Of a porter I inquired the time of arrival of the next underground train and found that I had eight minutes. So I dashed along to the _Feathers Hotel_, where I obtained a map of the Ealing district and eagerly scanned it to find streets commencing with "C."
For some minutes I was unsuccessful, until of a sudden I noticed Castlebar Road, and examining the map carefully saw, to my excitement, that at an acute angle it joined another road, called Carlton Road, a triangular open space lying between the two thoroughfares.
It was the spot in Ealing where the two C's met!
It still wanted a quarter to ten, therefore I drained my glass hastily and, leaving the hotel, struck across the small open space opposite the station, in which, in a direct line, lay the junction of the two roads.
The evening was dark and sultry, with every indication of a thunderstorm. I remembered Rayner's vigil, but alas! had no time to go to him and explain my altered plans.
Along the dark, rather ill-lit, suburban road I hurried until, before me, I saw a big electric-light standard with four great inverted globes.
I looked at my watch as I passed a street-lamp, and saw that it wanted two minutes to ten.
And as I looked on ahead I saw, standing back in the shadow of the trees, on the left-hand, a dark figure, but in the distance I could not distinguish whether a man or a woman waited there.
I hurried forward, full of eagerness, to witness the secret meeting, and with an intention of watching and following those who met.
Yet, could I have foreseen the due result of such inquisitiveness, I scarcely think that I would have dared to tread ground so highly dangerous.
Approaching from Ealing Broadway, the huge electric-light standard, which was also a sign-post, shed a bright glow across the junction of the two roads. The thoroughfare on the right was Castlebar Road and on the left Carlton Road. In the latter road stood half a dozen big old trees, relics of a day when Ealing was a rural village and those trees formed a leafy way.
Beyond the sign-post, placed at the end of the triangle, lay a small open space of grass, and behind it a pleasant house with many trees in its spacious grounds.
At that hour silence reigned in that highly respectable suburban neighbourhood, and, as I went forward, I noticed that the figure beneath the trees was that of a man, who, emerging from the shadow, crossed the road leisurely and passed across the grass into the Castlebar Road, on the right hand.