"Nay, there's no need to hurry," said Elmscott comfortably, throwing his legs across a chair. "Marston will never start before the morning."
"He has started," I replied. "He has seven hours to the good already. He started between three and four of the afternoon."
"But you were to follow him," he exclaimed, starting up. "You knew the road he was going. You were to follow him."
"He slipped through my fingers," said I, with some shame, for Elmscott was regarding me with the same doubtful look which I had noticed so frequently upon Jack Larke's face. "And as for knowing his road, 'twas a mere guess that flashed on me at the moment of your arrival."
"Well, well," said Elmscott, with a shrug, "order some supper, and if you can lend me a horse we will follow in half an hour."
Udal fetched a capon and a bottle of canary from the larder, and together we made short work of the meal. For, in truth, I was no less famished than Elmscott, though it needed his appetite to remind me of the fact. Meanwhile, I related in what manner Marston had escaped me, and handed him the letter which the servant had delivered to me in the Lincoln's Inn Fields.
"In a bale of carpets!" cried Elmscott, with a fit of laughter which promised to choke him. "Gadsbud, but the fellow deserves to win! Well wrapped up! Morrice, Morrice, I fear me he'll trip up your heels!"
Elmscott's hilarity, it may easily be understood, had little in it which could commend it to me, and I asked him abruptly by what means he had discovered that the Countess Lukstein was visiting in Bristol.
"I'll tell you that as we go," said he, with a mouth full of capon. "At present I have but one object, to fill my stomach."
After we had set forth, which we did a short while before midnight--for I heard a clock tell that hour as we rode through the village of Knightsbridge--he explained how the conjecture had grown up in his mind.