"There you have the advantage of me," he inclined his head politely; "I was named after my father"s favourite dog."
"What does T. X. stand for?" she asked curiously.
"Thomas Xavier," he said, and she leant back in the big chair on the edge of which a few minutes before she had perched herself in trepidation and dissolved into a fit of immoderate laughter.
"It is comic, isn"t it?" he asked.
"Oh, I am sorry I"m so rude," she gasped. "Fancy being called Tommy Xavier--I mean Thomas Xavier."
"You may call me Tommy if you wish--most of my friends do."
"Unfortunately I"m not your friend," she said, still smiling and wiping the tears from her eyes, "so I shall go on calling you Mr. Meredith if you don"t mind."
She looked at her watch.
"If you are not going to arrest me I"m going," she said.
"I have certainly no intention of arresting you," said he, "but I am going to see you home!"
She jumped up smartly.
"You"re not," she commanded.
She was so definite in this that he was startled.
"My dear child," he protested.
"Please don"t "dear child" me," she said seriously; "you"re going to be a good little Tommy and let me go home by myself."
She held out her hand frankly and the laughing appeal in her eyes was irresistible.
"Well, I"ll see you to a cab," he insisted.
"And listen while I give the driver instructions where he is to take me?"
She shook her head reprovingly.
"It must be an awful thing to be a policeman."
He stood back with folded arms, a stern frown on his face.
"Don"t you trust me?" he asked.
"No," she replied.
"Quite right," he approved; "anyway I"ll see you to the cab and you can tell the driver to go to Charing Cross station and on your way you can change your direction."
"And you promise you won"t follow me?" she asked.
"On my honour," he swore; "on one condition though."
"I will make no conditions," she replied haughtily.
"Please come down from your great big horse," he begged, "and listen to reason. The condition I make is that I can always bring you to an appointed rendezvous whenever I want you. Honestly, this is necessary, Belinda Mary."
"Miss Bartholomew," she corrected, coldly.
"It is necessary," he went on, "as you will understand. Promise me that, if I put an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the agonies of either an evening paper which I will name or in the Morning Port, you will keep the appointment I fix, if it is humanly possible."
She hesitated a moment, then held out her hand.
"I promise," she said.
"Good for you, Belinda Mary," said he, and tucking her arm in his he led her out of the room switching off the light and racing her down the stairs.
If there was a lot of the schoolgirl left in Belinda Mary Bartholomew, no less of the schoolboy was there in this Commissioner of Police. He would have danced her through the fog, contemptuous of the proprieties, but he wasn"t so very anxious to get her to her cab and to lose sight of her.
"Good-night," he said, holding her hand.
"That"s the third time you"ve shaken hands with me to-night," she interjected.
"Don"t let us have any unpleasantness at the last," he pleaded, "and remember."
"I have promised," she replied.
"And one day," he went on, "you will tell me all that happened in that cellar."
"I have told you," she said in a low voice.
"You have not told me everything, child."
He handed her into the cab. He shut the door behind her and leant through the open window.
"Victoria or Marble Arch?" he asked politely.
"Charing Cross," she replied, with a little laugh.
He watched the cab drive away and then suddenly it stopped and a figure lent out from the window beckoning him frantically. He ran up to her.
"Suppose I want you," she asked.
"Advertise," he said promptly, "beginning your advertis.e.m.e.nt "Dear Tommy.""
"I shall put "T. X.,"" she said indignantly.
"Then I shall take no notice of your advertis.e.m.e.nt," he replied and stood in the middle of the street, his hat in his hand, to the intense annoyance of a taxi-cab driver who literally all but ran him down and in a figurative sense did so until T. X. was out of earshot.