The Agony Column [24]
whisper in my ear. I shall, no doubt, spend the night behind those hideous, forbidding walls that your guide has pointed out to you as New Scotland Yard. And when I shall write again, when I shall end this series of letters so filled with -
The constable will not wait. He is as impatient as a child. Surely he is lying when he says I have kept him here an hour.
Wherever I am, dear lady, whatever be the end of this amazing tangle, you may be sure the thought of you - Confound the man!
YOURS, IN DURANCE VILE.
This fifth letter from the young man of the Agony Column arrived at the Carlton Hotel, as the reader may recall, on Monday morning, August the third. And it represented to the girl from Texas the climax of the excitement she had experienced in the matter of the murder in Adelphi Terrace. The news that her pleasant young friend - whom she did not know - had been arrested as a suspect in the case, inevitable as it had seemed for days, came none the less as an unhappy shock. She wondered whether there was anything she could do to help. She even considered going to Scotland Yard and, on the ground that her father was a Congressman from Texas, demanding the immediate release of her strawberry man. Sensibly, however, she decided that Congressmen from Texas meant little in the life of the London police. Besides, she night have difficulty in explaining to that same Congressman how she happened to know all about a crime that was as yet unmentioned in the newspapers.
So she reread the latter portion of the fifth letter, which pictured her hero marched off ingloriously to Scotland Yard and with a worried little sigh, went below to join her father.
CHAPTER VII
In the course of the morning she made several mysterious inquiries of her parent regarding nice points of international law as it concerned murder, and it is probable that he would have been struck by the odd nature of these questions had he not been unduly excited about another matter.
"I tell you, we've got to get home!" he announced gloomily. "The German troops are ready at Aix-la-Chapelle for an assault on Liege. Yes, sir - they're going to strike through Belgium! Know what that means? England in the war! Labor troubles; suffragette troubles; civil war in Ireland - these things will melt winter in Texas. They'll go in. It would be national suicide if they didn't."
His daughter stared at him. She was unaware that it was the bootblack at the Canton he was now quoting. She began to think he knew more about foreign affairs than she had given him credit for.
"Yes, sir," he went on; "we've got to travel - fast. This won't be a healthy neighborhood for non-combatants when the ruction starts. I'm going if I have to buy a liner!"
"Nonsense!" said the girl. "This is the chance of a lifetime. I won't be cheated out of it by a silly old dad. Why, here we are, face to face with history!"
"American history is good enough for me," he spread-eagled. "What are you looking at?"
"Provincial to the death!" she said thoughtfully. "You old dear - I love you so! Some of our statesmen over home are going to look pretty foolish now in the face of things they can't understand I hope you're not going to be one of them."
"Twaddle!" he cried. "I'm going to the steamship offices to-day and argue as I never argued for a vote."
His daughter saw that he was determined; and, wise from long experience, she did not try to dissuade him.
London that hot Monday was a city on the alert, a city of hearts heavy with dread. The rumors in one special edition of the papers were denied in the next and reaffirmed in the next. Men who could look into the future walked the streets with faces far from happy. Unrest ruled the town. And it found its echo in the heart of the girl from Texas as she thought of her young friend of the Agony Column "in durance vile" behind the frowning walls of Scotland Yard.
That afternoon her father appeared, with the beaming mien of the victor, and announced that for
The constable will not wait. He is as impatient as a child. Surely he is lying when he says I have kept him here an hour.
Wherever I am, dear lady, whatever be the end of this amazing tangle, you may be sure the thought of you - Confound the man!
YOURS, IN DURANCE VILE.
This fifth letter from the young man of the Agony Column arrived at the Carlton Hotel, as the reader may recall, on Monday morning, August the third. And it represented to the girl from Texas the climax of the excitement she had experienced in the matter of the murder in Adelphi Terrace. The news that her pleasant young friend - whom she did not know - had been arrested as a suspect in the case, inevitable as it had seemed for days, came none the less as an unhappy shock. She wondered whether there was anything she could do to help. She even considered going to Scotland Yard and, on the ground that her father was a Congressman from Texas, demanding the immediate release of her strawberry man. Sensibly, however, she decided that Congressmen from Texas meant little in the life of the London police. Besides, she night have difficulty in explaining to that same Congressman how she happened to know all about a crime that was as yet unmentioned in the newspapers.
So she reread the latter portion of the fifth letter, which pictured her hero marched off ingloriously to Scotland Yard and with a worried little sigh, went below to join her father.
CHAPTER VII
In the course of the morning she made several mysterious inquiries of her parent regarding nice points of international law as it concerned murder, and it is probable that he would have been struck by the odd nature of these questions had he not been unduly excited about another matter.
"I tell you, we've got to get home!" he announced gloomily. "The German troops are ready at Aix-la-Chapelle for an assault on Liege. Yes, sir - they're going to strike through Belgium! Know what that means? England in the war! Labor troubles; suffragette troubles; civil war in Ireland - these things will melt winter in Texas. They'll go in. It would be national suicide if they didn't."
His daughter stared at him. She was unaware that it was the bootblack at the Canton he was now quoting. She began to think he knew more about foreign affairs than she had given him credit for.
"Yes, sir," he went on; "we've got to travel - fast. This won't be a healthy neighborhood for non-combatants when the ruction starts. I'm going if I have to buy a liner!"
"Nonsense!" said the girl. "This is the chance of a lifetime. I won't be cheated out of it by a silly old dad. Why, here we are, face to face with history!"
"American history is good enough for me," he spread-eagled. "What are you looking at?"
"Provincial to the death!" she said thoughtfully. "You old dear - I love you so! Some of our statesmen over home are going to look pretty foolish now in the face of things they can't understand I hope you're not going to be one of them."
"Twaddle!" he cried. "I'm going to the steamship offices to-day and argue as I never argued for a vote."
His daughter saw that he was determined; and, wise from long experience, she did not try to dissuade him.
London that hot Monday was a city on the alert, a city of hearts heavy with dread. The rumors in one special edition of the papers were denied in the next and reaffirmed in the next. Men who could look into the future walked the streets with faces far from happy. Unrest ruled the town. And it found its echo in the heart of the girl from Texas as she thought of her young friend of the Agony Column "in durance vile" behind the frowning walls of Scotland Yard.
That afternoon her father appeared, with the beaming mien of the victor, and announced that for