Kneeling there with this strange litter about me, I looked up amazedly. Nayland Smith, the unsuitable silk hat set right upon the back of his head, was pacing the room excitedly, his fuming pipe protruding from the tangle of factitious beard.
"You see, Petrie," he began again, rapidly, "I did not entirely trust the agent. I've leased the house in the name of Professor Maxton...."
"But, Smith," I cried, "what possible reason can there be for disguise?"
"Why should you interest yourself in The Gables?"
"None whatever; to me the whole thing smacks of stark lunacy."
"I've never stuck at anything, Smith," I replied, "however undignified, when it has seemed that my presence could be of the slightest use."
As I rose to my feet, Smith stepped in front of me, and the steely grey eyes shone out strangely from the altered face. He clapped his hands upon my shoulders.
"If I assure you that your presence is necessary to my safety," he said, "that if you fail me I must seek another companion--will you come?"
Intuitively, I knew that he was keeping something back, and I was conscious of some resentment, but, nevertheless, my reply was a foregone conclusion, and--with the borrowed appearance of an extremely untidy old man--I crept guiltily out of my house that evening and into the cab which Smith had waiting.
The Gables was a roomy and rambling place lying back a considerable distance from the road. A semi-circular drive gave access to the door, and so densely wooded was the ground, that for the most part the drive was practically a tunnel--a verdant tunnel. A high brick wall concealed the building from the point of view of any one on the roadway, but either horn of the crescent drive terminated at a heavy, wrought-iron gateway.
Smith discharged the cab at the corner of the narrow and winding road upon which The Gables fronted. It was walled in on both sides; on the left the wall being broken by tradesmen's entrances to the houses fronting upon another street, and on the right following, uninterruptedly, the grounds of The Gables. As we came to the gate--
"Nothing now," said Smith, pointing into the darkness of the road before us, "except a couple of studios, until one comes to the Heath."