Detective and mystery stories; Secret societies -- Fiction
This address he had determined to learn, and, having learned it, was
also determined to inspect the premises. But for such a stroke of good
luck as that which had befallen him at the Savoy, he could scarcely have
hoped. His course now lay clearly before him. And presently, laying his
pipe aside, he took up a telephone which stood upon the dressing table
and rang up a garage with which he had an account.
“Hello, is that you, Mason?” he said. “Have the racer to meet me at
seven o’clock, half-way along Pall Mall.”
Never for a moment did he relax his vigilance. Observing every
precaution when he left The Chancery Agency, he spent the intervening
time at one of his clubs, from which, having made an early dinner, he
set off for Pall Mall at ten minutes to seven. A rakish-looking gray car
resembling a giant torpedo was approaching slowly from the direction of
Buckingham Palace. The driver pulled up as Paul Harley stepped into
the road, and following a brief conversation Harley set out westward,
performing a detour before heading south for Lower Claybury, a little
town with which he was only slightly acquainted. No evidence of
espionage could he detect, but the note of danger spoke intimately to
his inner consciousness; so that when, the metropolis left behind, he
found himself in the hilly Surrey countryside, more than once he pulled
up, sitting silent for a while and listening intently. He failed,
always, to detect any sign of pursuit.
The night was tropically brilliant, hot, and still, but saving the
distant murmur of the city, and ordinary comings and goings along the
country roads, there was nothing to account for a growing anxiety of
which he became conscious.
He was in gunshot of Old Claybury church tower, when the sight of a
haystack immediately inside a meadow gate suggested a likely hiding
place for the racer; and, having run the car under cover, Harley
proceeded on foot to the little railway station. He approached a porter
who leaned in the doorway. “Could you direct me to the house of his
excellency Ormuz Khan?” he inquired.
“Yes, sir,” was the reply. “If you follow the uphill road on the other
side of the station until you come to the Manor Park--you will see the
gates--and then branch off to the right, taking the road facing the
gates. Hillside--that’s the name of the house--is about a quarter of a
mile along.”
Dusk was beginning to fall and, although the nature of his proposed
operations demanded secrecy, he recognized that every hour was precious.
Accordingly he walked immediately back to the spot at which he had left
the car and, following the porter’s directions, drove over the line at
the level crossing immediately beyond the station, and proceeded up
a tree-lined road until he found himself skirting the railing of an
extensive tract of park land.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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