THE COMPLETE BULLDOG DRUMMOND SERIES (10 Novels in One Edition). H. C. McNeile / Sapper
a while they were silent, occupied with matters quite foreign to such trifles as Peterson and his daughter.
"Are you glad I answered your advertisement?" inquired Phyllis at length.
"The question is too frivolous to deserve an answer," remarked her husband severely.
"But you aren't sorry it's over?" she demanded.
"It isn't over, kid; it's just begun." He smiled at her tenderly. "Your life and mine ... isn't it just wonderful?"
And once again the man sauntered past them. But this time he dropped a piece of paper on the path, just at Hugh's feet, and the soldier, with a quick movement which he hardly stopped to analyse, covered it with his shoe. The girl hadn't seen the action; but then, as girls will do after such remarks, she was thinking of other things. Idly Hugh watched the saunterer disappear in the more crowded part of the esplanade, and for a moment there came on to his face a look which, happily for his wife's peace of mind, she failed to notice.
"No," he said, à propos of nothing, "I don't see the gentleman picking oakum. Let's go and eat, and after dinner I'll run you up to the top of the headland...."
With a happy sigh she rose. It was just wonderful! and together they strolled back to their hotel. In his pocket was the piece of paper; and who could be sending him messages in such a manner save one man—a man now awaiting his trial?
In the hall he stayed behind to inquire for letters, and a man nodded to him.
"Heard the news?" he inquired.
"No," said Hugh. "What's happened?"
"That man Peterson and the girl have got away. No trace of 'em." Then he looked at Drummond curiously. "By the way, you had something to do with that show, didn't you?"
"A little," smiled Hugh. "Just a little."
"Police bound to catch 'em again," continued the other. "Can't hide yourself these days."
And once again Hugh smiled, as he drew from his pocket the piece of paper:
"Only au revoir, my friend; only au revoir."
He glanced at the words written in Peterson's neat writing, and the smile broadened. Assuredly life was still good; assuredly....
"Are you ready for dinner, darling?" Quickly he swung round, and looked at the sweet face of his wife.
"Sure thing, kid," he grinned. "Dead sure; I've had the best appetiser the old pot-house can produce."
"Well, you're very greedy. Where's mine?"
"Effects of bachelordom, old thing. For the moment I forgot you. I'll have another. Waiter—two Martinis."
And into an ash-tray near by he dropped a piece of paper torn into a hundred tiny fragments.
"Was that a love-letter?" she demanded with assumed jealousy.
"Not exactly, sweetheart," he laughed back. "Not exactly." And over the glasses their eyes met. "Here's to hoping, kid; here's to hoping."
THE END
The Black Gang
I. IN WHICH THINGS HAPPEN NEAR BARKING CREEK
II. IN WHICH SCOTLAND YARD SITS UP AND TAKES NOTICE
III. IN WHICH HUGH DRUMMOND COMPOSES A LETTER
IV. IN WHICH COUNT ZADOWA GETS A SHOCK
V. IN WHICH CHARLES LATTER, M.P., GOES MAD
VI. IN WHICH AN EFFUSION IS SENT TO THE NEWSPAPERS
VII. IN WHICH A BOMB BURSTS AT UNPLEASANTLY CLOSE QUARTERS
VIII. IN WHICH THE BAG OF NUTS IS FOUND BY ACCIDENT
IX. IN WHICH THERE IS A STORMY SUPPER PARTY AT THE RITZ
X. IN WHICH HUGH DRUMMOND MAKES A DISCOVERY
XI. IN WHICH HUGH DRUMMOND AND THE REVEREND THEODOSIUS LONGMOOR TAKE LUNCH TOGETHER
XII. IN WHICH COUNT ZADOWA IS INTRODUCED TO ALICE IN WONDERLAND
XIII. IN WHICH HUGH DRUMMOND AND THE REVEREND THEODOSIUS HAVE A LITTLE CHAT
XIV. IN WHICH A ROLLS-ROYCE RUNS AMOK
XV. IN WHICH HUGH DRUMMOND ARRIVES AT MAYBRICK HALL
XVI. IN WHICH THINGS HAPPEN AT MAYBRICK HALL
XVII. IN WHICH A MURDERER IS MURDERED AT MAYBRICK HALL
XVIII. IN WHICH THE HOME SECRETARY IS TAUGHT THE FOX-TROT
I. — IN WHICH THINGS HAPPEN
NEAR NEW BARKING CREEK
The wind howled dismally round a house standing by itself almost on the shores of Barking Creek. It was the grey dusk of an early autumn day, and the occasional harsh cry of a sea-gull rising discordantly above the wind alone broke the silence of the flat, desolate waste.
The house seemed deserted. Every window was shuttered; the garden was uncared for and a mass of weeds; the gate leading on to the road, apparently feeling the need of a deficient top hinge, propped itself drunkenly on what once had been a flower-bed. A few gloomy trees swaying dismally in the wind surrounded the house and completed the picture—one that would have caused even the least imaginative of men to draw his coat a little tighter round him, and feel thankful that it was not his fate to live in such a place.
But then few people ever came near enough to the house to realise its sinister appearance. The road—it was little better than a cart track—which passed the gate, was out of the beaten way; only an occasional fisherman or farm labourer ever used it, and that generally by day when things assumed their proper proportion, and it was merely an empty house gradually falling to pieces through lack of attention. At night they avoided it if possible; folks did say that twelve years ago some prying explorer had found the bones of a skeleton lying on the floor in one of the upstair rooms with a mildewed rope fixed to one of the beams in the ceiling. And then it had been empty for twenty years.
Even now when the wind lay in the east or north-east and the tide was setting in, there were those who said that you could see a light shining through the cracks in the shutters in that