Carver eyed him keenly.
“When he came to you,” he asked, “how was he dressed?”
The other shrugged his shoulders.
“Poorly. He has always been dressed poorly.”
“Did he wear gloves?”
“No. He had no gloves. That was the first thing I noticed because he was, what do you call it in English—fastidious to a degree. In the hottest days I have seen him wearing gloves. A shabby dandy! That is the expression I was seeking. I am sorry to disappoint you.”
“You haven’t disappointed me,” said Carver bitterly, “you have merely added another brick wall between me and my objective.”
Yeh Ling left soon after. He had bicycled down from town and cheerfully undertook the long return journey in preference to spending the remainder of the night at the cottage.
It was too late for Ursula to go to her hotel and they sat up all night, Carver playing an interminable game of Solitaire, whilst Tab and the girl walked about the garden in the growing light and talked oddly of incongruous things.
As soon as it was light, Carver went out to find the place where the car had stood and to examine wheel-tracks. He gained little from his inspection, except that the tyres were new and that the car was a powerful one, which was hardly a discovery.
“The man who drove was not a skilled driver, or else he was very nervous. Halfway up the lane he nearly swerved into a ditch and came into collision with a telegraph pole, which must have damaged his mudguard severely. I found flakes of brand new enamel attaching to the damaged wood, so I guessed that the car also had not been long from the maker’s hands.”
Thus passed the second appearance of the Man In Black.
The third was to come in yet a more dramatic fashion.
XIX
Mr. Wellington Brown woke one morning feeling extraordinarily refreshed. Usually he woke with a clouded brain and a parched mouth, with no other desire than to satisfy that craving for opium which all his life had kept him poor and eventually had ruined him physically and morally. But on this occasion he opened his eyes, made a quick stock of his surroundings, and uttered a “faugh!” of disgust. He knew himself so well, and was so well acquainted with his idiosyncrasies and the character of these fits which came upon him, that he saw that the end of a bout had come. Some day he would not wake up feeling refreshed, or wake up at all.
He sat up in bed, fingering his beard, and sucked in the breeze that came through the open window. Rising to his feet, he found his knees a little unstable, and laughed foolishly. It was Yo Len Fo himself who came in bearing a tray with a glass of water, a bottle half-full of whiskey and the inevitable pipe.
Without a word, Wellington poured himself out a stiff dose of the spirit and gulped it down.
“You may take that pipe to the devil,” he said. His voice was quavery but determined.
“ ‘A pipe in the morning makes the sun shine,’ ” quoted Yo Len Fo.
“ ‘A pipe in the morning does not go out with the stars,’ ” replied Wellington Brown, giving proverb for proverb.
“If the Illustrious will stay I will have breakfast sent to him,” said the Chinaman urgently.
“I have stayed too long,” said Wellington Brown. “What is the day of the month by the foreign reckoning?”
“I do not know the foreign ways,” said Yo Len Fo, “but if your Excellency will deign to stay a few hours in this hovel—”
“My Excellency will not deign to stay in any hovel or palace,” said Wellington. “Where is Yeh Ling?”
“I will send for him at once,” said the old man eagerly.
“Leave him,” replied Mr. Brown with a fine gesture and began to search his pockets. To his surprise, all his money, which was not much, was intact.
“How much do I owe you?” he asked.
Yo Len Fo nodded, thereby meaning “nothing.”
“Running a philanthropic hop joint?” asked the other sarcastically.
“It has all been paid by the excellent Yeh Ling,” answered the man.
Brown grunted.
“I suppose that old devil Trasmere is behind this,” he said in English, and seeing that the man did not comprehend him, he pushed his way past Yo Len Fo and went down the uncarpeted stairs into the street. He felt terribly weak, but his heart was light. Hesitating at the end of a narrow passage, he turned to the left, otherwise he could not have failed to have run into the arms of Inspector Carver who had made a call that morning upon the proprietor of the Golden Roof.
Mr. Brown’s day was spent simply. He found his way to the park and, sitting down on a bench, dozed and mused the hours away, basking in the glorious June sunlight and seemingly obvious to its heat.
Late in the afternoon he felt hungry and went to a refreshment kiosk in the park. Finishing his meal he found the nearest bench and continued his pleasant occupation of doing nothing. Mr. Wellington Brown was a born loafer; it is a knack which would prolong many lives in this strenuous age, if it could be acquired.
The stars were coming out in a velvet blue sky when, with a shiver, he aroused himself and made instinctively for the lights. As he slouched along one of the big main paths that cross the park, he overtook a man who was walking slowly in his direction. The man shot a quick glance at him and then turned suddenly away.
“Here,” said Mr. Brown truculently, “I know you. Why in hell are you running away from me? Think I’m a leper or something?”
The man stopped, glanced uneasily left and right.
“I don’t know you,” he said coldly.
“That’s a damned lie,” snarled Brown. The reaction of his bout was upon him. He would have quarrelled with anything or anybody. “I know you and I’ve met you.”
