eyes and fool him a bit. Lord! how I wish my uncle, General Sadgrove, was with us!”
“He seemed to me a trifle dull,” remarked the Duke, inconsequently.
Forsyth made allowances, and did not answer.
“See here,” he said, after a minute’s reflection. “This is the plan to throw the spy off the scent. It’s nine o’clock—just the hour when it would be quite natural for a bachelor to go to his club. I will stroll round to Northumberland Avenue, and drop into the Constitutional for an hour. In the meanwhile, do you stay here and lie low behind locked doors, and with gas turned down. That rascal will almost certainly retire to his employers baffled, for he would not think that I should go out and leave you alone.”
“That sounds promising,” Beaumanoir assented. “But don’t stay a moment longer than the hour, Alec. I don’t think I could stand it.”
Forsyth reassured him, and having slipped into evening clothes and donned a light overcoat, he issued his final instructions. It was beginning to be natural to him now to take the lead, after that glimpse of the lurking figure
[83]
