XVI

It was a quarter past five on a fine morning, early in July.  On the stroke of the quarter Captain Frank Drayton’s motor-car, after exceeding the speed limit along the forlorn highway of the Caledonian Road, drew up outside the main entrance of Holloway Gaol.  Captain Frank Drayton was alone in his motor-car.

He had the street all to himself till twenty past five, when he was joined by another motorist, also conspicuously alone in his car.  Drayton tried hard to look as if the other man were not there.

The other man tried even harder to look as if he were not there himself.  He was the first to be aware of the absurdity of their competitive pretences.  He looked at his watch and spoke.

“I hope they’ll be punctual with those doors.  I was up at four o’clock.”

“I,” said Drayton, “was up at three.”

“I’m waiting for my wife,” said the other man.

“I am not,” said Drayton, and felt that he had scored.

The other man’s smile allowed him the point he made.

“Yes, but my wife happens to be Lady Victoria Threlfall.”

The other man laughed as if he had made by far the better joke.

Drayton recognized Mr. Augustin Threlfall, that Cabinet Minister made notorious by his encounters with the Women’s Franchise Union.  Last year Miss Maud Blackadder had stalked him in the Green Park and lamed him by a blow from her hunting-crop.  This year his wife, Lady Victoria Threlfall, had headed the June raid on the House of Commons.

And here he was at twenty minutes past five in the morning waiting to take her out of prison.

And here was Drayton, waiting for Dorothea, who was not his wife yet.

“Anyhow,” said the Cabinet Minister, “we’ve done them out of their Procession.”

“What Procession?”

All that Drayton knew about it was that, late last night, a friend he had in the Home Office had telephoned to him that the hour of Miss Dorothea Harrison’s release would be five-thirty, not six-thirty as the papers had it.

“The Procession,” said the Cabinet Minister, “that was to have met ’em at six-thirty.  A Car of Victory for Mrs. Blathwaite, and a bodyguard of thirteen young women on thirteen white horses.  The girl who smashed my knee-cap is to be Joan of Arc and ride at the head of ’em.  In armour.  Fact.  There’s to be a banquet for ’em at the Imperial at nine.  We can’t stop that.  And they’ll process down the Embankment and down Pall Mall and Piccadilly at eleven; but they won’t process here.  We’ve let ’em out an hour too soon.”

A policeman came from the prison-yard.  He blew a whistle.  Four taxi-cabs crept round the corner furtively, driven by visibly hilarious chauffeurs.

“The triumphant procession from Holloway,” said the Cabinet Minister, “is you and me, sir, and those taxi-cabs.”