Page:William Le Queux - The Czar's Spy.djvu/71

Rh seemed to me that they might be the identical house from which I had so narrowly escaped with my life.

Gradually it became impressed upon me that my ex-servant had somehow gained knowledge that I was in London, that he had watched my exit from the club, and that all his pitiful story regarding Armida was false. He was the envoy of my unknown enemics, who had so ingeniously and so relentlessly plotted my destruction.

That I had enemies I knew quite well. The man who believes he has not is an arrant fool. There is no man breathing who has not an enemy, from the pauper in the workhouse to the king in his motor. But the unseen enemy is always the more dangerous; hence my deep apprehensive reflections that day as I walked those sordid back streets "over the water," as the Cockney refers to the district between those two main arteries of traffic, the Waterloo and Westminster Bridge Roads.

My unknown enemies had secured the services of Olinto in their dastardly plot to kill me. With what motive!

I wondered, as I crossed Waterloo Bridge to the Strand, whether Olinto Santini would again approach me and make the promised explanation. I had given my word not to judge him until he had revealed to me the truth. Yet I could not, in the circumstances, repose entire confidence in him.

When one's enemies are unknown, the feeling of apprehension is always much greater, for in the imagination danger lurks in every corner, and every