"M'sieur!" he went on with a characteristic gesture, "I decided that I would come to London and find Hyatt. I took train, but I was watched. At a little junction called Sandgate, a man sauntered past my carriage. I did not know him, he looked like an Italian. As the train left the station something smashed the window and I heard a thud. There was no report, but I knew that I had been fired at with an air-gun, for the bullet I found embedded in the woodwork of the carriage."
"Did nothing further happen?" asked T. B.
"Nothing till I reached Charing Cross, then when I stopped to ask a policeman to direct me to the Central Police Bureau I saw a man pass me in a motor-car, eyeing me closely. It was the man who had tried to kill me."
"And then?"
"Then I saw my danger. I was afraid of the police. I saw a newspaper sheet. It was a great newspaper—I wrote a letter—and sought lodgings in a little hotel near the river. There was no answer to my letter. I waited in hiding for two days before I realised that I had given no address. I wrote again. All this time I have been seeking Hyatt. I have telegraphed to Cornwall, but the reply comes that he is not there. Then in the newspaper I learn of his death. M'sieur, I am afraid."
He wiped the drops of sweat from his forehead with a shaky hand.
He was indeed in a pitiable condition of fright, and T. B., upon whose nerves the mysterious "bears" were already beginning to work, appreciated his fear without sharing it.
There came a knock at the outer door of the office, and the editor moved to answer it.
There was a whispered conversation at the door, the door closed again, and the editor returned with raised brows.
"T. B.," he said, "that wretched market has gone again."