"You or I, or both of us, are followed," she said. "Come this way. Peep out of the window without lifting the blind. What do you see?"Not till now did Gordon Bruce fully appreciate the blow that a cruel fate had dealt him. At first he had been confused and bewildered, and a little disposed to doubt the evidence of his senses. There was a vague hope that it was a trick, a mistake that a moment would rectify.Apparently it was quite sufficient. As the gang separated one by one, each was picked up by an officer in plain clothes. The little man in the suede gloves went cautiously on till he came to a working-man's flat off Gray's Inn Road, and here for the first time he became conscious that he was being followed.
ONE:"It's a queer thing," said Prout, scratching his snaky little head reflectively; "a very queer thing. Now here's a house for you. Given a man of energy and pluck who has learnt its story, and what is to prevent his taking possession and living here as if the place was his own? He comes and picks the lock, he has his servants in, and gives out that he is Jones or Robinson, and there's an end of it so long as he holds his head high and pays his creditors. Of course there is the risk of the real man turning up, but criminals must always take chances. In a way that's what happened. The poor fellow was lured here to be murdered by some one who pretended that the house was his. It's a very pretty case."
TWO:"Well, in any case, your Eminence, I promise to bring it to the knowledge of the Catholics in The Netherlands, and you may rely upon their readiness. But now I will not take more of your valuable time, which you give so zealously to the poor and the unfortunate. I thank you very much for having granted me this audience."
TWO:I think that my answer left nothing to be desired for plainness, and Germany cannot have derived much pleasure from its official contradiction. Moreover, the editor of De Tijd had also made inquiries from the little girl whom I escorted from Louvain on the day of the occurrence at Landen, and although I admit at once that not too great a value can be attached to the evidence of a girl of nine, I insert here what the editor wrote about that interview:She did take the string, as the letter says, Jeff nodded. It was a secretthey didnt broadcast it that the necklace was in the captains cabin, locked up in his safe. Nobody knew it, not even the ladys personal maid, as far as anybody supposed.
