The Yellow Face

by Fred M. White

By way of reply Rigby drew his companion into the comparative shadow of a doorway. He had hardly done so before another figure came jauntily down the street--a tall, slim figure which seemed strangely familiar to Masefield.

"The whole place seems to reek of Anstruther to-night," Jack said, "or perhaps it is my disordered imagination. But if that is not Anstruther himself, my eyesight strangely deceives me."

"If you knew as much as I do, or you had learned what I have learned the last hour, you would not be surprised," Rigby said. "However, we will soon settle that. I'll just step across the road and try and sell him a paper." Before Jack could lay a detaining hand on the arm of his friend, Rigby was half way across the street. In the approved raucous voice of the tribe, the amateur news-vender tendered Anstruther an Echo. He waved the offer aside, and made his way down the street with the air of one who has a definite object in view. With a whine artistically uttered, Rigby fell back upon the doorway in which Masefield was concealed.

"Anstruther beyond all shadow of doubt," Rigby said triumphantly. "Now, I am not a betting man, but I will lay you any odds in reason that our interesting friend enters No. 4. Ah, what did I tell you?"

Surely enough, Anstruther paused in his stride before the dilapidated door of No. 4. With one swift glance up and down the street to make certain that he was not observed, he drew a latch-key from his pocket and disappeared within the dingy portals. On the still night air the click of the latch-key and the muffled banging of the door could be heard all down the road. Rigby drew a sigh of relief.

"Well, I think that'll do for to-night," he said. "I reckon I have had just about as much as my nerves will stand. No, I am not going to tell you anything, and I have no stomach for further adventures this evening. I am going straight to bed, to sleep if I can. Come around and see me to-morrow afternoon."

But curious as he was, and anxious also as he was, Jack was forced to decline the proffered invitation. Besides, he had promised to take Claire to a matinee concert at the Albert Hall, to hear a new violinist who so far had only performed twice before in England. Signor Padini had come to the metropolis with a marvelous reputation, but so far he had hardly fulfilled expectations. Still, it was not the habit of music-lovers like Claire and Masefield to accept a verdict of this kind at second-hand. Therefore they had determined to hear the new virtuoso for themselves.

Not that any thoughts of a harmonious and musical kind were running in Jack's mind as he walked home to-night. Try as he would, he could not dismiss the idea that some grave peril was impending, and that Claire was likely to be the central figure of the tragedy. But it is the blessed privilege of youth to throw off the haunting cares and doubts that assail their elders, and Jack suffered little on the ground of sleeplessness that night.

All the same, the haunting fears were with him again on waking in the morning.

But perhaps Claire noticed something of this, for she put the direct question to her lover when he called on her the next afternoon. Yet Jack had no intention of saying anything for the present. He began to speak somewhat hurriedly of the new violinist, Signor Padini, and so the conversation lasted till the Albert Hall was reached.