Part 33 (2/2)

She caught up the first coat she could find, and, hatless as she was, rushed down again and out through the front door, running to overtake Farrow, who had already left the house.

She caught him up at the end of the street, breathless and panting.

”Get a taxi! Oh, how slow you are!” she broke out pa.s.sionately.

She dashed out into the road, nearly getting run over in her excitement, and pulled up a slowly pa.s.sing taxicab.

Farrow had recovered himself and hurriedly followed.

”It may be all bluff,” he said, rather shamefacedly, as they drove away; ”but I don't like the look of things, and that's a fact. And I thought it my duty to warn the guv'nor.” Man-like, he hated to feel that he had made an unnecessary fuss.

Peg did not answer. Her eyes were fixed on the dark night, and her hands hard clasped in her lap. Every second seemed an eternity. The speeding cab seemed to crawl.

Presently she broke out hoa.r.s.ely:

”You are sure--sure that's where he has gone--to Heeler's?”

”He told me he should go. He told me to meet him there,” Farrow answered.

Peg bit her lip till the blood came.

”And you think--do you think ... they are ... waiting for him?”

”That was what it sounded like from the talk.”

”Who told you?”

”The landlord of the Green Man overheard and sent for me.”

Peg groaned. Her love for Forrester exaggerated the possible danger a thousandfold. She suffered tortures as they drove through the dark streets; and when at last the cab stopped close to the closed gates of Heeler's factory she flung herself from it headlong.

But the whole building was in darkness, and when she shook the padlocked gates with frantic hands they yielded nothing.

The cabman was staring at her curiously, and Peg came back to consciousness of her surroundings with a little gasping laugh.

She looked at Farrow.

”He can't have come, after all,” she said faintly. Farrow shrugged his shoulders. He was beginning to feel rather foolish.

Peg spoke to him sharply.

”Pay the man, and tell him to go. What's he think he's staring at?”

She was angry and shaken; she leaned against the closed yard gates, trembling from head to foot. Suddenly she laughed.

”Well--we've had a wild-goose chase,” she said dryly. ”Come on, we may as well go home. I daresay Mr. Forrester went to his club after all.

Come on, I say,” she added angrily as Farrow did not move. ”What are you waiting for?”

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