Page:Waylaid by Wireless - Balmer - 1909.djvu/24

Rh of my being suspected as the perpetrator of these pilferings, as you call them. I am afraid that any chance acquaintance but an Englishman would have suggested it first to the police."

"And have the police pothering me here until the trial for my trouble? Oh, but I say, aside from that, and in spite of this array of—coincidences against you, Mr. Preston, I couldn't stop myself forming so favorable an idea of you and so hoping to still have you with me," the Englishman confessed, "that I'd drop the coincidences gladly, if I could only have some decently credible explanation for your—your certainly extraordinary actions about these little towns, sir, when you're not with me."

"So I have some extraordinary actions to explain," young Preston inquired, as he reseated himself, "entirely apart from my circumstantial connection with these crimes?" He took up his knife and fork and cut into his second thick mutton chop, hot from the 6