A sound of fury and disdain broke from Jack.

"Well," continued d.i.c.k, "(May I take a cigarette, by the way?), why shouldn't you go round and make inquiries, and find out how the land lies? Then Kirkby and I might perhaps hang about a bit and run up against him--if you'd just give us a hint, you know."

The other looked at him a moment.

"Well, perhaps I might," he said doubtfully. "But what--"

"Good Lord! But you'll be keeping your promise, won't you? After all, it's quite natural we should come down after his letter--and quite on the cards that we should run up against him.... Please to go at once, and let us wait here."

In a quarter of an hour Mr. Parham-Carter came back quickly into the room and shut the door.

"Yes; he's at the factory," he said. "Or at any rate he's not at home.

And they don't expect him back till late."

"Well?"

"There's something up. The girl's gone, too. (No; she's not at the factory.) And I think there's going to be trouble."

CHAPTER VI

(I)

The electric train slowed down and stopped at the Hammersmith terminus, and there was the usual rush for the doors.

"Come on, Gertie," said a young man, "here we are."

The girl remained perfectly still with her face hidden.

The crowd was enormous this Christmas Eve, and for the most part laden with parcels; the platforms surged with folk, and each bookstall, blazing with lights (for it was after seven o'clock), was a center of a kind of whirlpool. There was sensational news in the evening papers, and everyone was anxious to get at the full details of which the main facts were tantalizingly displayed on the posters. Everyone wanted to know exactly who were the people concerned and how it had all happened. It was a delightful tragedy for the Christmas festivities.

"Come on," said the young man again. "They're nearly all out."

"I can't," moaned the girl.

Frank took her by the arm resolutely.

"Come!" he said.

Then she came, and the two pa.s.sed out together into the mob waiting to come in.

"We shall have to walk," said Frank. "I'm sorry; but I've got to get home somehow."

She bowed her head and said nothing.

Gertie presented a very unusual appearance this evening. Certainly she had laid out the two-pound-ten to advantage. She was in a perfectly decent dark dress with a red stripe in it; she had a large hat and some species of boa round her neck; she even carried a cheap umbrella with a sham silver band and a small hand-bag with one pocket-handkerchief inside it. And to her own mind, no doubt, she was a perfect picture of the ideal penitent--very respectable and even prosperous looking, and yet with a dignified reserve. She was not at all flaunting, she must have thought; neither was she, externally, anything of a disgrace. It would be evident presently to her mother that she had returned out of simple goodness of heart and not at all because her recent escapade had been a failure. She would still be able to talk of "the Major" with something of an air, and to make out that he treated her always like a lady. (When I went to interview her a few months ago I found her very dignified, very self-conscious, excessively refined and faintly reminiscent of fallen splendor; and her mother told me privately that she was beginning to be restless again and talked of going on to the music-hall stage.)

But there is one thing that I find it very hard to forgive, and that is, that as the two went together under the flaming white lights towards Chiswick High Street, she turned to Frank a little nervously and asked him if he would mind walking just behind her. (Please remember, however, in extenuation, that Gertie's new pose was that of the Superior Young Lady.)

"I don't quite like to be seen--" murmured this respectable person.

"Oh, certainly!" said Frank, without an instant's hesitation.

They had met, half an hour before, by appointment, at the entrance to the underground station at Victoria. Frank's van-journeyings would, he calculated, bring him there about half-past six, and, strictly against the orders of his superiors, but very ingeniously, with the connivance of his fellow-driver of the van, he had arranged for his place to be taken on the van for the rest of the evening by a man known to his fellow-driver--but just now out of work--for the sum of one shilling, to be paid within a week. He was quite determined not to leave Gertie alone again, when once the journey to Chiswick had actually begun, until he had seen her landed in her own home.

The place of meeting, too, had suited Gertie very well. She had left Turner Road abruptly, without a word to anyone, the instant that the Major's military-looking back had been seen by her to pa.s.s within the swing-doors of the "Queen's Arms" for his usual morning refreshment.

Then she had occupied herself chiefly by collecting her various things at their respective shops, purchased by Frank's two-pound-ten, and putting them on. She had had a clear threepence to spare beyond the few shillings she had determined to put by out of the total, and had expended it by a visit to the cinematograph show in Victoria Street.

There had been a very touching series of pictures of the "Old Home in the Country," and the milking of the cows, with a general atmosphere of roses and church-bells, and Gertie had dissolved into tears more than once, and had cried noiselessly into her new pocket-handkerchief drawn from her new hand-bag. But she had met Frank quite punctually, for, indeed, she had burned her boats now entirely and there was nothing else left for her to do.

At the entrance to Chiswick High Street another brilliant thought struck her. She paused for Frank to come up.

"Frankie," she said, "you won't say anything about the two-pound-ten, will you? I shouldn't like them to think--"

"Of course not," said Frank gravely, and after a moment, noticing that she glanced at him again uneasily, understood, and fell obediently to the rear once more.

About a quarter of a mile further on her steps began to go slower. Frank watched her very carefully. He was not absolutely sure of her even now.

Then she crossed over the street between two trams, and Frank dodged after her. Then she turned as if to walk back to Hammersmith. In an instant Frank was at her side.

"You're going the wrong way," he said.

She stopped irresolutely, and had to make way for two or three hurrying people, to pa.s.s.

"Oh, Frankie! I can't!" she wailed softly.

"Come!" said Frank, and took her by the arm once more.

Five minutes later they stood together half-way down a certain long lane that turns out of Chiswick High Street to the left, and there, for the first time, she seems to have been genuinely frightened. The street was quite empty; the entire walking population was parading up and down the brightly-lit thoroughfare a hundred yards behind them, or feverishly engaged in various kinds of provision shops. The lamps were spa.r.s.e in this lane, and all was comparatively quiet.

"Oh, Frankie!" she moaned again. "I can't! I can't!... I daren't!"

She leaned back against the sill of a window.

Yet, even then, I believe she was rather enjoying herself. It was all so extremely like the sort of plays over which she had been accustomed to shed tears. The Prodigal's Return! And on Christmas Eve! It only required a little snow to be falling and a crying infant at her breast....

I wonder what Frank made of it. He must have known Gertie thoroughly well by now, and certainly there is not one sensible man in a thousand whose gorge would not have risen at the situation. Yet I doubt whether Frank paid it much attention.

"Where's the house?" he said.

He glanced up at the number of the door by which he stood.