Page:William Le Queux - The Czar's Spy.djvu/348

328 variety actress to the daughter of a peer, or the wife of a millionaire pork-butcher doing Europe.

"You've been a bit down in the mouth to-night, Jack," I said presently, after we had been watching the cabs coming up, depositing the home-coming revellers from the Savoy or the Carlton.

"Yes," he sighed. "And surely I have enough to cause me — after what I've heard from Bartlett."

"What! Did the facts he told us convey any bad news to you?" I inquired with pretended ignorance.

"Yes," he said hoarsely, after a brief pause. Then he added: "Bartlett said you could tell me what happened up in Scotland, where Leithcourt had shooting. Tell me everything," he added with the air of a man in whom all hope is dead.

"Well," I began, "the Leithcourts took Rannoch Castle, close to my uncle's place, near Dumfries. I got to know them, of course, and often shot with his party. One day, however, I was amazed to notice in one of the rooms the photograph of a lady, the exact counterpart of that picture which, I recollect, I told you when in Leghorn I had found torn up on board the Lola. You recollect what I narrated about my strange adventure, don't you?"

"I remember every word," was his answer. "Go on. What did you do?"

"Nothing. I held my tongue. But when I discovered that the fellow who called himself Woodroffe — the man who had represented himself as the owner of the Lola, and who no doubt had had a