“Hello,” said Barbara.
She seemed more aloof than he remembered her.
“Hello,” said Miles. “I—er--hardly liked to drag you over here to the station.”
“Oh, that's all right,” said Barbara. He well remembered, now, the grey eyes with their long black lashes. “Besides, I have to be at the office later this evening.”
“At the office? On Sunday night?” “I'm in Fleet Street,” said Barbara. “I'm a journalist. That's why I said I didn't 'exactly' write fiction.” She brushed this away. The grey eyes studied him furtively. “What's wrong?” she asked suddenly. “What is it? You look . . .”
“There's the devil and all to pay,” Miles burst out. He felt somehow that he could let himself go in front of this girl. “I was supposed to find Fay Seton at any cost. Everything depended on it. We all thought she'd be in this train. Now I don't know what in blazes to do, because she wasn't in the train after all.”
“Wasn't in the train?” Barbara repeated. Her eyes opened wide. “But Fay Seton was in the train! She walked through that barrier not twenty seconds before you did!”
“Will pass-en-gers for Hon-i-ton,” sang the dictatorial loudspeaker, “join the queue outside Platform Num-ber Nine! Will pass-en-gers for Hon-i-ton . . .”
It blattered above every other noise in the station. And yet the realm of nightmare had returned.
“You must have been seeing things!” said Miles. “I tell you she wasn't aboard that train!” He looked round wildly as a new thought occurred to him. “Stop a bit! So you do know her after all?”
“No! I'd never set eyes on her before in my life!”
“Then how do you know it was Fay Seton?”
“From the photograph. The coloured photograph Professor Rigaud showed us on Friday night. After all, I . . . I though she was with you. And so I wasn't going to keep the appointment. Or at least—I didn't quite know. What's wrong?”
This was disaster fine and full.
He wasn't mad, Miles told himself; and he wasn't drunk, and he wasn't blind; and he could take his oath Fay Seton had not been aboard that train. Fantastic images occurred to him, of a white face and a red mouth. These images were exotic plants which withered in the atmosphere of Waterloo Station, certainly in the atmosphere of the train he had just left.
Yet he looked down at Barbara's fair hair and grey eyes; he thought of her normalness-that was it! A lovable normalness—in this murky affair; and at the same time he thought of all that had happened since he saw her last.
Marion was lying in a stupor at Greywood, and not from the effects of poison or a knife. Dr. Fell had spoken of an evil spirit. These things were not fancies; they were facts. Miles remembered his impression of that morning: here's a malignant force, and Dr. Fell knows what it is; we'll kill it, or it will kill us; and, in sober God's truth, the game had begun now.
All this went through his head in the split-second of Barbara's remark.
“You saw Fay Seton come through the gates,” he said. “In which direction did she go?”
“I couldn't tell. There are too many people.”
“Wait a minute! We're not beaten yet! Professor Rigaud told me last night . . . yes, he's at Greywood too! . . . that you 'phoned him yesterday, and that you knew Fay's address. She's got a room in town somewhere, and according to Dr. Fell she'll go straight to it. Do you know the address?”
“Yes!” Barbara, in a tailored suit and white blouse, with a mackintosh draped over her shoulders and an umbrella hung across her arm, fumblingly opened her handbag and took out an address-book. “This is t. Fiver Bolsover Place, N.W.1. But . . .!”
“Where's Bolsover Place??”
“Well, Bolsover Street is off Camden High Street in Camden Town. I—I looked it up when I wondered whether I ought to go and see her. It's rather a dingy neighborhood, but imagine she's even more hard up than the rest of us.”
“What's her quickest way to get there?”
“By Underground, easily. You can go straight through from here without a change.”
“Then that's what she's done, you can bet a fiver! She can't be two minutes ahead of us! Probably we can catch her! Come on!”
Give me some luck! He was praying under his breath. Give me just one proper hand to play, one card higher than a deuce or a three! And not long afterwards, when they burst out of a ticket-queue and penetrated down into the airless depths where a maze of lines join, he got his card.
Miles heard the rumble of the approaching train as they emerged on the platform of the Northern Line. They were at one end of the platform, and people straggled for more than a hundred yards along its curve. Vision was blurred in this half-cylinder cavern, once brave with white tiling, now sordid and ill-lighted.
The red train swept out of its tunnel in a gale of wind, and streamed past to a stop. And he saw Fay Seton.
He saw her by the bright flash of windows now unscaled from blast-netting. She was standing at the extreme other end of the platform, the front of the train; and she moved forward as the doors rolled open.
“Fay!” he yelled. “Fay!”
It went completely unheard.
“Edgware train!” the guard was bellowing. “Edgware train!”
“Don't try to run up there!” warned Barbara. “The doors will close and we'll lose her together. Hadn't we better go in here?”
They dived into the rear car of the train, a non-smoker, just before the doors did close. Its only other occupants were a policeman, a somnolent-looking Australian soldier, and the guard at his panel of control-buttons. Miles had got only a faint glimpse of Fay's face; but it had looked fierce, preoccupied, with that same curious smile of last night.
It was maddening to be so close to her, and yet . . .
“If I can get through to the front of the train--!”
“Please!” urged Barbara. She indicated the sign, “Do Not Pass From One Car To Another Whilst The Train Is In Motion”' she indicated the guard, and she indicated the policeman. “It wouldn't do much good, would it,if you got yourself arrested now?”
“No. I suppose not.”
“She'll get out at Camden Town. So will we. Sit down here.”
In their ears was a soft, streaming thunder as the train rocketed through the tunnel. The car swayed and creaked round a curve; lights behind opaque glass jolted on the upholstery of the seats. Miles, all his nerves twitching with doubt, and down beside Barbara on a double-seat facing forward.
“I don't like to ask too many questions,” continued Barbara, “but I've been half mad with curiosity ever since I talked to you on the 'phone. What is all the urgency about overtaking Fay Seton?
The train ground to a stop, and the sliding doors rolled open.
“Charing Cross!” yelled the guard conscientiously. “Edgware train!”
Miles sprang to his feet.
“Really it's all right,” Barbara pleaded. “If Dr. Fell says she's going to that place of hers, she's bound to get out at Camden Town. What can happen in the meantime?”
“I don't know,” admitted Miles. “Look here,” he added, sitting down again and taking her hand in both of his. “I've known you only a very short time; but do you mind my saying I'd rather talk to you now than almost anyone else I can think of?”
“No,” answered Barbara, looking away from him, “I don't mind.”
“I can't say how you've been spending the weekend,” pursued Miles, “but we've been having nothing but a Grand Guignol of vampires and near-murders, and . . .”
“What did you say?” She drew back her hand quickly.