I must let my mother and Maisie know of my safety—­at once.  I must let Mr. Lindsey know, too.  I knew what must have happened there at Berwick.  That monstrous villain would sneak home and say that a sad accident had happened me.  It made me grind my teeth and long to get my hands at his lying tongue when I thought of what Maisie and my mother must have suffered after hearing his tales and excuses.  But I did not want him to know I was safe—­I did not want the town to know.  Should I telephone to Mr. Lindsey’s office, it was almost certain one of my fellow-clerks there would answer the ring, and recognize my voice.  Then everything would be noised around.  And after thinking it all over I sent Mr. Lindsey a telegram in the following words, hoping that he would fully understand:—­

“Keep this secret from everybody.  Bring suit of clothes, linen, money, mother, and Maisie by next train to Dundee.  Give post-office people orders not to let this out, most important.  H.M.”

I read that over half a dozen times before I finally dispatched it.  It seemed all wrong, somehow—­and all right in another way.  And, however badly put it was, it expressed my meaning.  So I handed it in, and my borrowed sovereign with it, and jingling the change which was given back to me, I went out of the telegraph office to stare around me.

It was a queer thing, but I was now as light-hearted as could be—­I caught myself laughing from a curious feeling of pleasure.  The truth was—­if you want to analyse the sources—­I was vastly relieved to be able to get in touch with my own people.  Within an hour, perhaps sooner, they would have the news, and I knew well that they would lose no time in setting off to me.  And finding myself just then in the neighbourhood of the North British Railway Station, I went in and managed to make out that if Mr. Lindsey was at the office when my wire arrived, and acted promptly in accordance with it, he and they could reach Dundee by a late train that evening.  That knowledge, of course, made me in a still more light-hearted mood.  But there was another source of my satisfaction and complaisance:  things were in a grand way now for my revenge on Sir Gilbert Carstairs, and what had been a mystery was one no longer.

I went back to the dock where I had left the tramp-steamer, and told its good-natured skipper what I had done, for he was as much interested in the affair as if he had been my own brother.  And that accomplished, I left him again and went sight-seeing, having been wonderfully freshened up and restored by my good sleep of the morning.  I wandered up and down and about Dundee till I was leg-weary, and it was nearly six o’clock of the afternoon.  And at that time, being in Bank Street, and looking about me for some place where I could get a cup of tea and a bite of food, I chanced by sheer accident to see a name on a brass plate, fixed amongst more of the same sort, on the outer door of a suite of offices.  That name was Gavin Smeaton.  I recalled it at once—­and, moved by a sudden impulse, I went climbing up a lot of steps to Mr. Gavin Smeaton’s office.