trace that damnable cab! We
cannot find the headquarters of the group--we cannot _move!_ To sit
here inactive whilst Sir Baldwin Frazer--God knows for what purpose!--
is perhaps being smuggled out of the country, is maddening--maddening!"
Then, glancing quickly across to me: "To think ..."

I rose from my chair, head averted. A tragedy had befallen me which
completely overshadowed all other affairs, great and small. Indeed,
its poignancy was not yet come to its most acute stage; the news was
too recent for that. It had numbed my mind; dulled the pulsing life
within me.

The s.s._Nicobar_, of the Oriental Navigation Line, had arrived at
Tilbury at the scheduled time. My heart leaping joyously in my bosom,
I had hurried on board to meet Karamaneh....

I have sustained some cruel blows in my life; but I can state with
candor that this which now befell me was by far the greatest and the
most crushing I had ever been called upon to bear; a calamity dwarfing
all others which I could imagine.

She had left the ship at Southampton--and had vanished completely.

"Poor old Petrie," said Smith, and clapped his hands upon my shoulders
in his impulsive sympathetic way. "Don't give up hope! We are not
going to be beaten!"

"Smith," I interrupted bitterly, "what chance have we? what chance
have we? We know no more than a child unborn where these people have
their hiding-place, and we haven't a shadow of a clue to guide us to it."

His hands resting upon my shoulders and his gray eyes looking
straightly into mine.

"I can only repeat, old man," said my friend, "don't abandon hope. I
must leave you for an hour or so, and, when I return, possibly I may
have some news."

For long enough after Smith's departure I sat there, companioned only
by wretched reflections; then, further inaction seemed impossible; to
move, to be up and doing, to be seeking, questing, became an
imperative necessity. Muffled in a heavy traveling coat I went out
into the wet and dismal night, having no other plan in mind than that
of walking on through the rain-swept streets, on and always on, in an
attempt, vain enough, to escape from the deadly thoughts that pursued
me.

Without having the slightest idea that I had done so, I must have
walked along the Strand, crossed Trafalgar Square, proceeded up the
Haymarket to Piccadilly Circus, and commenced to trudge along at the
Oriental rugs displayed in Messrs. Liberty's window, when an incident
aroused me