From which it will be gathered that I was only allowing a decent interval to elapse before repeating my visit to “The Hawthorns”; indeed, I was beginning to think that a sufficient interval had already passed and to contemplate seriously my second call, when my intentions were forestalled by Sylvia herself. Returning home one Friday evening, I found on my mantelpiece a short letter from her, enclosing a ticket for an exhibition of paintings and sculpture at a gallery in Leicester Square, and mentioning—incidentally—that she proposed to visit the show on the following morning in order to see the works by a good light; which seemed such an eminently rational proceeding in these short winter days, that I determined instantly to follow her example and get the advantage of the morning light myself.
I acted on this decision with such thoroughness that, when I arrived at the gallery, I found the attendant in the act of opening the doors, and, for nearly half an hour I was in sole possession of the premises. Then, by twos and threes, other visitors began to straggle in, and among them Sylvia, looking very fresh and dainty and obviously pleased to see me. “I am glad you were able to come,” she said, as we shook hands. “I thought you would, somehow. It is so much nicer to have someone to talk over the pictures with, isn’t it?”
“Much more interesting,” I agreed. “I have been taking a preliminary look round and have already accumulated quite a lot of profound observations to discharge at you as occasion offers. Shall we begin at number one?”
We began at number one and worked our way methodically picture by picture, round the room, considering each work attentively with earnest discussion and a wealth of comment. As the morning wore on, visitors arrived in increasing numbers, until the two large rooms began to be somewhat inconveniently crowded. We had made a complete circuit of the pictures and were about to turn to the sculpture, which occupied the central floor space, when Sylvia touched me on the arm. “Let us sit down for a minute,” said she. “I want to speak to you.”
I led her to one of the large settees that disputed the floor-space with the busts and statuettes, and, somewhat mystified by her serious tone and by the rather agitated manner, which I now noticed for the first time, seated myself by her side. “What is it?” I asked.
She looked anxiously round the room, and, leaning towards me, said in a low tone: “Have you noticed a man who has been keeping near us and listening to our conversation?”
“No, I haven’t,” I replied. “If I had I would have given him a hint to keep farther off. But there’s nothing in it, you know. In picture galleries it is very usual for people to hang about and try to overhear criticisms. This man may be interested in the exhibits.”
“Yes, I know. But I don’t think this person was so much interested in the exhibits. He didn’t look at the pictures, he looked at us. I caught his eye several times reflected in the picture-glasses, and once or twice I saw him looking most attentively at this crucifix of mine. That was what really disturbed me. I wish, now, that I hadn’t unbuttoned my coat.”
“So do I. You will have to leave that crucifix at home if it attracts so much undesirable attention. Which is the man? Is he in this room?”
“No, I don’t see him now. I expect he has gone into the next room.”
“Then let us go there, too; and if you will point him out to me, I will pay him back in his own coin.”
We rose and made our way to the door of communication, and, as we passed into the second room, Sylvia grasped my arm nervously. “There he is—don’t let him see us looking at him—he is sitting on the settee at the farther end of the room.”
It was impossible to make a mistake since the settee held only a single person; a fairly well-dressed, ordinary-looking man, rather swarthy and foreign in appearance, with a small waxed moustache. He was sitting nearly opposite the entrance door and seemed, at the moment to be reading over the catalogue, which he held open on his knee; but, as he looked up almost at the moment when we entered, I turned my back to him and continued my inspection with the aid of the reflection in a picture-glass. “He is probably a journalist,” I said. “You see he is scribbling some notes on the blank leaves of his catalogue; probably some of your profound criticisms, which will appear, perhaps tomorrow morning, clothed in super-technical jargon, in a daily paper.”
Here I paused suddenly, for I had made a rather curious observation. The reflection in a mirror is, as everybody knows, reversed laterally; so that the right hand of a person appears to be the left, and vice versa. But in the present case, no reversal seemed to have taken place. The figure in the reflection was writing with his right hand. Obviously, then, the real person was writing with his left.
This put a rather different aspect on the affair. Up to the present, I had been disposed to think that Sylvia had been unduly disturbed; for there are plenty of ill-bred bounders to be met in any public place who will stare a good-looking girl out of countenance. But now my suspicions were all awake. It is true that left-handed men are as common as blackberries; but still—“Can you tell me, Miss Vyne,” I asked, as we worked our way towards the other end of the room, “if this man is at all like the one who frightened you so in Millfield Lane?”
“No, he is not. I am sure of that. The man in the lane was a good deal taller and thinner.”
“Well, said I, “whoever he is, I want to have a good look at him, and the best plan will be to turn our attention to the sculpture. Shall we go and look at that rather remarkable pink bust?. That will give our friend a chance of another stare at you, and, if he doesn’t take it, I will go and inspect him where he sits.”
The bust to which I had referred was executed in a curious, rose-tinted marble, very crystalline and translucent, a material that suited the soft, girlish features of its subject admirably. It stood on an isolated pedestal quite near the settee on which the suspicious stranger was sitting, and I hoped that our presence might lure him from his retreat. “I don’t think,” I said, taking up a position with my back to the settee,” that I have ever seen any marble quite like this. Have you?”
