Every word she had spoken, every evasive sentence, every protest that she was compelled to remain silent, recurred to me as I lay there staring blankly at the painted ceiling.
She had told me that she was unaware of the fugitive's whereabouts, and yet not half an hour before she had received a telegram from him.
Yes, Phrida—the woman I trusted and loved with such a fierce, passionate affection, had lied to me deliberately and barefacedly.
But I was on the fellow's track, and cost what it might in time, or in money, I did not intend to relinquish my search until I came face to face with him.
That night, as I tossed restlessly in bed, it occurred to me that even though he might be in Brussels, it was most probable in the circumstances that he would exercise every precaution in his movements, and knowing that the police were in search of him, would perhaps not go forth in the daytime.
Many are the Englishmen living "under a cloud" in Brussels, as well as in Paris, and there is not a Continental city of note which does not contain one or more of those who have "gone under" at home.
Seedy and down-at-heel, they lounge about the cafés and hotels frequented by English travellers. Sometimes they sit apart, pretend to sip their cup of coffee and read a newspaper, but in reality they are listening with avidity to their own language being spoken by their own people—poor, lonely, solitary exiles.
Every man who knows the by-ways of the Continent has met them often in far-off, obscure towns, where they bury themselves in the lonely wilderness of a drab back street and live high-up for the sake of fresh air and that single streak of sunshine which is the sole pleasure of their broken, blighted lives.
Yes, the more I reflected, the more apparent did it become that if the man whom Inspector Edwards had declared to be a gross impostor was still in the Belgian capital, he would most probably be in safe concealment in one or other of the cheaper suburbs.
But how could I trace him?