It was my first care to go to George Street, which I reached (by good luck) as a boy was taking down the bank shutters.  A man was conversing with him; he had white stockings and a moleskin waistcoat, and was as ill-looking a rogue as you would want to see in a day’s journey.  This seemed to agree fairly well with Rowley’s signalement:  he had declared emphatically (if you remember), and had stuck to it besides, that the companion of the great Lavender was no beauty.

Thence I made my way to Mr. Robbie’s, where I rang the bell.  A servant answered the summons, and told me the lawyer was engaged, as I had half expected.

‘Wha shall I say was callin’?’ she pursued; and when I had told her ‘Mr. Ducie,’ ‘I think this’ll be for you, then?’ she added, and handed me a letter from the hall table.  It ran: 

’Dear Mr. Ducie,

’My single advice to you is to leave quam primum for the South.

Yours, T. Robbie.’

That was short and sweet.  It emphatically extinguished hope in one direction.  No more was to be gotten of Robbie; and I wondered, from my heart, how much had been told him.  Not too much, I hoped, for I liked the lawyer who had thus deserted me, and I placed a certain reliance in the discretion of Chevenix.  He would not be merciful; on the other hand, I did not think he would be cruel without cause.

It was my next affair to go back along George Street, and assure myself whether the man in the moleskin vest was still on guard.  There was no sign of him on the pavement.  Spying the door of a common stair nearly opposite the bank, I took it in my head that this would be a good point of observation, crossed the street, entered with a businesslike air and fell immediately against the man in the moleskin vest.  I stopped and apologised to him; he replied in an unmistakable English accent, thus putting the matter almost beyond doubt.  After this encounter I must, of course, ascend to the top story, ring the bell of a suite of apartments, inquire for Mr. Vavasour, learn (with no great surprise) that he did not live there, come down again and, again politely saluting the man from Bow Street, make my escape at last into the street.

I was now driven back upon the Assembly Ball.  Robbie had failed me.  The bank was watched; it would never do to risk Rowley in that neighbourhood.  All I could do was to wait until the morrow evening, and present myself at the Assembly, let it end as it might.  But I must say I came to this decision with a good deal of genuine fright; and here I came for the first time to one of those places where my courage stuck.  I do not mean that my courage boggled and made a bit of a bother over it, as it did over the escape from the Castle; I mean, stuck, like a stopped watch or a dead man.  Certainly I would go to the ball; certainly I must see this morning about my clothes.  That was all decided.  But the most of the shops were on the other side of the valley, in the Old Town; and it was now my strange discovery that I was physically unable to cross the North Bridge!  It was as though a precipice had stood between us, or the deep sea had intervened.  Nearer to the Castle my legs refused to bear me.