I heard my name spoken, and turned to find White at my elbow.
‘Mr Abney would like to see you, sir.’
I went upstairs, glad to escape. The tension of the situation had begun to tear at my nerves.
‘Cub id, Bister Burds,’ said my employer, swallowing a lozenge. His aspect was more dazed than ever. ‘White has just bade an–ah–extraordinary cobbudicatiod to me. It seebs he is in reality a detective, an employee of Pidkertod’s Agedcy, of which you have, of course–ah–heard.’
So White had revealed himself. On the whole, I was not surprised. Certainly his motive for concealment, the fear of making Mr Abney nervous, was removed. An inrush of Red Indians with tomahawks could hardly have added greatly to Mr Abney’s nervousness at the present juncture.
‘Sent here by Mr Ford, I suppose?’ I said. I had to say something.
‘Exactly. Ah–precisely.’ He sneezed. ‘Bister Ford, without codsulting me–I do not cobbedt on the good taste or wisdob of his actiod–dispatched White to apply for the post of butler at this–ah–house, his predecessor having left at a bobedt’s dotice, bribed to do so, I strodgly suspect, by Bister Ford himself. I bay be wrodging Bister Ford, but do dot thig so.’
I thought the reasoning sound.
‘All thad, however,’ resumed Mr Abney, removing his face from a jug of menthol at which he had been sniffing with the tense concentration of a dog at a rabbit-hole, ‘is beside the poidt. I berely bedtiod it to explaid why White will accompady you to London.’
‘What!’
The exclamation was forced from me by my dismay. This was appalling. If this infernal detective was to accompany me, my chance of bringing Ogden back was gone. It had been my intention to go straight to my rooms, in the hope of finding him not yet departed. But how was I to explain his presence there to White?
‘I don’t think it’s necessary, Mr Abney,’ I protested. ‘I am sure I can manage this affair by myself.’
‘Two heads are better thad wud,’ said the invalid sententiously, burying his features in the jug once more.
‘Too many cooks spoil the broth,’ I replied. If the conversation was to consist of copybook maxims, I could match him as long as he pleased.
He did not keep up the intellectual level of the discussion.
‘Dodseds!’ he snapped, with the irritation of a man whose proverb has been capped by another. I had seldom heard him speak so sharply. White’s revelation had evidently impressed him. He had all the ordinary peaceful man’s reverence for the professional detective.
‘White will accompany you, Bister Burds,’ he said doggedly.
‘Very well,’ I said.
After all, it might be that I should get an opportunity of giving him the slip. London is a large city.
A few minutes later the cab arrived, and White and I set forth on our mission.
We did not talk much in the cab. I was too busy with my thoughts to volunteer remarks, and White, apparently, had meditations of his own to occupy him.
It was when we had settled ourselves in an empty compartment and the train had started that he found speech. I had provided myself with a book as a barrier against conversation, and began at once to make a pretence of reading, but he broke through my defences.
‘Interesting book, Mr Burns?’
‘Very,’ I said.
‘Life’s more interesting than books.’
I made no comment on this profound observation. He was not discouraged.
‘Mr Burns,’ he said, after the silence had lasted a few moments.
‘Yes?’
‘Let’s talk for a spell. These train-journeys are pretty slow.’
Again I seemed to detect that curious undercurrent of meaning in his voice which I had noticed in the course of our brief exchange of remarks in the hall. I glanced up and met his eye. He was looking at me in a way that struck me as curious. There was something in those bright brown eyes of his which had the effect of making me vaguely uneasy. Something seemed to tell me that he had a definite motive in forcing his conversation on me.
‘I guess I can interest you a heap more than that book, even if it’s the darndest best seller that was ever hatched.’