"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 adamant, but told him where he would
find the bag and once more set out across the moonbright 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