The Mystery of Room 75. Fred M. White

      I - THE “AGONY” COLUMN

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      Wendover was feeling just a little good-natured contempt for himself. He would not have cared to admit that he had been following the girl down the Strand, but it was more or less the fact, though he had not the least intention of speaking to her, or molesting her in any way. Paul Wendover was a University man, and a gentleman, and he had the healthiest contempt for the class of cad who does that sort of thing.

      He was following the slim figure with the tinge of titian red in her hair in the direction of Fleet-street out of a spirit of mingled curiosity and admiration—that intangible something where woman is concerned that always moves man, sooner or later, even though he happens to be a busy journalist, with his whole soul wrapped up in his profession. Wendover would have indignantly denied that he had fallen head over ears in love with a stranger whose features he had not even seen, except a fleeting glance at a perfect little profile, the vision of a slim and slender figure, and a mass of hair that seemed to have caught the sunshine and retained it.

      And so Wendover wandered on, keeping the girl in sight on the off-chance, perhaps, of meeting some casual acquaintance who knew her. He had heard of such things, and fortune is always on the side of those seekers after adventure who pursue her steadily. Moreover, it was a case where Satan finds some mischief still, for idle hands to do, because Paul was taking more or less of a holiday after a long spell of strenuous work on the Continent, where he had been investigating certain anarchists’ haunts on behalf of his paper, ‘The Daily Herald.’ He spoke half a dozen languages fluently, he was skilled in various disguises, and he asked for nothing better than to take his life in his hands occasionally, whenever there was danger to be found. In short, he was the star man on the ‘Herald,’ a brilliant descriptive writer, and an athlete to his finger tips. He had just wound up a successful investigation and he was back in Fleet-street now, with the intention of dropping into the ‘Herald’ office presently to report himself, and, like a journalistic Oliver Twist, ask for more.

      And then, as he strolled along, the dazzling vision with the red-gold hair had drifted across his path, and, on the idle impulse of the moment, he was following her, though he would have found it difficult to explain why. He was interested, he was more interested still when the girl suddenly started and swerved across the pavement away from a thick-set man with a big felt hat pulled down over his eyes. Evidently the girl was startled, and, perhaps, not a little afraid, for she would have passed on hurriedly if the somewhat forbidding-looking individual had not detained her.

      “Ah, this is an unexpected pleasure,” he said, in a foreign accent that was irritatingly familiar to Wendover, though he could not for the life of him recollect where he had heard it before. “You haf forgotten me, Miss—er–-“

      Paul could not catch the name. He was standing near enough, under the pretence of gazing into a shop window, to catch snatches of conversation. He heard the girl whisper a name under her breath, then she would have hurried on again but the man prevented her. Wendover’s fingers clenched, and the blood began to sing in his ears.

      “I am in a hurry,” the girl said.

      “So! I should not have thought so by the way you were sauntering along. But why are you angry with me, Zena? This little trouble of yours is no fault of mine. It was not I who suggested that your father, before he died, should give everything to the Brotherhood. And perhaps I can help you, even now, if you will let me. If it is a question of money–-“

      “You know it is,” the girl whispered passionately. “You know that I have nothing except what I can earn. You know that during my father’s