Nobody could ever have suspected so solid a man
as the great Q.C. of any more serious crime or misdemeanour than
shirking the second service on Sunday evening. There was a ponderous
respectability about his portly build that defied detection. The
agents of all the steamboat companies had been warned that morning
that the slim young man of the name of Waring might try to escape
at the last moment. But who could ever suspect this colossal pile,
in the British churchwarden style of human architecture, of aiding
and abetting the escape of the young man Waring from the pervasive
myrmidons of English justice? The very idea was absurd. Gilbert
Gildersleeve's waistcoat was above suspicion.
And when Guy Waring returned to his room at the Duke of Devonshire
Hotel half an hour later, in complete ignorance as yet of the bare
fact of the murder, he found on his table an envelope addressed,
in an unknown hand, "Guy Waring, Esq.," while below in the corner,
twice underlined, were the importunate words, "IMMEDIATE! IMPORTANT!"
Guy tore it open in wonder. What on earth could this mean? He
trembled as he read. Could Cyril have learnt all? Or had Nevitt,
that double-dyed traitor, now trebled his treachery by informing
against the man whom he had driven into a crime? Guy couldn't imagine
what it all could be driving at, for there, before his eyes, in a
round schoolboy hand, very carefully formed, without the faintest
trace of anything like character, were the words of this strange
and startling message, whose origin and intent were alike a mystery
to him.
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