: number 280 Rectory Grove."

"Where is the girl?" I asked sharply.

"She ran back directly she had given me her message."

"Was she a servant?"

"I should imagine so: French, I think. But she was so wrapped up I had
little more than a glimpse of her. I am sorry to hear that some one
has played a silly joke on you, but believe me"--he was very
earnest--"this is no jest. The poor girl could scarcely speak for
sobs. She mistook me for you, of course."

"Oh!" said I grimly; "well, I suppose I must go. Broken leg, you
said?--and my surgical bag, splints and so forth, are at home!"

"My dear Petrie!" cried Eltham, in his enthusiastic way, "you no doubt
can do something to alleviate the poor man's suffering immediately. I
will run back to your rooms for the bag and rejoin you at 280 Rectory
Grove."

"It's awfully good of you, Eltham--"

He held up his hand.

"The call of suffering humanity, Petrie, is one which I may no more
refuse to hear than you."

I made no further protest after that, for his point of view was
evident and his determination adamantine, but told him where he would
find the bag and once more set out across the moon-bright common, he
pursuing a westerly direction and I going east.

Some three hundred yards I had gone, I suppose, and my brain had been
very active the while, when something occurred to me which placed a
new complexion upon this second summons. I thought of the falsity of
the first, of the improbability of even the most hardened practical
joker practising his wiles at one o'clock in the morning. I thought of
our recent conversation; above all I thought of the girl who had
delivered the message to Eltham, the girl whom he had described as a
French maid--whose personal charm had so completely enlisted his
sympathies. Now, to this train of thought came a new one, and, adding
it, my suspicion became almost a certainty.

I remembered (as, knowing the district, I should have remembered
before) that there was no number 280 Rectory Grove.

Pulling up sharply, I stood looking about me. Not a living soul was in
sight; not even a policeman. Where the lamps marked the main paths
across the common nothing moved; in the shadows about me nothing
stirred. But something stirred within me--a warning voice which for
long had lain dormant.

What was afoot?

A breeze caressed the leaves overhead, breaking the silence with
mysterious whisperings. Some portentous truth was seeking for
admittance to