He gave a short laugh.
“Talk of the devil; here he is. Don’t look round either of you, but he’s taken a table near the door. Well, well: now the fun begins. He is ordering the plat du jour and a whisky-and-soda: moreover, he is adopting the somewhat unusual custom of paying in advance. Most thoughtful of him. It goes to my heart to think that his money will be wasted.”
He signalled to the head waiter, who came at once.
“Add this little lot to my account,” said Drummond. “We’ve suddenly remembered we’re supposed to be lunching in Hampstead. Now, you two—up the stairs: through Burlington Arcade, into a taxi and straight to Brook Street. I’ll deal with this bloke.”
Looking back on things now after the lapse of many months, one of the strangest things to me is the habit of unquestioning obedience to Drummond into which I dropped at once. If someone tells me to do a thing, my nature as a general rule impels me to do the exact reverse. In the Army I never took kindly to discipline. And yet when Drummond gave an order I never questioned, I never hesitated. I mention this fact merely to emphasise the peculiar influence he had on people with whom he came in contact, and the extraordinary personality which he tried to obscure by an air of fatuous nonsense. And though it took me some weeks to realise it, yet the fact remains that that first day I met him I did what he said with the same readiness as I did in days to come after I had grown to know him better.
And I remember another thing which struck me very forcibly that day. I stopped at the top of the stairs for a moment or two to see the fun. Drummond was halfway up when he dropped his stick. And in stooping to pick it up he completely blocked the gangway. Behind him, dancing furiously from side to side in his endeavours to pass, was the other man.
“Why, it’s the man with the charming face,” cried Drummond genially. “But I wish you wouldn’t hop, laddie. It’s so damned bad for the tum-tum.”
I heard no more: Toby Sinclair, swearing vigorously under his breath, dragged me into Piccadilly.
“Confound you, Stockton, why the devil don’t you do what you’re told? I was halfway along Burlington Arcade before I realised you weren’t there. You’d better take it here and now that if Hugh tells you to do a thing he means it to be done exactly as he said. And he said nothing about standing and watching him.”
“Damn Drummond and everything connected with him,” I said irritably. “Who is he anyway to give me orders?”
He laughed quietly as we got into the taxi.
“I’m sorry, old man,” he said. “I was forgetting for the moment that you only met him for the first time today. You’ll laugh yourself in a few days when you recall that remark of yours.”
I did; but at the time I was peevish.
“If there’s a man living in England today,” he went on, “who is more capable than Hugh of finding out what happened last night I’d like to meet him.”
And I smiled my incredulity. To tell the truth, the things that had happened since my return from the War Office had rather driven that interview from my mind. But now I had leisure to recall it, and the more I thought of it the less I liked it. It is all very well in theory to say that there are occasions when an individual must suffer for the good of the state, but in practice it is most unpleasant when that individual is your own particular friend. Your friend, too, who has called to you for help and whom you have failed. Mercifully Robin had neither kith nor kin, which eased my mind a certain amount: by allowing this false impression to be given at the inquest I was harming no one, except Robin himself. And if he was dead, sooner or later his body would be found, which would prove beyond a doubt that he was not the original culprit: whereas if he was alive the time would come when I should be able to explain. For all that, nothing could alter the fact that I disliked my role, and not the less because it was compulsory.
I said as much that afternoon as we sat in Drummond’s study. He had come in about two hours after us, and he seemed a bit silent and thoughtful.
“You can’t help it, Stockton,” he said. “And probably Gaunt if he knew would be the first man to realise the necessity. It’s not that that’s worrying me.” He rose and went to the window. “I’m thinking I’ve made a fool of myself. I don’t see a sign of anyone: I haven’t for the last hour—and I took Ted’s car out of St. James’s Square, and have been all round London in it; but I’m afraid I’ve transferred attention to myself. There was just a second or two on the stairs at Hatchett’s when our little lad of the genial face looked at me with the utmost suspicion.”
He resumed his chair and stretched out his legs.
“However, we can but chance it. It may lead to something.”
“It’s very good of you,” I said a little doubtfully. “But I really don’t know if—I mean, the police and all that, don’t you know. They’ve got the thing in hand.”
He gazed at me in genuine amazement.
“Good Lord! my dear man,” he remarked, “if you want to leave the thing to old MacIver and Co., say the word. I mean it’s your palaver, and I wouldn’t butt in for the world.
