Page:William Le Queux - The Temptress.djvu/42

Rh "Good-night, Master Hugh," murmured the latter in a low, broken voice. "Good-night; may God watch over you, sir."

"Ay, Jacob, and may this smash bring me good luck in the future. Good-night."

The old man tottered out, closing the door noiselessly after him.

"Poor old Jacob," said Hugh aloud, as he stood before the fireplace with his hands thrust deep in his pockets in an attitude of despair. "It must be truly hard for him to leave me. He was my father's valet when he was a young man; he has known me ever since I could toddle, and now I'm compelled to throw him out of doors, as if he were a common drudge who didn't please me. He's been more than a servant—he was the friend and adviser of my youth. Yet now we must part, owing to my own mad folly. Some people carry wealth in their pockets, others in their hearts."

With a sigh and a muttered imprecation, he paced the room with deliberate, thoughtful steps.

Suddenly he noticed the evening newspaper that had been placed upon the table by his servant. Anxious to know the result of a race, he took it up mechanically, when his eyes fell upon the head-line in large capitals, "Mysterious murder in the Strand."

"Good heavens!" he exclaimed in surprise. "Why, I had really forgotten that strange incident last night. It must be the man I saw taken from the omnibus. By Jove, that was a curious affair; I wonder what the paper says about it?"

Reseating himself, he commenced to read the column of elaborately worked-up sensation with which the journal regaled its readers.

It certainly was an extraordinary case, inasmuch as the crime must have been committed with a swiftness