Page:Guy Boothby--A Bid for Fortune.djvu/178

168 private office. He was a tall, thin man, slightly bald, wearing a pair of heavy gold pince-nez, and very slow and deliberate in his speech.

"I beg your pardon," he began, when I had taken possession of his proffered chair, "but did I understand my clerk to say that your name was Hatteras?"

"That's my name," I answered. "I was a passenger in your boat the Saratoga for Australia three weeks ago, but had the misfortune to be left behind when she sailed."

"Ah! I remember the circumstances well," he said. "The young Marquis of Beckenham went ashore with you, I think, and came within an ace of being also left behind."

"Within an ace!" I cried; "but he was left behind."

"No, no! there you are mistaken," was the astounding reply; "he would have been left behind had not his tutor and I gone ashore at the last moment to look for him and found him wandering about on the outskirts of Arab Town. I don't remember ever to have seen a man so angry as the tutor was, and no wonder, for they only just got out to the boat again as the gangway was being hauled aboard."

"Then you mean to tell me that the Marquis went on to Australia after all!" I cried. "And pray how did this interesting young gentleman explain the fact of his losing sight of me?"

"He lost you in a crowd, he said," the agent continued. "It was a most extraordinary business altogether."

It certainly was, and even more extraordinary than he imagined. I could hardly believe my ears. The world seemed to be turned upside down. I only know that I stumbled out a few lame enquiries about the next