“What does it mean?” said Nayland Smith wearily, looking at me through the haze of tobacco smoke which lay between us.  “A well-known man like Sir Baldwin Frazer is decoyed away—­undoubtedly by the woman Zarmi; and up to the present moment not so much as a trace of him can be found.  It is mortifying to think that with all the facilities of New Scotland Yard at our disposal we cannot 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 from the apathy of sorrow in which I was sunken.