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Page 20
"But surely, if that fellow was annoying you, you could have called
a policeman?"
"Oh, it wasn't anything like that. It was much, much worse. But I
mustn't go on like this. It isn't fair on you." Her eyes lit up
again with the old shining smile. "I know you have no curiosity
about me, but still there's no knowing whether I might not arouse
some if I went on piling up the mystery. And the silly part is that
really there's no mystery at all. It's just that I can't tell
anyone about it."
"That very fact seems to me to constitute the makings of a pretty
fair mystery."
"Well, what I mean is, I'm not a princess in disguise trying to
escape from anarchists, or anything like those things you read
about in books. I'm just in a perfectly simple piece of trouble.
You would be bored to death if I told you about it."
"Try me."
She shook her head.
"No. Besides, here we are." The cab had stopped at the hotel, and a
commissionaire was already opening the door. "Now, if you haven't
repented of your rash offer and really are going to be so awfully
kind as to let me have that money, would you mind rushing off and
getting it, because I must hurry. I can just catch a good train,
and it's hours to the next."
"Will you wait here? I'll be back in a moment."
"Very well."
The last George saw of her was another of those exhilarating smiles
of hers. It was literally the last he saw of her, for, when he
returned not more than two minutes later, the cab had gone, the
girl had gone, and the world was empty.
To him, gaping at this wholly unforeseen calamity the commissionaire
vouchsafed information.
"The young lady took the cab on, sir."
"Took the cab on?"
"Almost immediately after you had gone, sir, she got in again and
told the man to drive to Waterloo."
George could make nothing of it. He stood there in silent
perplexity, and might have continued to stand indefinitely, had not
his mind been distracted by a dictatorial voice at his elbow.
"You, sir! Dammit!"
A second taxi-cab had pulled up, and from it a stout, scarlet-
faced young man had sprung. One glance told George all. The hunt
was up once more. The bloodhound had picked up the trail. Percy was
in again!
For the first time since he had become aware of her flight, George
was thankful that the girl had disappeared. He perceived that he
had too quickly eliminated Percy from the list of the Things That
Matter. Engrossed with his own affairs, and having regarded their
late skirmish as a decisive battle from which there would be no
rallying, he had overlooked the possibility of this annoying and
unnecessary person following them in another cab--a task which, in
the congested, slow-moving traffic, must have been a perfectly
simple one. Well, here he was, his soul manifestly all stirred up
and his blood-pressure at a far higher figure than his doctor would
have approved of, and the matter would have to be opened all over
again.
"Now then!" said the stout young man.
George regarded him with a critical and unfriendly eye. He disliked
this fatty degeneration excessively. Looking him up and down, he
could find no point about him that gave him the least pleasure,
with the single exception of the state of his hat, in the side of
which he was rejoiced to perceive there was a large and unshapely
dent.
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