“No,” replied Sylvia. “It looks like coarse lump sugar stained pink. And how very transparent it is; too transparent for most subjects.”
Here she gave a quick, nervous glance at me, and I was aware of a shadow thrown by some person standing behind me. Had our friend risen to the bait already?
I continued the conversation in good audible tones. “Very awkward these isolated pedestals would be for slovenly artists who scamp the back of their work.”
With this remark I moved round the pedestal as if to examine the back of the bust, and Sylvia followed. The move brought us opposite the person who had been standing behind me; and, sure enough, it was the gentleman from the settee. I continued to talk—rather blatantly, I fear—commenting on the careful treatment of the hair and the backs of the ears; and meanwhile took an occasional swift glance at the man opposite. He appeared to be gazing in wrapt admiration at the bust, but his glance, too, occasionally wandered; and when it did, the “point of fixation,” as the oculists would express it, was Sylvia’s crucifix, which was still uncovered.
Presently I ventured to take a good, steady look at him and was for a few moments unobserved. His left eye moved, as I could see, quite smoothly and evenly from point to point; but the right, at each change of position, gave a little, rapid, vertical oscillation. Suddenly he became aware of my, now undisguised, inspection of him, and, immediately, the oscillation became much more marked, as is often the case with these spasmodic movements. Perhaps he was conscious of the fact; at any rate, he turned his head away and then moved off to examine a statuette that stood near the middle of the room.
I looked after him, wondering what I ought to do. That he was the man whom I had seen on the two previous occasions I had not the slightest doubt, although I was still unable to identify his features or anything about him excepting the nystagmus and the left-handed condition. But there could be no question that he was the same man; and this very variability in his appearan
ce only gave a more sinister significance to the affair, pointing clearly, as it did, to careful and efficient disguise. Evidently he had been, and still was, shadowing me, and, what was still worse, he seemed to be taking a most undesirable interest in Sylvia. And yet what could I do? My small knowledge of the law suggested that shadowing was not a criminal act unless some unlawful intent could be proved. As to punching the fellow’s head—which was what I felt most inclined to do—that would merely give rise to disagreeable, and perhaps dangerous, publicity.
“My lord is pleased to meditate,” Sylvia remarked at length, breaking in upon my brown study.
“I beg your pardon,” I exclaimed. “The fact is I was wondering what we had better do next. Do you want to see anything else?”
“I should rather like to see the outside of the building,” she answered. “That man has made me quite nervous.”
“Then we will go at once, and we won’t sign the visitor’s book.”
I led her to the door, and, as we rapidly descended the carpeted stairs, I considered once more what it were best to do. Had I been alone I would have kept our watcher in view and done a little shadowing on my own account; but Sylvia’s presence made me uneasy. It was of the first importance that this sinister stranger should not learn where she lived. The only reasonable course seemed to be to give him the slip if possible. “What did you make of that man?” Sylvia asked when we were outside in the square. “Don’t you think he was watching us?”
“Yes, I do. And I may say that I have seen him before.”
She turned a terrified face to me and asked: “You don’t think he is the wretch who pushed you into the river?”
Now this was exactly what I did think, but it was not worth while to say so. Accordingly I temporized. “It is impossible to say. I never saw that man, you know. But I have reason for thinking that this fellow is keeping a watch on me, and it occurs to me that, if he appears still to be following us, I had better put you into a hansom and keep my eye on him until you are out of sight.”
“Oh, I’m not going to agree to that,” she replied with great decision. “I don’t suppose that my presence is much protection to you, but still, you are safer while we are together, and I’m not going to leave you.”
This settled the matter. Of course she was quite right. I was much safer while she was with me, and if she refused to go off alone, we must make our escape together. I looked up the square as we turned out of it towards the Charing Cross Road, but could see no sign of our follower, and, as we walked on at a good pace, I hoped that we might get clear away. But I was not going to take any chances. Before turning homewards, I decided to walk sharply some distance in an easterly direction and then see if there was any sign of pursuit; for my previous experiences of this good gentleman led me to suspect that he was by no means without skill and experience in the shadowing art.
We walked down to Charing Cross and turned eastward along the north side of the Strand. I had chosen this thoroughfare as offering a good cover to a pursuer, who could easily keep out of sight among the crowd of way-farers who thronged the pavement for the first question to be settled was whether we were or were not being shadowed. “Where are we going now?” Sylvia asked.
“We are going up Bedford Street,” I answered. “There is a book shop on the right-hand side where we can loiter unobtrusively and keep a lookout. If we see nobody, we will try one of the courts off Maiden Lane where we should be certain to catch anyone who was following. But we will try the bookstall first because, if our friend is in attendance, I have a rather neat plan for getting rid of him.”
We accordingly made our way to the bookstall in Bedford Street and began systematically to look through the second-hand volumes; and as we pored over an open book, we were able to keep an effective watch on the end of the street and the Strand beyond. Our vigil was not a long one. We had been at the stall less than a minute when Sylvia whispered to me: “Do you see that man looking in the shop on the farther side of the Strand?”
