But the message he found waiting for him at the left-luggage office changed his opinion. He had been rather surprised to find that it was in fact a piece of luggage, a small brown suitcase. 'Are you sure this is the article?' he asked the attendant rather incautiously.
'Listen, mate, it's yours isn't it? You gave me the ticket for it and that's the luggage,' said the man and turned away to deal with another customer. Glodstone glanced at a label tied to the handle and was satisfied. Neatly typed on it was his own name. He walked back to the car with a new sense of caution and twice stopped at a corner to make sure he was not being followed. Then with the case on the seat beside him he drove to the flat of an aged aunt in Highgate which he was forced to use when he was in London. In keeping with his background, Glodstone would have much preferred his club, The Ancient Automobile, but it didn't run to rooms.
'Well I never, if it isn't Gerald,' said the old lady, rather gratuitously in Glodstone's opinion, 'and you didn't even write to say you were coming.'
'I didn't have time. Urgent business,' said Glodstone.
'It's a good thing your room is still ready just as you left it, though I'll have to put a hot-water bottle in to air the sheets. Now you just sit down and I'll make a nice pot of tea.'
But Glodstone was in no mood for these domestic details. They clashed too prosaically with his excitement. All the same, his aunt disappeared into the kitchen while he went up to his room and opened the suitcase. Inside it was stuffed with French newspapers and it was only when he had taken them all out that he found the second envelope. He ripped it open and took out several sheets of notepaper. They were all crested and the handwriting was unmistakably that of La Comtesse.
'Dear Mr Glodstone, Thank you for coming thus far,' he read. 'It was to be expected of you but, though I would have you come to my aid, I fear extremely you do not appreciate the dangers you will face and I would not put you at your peril without fair warning. Desperate as my situation is, I cannot allow you to come unprepared. Those about me are wise in the ways of crime whereas you are not. This is perhaps to your advantage but for your own sake and for mine, be on your guard and come, if you can, armed, for this is a matter of life and death and murder has already been done.'
'Your tea is ready, dear,' the old lady called from her cluttered sitting-room.
'All right, I'll be there in a minute,' said Glodstone irritably. Here he was about to engage in a matter of life and death and with murder already done, and aged aunts who called him dear and served tea were distinctly out of place. He read on. 'I enclose the route you must follow. The ports are watched and on no account must you appear to be other than an English gentleman touring through France. It is vital therefore that you take your time and trust no one. The men against whom you are set have agents among the gendarmerie and are themselves above suspicion. I cannot state their influence too highly. Nor dare I catalogue their crimes in writing.' This time the letter was signed 'Yours in gratitude, Deirdre de Montcon,' and as before the postscript ordered him to burn both letter and envelope.
Glodstone turned to the other page. It was typewritten and stated that he was to cross from Dover to Ostend on the early morning ferry on the 28th of July and drive to Iper before passing the frontier into France the following day. Thereafter his route was listed with hotels at which 'rooms have been booked for you.' Glodstone read down the list in amazement. Considering the terrible dangers La Comtesse was evidently facing, her instructions were quite extraordinarily explicit. Only when he turned the page was there an explanation. In her own handwriting she had written, 'Should I have need to communicate with you, my messages will be waiting for you in your rooms each night. And now that I have written this by hand, please copy and then burn.'
Glodstone reached in his pocket for a pen, only to be interrupted by his aunt.
'Your tea's getting cold, dear.'
'Damn,' said Glodstone, but went through to the sitting-room and spent an extremely impatient half an hour listening to the latest family gossip. By the time Aunt Lucy got on to the various diseases her grandnieces and nephews had been suffering from, Glodstone was practically rabid. 'Excuse me, but I have some really pressing business to attend to,' he said, as she launched into a particularly clinical account of the symptoms his cousin Michael had contracted, or more precisely expanded, as a result of mumps.
'Balls,' continued Aunt Lucy implacably.
'I beg your pardon,' said Glodstone, whose attention had been fixed on La Comtesse's instructions.
'I was saying that his '
'I simply must go,' said Glodstone and rather rudely left the room.
'What a very peculiar boy Gerald is,' muttered the old lady as she cleared away the tea things. Her opinion was confirmed some forty minutes later when she discovered the hallway was filling with smoke.
'What in heaven's name are you doing in there?' she demanded of the door to the lavatory which seemed to be the source of the fire.
'Nothing,' choked Glodstone, wishing to God he hadn't been so conscientious in following La Comtesse's instructions to burn all evidence. The letter and his itinerary had gone easily enough, but his attempt to screw the envelope into a ball and catch the flood had failed dismally. The envelope remained obstinately buoyant with the crest plainly visible. And the cistern had been no great help either. Built for a more leisurely age, it filled slowly and emptied no faster. Finally Glodstone had resorted to the French newspapers. They were incriminating too and by crumpling them up around the sodden envelope he might get that to burn as well. In the event, he was proved right, but at considerable cost. The newspapers were as fiery as their editorials. As flames shot out of the pan, Glodstone slammed the lid down and was presently tugging at the chain to extinguish what amounted to an indoor bonfire. It was at this point that his aunt intervened.
'Yes, you are,' she shouted through the door, 'You've been smoking in there and something's caught fire.'
'Yes,' gasped Glodstone, finding this a relatively plausible explanation. Nobody could say that he hadn't been smoking. The damned stuff was issuing round the edges of the lid quite alarmingly. He seized the towel from behind the door and tried to choke the smoke off before he suffocated.
'If you don't come out this minute I shall be forced to call the fire brigade,' his aunt threatened but Glodstone had had enough. Unlocking the door, he shot, gasping for air, into the hall.
His aunt surveyed the smoke still fuming from beneath the seat. 'What on earth have you been up to?' she said, and promptly extinguished the smouldering remnants of Le Monde with a basin of water from the kitchen before examining the fragments with a critical eye.
'You've been a bachelor too long,' she declared finally. 'Your Uncle Martin was found dead in the lavatory with a copy of La Vie Parisienne and you've evidently taken after him. What you need is a sensible wife to take care of your baser needs.'
Glodstone said nothing. If his aunt chose to draw such crude conclusions it was far better that she do so than suspect the true nature of his enterprise. All the same, the incident had taken a measure of the immediate glamour out of the situation. 'I shall be dining out,' he said with some hauteur and spent the evening at his club planning his next move. It was complicated by the date of his cross-channel booking, which was set for the 28th. He had five days to wait. Then there was the question of obtaining arms. The letter had definitely said 'Come armed,' but that was easier said than done. True, he had a shotgun at a cousin's farm in Devon but shotguns didn't come into the category of proper arms. He needed a revolver, something easy to conceal in the Bentley, and he could hardly go into a gunsmith in London and ask for a .38 Smith & Wesson with a hundred cartridges. The thing to do would be to approach some member of the underworld. There must be plenty of people selling guns in London. Glodstone didn't know any and had not the foggiest notion where to look for them. It was all very disconcerting and he was about to give up the notion of going armed when he remembered that Major Fetherington kept revolvers and ammunition in the School Armoury. In fact there were several old ones there. And he knew where the Major kept the keys. It would be a simple matter to take one and he could have it back before the beginning of next term. With a more cheerful air, Glodstone ordered a brandy before returning to his aunt's flat. Next morning he was on the road again and by lunchtime back at Groxbourne.