CHAPTER XXXIV.
MR. PIKE ON THE WING.
The time went on. It may have been some twelve or thirteen months later that Mr. Carr, sitting alone in his chambers, one evening, was surprised by the entrance of his clerk—who possessed a latch-key as well as himself.
"Why, Taylor! what brings you here?"
"I thought you would most likely be in, sir," replied the clerk. "Do you remember some few years ago making inquiries about a man named Gorton—and you could not find him?"
"And never have found him," was Mr. Carr's comment. "Well?"
"I have seen him this evening. He is back in London."
Thomas Carr was not a man to be startlingly affected by any communication; nevertheless he felt the importance of this, for Lord Hartledon's sake.
"I met him by chance, in a place where I sometimes go of an evening to smoke a cigar, and learned his name by accident," continued Mr. Taylor. "It's the same man that was at Kedge and Reck's, George Gorton; he acknowledged it at once, quite readily."
"And where has he been hiding himself?"