Page:The Clue of the Twisted Candle (1916).djvu/275

"I ask you to do nothing more painful or repugnant to your natural feelings than to be a gentleman," she said.

"Thank you very kindly," said T. X., and leant back in the cab with an air of supreme resignation.

"I believe you're making faces in the dark," she accused him.

"God forbid that I should do anything so low," said he hastily; "what made you think that?"

"Because I was putting my tongue out at you," she admitted, and the taxi driver heard the shrieks of laughter in the cab behind him above the wheezing of his asthmatic engine.

At twelve that night in a certain suburb of London an overcoated man moved stealthily through a garden. He felt his way carefully along the wall of the house and groped with hope, but with no great certainty, along the window sill. He found an envelope which his fingers, somewhat sensitive from long employment in nefarious uses,