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CHAPTER V

IN WHICH THERE IS TROUBLE AT GORING

I

"Did you have a good night, Mullings?" remarked Hugh as he got into his car.

The man grinned sheepishly.

"I dunno what the game was, sir, but I ain't for many more of them. They're about the ugliest crowd of blackguards in that there 'ouse that I ever wants to see again."

"How many did you see altogether?" asked Drummond.

"I saw six actual like, sir; but I 'eard others talking."

The car slowed up before the post office and Hugh got out. There were one or two things he proposed to do in London before going to Goring, and it struck him that a wire to Peter Darrell might allay that gentleman's uneasiness if he was late in getting down. So new was he to the tortuous ways of crime, that the foolishness of the proceeding never entered his head: up to date in his life, if he had wished to send a wire he had sent one. And so it may be deemed a sheer fluke on his part, that a man dawdling by the counter aroused his suspicions. He was a perfectly ordinary man, chatting casually with the girl on the other side; but it chanced that,

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