Page:William Le Queux - The Czar's Spy.djvu/206

190 This latter question troubled me until I could bear it no longer. I felt that it was my duty to go to Finland and endeavour to learn something regarding this Baron Oberg and his niece. Frank Hutcheson had written me declaring that the weather in Leghorn was now perfect, and expressing wonder that I did not return. I was his only English friend, and I knew how dull he was when alone. Even His Majesty's Consuls sometimes suffer from home-sickness, and long for the smell of the London gutters and a glass of homely bitter ale.

But you, my reader, who have lived in a foreign land for any length of time, know well how wearisome becomes the life, however brilliant, and how sweet are the recollections of our dear grey old England with her green fields, her muddy lanes, and the bustling streets of her grey grimy cities. You have but one "home," and England is still your home, even though you may become the most bigoted of cosmopolitans and may have no opportunity of speaking your native tongue the whole year through.

Duty — the duty of a man who had learned strange facts and knew that a defenceless woman was a victim — called me to Finland. Therefore, with my passport properly viséd and my papers all in order, I one night left Hull for Stockholm by the weekly Wilson service. Four days of rough weather in the North Sea and the Baltic brought us to the Swedish capital, whence on the following day I took the small steamer which plies three times a week around the Aland Islands, and then across the