She suddenly looked up at me with an anxious searching expression.

Was my face betraying anything of my real purpose?
I hurried to the door before she could ask me a single question.
The front of the inn stood nearly in the middle of the principal street of the town.

No chance of giving any one the slip in that direction; and no sign, either, of the Bow Street runner.

I sauntered round, with the most unconcerned manner I could assume, to the back of the house, by the inn yard.

A door in one part of it stood half-open.