pounds never to have seen him!

CHAPTER VII.

THE BEGINNING OF THE GREAT PURSUIT.

It was our last day in London. Roderick and I sat down to dinner in the
hotel, the touch of depression upon us both. Mary had left us early in
the morning to go to Salisbury, where her kinsfolk lived, and I confess
that her readiness to quit us without protest somewhat hurt me. I
imagine that I was thinking of it, for I blurted out at last, when we
had been silent for at least a quarter of an hour--

"I suppose she's arrived by this."

"No, I didn't post her till three," Roderick replied in equal
reflective mood.

"Didn't post who?" I asked indignantly.

"Why, old Belle, of course. I sent her down with the guard to get her
out of the way."

"Oh," I replied, "I was thinking of Mary, not of your dog."

"You always are," he said; "but, between ourselves, I'm glad she went.
I thought there'd be a fuss; and if it comes to a row, as it most
probably will, girls are in the way. Don't you think so? But, of
course, you don't."

I didn't, and made no bones of pretence about it. Mary was a child;
there was no doubt about that; but as I girded up my courage for this
undertaking, I thought how much those pretty eyes would have encouraged
me, and how sweet that childish laugh would have been in mid-Atlantic.
But there--that's no part of this story.

We were going down to Plymouth by the nine o'clock mail from
Paddington, and there was not a wealth of time to spare. So soon as we
had dined, I went up to my room to put the small things of need away,
meaning to be no more than five minutes at the work; but, to my
amazement, the whole of the place had been turned utterly inside out by
one who had been there before me. My trunk lay upside down; my
writing-case was unlocked and stripped, my diary was torn and rent, my
clothes were scattered; I thought at first that a common cheat of a
hotel thief had been busy snapping up trifles; but I got a shock
greater than any I had known since Martin Hall's death when I felt for
his writing, which lay secure in its case, and found that, while the
main narrative was intact, his letters to the police at New York, his
plans, and his sketches had been taken. For the moment the discovery
made me reel. I could not realise its import, and almost mechanically I
rang for a servant, who sent the manager to me.

His perplexity and dismay were no less than mine.

"No one has any right to enter your rooms,"