The suggestion was at once adopted, and on the Saturday morning the pair left London for a day’s outing.
The car had scarcely left the garage at the rear of South Audley Street, where, with others belonging to people in the neighbourhood, it was kept, when a well-dressed man of about forty entered the yard and approaching the man in charge, exclaimed:
“I see Mrs. Beverley’s Royce has just gone out. Did you get to know what I want?”
“Yes, sir,” replied the man. “Young Mr. Falconer is driving Miss Beverley down to Hastings. They’re lunching at the Queen’s.”
“Quite sure, sir,” was the reply, whereupon the stranger placed a Treasury note into the hand of his informant.
Then, re-entering a taxi in which he had been seated, apparently watching Falconer drive out Mrs. Beverley’s car, he sped along to a garage in Knightsbridge, where another large open car awaited him, and even before Sylvia and her lover had left Upper Brook Street the mysterious watcher was well on his way out of London.
The day was a lovely one in early autumn, and the drive through Kent was delightful. Geoffrey and Sylvia came along the sea-front at St. Leonard’s just before noon, and, continuing, pulled up at the back entrance of the Queen’s Hotel, where they ordered lunch. Then, after a wash, they strolled out into the autumn sunshine beside the sea.
As they left by that door with its wide glass porch which leads out upon the terrace before the sea, they passed a man seated in one of the wicker lounge chairs, smoking a good cigar.
He was the mysterious individual who had been so keen to ascertain the destination of the pair. But as they passed he was gazing thoughtfully out upon the sea, taking no notice of them.
After they had gone along towards the Pier, he returned to the lounge, where he scribbled a telegram. Having done so, he apparently desired to alter it, so he tore it into tiny fragments, half of which he tossed into the waste-paper basket, and the other half he placed in the pocket of his grey tweed jacket. That action showed him first to be a man of method, and secondly that the message was one which he did not wish to be read by anyone who might perhaps be watching.
He wrote a second telegram, and that he took across to the post-office and dispatched.