"H'm!" said Oppner. "Have Rohscheimer and Jesson seen this article?"
"Don't know!" answered Zoe.
"Because," explained Oppner, "they've showed their blame devotion to the flag on which the sun don't set, same as me, and if they can stand it, my hide's as tough as theirs, I reckon."
It was whilst Mr. Oppner was thus expressing himself that Sheard, who, having left the proof at the Astoria, had raced back to the club to keep an appointment, quitted the club again (his man had disappointed him), and walked down the court to Fleet Street.
Mr. Aloys. X. Alden, arrayed in his capacious tweed suit, a Stetson felt hat, and a pair of brogues with eloquent Broadway welts, liquidated the business that had detained him in the "Cheshire Cheese" and drifted idly in the same direction.
A taxi-driver questioned Sheard with his eyebrows, but the pressman, after a moment's hesitancy, shook his head, and, suddenly running out into the stream of traffic, swung himself on a westward bound bus. Pausing in the act of lighting a Havana cigarette, Alden hailed the disappointed taxi-driver and gave him rapid instructions. The broad-brimmed Stetson disappeared within the cab, and the cab darted off in the wake of the westward bound bus.
Such was the price that Mr. Thomas Sheard must pay for the reputation won by his inspired articles upon Séverac Bablon. For what he had learnt of him during their brief association had enabled that clever journalist to invest his copy with an atmosphere of "exclusiveness" which had attracted universal attention.
As a less pleasant result, the staff of the Gleaner—and Sheard in particular—were being kept under strict surveillance.
Sheard occupied an outside seat, and as the bus travelled rapidly westward, Fleet Street and the Strand offered to his gratified gaze one long vista of placards:
"M. DUQUESNE IN LONDON."