“Yes,” I replied, “I have noticed him. He has only just arrived, and I fancy he is our man. If he is, he will probably go into the doorway so as not to have to keep his back to us.”
Almost as I spoke, the man moved into the deep doorway as if to inspect the end of the shop window, and Sylvia exclaimed: “I’m sure that is the man. I can see his profile now.”
There could be no doubt of the man’s identity; and, at this moment, as if to clinch the matter, he took out a cigarette and lighted it, striking the match with his left hand. “Come along,” said I. “We will now try my little plan for getting rid of him. We mustn’t seem to hurry.”
We sauntered up to the corner of Maiden Lane and there stood for a few moments looking about us. Then we strolled across to the farther side of Chandos Street, and, as soon as we were out of sight of our follower, crossed the road and slipped in at the entrance to the Civil Service Stores. Passing quickly through the provision department, we halted at the glazed doors, from which we could look out through the Bedford Street entrance. “There he is!” exclaimed Sylvia. And there he was, sure enough, walking rather quickly up the east side of Bedford Street. “Now,” said I, “let us make a bolt for it. This way.”
We darted out through the china, furniture and ironmongery departments, across the whole width of the building and out of the Agar Street entrance, where we immediately crossed into King William Street, turned down Adelaide Street, shot through the alley by St. Martin’s Church, and came out opposite the National Portrait Gallery just as a yellow omnibus was about to start. We sprang into the moving vehicle, and, as it rumbled away into the Charing Cross Road, we kept a sharp watch on the end of King William Street. But there was no sign of our pursuer. We had got rid of him for the present, at any rate. “Don’t you think,” said Sylvia, “that he will suspect that we went into the Stores?”
“I have no doubt he will, and that is where we have him. He can’t come away and leave the building unsearched. Most probably he is, at this very moment, racing madly up and down the stairs and trying to watch the three entrances at the same time.”
Sylvia chuckled gleefully. “It has been quite good fun,” she said, “but I am glad we have shaken him off. I think I shall stay indoors for a day or two and paint, and I hope you’ll stay indoors, too. And that reminds me that I am out of Heyl’s white. I must call in at Robinson’s and get a pound tube. Do you mind? It won’t delay us more than a few minutes.”
Now I would much rather have gone straight on to Hampstead, for our unknown attendant certainly knew the whereabouts of my lodgings and might follow us when he failed to find us in the stores. Moreover, I had, of late, given the neighbourhood of the artist’s-colourman’s shop a rather wide berth, having seen Mrs. Samway from afar once or twice, thereabouts, and having surmised that she tended to haunt, that particular part of the Hampstead Road. But the fresh supply of flake white seemed to be a necessity, so I made no objection, and we accordingly alighted opposite the shop and entered. Nevertheless, while Sylvia was making her purchase, I stood near the glass door and kept a watchful eye on the street. When a tram stopped a short distance away, I glanced quickly over its passengers, as well as I could, though without observing anyone who might have been our absent friend. But just as it was about to move on, I saw a woman run out from the pavement and enter; and though I got but an indifferent view of her, I felt an uncomfortable suspicion that the woman was Mrs. Samway.
Looking back, I do not quite understand why I had avoided this woman or why I now looked with distaste on the fact that she was travelling in our direction. She was a pleasant-spoken, intelligent person, and I had no dislike of her, nor any cause for dislike. Perhaps it was the recollection of the offence that she had given Sylvia in this very shop, but a short time since, that made me unwilling to encounter her now in Sylvia’s company. At any rate, whatever the cause may have been, throughout the otherwise, pleasant journey, and in spite of an animated and interesting conversation, the thought of M
rs. Samway continually recurred, and this notwithstanding that I kept a constant, unobtrusive lookout for the mysterious spy who might, even now, be hovering in our rear.
We alighted from the tram at the “Duke of St. Alban’s” and made our way to North End by way of the Highgate Ponds. As we crossed the open fields and the Heath, I turned at intervals to see if there was any sign of our being followed; but no suspicious-looking person appeared in sight, though on two separate occasions, I noticed a woman ahead of us, and walking in much the same direction, turn round and look our way. There was no reason, however, to suppose that she was looking at us, and, in any case, she was too far ahead to be recognizable. At last, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Spaniard’s Road, she finally disappeared, possibly into the hollow beyond, and I saw no more of her.
At the gate of “The Hawthorns” I delivered up the heavy tube of paint, and thus, as it were, formally brought our little outing to an end; and as we shook hands Sylvia treated me to a parting exhortation. “Now do take care of yourself and keep out of harm’s way,” she urged. “You are so large, you see,” she added with a smile,” and such a very conspicuous object that you ought to take special precautions. And you must come and see us again quite soon. I assure you my aunt is positively pining for another conversation with you. Why shouldn’t you drop in tomorrow and have tea with us?”
The First R. Austin Freeman Megapack: 27 Mystery Tales of Dr. Thorndyke & Others Page 152
