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Updated: June 16, 2025
The scattered lights of Southall were winking out behind them before Brentwick chose to give the word to the mechanician. Quietly the latter threw in the clutch for the third speed and the fourth. The car leaped forward like a startled race-horse. The motor lilted merrily into its deep-throated song of the open road, its contented, silken humming passing into a sonorous and sustained purr.
In the shadows across the way, a lengthy shadow lurked: Stryker, beyond reasonable question. Otherwise the street was deserted. Not even that adventitous bobby of the early evening was now in evidence. Dorothy presently joining them, Brentwick led the way to the door.
He paused, looking his erstwhile dupes over with a melancholy eye; then, with an uncertain nod comprehending the girl, Kirkwood and Brentwick, "So long!" he said thickly; and turned, with the detective's hand under his arm and, accompanied by the thoroughly cowed Stryker, waddled out of the room.
The butler had again appeared noiselessly in the doorway. "Beg pardon, sir; they're waiting, sir." "The caitiffs, Wotton?" "Yessir." "Where waiting?" "One at each end of the street, sir." "Thank you. You may bring us sherry and biscuit, Wotton." "Thank you, sir." The servant vanished. Brentwick removed his glasses, rubbed them, and blinked thoughtfully at the girl.
Brentwick touched Kirkwood's arm and drew him into the house. As the door closed, Kirkwood swung impulsively to Brentwick, with the brief, uneven laugh of fine-drawn nerves. "Good God, sir!" he cried. "You don't know " "I can surmise," interrupted the elder man shrewdly. "You turned up in the nick of time, for all the world like " "Harlequin popping through a stage trap?"
While he was present the three held silent the girl trembling slightly, but with her face aglow; Kirkwood half stupefied between his ease from care and his growing astonishment, as Brentwick continued to reveal unexpected phases of his personality; Brentwick himself outwardly imperturbable and complacent, for all that his hand shook as he lifted his wine glass. "You may go, Wotton or, wait.
His musings merged into vacuity, into a dull gray mist of hopelessness comparable only to the dismal skies then lowering over London-town. Brentwick was good, but Brentwick was mistaken. There was really nothing for Kirkwood to do but to go ahead.
Take me take her; d'you hear?" "I think," put in the clear, bland accents of Brentwick, "we can consider that matter settled. I have here, my man," nodding to the adventurer as he took up the black leather wallet, "I have here a little matter which may clear up any lingering doubts as to your standing, which you may be disposed at present to entertain."
Fancy, what should we have done without you!" "I'm afraid I have been very clumsy," sighed Brentwick, "clumsy and impulsive ... Kirkwood, do you hear anything?" "Not yet, sir." "Perhaps," suggested Brentwick a little later, "perhaps we had better alight and go up to the inn. It would be more cosy there, especially if the petrol proves hard to obtain, and we have long to wait."
I'll camp on his trail for the rest of his natural-born days! I'll have his eye-teeth for this, I'll " He swayed, gibbering with rage, his countenance frightfully contorted, his fat hands shaking as he struggled for expression. And then, while yet their own astonishment held Dorothy, Kirkwood, Brentwick and Stryker speechless, Charles, the mechanician, moved suddenly upon the adventurer.
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