“Very sorry to have disturbed you, Mr. Samuel. I just looked in to say good-bye. I sail on Saturday, and my time will be pretty fully taken up all the week. I have to go down to the country to get some final instructions from the client whose important papers I am taking over. I’m sorry to have missed your father, Mr. Samuel.”
“Yes, this is his golf day, I’ll tell him you looked in.”
“Is there anything I can do before I go?”
“Do?”
“Well—”—Jno. Peters coughed tactfully—“I see that you are engaged with a client, Mr. Samuel, and was wondering if any little point of law had arisen with which you did not feel yourself quite capable of coping, in which case I might perhaps be of assistance.”
“Oh, that lady,” said Sam. “That was Miss Milliken’s sister.”
“Indeed? I didn’t know Miss Milliken had a sister.”
“No?” said Sam.
“She is not very like her in appearance.”
“No. This one is the beauty of the family, I believe. A very bright, intelligent girl. I was telling her about your revolver just before you came in, and she was most interested. It’s a pity you haven’t got it with you now, to show to her.”
“Oh, but I have! I have, Mr. Samuel!” said Peters, opening a small handbag and taking out a hymn-book, half a pound of mixed chocolates, a tongue sandwich, and the pistol, in the order named. “I was on my way to the Rupert Street range for a little practice. I should be glad to show it to her.”
“Well, wait here a minute or two,” said Sam, “I’ll have finished talking business in a moment,”
He returned to the inner office.
“Well?” cried Billie.
“Eh? Oh, he’s gone,” said Sam. “I persuaded him to go away. He was a little excited, poor fellow. And now let us return to what we were talking about. You say….” He broke off with an exclamation, and glanced at his watch. “Good Heavens! I had no idea of the time. I promised to run up and see a man in one of the offices in the next court. He wants to consult me on some difficulty which has arisen with one of his clients. Rightly or wrongly he values my advice. Can you spare me for a short while? I shan’t be more than ten minutes.”
“Certainly.”
“Here is something you may care to look at while I’m gone. I don’t know if you have read it? Widgery on Nisi Prius Evidence. Most interesting.”
He went out. Jno. Peters looked up from his Home Whispers.
“You can go in now,” said Sam.
“Certainly, Mr. Samuel, certainly.”
Sam took up the copy of Home Whispers, and sat down with his feet on the desk. He turned to the serial story and began to read the synopsis.
In the inner room, Billie, who had rejected the mental refreshment offered by Widgery, and was engaged in making a tour of the office, looking at the portraits of whiskered men whom she took correctly to be the Thorpes, Prescotts, Winslows and Applebys mentioned on the contents-bill outside, was surprised to hear the door open at her back. She had not expected Sam to return so instantaneously.
Nor had he done so. It was not Sam who entered. It was a man of repellent aspect whom she recognised instantly, for Jno. Peters was one of those men who, once seen, are not easily forgotten. He was smiling, a cruel, cunning smile—at least, she thought he was; Mr. Peters himself was under the impression that his face was wreathed in a benevolent simper; and in his hand he bore the largest pistol ever seen outside a motion picture studio.
“How do you do, Miss Milliken?” he said.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Billie had been standing near the wall, inspecting a portrait of the late Mr. Josiah Appleby, of which the kindest thing one can say is that one hopes it did not do him justice. She now shrank back against this wall, as if she were trying to get through it. The edge of the portrait’s frame tilted her hat out of the straight, but in this supreme moment she did not even notice it.