“Thath right,” said Mr. Pellett with a golden smile.
“It may be.” Anthony fixed him with a glittering eye. “Let us hear you, Mr.—er—Pellet.”
Mr. Pellett cleared his throat, produced a packet of papers, wiped his hands on a pink silk handkerchief and began.
“About theeth three newthpaperth,” he said—and went on for one hour and fifty-seven minutes by the clock on Hastings’s table.
He got his two hundred pounds.
IV
There was a matinée at the Regency. At half-past four, Anthony was at the stage-door.
The stage-door keeper remembered that five-pound note and the foreign gent. He was civil. Yes, Madam Vander was in the theatre. She had, indeed, just finished her performance. He would see if the—the prince could be admitted. The prince scribbled on a card, placed the card in an envelope, and sealed the envelope. As balm for tender feelings, he gave the doorkeeper a flashing foreign smile and a pound-note.
He was kept waiting not more than three minutes. After four, he was ushered into the most sacred dressing-room in Europe.
From a silken couch in a silken corner a silken, scented vision rose to meet him.
Anthony saw that they were alone. He bowed, kissing the imperious hand. He was regarded with approval by tawny, Slavonic eyes.
She peered at the card in her hand. “Who are you,” she said, “that write to me of—of John?”
Anthony proceeded to make himself clear.
It was nearly six o’clock when he left the theatre.
V
By half-past six Anthony was in his flat. At seven he bathed; at eight dined. From eight-thirty to nine he smoked—and thought. From nine until midnight he wrote, continuing his work of the night before. Save for occasional reference to notes, he wrote for those three hours without a pause. From midnight until one he considered what he had written. Then, after a long and powerful drink, he unearthed from its lair his typewriter.
It was lucky, he reflected, that two years ago he had wearied at last of professional typists and taken a machine unto himself.
From one-thirty in the morning until five—three whole hours and a half—he typed. There were two reasons why the work took him so long: the first, that he had not used the machine for six months; the second, that in copying what he had written he was constantly polishing, correcting, altering, improving.
At five he discarded the typewriter, took pen and paper and wrote a letter. This, together with the typewritten document, he placed in a large envelope. He stamped the envelope; was about to leave the flat and post it; then changed his mind. It should be sent by special messenger as early as one could be found awake.
He did not go to bed, feeling that if he did, nothing could wake him for at least twelve hours. He had another drink, another bath, and, when he had roused his man, a breakfast.
XVI
Revelation and the Sparrow
I
His meal over, he left the flat, going first to a District Messengers’ office and then back to the garage for his car.
He knew the road to Marling so well by this time that he could almost have driven blindfold, and he has said that on this morning he once or twice found himself to have been sleeping at the wheel. It is certain, anyhow, that he barely saw where he was going. Such thought as his tired brain could compass was not of murders and murderers, but of Love, a Lover and a Lady.
It was, if one is to believe him, at the crossroads beyond Beachmere that he made up his mind to see Her, to drive straight to the house on the bank of the Marle.
He looked at his watch. The hands pointed to ten. He settled down in his seat. The needle on the speedometer jerked to twenty, to twenty-five; then gradually crept on till it hesitated between forty-five and fifty.
His spirits mounted with the speed. The car tore her way into Marling and down the cobbled slope of the High Street, swung to the left, took the little bridge at a bound, raced on, turned the corner next on the left after the river bank on two wheels, ploughed up the little lane, and pulled up at the gates of the house which was graced with Her presence.
Or should have been. For the parlourmaid informed him that her mistress and her mistress’s sister were out. For the day, she thought. She was not sure, but she imagined the ladies to have gone to London.
Anthony, his fatigue heavy upon him, walked slowly back to his car. For a moment he sat idle in the driving-seat; then suddenly quickened into life. Though their ultimate destination might indeed be London, the women would surely stop on their way through Greyne. For in Greyne’s jail was Deacon.
So to Greyne he drove at speed. He missed them by five minutes.
Had Anthony Gethryn been a man of common sense he would have returned at once to his Marling inn, fallen upon his bed, and let Sleep have her way with him. But he was not, so he stayed with Deacon. Deacon was obviously—in spite of his flippancy—delighted at this visit. Anthony stayed with him until two o’clock, when the great Sir Edward Marshall, K.C., arrived in person for consultation with his latest case, and then set out for Marling. This he did not reach for two hours, fatigue and preoccupation having cost him no fewer than three wrong turnings.
At the inn was waiting the reply to the letter he had sent by District Messenger that morning. It had come, this reply, in the form of a seemingly ordinary message over the inn’s telephone. It was what he had expected, but nevertheless it made it necessary for him to think.
And think he did, sitting on the hot grass bank at the edge of the little bowling-green behind
