Part 34 (2/2)
replied the chief. ”Nothing like having reserves in hand, you know. Now let me give you a tip. It is almost exactly two o'clock. Never mind the people who are already here, gentlemen. Keep your eyes open on any new-comers. Look out--quietly--for folk who seem to drop in as casually as we do. Look, for example, at those two well-dressed men who are coming across the sward there, swinging their sticks. They--”
Allerd.y.k.e suddenly bent his head towards the table.
”Careful!” he said. ”Gad!--I know one of 'em, anyhow. Van Koon, as I live!”
CHAPTER x.x.xII
THE CHILVERTON ANTI-CLIMAX
The chief allowed himself to take a quick searching glance at the two men he had indicated. He had already heard of Van Koon and of his sudden disappearance from the hotel after the chance encounter with Chilverton, and he now regarded him with professional interest.
”The tall man, you mean?” he asked.
”Just so,” answered Allerd.y.k.e. ”The other man I don't know. But that's Van Koon. What's he here for, now? Is he in this, after all?”
The chief made no reply. He was furtively watching the two men, who had dropped into chairs at a vacant table beneath the shade of the trees and were talking to a waitress. Having taken a good look at Van Koon, he turned his attention to Van Koon's companion, a little, dapper man, smartly dressed in bright blue serge, and finished off with great care in all his appointments. He seemed to be approaching middle age; there were faint traces of grey in his pointed beard and upward-twisted moustaches; he carried his years, however, in very jaunty fas.h.i.+on, and his white Homburg hat, ornamented with a blue ribbon, was set at a rakish angle on the side of his close-cropped head. In his right eye he wore a gold-rimmed monocle; just then he was bringing it to bear an the waitress who stood between himself and his companion.
”You don't know the other man, either of you?” asked the chief suddenly.
Allerd.y.k.e shook his head, but Appleyard nodded.
”I know that chap by sight,” he said. ”I've seen him in the City--about Threadneedle Street--two or three times of late. He's always very smartly dressed--I took him for a foreigner of some sort.”
The chief turned to his coffee.
”Well--never mind him,” he said. ”Pay no attention--so long as that man is Van Koon, I'll watch him quietly. But you may be sure he has come here on the same business that has brought us here. I--”
Allerd.y.k.e, whose sharp eyes were perpetually moving round the crowded enclosure and the little groups which mingled outside it, suddenly nudged the chief's elbow.
”Miss Slade!” he whispered. ”And--Rayner!”
Appleyard had caught sight of his two fellow inmates of the Pompadour at the very moment in which Allerd.y.k.e espied them. He slightly turned away and bent his head; Allerd.y.k.e followed his example.
”You can't mistake them,” he said to the chief. ”I've described the man to you--a hunchback. They're crossing through the crowd towards the tea-house door.”
”And they've gone in there,” replied the chief in another minute.
”Um!--this is getting more mysterious than ever. I wish I could get a word with some of our men who really know something! It seems to me--”
But at that moment Blindway came strolling along, his nose in the air, his eyes fixed on the roofs of the houses outside the park, and he quietly dropped a twisted sc.r.a.p of paper at his superior's feet as he pa.s.sed. The chief picked it up, spread it out on the marble-topped table, and read its message aloud to his companions.
”City men say the informant is here and will indicate the men to be arrested in a few minutes.”
The chief tore the sc.r.a.p of paper into minute shreds and dropped them on the gra.s.s.
”Things are almost at the crisis,” he murmured with a smile. ”It seems that we, gentlemen, are to play the part of spectators. The next thing to turn up--”
”Is Fullaway!” suddenly exclaimed Allerd.y.k.e, thrown off his guard and speaking aloud. ”And, by Gad!--he's got that man Chilverton with him.
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