“You are certainly right, Mr Pons,” said the girl.
She looked very becoming today in a smart tailored suit. She had put her overcoat and luggage on the rack and still wore the bobbled hat, which gave the carriage something of the atmosphere of our destination.
The trip passed uneventfully; we took lunch and high tea in the dining car and long before darkness fell we were well on our way. Pons spent much of the time studying his maps and occasionally scribbling notes, while I wracked my brains over The Times crossword, which I finally threw down in disgust.
“It is digit, Parker,” Solar Pons observed with a smile.
“Eigh, Pons?”
“The answer to nine across, my dear fellow. I solved it almost immediately but refrained from filling it in as I did not want to spoil the problem for you.”
“You have not done that, Pons,” I observed grimly, picking up the paper and scanning the clues. It seemed blindingly simple once my companion had pointed it out and I was conscious of the fair girl’s quiet amusement as I somewhat savagely inked the answer in.
I had noticed, as the journey progressed, that my companion, though apparently engrossed in his calculations, had cast sharp glances about him from time to time, particularly at people passing the door of the compartment. Now I was astonished to see him suddenly leap to his feet. We had in fact drawn the blinds as dusk fell, in order to ensure privacy, and Pons strode to the door and swiftly slid it open. A small man dressed in a salt and pepper suit with a bow-tie slid into the compartment with a muffled exclamation.
“Dear me,” said Solar Pons gently, as he closed his hand over the elbow of the little man, ostensibly to steady him.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” the latter stammered, blinking about him.
“It is rather a squeeze in the corridor here.”
“It is rather a squeeze in here also,” said Solar Pons, clamping his fingers on the other’s arm and propelling him back into the passageway. The fellow howled with pain and tears ran down from beneath his horn-rimmed spectacles.
“You may tell your master that we are en route to Scotland,” said Pons crisply. “That will save you a good deal of time and trouble. You may also add — though that is expecting rather too much of human nature — that you are doing your job extremely incompetently. There is an art to observing people without being noticed and you have not yet mastered it.”
He slammed the door in the other’s face and resumed his seat with a dry chuckle, oblivious of my astonishment and that of Miss Hayling.
“What on earth was that about, Pons?” I asked.
“That little man was obviously one of Colonel McDonald’s agents,” he observed soberly. “But, as I indicated, he is not very good at his job. I have noticed him no less than a dozen times during the day, giving our compartment an extremely close degree of attention. I happened to observe that the door had been slid back an inch or so, though I secured it firmly after tea. He was obviously listening in the corridor.”
“Good heavens, Pons,” I said. “This is serious. So we are expected at Glen Affric?”
“Of course, Parker,” my companion said calmly. “We would have been in any case. I would have expected little less of the Colonel. He is leaving nothing to chance. You forget he has already made several attempts to remove me from his sphere of influence.”
He pulled thoughtfully at the lobe of his left ear.
“The question is whether he will try anything before we reach our destination.”
He turned to the girl.
“I take it we shall be breaking our journey in Edinburgh this evening?”
“Oh, certainly, Mr Pons. I took the precaution of booking rooms at one of the best hotels as soon as I left Dr Parker last night.”
“Hmm.”
Pons continued to look grave.
“We must be on our guard this evening, that is all. I think we must stay indoors tonight, Parker. An accident before we reached Glen Affric would suit McDonald’s purposes nicely. But I do not think even he would be fool-hardy enough to try anything on a crowded train in broad daylight tomorrow.”
And he immersed himself in his documents until we had arrived at our destination. I noticed his eyes were extremely watchful and alert as we alighted in the great, steam-filled vault of Waverley Station. He chuckled as the little man of the dramatic interview scuttled away.
“I fancy we have seen the last of him at least, Parker.”
The evening was well advanced by this time and the air raw and damp and he hurried us out to the taxi-rank. In a few moments we were bowling swiftly down Princes Street to the elegant, not to say luxurious hotel Miss Hayling had engaged for us.
Pons glanced back through the rear window several times but as far as I could make out we were not being followed by any other vehicle. As though he could read my thoughts, Pons nodded grimly and put his empty pipe between his teeth.
“Unless I miss my guess, Parker, McDonald would know our destination in advance. He has a big organisation.”
“Then why would he set someone to watch us on the train, Pons?”
“He wants to make sure we three have arrived at Waverley. Once we are in the city he can pick us up again without much trouble.”
The girl shivered suddenly, though it was warm in the interior of the cab. We were screened from the driver by a heavy sheet of glass and I had already noted that Pons had given the man a very careful scrutiny, being at some pains not to choose the first vehicle in the station-rank.
“I am afraid I have involved you in a very black business, Mr Pons. I would never forgive myself for leading others into danger if something dreadful were to happen.”
Solar Pons’ eyes rested reflectively on the girl’s face, now lit, now dark as the lights from shops in the great thoroughfare glanced across her expressive features.
“Do not disturb yourself, Miss Hayling,” he said, solicitude in his tone. “You are forgetting I am operating within my own milieu. The danger and excitement of the chase are like meat and drink to me and the Colonel is an opponent worthy of my steel. My only concern was for your welfare.”
The girl smiled winningly.
“Oh, I am safe enough in your company, Mr Pons,” she said confidently. “I feel so much better already.”
By this time the cab was crunching into the hotel forecourt and the discreet lights of the vestibule were beginning to compose themselves from the thin mist which lay about the city. Gas-lamps bloomed in the square and marched in stately rows along Princes Street until they were lost in the hazy shimmer. At any other time such a noble prospect would have gladdened my heart but our errand and the mortal danger in which Pons’ young client stood filled my mind with foreboding.
We lost no time in paying off the cab and while the luggage was being carried in, we hurried the girl through into the warm luxuriance of the hotel lobby.
The evening passed without incident. After we had registered and taken possession of our respective rooms, we dined a trois at a side-table in the great elegant Edwardian restaurant with its crystal chandeliers and afterward took coffee in a cavernous smoking-room which had an enormous fire of logs blazing in its huge stone fireplace. Pons sat slightly apart from us, his eyes apparently directed toward the dimly-glimpsed facade of the square through the fog which seemed to have thickened at the long windows hung with filmy gauze. For some reason the hotel servants had not pulled to the thick velvet curtains in here but even as I noted the fact an elderly man in dark blue livery appeared to make a solemn, stately ritual of the drawing.