"Not there, sir," I replied quickly. "I—I don't know where he is."
We were standing on the opposite side of the street; he suddenly grasped my arm, and pointed. A window had been opened up above, and leaning out from a lighted room I saw for a moment the head and shoulders of Murray Olivant. The head was withdrawn in a moment, and the window closed and darkened, but we had both seen it distinctly.
"Not there?" exclaimed the boy derisively. "So they've told me every time I've inquired. Hiding from me, is he?"
He ran across the street, and I ran after him, calling to him to stop. We both reached the stairs together, and together rushed up them; and by that time I had him by the arms, and was clinging to him, imploring him to calm himself. The noise we made when we got to the door of the flat alarmed that respectable manservant inside; he opened the door a little way, and we stumbled in together, brushed him aside, and rushed pell-mell into the room where Murray Olivant stood. And there was not only Olivant there, but the man Dawkins and Jervis Fanshawe.
"I've found you at last," cried the boy excitedly. "I want to know where Miss Barbara Savell is?"
Murray Olivant looked quickly round from one to the other of us; saw me clinging to the boy, and whispering to him—saw Dawkins and Fanshawe and the manservant. Perhaps he felt that there was safety in numbers; at all events, he retreated to the door of an inner room, and spread his arms across it, as though to guard it.
"You fool!" he cried roughly—"she's here!"