"My Dear Dick" (it ran), "The reason that I have had the address on the envelope written in a strange hand is that I do not want mother to know I am writing to you. You must not tell her. I feel sure you will get my letter this morning, because you will have heard of my going away, and will go to mother's to get some news of me. I need your help, dear Dick. I am at 16, Park Street, Islington, first floor. Come at 2 o'clock; I shall be looking out for you; and let it be a secret between us. I know how true and faithful you are, and I have no fear that you will betray me. With constant love, my dear Dick,
"Your affectionate Cousin,
"Florence."
CHAPTER XXII.
[DICK RELIEVES GRACIE'S FEELING BY ONE EXPRESSIVE WORD.]
"At last!" said Dick. "At last a ray of light! What's the time?" He looked at a clock in a baker's shop. "Five minutes past ten. Ought I to go to her at once? No, I think not. Had she wanted me earlier she would have said, 'Come to me the moment you get this letter.' Four long hours to wait. What am I to do with myself till two o'clock?"
With the idea of making time fly faster he began to count his steps-- ten, twenty, thirty, one hundred, two hundred, three hundred. He made a calculation. A step a second, three hundred steps three hundred seconds, five minutes, and five minutes more employed in thought and calculation. Ten minutes gone, ten minutes nearer to Florence. He came to another shop with a clock in it; it marked eight minutes past ten. He had done all this in three minutes. He had walked too quickly, and was fast working himself up to fever heat. "Keep cool, my lad," he muttered; "you'll mar instead of mend if you don't keep cool."
But the events of the last few hours, with their tragic issues, pressed so heavily upon him that he found it no easy matter to keep cool. Much easier was it to conjure up the feelings of a murderer, who, oppressed with the weight of his undiscovered crime, fancies he discerns in every face the knowledge of his guilt--turning his head over his shoulder every minute to see if he was being dogged--starting at familiar sounds, especially at the sound of bells and clocks striking the hour, every peal proclaiming to all the world that a Murderer was passing that way--tortured by the devilish temptation to leap into the middle of the road, and flinging up his arms to scream aloud, "Stop, you grinning fools! I did it!" Then running to a bridge, with a mob at his heels, and flinging himself into the river.
For some minutes Dick was under a spell of this nature. He looked nervously at the head-lines on the newspaper bills, and listened for the shouting of the newsboys, "Murder! Murder! Frightful Murder in Catchpole Square!" But no such words reached his ears. Passing the shop in which he had purchased the rope and grapnel, he was almost prepared to see the dirty-faced old man, in his list slippers and greasy skull cap, run out and cry, "Stop that man! Ask him what he did with the rope he bought of me last night. Stop him--stop him!"
"I am losing my senses," said Dick, "indulging in these fancies. I shall be deluding myself presently into the belief that it was I who murdered Samuel Boyd. I'll go and see little Gracie. I may get some news of Abel Death."