Then I took my departure, accompanied to the door by the urbane individual who had received me.
The telegram which I at once despatched was not couched precisely as he would have dictated, I allow. And he would have been considerably surprised at my sending off another, later in the day, to Bluestone & Fagg's telegraphic address, in these words:—
"Unavoidably detained till Thursday morning.—Schmidt."
This was after the arrival of a wire from home in answer to mine.
By Thursday morning I had had time to receive a letter from Herr Wilhelm, and to secure the services of a certain noted detective, accompanied by whom I presented myself at the appointed hour at 909. But my companion's services were not required. The birds had flown, warned by the same traitor in our camp through whom the first hints of the new patent had leaked out. With him it was easy to deal, poor wretch! but the clever rogues who had employed him and personated the members of the honourable firm of Bluestone & Fagg were never traced.
The negotiation was successfully carried out. The experience I had gone through left me a wiser man. It is to be hoped, too, that the owners of 909 Blackfriars Street were more cautious in the future as to whom they let their premises to when temporarily vacant. The re-painting of the doorway, etc., at the tenant's own expense had already roused some slight suspicion.
It is needless to add that Nos. 7 and 13 had been duly received on the second-floor.
I have never known the true history of that extraordinary night. Was it all a dream, or a prophetic vision of warning? Or was it in any sense true? Had I, in some inexplicable way, left my own town earlier than I intended, and really travelled in a slow train?
Or had the man with a cough, for his own nefarious purposes, mesmerised or hypnotised me, and to some extent succeeded?
I cannot say. Sometimes, even, I ask myself if I am quite sure that there ever was such a person as "the man with the cough"!