Mallory lugged his purchase through the far gate of the Burlington Arcade, where the constable on guard gave him a cheery salute. Outside, in Burlington Gardens, a young man in a dented hat and shabby, greasy coat, who had been sitting apparently much at his ease on the rim of a cement planter, rose suddenly to his feet.
The shabby young man limped toward Mallory, his shoulders slumped in theatrical despair. He touched the brim of his hat, essayed a pathetic smile, and began to speak to Mallory, all in one breath. "I ask your pardon sir but if you would excuse the liberty of being so addressed in the public street by one who is almost reduced to rags though it has not always been so and by no fault of my own but through ill health in my family and many unmerited sufferings it would be a great obligation sir to know the time."
The time? Could this man somehow know that Mallory had just purchased a large clock? But the shabby man paid no attention to Mallory's sudden confusion, for he continued on eagerly, in the same insinuating monotone.
"Sir it is not begging that is my intention for I was brought up by the best of mothers and begging is not my trade I should not know how to follow such a trade if such were my shameful wish for I would sooner die of deprivation but sir I implore you in the name of charity to allow me the honor of acting as your porter to carry that case that burdens you for whatever price that your humanity may put upon my services"
The shabby man broke off short. He looked, wide-eyed, over Mallory's shoulder, his mouth assuming a sudden tight-clamped, pinchy look, like a seamstress biting off a thread. The shabby man took three careful steps backward, slowly, keeping Mallory between himself and whatever it was that he saw. And then he turned directly on his flapping, newspaper-stuffed heels and walked swiftly away, without any limp, into the crowded sidewalks of Cork Street.
Mallory turned at once and looked behind him. There was a tall, long-shanked, slender man behind him, with a button-nose and long side-whiskers, in a short Albert coat and plain trousers. Even as Mallory's gaze caught him, the man raised a handkerchief to his face. He coughed, in a gentlemanly way, then he dabbed at his eyes a bit. Then he seemed, with a sudden theatrical start, to have recalled something he had forgotten. He turned away, and began to wander back toward the Burlington Arcade. He had not once looked straight at Mallory.
Mallory himself took a sudden pretended interest in the clasps of his clock-case. He set his case down, bent, and looked at the bits of shiny brass with his mind racing and a chill in his spine. The rascal's handkerchief trick had given him away. Mallory recognized him now as the man he had seen by the underground station in Kensington; the coughing gent, who would not give up his cab. What's more, thought Mallory, his mind hot with insight, the coughing gent was also the rude man who'd argued with the cabbie about his fare, in Piccadilly. He had followed Mallory the whole distance from Kensington. He was trailing him.
Mallory seized his clock-case in a fierce grip and began to walk quietly down Burlington Gardens. He turned right on Old Bond Street. His nerves were tingling now, with a stalker's instinct. He had been a fool to turn and stare at first. Perhaps he had given himself away to his pursuer. Mallory did not turn and look again, but ambled along with his best pretense at leisure. He paused before a jeweler's velvet racks of cameos and bracelets and evening tiaras for Her Ladyship, and watched the street behind him, in the iron-barred shining glass.
He saw the Coughing Gent reappear almost at once. The man hung well back for the moment, careful to keep groups of London shoppers between himself and Mallory. The Coughing Gent was perhaps thirty-five, with a bit of grey in his
side-whiskers, and a dark machine-stitched Albert coat that did not look like anything remarkable. His face was that of anyone in London, perhaps a little heavier, a little colder in the eyes, with a grimmer mouth beneath the button-nose.
Mallory took another turn, left up Bruton Street, his clock-case growing more awkward by the step. The shops here lacked conveniently angled glass. He doffed his hat to a pretty woman, and pretended to glance back at her ankles. The Coughing Gent was still with him.
Perhaps the Coughing Gent was a confederate of the tout and his woman. A hired ruffian; a murderer, with a derringer in the pocket of that Albert coat. Or a vial of vitriol. The hair rose at the base of Mallory's skull, anticipating the sudden impact of the assassin's bullet, the wet burning splash of corrosion.
Mallory began to walk more quickly, the case banging painfully against his leg. Into Berkeley Square, where a small steam-crane, chugging gamely between a pair of splintered plane-trees, swung a great cast-iron ball into a crumbling Georgian facade. A crowd of spectators was enjoying the sight. He joined them behind the saw-horse barricade, amid the acrid smell of ancient plaster, and sensed a moment's safety. He spied out the Coughing Gent with a sidelong glance. The fellow looked sinister enough, and anxious, having lost Mallory in the crowd for the time being. But he did not seem mad with hatred, or nerved to kill; he was glancing about among the legs of the spectators, hunting for Mallory's clock-case.