So Jack Beardmore thought. He was supping with some friends much against his will, for he hated the night side of life, when he saw her come in, and scowled jealously at her debonair escort.
“Who is he?”
Jack’s companion glanced across lazily.
“I don’t know the lady,” he said, “but the man is Raphael Willings. He is a big pot in the Government.”
Thalia Drummond had seen the young man before he had seen her, and she groaned inwardly. Half of what her host said she missed; her mind was completely absorbed in other directions, and it was not until a familiar phrase reached her ear that she turned her interest toward the Minister.
“Antique swords,” she said with a start. “I’m told you have a wonderful collection, Mr. Willings.”
“Are you interested?” he smiled.
“A little. In fact, quite a lot,” she said awkwardly, and it was not like Thalia to be at a loss for a reply.
“Could I ask you to come along to tea one day and see them?” said Raphael. “One doesn’t often find a woman who is interested in such things. Shall we say tomorrow?”
“Not tomorrow,” said Thalia hastily. “Perhaps the next day.”
He made the appointment then and there, writing it ostensibly on his cuff.
She saw Jack leave the club without a look in her direction, and she felt absurdly miserable. She did so want to talk to him and was praying that he would come over to their table.
Mr. Willings insisted upon driving her home in his car, and she left him with a sigh of relief. He did not harmonise with her mood that night.
There was a little forecourt to the flats in which she lived, and she had dismissed her admirer (he made no secret of this relationship) in the street outside. She had to walk a dozen paces to reach one of the two entrances, and even before she had sent her escort away, she was aware that a man was waiting for her in the darkened court. She stood on the pavement until Willings’s car had moved on, and then she came slowly toward the waiting man. He spoke for a minute in a voice that was a little above a whisper, and she responded in the same tone.
The conversation was of very short duration. Presently the man turned without sign or word of farewell, and walked quickly away and the girl entered her flat.
Though the man made no sign, he knew he was being followed. He had been waiting for ten minutes in the dark of the forecourt and had seen the stealthy figure in the doorway of a closed shop opposite the flats. Apparently, however, he was oblivious of the fact that somebody was walking behind him, somebody who he knew would presently overtake him and look into his face. He turned into a side thoroughfare where the street lamps were few and far between, and as he did so he slackened his pace. Presently the spy overtook him, choosing for the point of passing, a place within the radius of a lamp. He had bent his head to peer into the first man’s face when suddenly the quarry turned and sprang at him. The trailer was taken by surprise; before he could shout, a grip of iron was around his throat and he was flung half-senseless to the stone pavement. And then from nowhere in particular, appeared as by magic three men, who pounced upon the prostrate tracker and jerked him to his feet.
He glared round, dazed and shaken, and his eyes fell upon the man he had been set to watch.
“My God!” he gasped. “I know you!”
The other smiled.
“You will never be able to employ your information, my friend,” he said.
XXXVII
“I Will See You—If You Are Alive”
Jack Beardmore went home savage and sick at heart. Thalia Drummond was an obsession to him, and yet he had every reason to believe the worst of her. He was a fool, a thrice-condemned fool, he told himself as he paced the library, his hands thrust into his pockets, his handsome young face clouded with the gloom of despair. He felt at that moment he would like to hurt her, punish her as she unconsciously had punished him. He flung himself down into his chair and sat for an hour with his head on his hands, covering the old ground which reason had so often trodden that it had left a worn and familiar track.
He got up sick and weary, and, opening a safe, took out a packet of documents and flung them on the table. It was the sealed envelope addressed to his father and unopened which interested him most, and he had a childish desire to open it if only to spite Thalia.
Why was she so anxious that he should not see the photograph which it contained? Was she so interested in Marl? He remembered with a scowl that she had spent the evening with that man on the night he died so mysteriously. He rose, and gathering the papers together, he carried them to his bedroom. He was so tired that he had not even the curiosity to probe into the mystery which attached to the photograph of an execution. He shivered at the thought of the grisly contents, and he dropped the package on his dressing-table with a little grimace and began leisurely to undress.
He quite expected that he would pass a sleepless night; his emotion and the state of his mind seemed to call for such an end to a miserable day, but youth, if it has its anguish, has also its natural reaction. He was asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. And then he began to dream. To dream
