Page:Anthony Hope - Rupert of Hentzau.djvu/129

Rh man banished my doubt by saying: "It's Bauer—it's certainly Bauer, my lord."

I hardly stayed to form a resolution. If I could catch this fellow or even see where he went, a most important clue as to Rupert's doings and whereabouts might be put into my hand. I leapt out of the carriage, bidding the man wait, and at once started in pursuit of my former servant. I heard the coachman laugh : he thought, no doubt, that anxiety for the missing bag inspired such eager haste.

The numbers of the houses in the Königstrasse begin, as anybody familiar with Strelsau will remember, at the end adjoining the station. The street being a long one, intersecting almost the entire length of the old town, I was, when I set out after Bauer, opposite number three hundred or thereabouts, and distant nearly three-quarters of a mile from that important number nineteen, towards which Bauer was hurrying like a rabbit to its burrow. I knew nothing and thought nothing of where he was going; to me nineteen was no more than eighteen or twenty; my only desire was to overtake him. I had no clear idea of what I meant to do when I caught him, but I had some hazy notion of intimidating him into giving up his secret by the threat of an accusation of theft. In fact he had stolen my bag. After him I went; and he knew that I was after him. I saw him turn his face over his shoulder,