Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/89

Rh “Past half-past ten!” She started. Her thoughts flew off to Mr. Cooper. “Then he’ll be late again! Whatever will he do?”

“It’s not of what he’ll do I’m thinking, but of what we’re going to do. After what your uncle said, do you propose to return to Camford Street at this hour of the night?”

“We shall have to. There’s nowhere else to go. I wish I’d never come to see him now; it hasn’t been a very pleasant interview, I’m sure.” I cordially agreed with her—I wished she had not. But it was too late to shut the stable-door after the steed was stolen. “Let’s hurry. There’s one thing, I’ve got the back-door key in my pocket, if the worst does come to the worst.”

What she meant I do not think she quite knew herself. She was in a state of mind in which she was inclined to talk at random.

We had not gone fifty yards when a man, coming to us from across the street, took off his hat to Pollie. I had noticed him when she was having her argument with Mr. Cooper, and had felt sure that he was watching us. There was something about the way in which he kept walking up and down which I had not liked, and now that Mr. Cooper had gone I was not at all surprised that he accosted us. He looked about thirty; had a short light brown beard and whiskers, which were very nicely trimmed; a pair of those very pale blue eyes which are almost the colour of steel; and there was something about him which made one think that he had spent most of his life in open air. He wore what looked, in that light—he had stopped us almost immediately under a gas-lamp—like a navy blue serge suit and a black bowler hat.

“Miss Blyth, I believe, the niece of my old friend Batters. My name is Max Lander. Perhaps you have heard him speak of me.”

His manner could not have been more civil. Yet, under the circumstances, it was not singular that Pollie