"
I handed him the pistol without a word.
"Don't assume that I want to mystify you," he added, "but the presence
of any one else might jeopardize my plan. I don't expect to be long."
The cold light of dawn flooded the hall-way momentarily; then the door
closed again and I went upstairs to my study, watching Nayland Smith
as he strode across the common in the early morning mist. He was
making for the Nine Elms, but I lost sight of him before he reached
them.
I sat there for some time, watching for the first glow of sunrise. A
policeman tramped past the house, and, a while later, a belated
reveller in evening clothes. That sense of unreality assailed me
again. Out there in the grey mist a man who was vested with powers
which rendered him a law unto himself, who had the British Government
behind him in all that he might choose to do, who had been summoned
from Rangoon to London on singular and dangerous business, was
employing himself with a plate of cold turbot, a jug of milk, and a
trowel!
Away to the right, and just barely visible, a tramcar stopped by the
common, then proceeded on its way, coming in a westerly direction. Its
lights twinkled yellowly through the greyness, but I was less
concerned with the approaching car than with the solitary traveller
who had descended from it.
As the car went rocking by below me I strained my eyes in an endeavour
more clearly to discern the figure, which, leaving the high-road, had
struck-out across the common.
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