“You choose to talk in riddles. You know very well that in your hands I should be like a baby. Where are you taking me?” “I hardly know. I hope out of the shadow into the sunshine.” “Suppose a policeman--see, there is one over the road--were to come up now, and say I was his prisoner. What should you do?” “I should explain that he was mistaken.” “Explain!” She laughed. “But you can’t explain to every one, in the same fashion, for ever.” I was startled. Her question had a little startled me. To tell the truth, I was wondering myself where I was taking her. The Paris boat train did not start till nine. It was barely five. To stay in London for another four hours would be to run a risk. By that time, too, a watch might have been set upon the boat express. We were walking towards the Brompton Road. I was just thinking of calling a cab, being only restrained from doing so by the doubt as to where I should tell him to drive us, when my attention was diverted by an exclamation from the lady. “Mr. Ferguson! Look! There’s Mr. Lawrence!” I glanced in the direction she was pointing. In front, just far enough off to cause the outlines to be a little obscured by the mist, was a figure I seemed to recognise. I quickened my steps. “Lawrence! Philip Lawrence!” Although his back was turned to us, I could not but suspect that he had seen us first. Because, scarcely had I spoken, than, darting into the road, he sprang into a passing cab without troubling to stop it, shouted some direction to the driver, which I could not catch, and in an instant was away. To pursue and leave the lady there was out of the question. I waited till she came up. “Are you sure that it was Lawrence?” I inquired. “Certain! I have only seen him once, but then under circumstances which make it impossible that I ever could mistake him. There is a portrait of the man upon my brain--life-size. Wherever and whenever I see him I shall know that it is he.” “It is odd that he should have run away.” I was puzzled; not only by his flight, but by the rapidity with which it had been performed. “Yes, it is odd. What’s that?” A note of fear was in her voice. She came closer to me. I saw that her face had suddenly grown white. The hand which she had placed on my arm was trembling. Through the mist, out there in the Fulham Road, there came the sound of a woman’s laughter. It was that curious laughter which I had heard in Edwin Lawrence’s room--soft, low, musical; yet within it, indefinable, yet not to be mistaken, a quality which was pregnant with horrible suggestion. At the sound, for some cause, my heart stood still. CHAPTER XXI. A CHECK AT THE START We looked each other in the face. “You heard it?” Her voice quavered. “I heard something. It was only a woman’s laughter. She is somewhere close at hand, but is hidden from us by the fog.” “It was That which did it. Do you think I can be wrong? It is with Mr. Lawrence. It is his shadow: it follows close behind him.”