Then he uttered a cry of surprise, and next moment was running down the street as fast as his legs could carry him.
"That was an unmannerly fellow," I said to Bertram, who was standing on the pavement watching the other's receding figure.
To my surprise, however, he did not answer. When he turned his face to me again, dark though it was, I could see that there was a look of extreme astonishment, if not of almost consternation, upon it.
"What is the matter?" I inquired, I fear a little sharply. "Why do you look like that?"
"That man," he answered. "I must be mistaken, and yet——"
"And yet what?" I inquired. "Come, my friend, tell me the reason of your extraordinary behaviour."
Bertram hesitated again before he replied.
"I only caught a glimpse of his face," he said at length, "and yet I feel almost certain that the person who ran into me, and who bade me look where I was going, was none other than Rodriguez, one of the men who accompanied us on that fatal journey to the diamond fields in Brazil."
For a moment, for some reason that was not quite apparent to me, he seemed almost beside himself. He must have communicated this feeling to me, for I remember taking him by the arm and laughing loudly, though, Heaven knows, I was not in the humour to laugh at anything.
"Have you taken leave of your senses?" I inquired scornfully, as soon as I had somewhat recovered my self-control. "How could he be here now, and why, since he was then in South America, should he be in Zaarfburg, of all places in the world?"