CHAPTER VIII
The scene shifts to London—London, so indifferent, so cruel, so drab a city to those whom she is stranger, not mother.
Harry Garlett and Dr. Maclean had gone to a city hotel where they felt sure that they would run little risk of meeting any one from their part of the world.
And it was there, within sound of what he vaguely felt to be the comforting roar of London’s busiest traffic, that Garlett paced up and down a big private sitting room in the cold, foggy atmosphere of a December afternoon, while he waited for the doctor’s return from the Criminal Investigation Department of the Home Office.
At last he stopped and looked at his watch. But for the cruel man or woman who had written the anonymous letters of which Dr. Maclean had told him, he and Jean would by now have been man and wife. He reminded himself drearily that he had forgotten to cancel his order for the small suite of rooms overlooking the Thames where they were to have spent their Christmas honeymoon. Well, so much the better! It gave him a little satisfaction to know that the rooms which were to have been the scene of his ecstatic happiness were empty of life, of joy, of laughter, for at least a little while.
The door of the darkened room burst open, and Dr. Maclean’s hearty voice exclaimed exultantly: “Our trouble’s over! The Home Office is going to take no further action in the matter——”
Then he shut the door, turning on, as he did so, the electric light.
“I had a great stroke of luck! One of the two men sent to examine me was an old fellow-student of mine, a fellow called Wilson, an Aberdeen chap. It made everything easy, of course.”
Putting his hat down on a table, he came close up to the other man.
“My God, Harry, don’t look like that! The trouble’s over, man—don’t you understand?”