THE SECRET ADVERSARY BY AGATHA CHRISTIE

“Waterloo?” frowned Tuppence.

“Why, yes. Didn’t he tell you?”

“I haven’t seen him either,” replied Tuppence impatiently. “Go on about

Waterloo. What were you doing there?”

“He gave me a call. Over the phone. Told me to get a move on, and hustle.

Said he was trailing two crooks.”

“Oh!” said Tuppence, her eyes opening. “I see. Go on.”

“I hurried along right away. Beresford was there. He pointed out the

crooks. The big one was mine, the guy you bluffed. Tommy shoved a ticket into

my hand and told me to get aboard the cars. He was going to sleuth the other

crook.” Julius paused. “I thought for sure you’d know all this.”

“Julius,” said Tuppence firmly, “stop walking up and down. It makes me

giddy. Sit down in that armchair, and tell me the whole story with as few fancy

turns of speech as possible.”

Mr. Hersheimmer obeyed.

“Sure,” he said. “Where shall I begin?”

“Where you left off. At Waterloo.”

“Well,” began Julius, “I got into one of your dear old-fashioned

first-class British compartments. The train was just off. First thing I knew a

guard came along and informed me mighty politely that I wasn’t in a

smoking-carriage. I handed him out half a dollar, and that settled that. I did a

bit of prospecting along the corridor to the next coach. Whittington was there

right enough. When I saw the skunk, with his big sleek fat face, and thought of

poor little Jane in his clutches, I felt real mad that I hadn’t got a gun with

me. I’d have tickled him up some.

“We got to Bournemouth all right. Whittington took a cab and gave the name

of an hotel. I did likewise, and we drove up within three minutes of each

other. He hired a room, and I hired one too. So far it was all plain sailing.

He hadn’t the remotest notion that anyone was on to him. Well, he just sat

around in the hotel lounge, reading the papers and so on, till it was time for

dinner. He didn’t hurry any over that either.

“I began to think that there was nothing doing, that he’d just come on the

trip for his health, but I remembered that he hadn’t changed for dinner, though

it was by way of being a slap-up hotel, so it seemed likely enough that he’d be

going out on his real business afterwards.

“Sure enough, about nine o’clock, so he did. Took a car across the

town–mighty pretty place by the way, I guess I’ll take Jane there for a spell

when I find her–and then paid it off and struck out along those pine-woods on

the top of the cliff. I was there too, you understand. We walked, maybe, for

half an hour. There’s a lot of villas all the way along, but by degrees they

seemed to get more and more thinned out, and in the end we got to one that

seemed the last of the bunch. Big house it was, with a lot of piny grounds

around it.

“It was a pretty black night, and the carriage drive up to the house was

dark as pitch. I could hear him ahead, though I couldn’t see him. I had to walk

carefully in case he might get on to it that he was being followed. I turned a

curve and I was just in time to see him ring the bell and get admitted to the

house. I just stopped where I was. It was beginning to rain, and I was soon

pretty near soaked through. Also, it was almighty cold.

“Whittington didn’t come out again, and by and by I got kind of restive,

and began to mouch around. All the ground floor windows were shuttered tight,

but upstairs, on the first floor (it was a two-storied house) I noticed a window

with a light burning and the curtains not drawn.

“Now, just opposite to that window, there was a tree growing. It was about

thirty foot away from the house, maybe, and I sort of got it into my head that,

if I climbed up that tree, I’d very likely be able to see into that room. Of

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