s daughter. I saw her when I called. That’ll do, Harvey. You can get away. I shall manage alone.”
It was a fine evening, but cold. The last glimmerings of daylight were disappearing from the sky and outside the radius of the street lamps stars began to show. It looked as if there would be frost later.
To keep a secret watch on a house in a city street is a feat requiring no little skill. Though French had reached the stage in which he left most of such work to his underlings, he was a past master in the art. Yet as first , then , then struck from the surrounding clocks it required all his ingenuity to give the appearance of being detained on some ordinary and unimportant business. He strolled up and down, hiding in alley ways and behind projecting corners and moving on at intervals from one such place of vantage to another. He had engaged a taxi in case his quarry should do the same, and for a good part of the time he employed the old device of sitting back in its deepest recesses while the driver gave a lengthy first aid to his refractory engine.
At last, when he had become stiff with cold and was cursing mentally but steadily at the delay, Pyke appeared and started off quickly towards Russell Square. French drew back into the entry in which he was taking cover and allowed him to pass, then having signed to his driver to keep him in sight, he followed the quarry as closely as he dared. Pyke turned down Montague Street, walking by New Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road to Charing Cross Station. He seemed about to enter the station, but, suddenly glancing round, he turned to the right and dived down the steps to the Hampstead and Highgate tube. French had already settled up with his driver and he followed without delay.
Keeping close behind, French shadowed his man to the platform and entered the next coach of the Hampstead train which the other boarded. At each station he watched the alighting passengers, but it was not until Hampstead was reached that Pyke appeared. Twenty feet apart, the two men passed out into the street and up the hill towards the Heath.
At the wide space at the entrance to the Heath French fell further behind. Pyke was now strolling easily along, as if out for a breath of air before bed. He passed in towards the left near Jack Straw’s Castle, taking one of the side paths which led to the wilder areas. Here were fewer people, and French dropped back till he could just see the man’s light fawn coat like a faint smudge against the dark background of the trees.
Some four or five hundred yards from the entrance, down in the hollow, there are a number of thick clumps of bushes. Round one of these Pyke passed and instantly became invisible. French stopped in his turn and, tiptoeing to
