"Lincoln; ticket--quick, sir."
I handed out my ticket.
"This is for Stixwould, four stations back on the line. Two extra shillings to pay."
"Good heavens! I must have been asleep. How am I to get back?"
"Don't know, sir; no train tonight."
The money is paid, the door banged to, and we are shot into Lincoln station at nine o'clock. There was no help for it now but to make my way to the nearest hotel, and see what [{749}] means were to be had of returning to Stixwould--the nearest station to the Grange, and that was ten miles from it--or else pass the night here and take the earliest train in the morning. I bade a porter take my bag, and show me to some hotel; and I followed him, shivering in every limb, my head aching as I had never felt it ache before--sick, giddy, and scarcely able to draw one foot after another. Then I knew what had happened to me; it flashed across me all in a moment. That man, disguised and in spectacles, standing next to me at the refreshment-counter at Peterborough, was De Vos, and he had dragged my coffee. I felt not a doubt of it.
In ten minutes we stopped at the Queen's Hotel, and after engaging a room, I despatched a porter for the nearest doctor. To him I confided the object of my journey, what I believed had occurred to me, and the necessity there was for my taking such prompt remedies as should enable me to recover my full strength, energies, and wits for the morrow. Following his advice, after swallowing his medicine, I relinquished all notion of proceeding that night on my journey, and went to bed. The next morning I awoke quite fresh and well; but what precious hours had been lost! hours sufficient to ruin all hope of my journey bearing any fruits, of finding even a shadowy clue to the tangled web that seemed closing in around us. And Hugh Atherton lay in prison and Ada, my poor sorrowful darling, was breaking her heart beneath the load of misery which had come upon her. By eight o'clock I had started for Stixwould, and in half an hour alighted at that small station. I was the only passenger for that place, and I had to wait whilst the train moved off for the solitary porter to take my ticket. Just as the bell had rung, a man passed out from some door and went up to one of the carriages. "Could you oblige me with a fusee, sir?" I heard him say.
Some one leaned forward and handed out what was asked for; it was the tall man in spectacles who had stood next to me at Peterborough station. The train moved off just as I rushed forward, rushed almost into the arms of the other man who had asked for the fusee. Wonders would never cease! It was Inspector Keene.
"Thank God, it is you!"
"Yes, sir--myself. In a moment--I must telegraph up to town;" and he ran into the office.