Page:William Le Queux - The Czar's Spy.djvu/358

338 old fellow," was his response. "The revelation of the true facts of the affair can be made only by Muriel. I tell you, we must find her."

"Yes, we must — at all hazards," I said. "Let's go across to the telegraph office opposite Charing Cross. It's open always." And we rose and walked out along the Strand, now nearly deserted, and despatched an urgent message to Muriel at an address in Hurlingham Road, Fulham.

Afterwards we stood outside on the kerb, still talking, I loth to part from him, when there passed by in the shadow two men in dark overcoats, who crossed the road behind us to the front of Charing Cross station, and then continued on towards Trafalgar Square.

As the light of the street lamp fell upon them, I thought I recognized the face of one as that of a person I had seen before, yet I was not at all certain, and my failure to remember whom the passer-by resembled prevented me from saying anything further to Jack than —

"A fellow I know has just gone by, I think."

"We seem to be meeting hosts of friends to-night," he laughed. "After all, old chap, it does one good to come back to our dear, dirty old town again. We abuse it when we are here, and talk of the life in Paris, and Vienna, and Brussels, but when we are away there is no place on earth so dear to us, for it is 'home.' And you, who are as often an exile as I am, know how much that one little word conveys to us — how we sit under those blue skies or under the brilliant stars and watch the