“Yes, sir.” James stood to attention with a smart heel-click.
“Your wife—she has a sister or something, hasn’t she, knocking about somewhere?”
“She ’as a palsied cousin in Camberwell, sir,” remarked James with justifiable pride.
“Magnificent,” murmured Hugh. “She will dally until eventide with her palsied cousin—if she can bear it—and then she must go by Underground to Ealing, where she will take a ticket to Goring. I don’t think there will be any chance of her being followed—you’ll have drawn them off. When she gets to Goring I want the cottage got ready at once, for two visitors.” He paused and lit a cigarette. “Above all, James—mum’s the word. As I told you a little while ago, the game has begun. Now just repeat what I’ve told you.”
He listened while his servant ran through his instructions, and nodded approvingly. “To think there are still people who think military service a waste of time!” he murmured. “Four years ago you couldn’t have got one word of it right.”
He dismissed Denny, and sat down at his desk. First he took the half-torn sheet out of his pocket, and putting it in an envelope, sealed it carefully. Then he placed it in another envelope, with a covering letter to his bank, requesting them to keep the enclosure intact.
Then he took a sheet of notepaper, and with much deliberation proceeded to pen a document which afforded him considerable amusement, judging by the grin which appeared from time to time on his face. This effusion he also enclosed in a sealed envelope, which he again addressed to his bank. Finally, he stamped the first, but not the second—and placed them both in his pocket.
For the next two hours he apparently found nothing better to do than eat a perfectly grilled chop prepared by Mrs. Denny, and superintend his visitor unwillingly consuming a sago pudding. Then, with the departure of the Dennys for Paddington, which coincided most aptly with the return of Peter Darrell, a period of activity commenced in Half Moon Street. But being interior activity, interfering in no way with the placid warmth of the street outside, the gentleman without, whom a keen observer might have thought strangely interested in the beauties of that well-known thoroughfare—seeing that he had been there for three hours—remained serenely unconscious of it. His pal had followed the Dennys to Paddington. Drummond had not come out—and the watcher who watched without was beginning to get bored.
About 4:30 he sat up and took notice again as someone left the house; but it was only the superbly dressed young man whom he had discovered already was merely a clothes-peg calling himself Darrell.
The sun was getting low and the shadows were lengthening when a taxi drove up to the door. Immediately the watcher drew closer, only to stop with a faint smile as he saw two men get out of it. One was the immaculate Darrell; the other was a stranger, and both were quite obviously what in the vernacular is known as oiled.
“You prisheless ole bean,” he heard Darrell say affectionately, “thish blinking cabsh my show.”
The other man hiccuped assent, and leant wearily against the palings.
“Right,” he remarked, “ole friend of me youth. It shall be ash you wish.”
With a tolerant eye he watched them tack up the stairs, singing lustily in chorus. Then the door above closed, and the melody continued to float out through the open window.
Ten minutes later he was relieved. It was quite an unostentatious relief: another man merely strolled past him. And since there was nothing to report, he merely strolled away. He could hardly be expected to know that up in Peter Darrell’s sitting-room two perfectly sober young men were contemplating with professional eyes an extremely drunk gentleman singing in a chair, and that one of those two sober young men was Peter Darrell.
Then further interior activity took place in Half Moon Street, and as the darkness fell, silence gradually settled on the house.
Ten o’clock struck, then eleven—and the silence remained unbroken. It was not till eleven-thirty that a sudden small sound made Hugh Drummond sit up in his chair, with every nerve alert. It came from the direction of the kitchen—and it was the sound he had been waiting for.
Swiftly he opened his door and passed along the passage to where the motionless man lay still in bed. Then he switched on a small reading-lamp, and with a plate of semolina in his hand he turned to the recumbent figure.
“Hiram C. Potts,” he said in a low, coaxing tone, “sit up and take your semolina. Force yourself, laddie, force yourself. I know it’s nauseating, but the doctor said no alcohol and very little meat.”
In the silence that followed, a board creaked outside, and again he tempted the sick man with food.
“Semolina, Hiram—semolina. Makes bouncing babies. I’d just love to see you bounce, my Potts.”
His voice died away, and he rose slowly to his feet. In the open door four men were standing, each with a peculiar-shaped revolver in his hand.
“What the devil,” cried Drummond furiously, “is the meaning of this?”
“Cut it out,” cried the leader contemptuously. “These guns are silent. If you utter—you die. Do you get me?”
The veins stood out on Drummond’s forehead, and he controlled himself with an immense effort.
“Are
