, if we could but secure ourselves from interruption for a single
half-hour the day would be our own. I had hardly begun to form my plans
when I saw the lights of a carriage coming swiftly from the direction of
Oxford Street. Ah! if it should be the messenger! What could I do?
I was prepared to kill him--yes, even to kill him--rather than at this
last moment allow our work to be undone. Thousands die to make a
glorious war. Why should not one die to make a glorious peace?
What though they hurried me to the scaffold? I should have sacrificed
myself for my country. I had a little curved Turkish knife strapped to
my waist. My hand was on the hilt of it when the carriage which had
alarmed me so rattled safely past me.

"But another might come. I must be prepared. Above all, I must not
compromise the Embassy. I ordered our carriage to move on, and I
engaged what you call a hackney coach. Then I spoke to the driver, and
gave him a guinea. He understood that it was a special service.

"'You shall have another guinea if you do what you are told,' said I.

"'All right, master,' said he, turning his slow eyes upon me without a
trace of excitement or curiosity.

"' If I enter your coach with another gentleman, you will drive up and
down Harley Street, and take no orders from anyone but me. When I get
out, you will carry the other gentleman to Watier's Club, in Bruton
Street.'

"'All right, master,' said he again.

"So I stood outside Milord Hawkesbury's house, and you can think how
often my eyes went up to that window in the hope of seeing the candle
twinkle in it. Five minutes passed, and another five. Oh, how slowly
they crept along! It was a true October night, raw and cold, with a
white fog crawling over the wet, shining cobblestones, and blurring the
dim oil-lamps. I could not see fifty paces in either direction, but my
ears were straining, straining, to catch the rattle of hoofs or the
rumble of wheels. It is not a cheering place, monsieur, that street of
Harley, even upon a sunny day. The houses are solid and very
respectable over yonder, but there is nothing of the feminine about
them. It is a city to be inhabited by males. But on that raw night,
amid the damp and the fog, with the anxiety gnawing at my heart, it
seemed the saddest, weariest spot in the whole wide world. I paced up
and down slapping my hands to keep them warm, and still straining my
ears. And then suddenly out of the dull hum