“That is exactly what we are trying to do, but unfortunately we are not alone in it.”
“You mean that the Italian hunchback has discovered something?”
“Why, has he been here since my last visit?”
“He was here all day yesterday. He has in his possession some curious plan or other.”
My companion suggested that we should go that very evening to Crowland, place the plan before our good friend Mr Mason, and commence investigations in an open and straightforward manner. This course we adopted, and arranged to leave for Peterborough by the Leeds express.
At five o’clock, however, the Captain returned to tell me that he had received an imperative call from Paris, and must be away for several days. As there was nothing to be done until the seventeenth, his absence made no difference with our plans, though I found my patience sorely tried by the long wait. I employed the time in searching the British Museum for more detailed accounts of Threave, but without success. Within less than a fortnight Wyman had rejoined me, and we were making plans for a leisurely trip back to Scotland when I received a telegram from Fred Fenwicke that accelerated our plans. It ran:
“Come back tonight without fail. Go on to Castle-Douglas, and put up at ‘Douglas Arms.’ Will meet you there tomorrow morning.”
At ten o’clock on the following morning we were back again in Scotland, breakfasting in a cozy room in that old-fashioned hotel, the “Douglas Arms,” at Castle-Douglas, and anxiously awaiting Fred Fenwicke.
We had spent a comfortable if rather warm night in the sleeping-car from Euston, and both of us being constant travellers, neither felt the fatigue of the long railway journey. The urgency of Fred’s message caused us the greatest anxiety, and as we sat there together our eyes were watching the window for his arrival.
Outside, the long, broad street, the principal thoroughfare of the town, was already filled with the August sunshine, the roadway almost as white as those glaring roads of Italy, the sky almost as blue as it was in my once-loved Tuscany.