There was to be no hole-and-corner business. This was bluff, and the bigger the bluff, the more chance there was of carrying it off. As they stepped into the foggy road, she said, “We’ll go to Brixton High Street and get a bus or a taxi.”
As it happened, it was a taxi that offered itself first. It swelled out of the dark before they had reached a main thoroughfare, and as the man heaved what they were carrying aboard the woman gave the address of their destination.
“Cost you something, lady,” said the driver.
“Well, well,” she said, “isn’t every day my son has a holiday.”
The driver grunted good-naturedly. “That’s the stuff! Feast and famine. Nothing like it.” And she climbed in, and the taxi ceased its agitated throbbing and slid into action.
After a silence the man said, “Well, you couldn’t do more for me if I were.”
“I’m glad you’re not!” she said. There was another long silence.
“What is your name?” she asked suddenly.
He thought for a moment. “George Lowe,” he said.
“Yes,” she said; “but don’t think next time. There is a train north to Inverness that leaves Waverly at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. You’ll have to spend tomorrow night in Inverness. I have written down on a paper what you do after that.”
“You seem to be perfectly sure that nothing’s going to happen at King’s Cross.”
“No, I’m not,” she said. “The police are not fools—that Scotland Yard man didn’t believe half I said—but they’re just human. All the same, I’m not going to give you that bit paper until the train’s going.”
“I wish I had that revolver now!” he said.
“I’m glad you haven’t. You’ve made a big enough fool of yourself already.”
“I wouldn’t use it. It would just give me courage.”
“For goodness’ sake, be sensible, Jerry. Don’t do anything silly and spoil things.”
They fell to silence again, the woman sitting upright and alert, the man shrunk in the corner, almost invisible. Into the west of London they went like that, through the dark squares north of Oxford Street, out into the Euston Road and with a sharp left-handed turn into King’s Cross. The moment had come.
“You pay the taxi and I’ll get the ticket,” she said.
As Lamont paid the taxi-man the shadow of his turned-down hat hid his face, so that his retreating back was all that the incurious gaze of the driver noted. A porter came and took his things from him, and he surrendered them willingly. Now that the time had come, his “nerves” had gone. It was neck or nothing, and he could afford to play the part well. When the woman joined him from the booking-office, the change in him was evident in the approbation on her cold face. Together they went on to the platform and followed the porter down it, looking for a corner seat. They made a sufficiently convincing picture—the man with the rug and the golf-bag and the wraps, and the woman in attendance with the man’s extra coat.
The porter dived into a corridor and came out again saying, “Got you a corner, sir. Probably have the side to yourself all the way. It’s quiet tonight.”
Lamont tipped him and inspected his quarters. The occupant of the other side had staked his claims, but was not present other than in spirit. He went back to the doorway with the woman and talked to her. Footsteps came down the corridor at his back, and he said to her, “Have they any fishing, do you think?”
“Only sea-fishing in the loch,” she said, and continued the subject until the steps had moved on. But before they faded out of earshot they stopped. Lamont cast as casual a glance as he could achieve down the corridor, and found that the owner of the steps had halted at the open door of his compartment and was examining the luggage on the rack. And then he remembered, too late, that the porter had put his suitcase up with the initials outside. The G. L. was plain for all the world to read. He saw the man stir preparatory to coming back. “Talk!” he said quickly to the woman.
“There’s a burn, of course,” she said, “where you can catch what they call beelans. They are about three inches long.”
“Well, I’ll send you a beelan,” he said, and managed a low laugh that earned the woman’s admiration just as the man stopped behind him.
“Excuse me, sir, is your name Lorrimer?”
“No,” said Lamont, turning round and facing the man squarely. “My name is Lowe.”
“Oh, sorry!” the man said. “Is that your luggage in the compartment, then?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, thank you. I am looking for a man Lorrimer, and I was hoping that it might be his. It’s a cold night to be hanging round for people who aren’t here.”
“Yes,” said the woman; “my son’s grumbling already at the thought of his first night journey. But he’ll grumble a lot more before he’s in Edinburgh, won’t he?”
The man smiled. “Can’t say I’ve ever travelled all night, myself,” he said. “Sorry to have bothered you,” he added, and moved on.
“You should have let me take that other rug, George,” she said as he moved out of earshot.
“Oh, rug be blowed!” said George, as to the manner born. “It will probably be like an oven before we’ve been going an hour.”
A long, shrill whistle sounded. The last door was banged.
“This is for expenses,” she said, and put a packet into his hand, “and this is what I promised you. The man’s on the platform. It’s all right.”
“We’ve left out one thing,” he said. He took off his hat and bent and kissed her.
The long train pulled slowly out into the darkness.
Chapter 9.
GRANT GETS MORE INFORMATION THAN HE EXPECTED
Grant was studying the morning papers with his habitual half-careless thoroughness. That is not a paradox; Grant apparently skimmed the paper, but if you asked him about any particular happening afterwards, you would find that he had acquired a very efficient working knowledge of it. He was feeling pleased with himself. It was only a matter of hours before he got his man. It was a week today that the murder had been committed, and to locate the murderer from among a mass of conflicting clues in such a short time was good work. He had been favoured by luck, of course; he acknowledged that freely. If it weren’t for luck on some one’s part, half the criminals in the world would go unpunished. A burglar, for instance, was hardly ever convicted except through an outrageous piece of luck on the part of the police. But the queue affair had not been a picnic by any means. There had been spadework galore; and Grant felt as nearly complaisant as it was in him to feel as he thought of the crowd of
