“What was that!” asked T.X.
“My convict number when I was in Dartmoor Prison, sir.”
“What did the note say?”
“‘Get out of here quick’ — I don’t know who had put it there, but I’d evidently been spotted and I was taking no chances. That’s the whole story from beginning to end. I accidentally happened to meet the young lady, Miss Holland — Miss Bartholomew as she is — and followed her to her house in Portman Place. That was the night you were there.”
T.X. found himself to his intense annoyance going very red.
“And you know no more?” he asked.
“No more, sir — and if I may be struck dead—”
“Keep all that sabbath talk for the chaplain,” commended T.X., and they took away Mr. Fisher, not an especially dissatisfied man.
That night T.X. interviewed his prisoner at Cannon Row police station and made a few more enquiries.
“There is one thing I would like to ask you,” said the girl when he met her next morning in Green Park.
“If you were going to ask whether I made enquiries as to where your habitation was,” he warned her, “I beg of you to refrain.”
She was looking very beautiful that morning, he thought. The keen air had brought a colour to her face and lent a spring to her gait, and, as she strode along by his side with the free and careless swing of youth, she was an epitome of the life which even now was budding on every tree in the park.
“Your father is back in town, by the way,” he said, “and he is most anxious to see you.”
She made a little grimace.
“I hope you haven’t been round talking to father about me.”
“Of course I have,” he said helplessly; “I have also had all the reporters up from Fleet Street and given them a full description of your escapades.”
She looked round at him with laughter in her eyes.
“You have all the manners of an early Christian martyr,” she said. “Poor soul! Would you like to be thrown to the lions?”
“I should prefer being thrown to the demnition ducks and drakes,” he said moodily.
“You’re such a miserable man,” she chided him, “and yet you have everything to make life worth living.”
“Ha, ha!” said T.X.
“You have, of course you have! You have a splendid position. Everybody looks up to you and talks about you. You have got a wife and family who adore you—”
He stopped and looked at her as though she were some strange insect.
“I have a how much?” he asked credulously.
“Aren’t you married?” she asked innocently.
He made a strange noise in his throat.
“Do you know I have always thought of you as married,” she went on; “I often picture you in your domestic circle reading to the children from the Daily Megaphone those awfully interesting stories about Little Willie Waterbug.”
He held on to the railings for support.
“May we sit down?” he asked faintly.
She sat by his side, half turned to him, demure and wholly adorable.
“Of course you are right in one respect,” he said at last, “but you’re altogether wrong about the children.”
“Are you married!” she demanded with no evidence of amusement.
“Didn’t you know?” he asked.
She swallowed something.
“Of course it’s no business of mine and I’m sure I hope you are very happy.”
“Perfectly happy,” said T.X. complacently. “You must come out and see me one Saturday afternoon when I am digging the potatoes. I am a perfect devil when they let me loose in the vegetable garden.”
“Shall we go on?” she said.
He could have sworn there were tears in her eyes and manlike he thought she was vexed with him at his fooling.
“I haven’t made you cross, have I?” he asked.
“Oh no,” she replied.
“I mean you don’t believe all this rot about my being married and that sort of thing?”
“I’m not interested,” she said, with a shrug of her shoulders, “not very much. You’ve been very kind to me and I should be an awful boor if I wasn’t grateful. Of course, I don’t care whether you’re married or not, it’s nothing to do with me, is it?”
“Naturally it isn’t,” he replied. “I suppose you aren’t married by any chance?”
“Married,” she repeated bitterly; “why, you will make my fourth!”
She had hardy got the words out of her mouth before she realized her terrible error. A second later she was in his arms and he was kissing her to the scandal of one aged park keeper, one small and dirty-faced little boy and a moulting duck who seemed to sneer at the proceedings which he watched through a yellow and malignant eye.
“Belinda Mary,” said T.X. at parting, “you have got to give up your little country establishment, wherever it may be and come back to the discomforts of Portman Place. Oh, I know you can’t come back yet. That ‘somebody’ is there, and I can pretty well guess who it is.”
“Who?” she challenged.
“I rather fancy your mother has come back,” he suggested.
A look of scorn dawned into her pretty face.
“Good lord, Tommy!” she said in disgust, “you don’t think I should keep mother in the suburbs without her telling the world all about it!”
“You’re an undutiful little beggar,” he said.
They had reached the Horse Guards at Whitehall and he was saying goodbye to her.
“If it comes to a matter of duty,” she answered, “perhaps you will do your duty and hold up the traffic for me and let me cross this road.”
“My dear girl,” he protested, “hold up the traffic?”
“Of course,” she said indignantly, “you’re a policeman.”
“Only when I am in uniform,” he said hastily, and piloted her across the road.
It was a new man who returned to the gloomy office in Whitehall. A man with a heart that swelled and throbbed with the pride and joy of life’s most precious possession.
Chapter XVIII
T.X. sat at his desk, his chin in his hands, his mind remarkably busy. Grave as the matter was which he was considering, he rose with alacrity to meet the smiling girl who was ushered through the door by Mansus, preternaturally solemn and mysterious.
She was radiant that day. Her eyes were sparkling with an unusual brightness.
“I’ve got the most wonderful thing to tell you,” she said, “and I can’t tell you.”
“That’s a very