“Cut out the scenario,” ordered Bingley. “Who was it?”
“The great frieze coat.”
Bingley was first to break the silence.
“Nice raw state of affairs,” he remarked savagely. “I s’pose he has caught on with one of those fluttered newspapers of New York. They are grabbing up anybody over here, even the remittance-men, so they won’t have to pay expenses out. Rather raw deal, I call it,—to be forced to ride with a traitor in this campaign.”
It was the austere Feeney who answered darkly, “Recall, ‘Horse-killer,’ that Routledge rides alone.”
“I can’t see yet why the secret service doesn’t delegate a man to get him,” Bingley whispered.
They had not heard that a venture of the kind had failed at Madras.
“There is a time for all things,” Feeney replied. “England never forgets a man like——”
“Are you quite sure of the face you saw?” inquired Benton Day, the new man of the Review. His tone was troubled. His work was cut out for him—to keep up the war-reputation of the old paper of fat columns.
“Surely,” Finacune said cheerfully, “unless the bottom dropped out of my brain-pan.”