‘Does that excuse her—yes, her laxity in agreeing to the proposal of a perfect stranger? I repeat—and make no mistake about it, Mr. Gilmour—if anything of that kind happens again she leaves my employment.’
‘It was unconventional I admit——’ began Gilmour, but the barrister interrupted him sharply.
‘You may gloss it over with words! But you know my intentions——’
‘And if you care to know what mine were, Sir Richard, I asked her out to dinner again to-night.’
‘She refused?’
‘She did.’
There was a pause, and Templeton fingered his lips. ‘Will you promise me, Mr. Gilmour, to refrain from seeing my secretary again?’
Alan rose to his feet.
‘I’ll make you no such promise, Sir Richard.’
The barrister met his glance for a moment, then, turning abruptly aside, walked slowly to the window and looked out over St. James’s Park, the darkness of which was pricked by a multitude of tiny scattered lights.
He stood there, a motionless figure, the grey head set firmly on his shoulders, a man supremely confident of himself and his powers. Gilmour could not guess what was passing through his mind.
‘I’ll admit your right, Sir Richard,’ he said, ‘to object to Miss Marlowe associating with undesirable people.’
‘Undesirable? And in view of your conduct yesterday evening Templeton shrugged his shoulders. ‘I am still waiting for your promise, Mr. Gilmour!’
‘My promise not to see Miss Marlowe again?’ Alan laughed. ‘You may wait long enough for that, Sir Richard. If you can tell me a good reason for cutting short our acquaintance I’ll give you my promise. Meantime, I intend to see Miss Marlowe as often as I can. It’s better for you to know the exact position.’
The barrister was not deaf to the decisive note in the young man’s voice; and, turning from the window, he walked across to the door and jerked it open.
‘You have the last word, Mr. Gilmour,’ he said quietly, though there was a hard edge to his tone, ‘but I think you may live to regret it.’
Instead of going to bed, Alan Gilmour went down to the corner of the smoking-room, where he lit his favourite pipe and sat down to think. He realized that his position was not an easy one, and he wished now that he had spoken to Sir Richard Templeton in a slightly more moderate tone. His conduct in taking Miss Marlowe out to dinner, if looked at from an early Victorian angle, might have been open to question. But he found it difficult to believe that Templeton, a man of the world, could regard it from such a viewpoint. Surely he must have some other motive in attempting to cut short their acquaintance! Alan recalled the glimpse he had got the night before of Sir Richard stealing up to the girl’s room in that dismal tenement in Somers Town. Though he refused to believe anything against Elizabeth Marlowe, he found it difficult to decide what the exact relations between her and her employer might be. That letter to the man Julius Brown in the house beside the Thames—could that have been sent on behalf of Templeton? No doubt a criminal barrister, in working up a case, came into contact with strange people. But why Elizabeth’s anxiety? No; Templeton could have known nothing about it. Alan looked at the matter from all directions, but at the heart of it there lay a puzzle that eluded him. He knocked out the ashes of his pipe and rose to stretch himself. The hour, he saw, was already one o’clock. Except for two young men whose conversation showed them to be Indian Army subalterns on leave from a hill-station above Peshawar, the smoking-room was empty, and Alan made his way slowly upstairs to bed.
He felt restless, uneasy. Deciding that a hot tub would be the best sedative, he strolled into the adjoining bathroom and turned on the taps. Then he opened one of the drawers in the big wardrobe, and was about to drop into it the contents of his pockets—thus leaving his clothes ready for the floor-valet to remove in the morning—when something made him look more closely. His passport lay there on the top of the bundle of letters. Of a sudden his mind was keenly alert. He remembered vividly that his passport had lain at the bottom of the drawer. It was the first thing he had taken from his pocket on his arrival the previous morning, and he had certainly not touched it since. Everything else was in order, even to the knot in the tape that held together a bundle of business letters from Calcutta. And yet—how came his passport to be in that position. The rush of the bath-water at the overflow attracted his attention; he hurried to turn off the tap, and then went carefully round the bedroom, examining all his belongings, even luggage that he had not yet unpacked.
In the end he dropped into a chair, staring straight in front of him. When exactly it had happened he had no means of deciding; but there was not any doubt left in his mind that his bedroom had been searched in his absence by some person or persons unknown.
‘Well, whoever he was,’ said Alan Gilmour twenty minutes later, ‘I hope he found out all he wanted.’ A hot bath had left him in a more cheerful frame of mind, and he was glad to get into bed and switch out the light.
But sleep was a long time in coming. His thoughts kept drifting in different avenues, searching in every corner for some clue that might make matters a little more plain. This latest development put a new complexion on everything, for it was evident that he himself was now being subjected to a careful scrutiny. Had this anything to do with his visit to the inn on the south bank of the Thames? His presence there had certainly caused some consternation in that room, and the man who had shown him upstairs had no doubt exceeded his authority. . . . But this at least was certain. If Alan had been told when he stepped off the boat-train at Waterloo Station yesterday morning that within thirty-six hours he was to be inextricably mixed up in the mysterious Lord John case, which had been puzzling the Criminal Investigation Department for months, he would have received the suggestion with incredulous laughter. Yet it was so. And, floating among the mists of that puzzle, there was a girl’s face. . . . It was with this image in his mind that he eventually fell asleep.
How long it was before he woke up Gilmour could not tell. He did not awaken with a start, but slid gradually from a state of unconsciousness to the full possession of his faculties. The room was in complete darkness, for he had drawn the curtains across the partly opened window. He restrained an impulse to put out his hand and switch on the light above the bed, and lay listening to the silence. It was certain that something had disturbed him, but what it was he could not decide. Perhaps some primitive instinct, which told of impending danger, had faintly stirred within him. Then he heard a step in the room.
It was almost as soft as the footfall of a cat. From the direction of the door it seemed to come, but Alan could not be certain of this. He remembered clearly that he had pressed home the bolt—and the door from his private bathroom into the corridor was also locked on the inside. But how the person had actually entered his bedroom was of little immediate importance, for again he heard the footsteps, and they were slowly approaching the bed.
Alan was glad now that he had refrained from switching on the light. He decided that his best plan was to manœuvre himself into a position to tackle the intruder from the rear; and inch by inch he slipped out of bed, fearful lest even the creak of the springs should give away the fact that he was awake. And then, at the same time that his feet touched the carpet, something came whizzing through the air, and went down with an ugly thud on the pillow where his head had lain a few moments before.