There in the darkness, beneath the trees, where there were no
onlookers--for at that hour the Mall is practically deserted, save for a
few loving couples and a stray taxi or two--she suddenly paused, and I
quickly approached and raised my cap politely.

"Well?" she asked sharply, almost in a tone of annoyance. "What is it?
What do you want with me, my man?"

CHAPTER X.

CHERCHEZ LA FEMME.

I confess that her attitude took me aback.

I was certainly unprepared for such a reception.

"I believed, madame, that you were in search of me?" I said, with polite
apology.

"I certainly was not. I don't know you in the least," was her reply. "I
went to the Tube to meet a friend who did not keep his appointment. Is it
possible that you have been sent by him? In any case, it was very
injudicious for you to approach me in that crowd. One never knows who
might have been watching."

"I come as messenger from my friend, Sir Digby Kemsley," I said in a low
voice.

"From him?" she gasped eagerly. "I--ah! I expected him. Is he prevented
from coming? It was so very important, so highly essential, that we
should meet," she added in frantic anxiety as we stood there in the
darkness beneath the bare trees, through the branches of which the wind
whistled weirdly.

"I have this letter," I said, drawing it from my pocket. "It is addressed
'For E. P. K.'"

"For me?" she cried with eagerness, as she took it in her gloved hand,
and then leaving my side she hurried to a street lamp, where she tore it
open and read the contents.

From where I stood I heard her utter an ejaculation of sudden terror. I
saw how she crushed the paper in one hand while with the other she
pressed her brow. Whatever the letter contained it was news which caused
her the greatest apprehension and fear, for dashing back to me she asked:

"When did he give you this? How long ago?"

"On the night of January the sixth," was my reply. "The night when he
left Harrington Gardens in mysterious circumstances."

"Mysterious circumstances!" she echoed. "What do you mean? Is he no
longer there?"

"No, madame. He has left, and though I am, perhaps, his most intimate
friend, I am unaware of his whereabouts. There were," I added, "reasons,
I fear, for his disappearance."

"Who are you? Tell me, first."

"My name is Edward Royle," was my brief response.

"Ah! Mr. Royle," the woman cried, "he has spoken of you many times. You
were his best friend, he said.