mined to overtake them on foot.

It was a very lonely place--a colony of half-finished streets, and
half-inhabited houses, which had grown up in the neighbourhood of a
great railway station. I heard the fierce scream of the whistle, and
the heaving, heavy throb of the engine starting on its journey, as I
advanced along the gloomy Square in which I now found myself. The cab
I had been following stood at a turning which led into a long street,
occupied towards the farther end, by shops closed for the night, and at
the end nearest me, apparently by private houses only. Margaret and Mr.
Mannion hastily left the cab, and without looking either to the right
or the left, hurried down the street. They stopped at the ninth house. I
followed just in time to hear the door closed on them, and to count the
number of doors intervening between that door and the Square.

The awful thrill of a suspicion which I hardly knew yet for what it
really was, began to creep over me--to creep like a dead-cold touch
crawling through and through me to the heart. I looked up at the house.
It was an hotel--a neglected, deserted, dreary-looking building.
Still acting mechanically; still with no definite impulse that I could
recognise, even if I felt it, except the instinctive resolution to
follow them into the house, as I had already followed them through the
street--I walked up to the door, and rang the bell.

It was answered by a waiter--a mere lad. As the light in the passage
fell on my face, he paused in the act of addressing me, and drew back
a few steps. Without stopping for any explanations, I closed the door
behind me, and said to him at once:

"A lady and gentleman came into this hotel a little while ago."

"What may your business be?"--He hesitated, and added in an altered
tone, "I mean, what may you want with them, Sir?"

"I want you to take me where I can hear their voices, and I want nothing
more. Here's a sovereign for you, if you do what I ask."

His eyes fastened covetously on the gold, as I held it before them. He
retired a few steps on tiptoe, and listened at the end of the passage.
I heard nothing but the thick, rapid beating of my own heart. He came
back, muttering to himself: "Master's safe at supper down stairs--I'll
risk it! You'll promise to go away directly," he added, whispering to
me, "and not disturb the house? We are quiet people here, and can't have
anything like a disturbance. Just say at once, will you promise to