In another minute we were once more traversing the streets of London,—­three in a hansom cab.

CHAPTER XLIII

THE MURDER AT MRS ’ENDERSON’S

It is something of a drive from Waterloo to Limehouse,—­it seems longer when all your nerves are tingling with anxiety to reach your journey’s end; and the cab I had hit upon proved to be not the fastest I might have chosen.  For some time after our start, we were silent.  Each was occupied with his own thoughts.

Then Lessingham, who was sitting at my side, said to me,

‘Mr Champnell, you have that report.’

‘I have.’

‘Will you let me see it once more?’

I gave it to him.  He read it once, twice,—­and I fancy yet again.  I purposely avoided looking at him as he did so.  Yet all the while I was conscious of his pallid cheeks, the twitched muscles of his mouth, the feverish glitter of his eyes,—­this Leader of Men, whose predominate characteristic in the House of Commons was immobility, was rapidly approximating to the condition of a hysterical woman.  The mental strain which he had been recently undergoing was proving too much for his physical strength.  This disappearance of the woman he loved bade fair to be the final straw.  I felt convinced that unless something was done quickly to relieve the strain upon his mind he was nearer to a state of complete mental and moral collapse than he himself imagined.  Had he been under my orders I should have commanded him to at once return home, and not to think; but conscious that, as things were, such a direction would be simply futile, I decided to do something else instead.  Feeling that suspense was for him the worst possible form of suffering I resolved to explain, so far as I was able, precisely what it was I feared, and how I proposed to prevent it.

Presently there came the question for which I had been waiting, in a harsh, broken voice which no one who had heard him speak on a public platform, or in the House of Commons, would have recognised as his.

’Mr Champnell,—­who do you think this person is of whom the report from Vauxhall Station speaks as being all in rags and tatters?’

He knew perfectly well,—­but I understood the mental attitude which induced him to prefer that the information should seem to come from me.

‘I hope that it will prove to be Miss Lindon.’

‘Hope!’ He gave a sort of gasp.

’Yes, hope,—­because if it is I think it possible, nay probable, that within a few hours you will have her again enfolded in your arms.’

‘Pray God that it may be so! pray God!—­pray the good God!’

I did not dare to look round for, from the tremor which was in his tone, I was persuaded that in the speaker’s eyes were tears.  Atherton continued silent.  He was leaning half out of the cab, staring straight ahead, as if he saw in front a young girl’s face, from which he could not remove his glance, and which beckoned him on.