along Buckingham Palace Road.

Perhaps a minute elapsed before I tapped the cab-roof with my walking
stick. On cabby looking down at me, I said, 'Did I tell you Charing Cross
just now, driver? Ah! well, I made a mistake. I meant Waterloo.'

'Right, sir,' rejoined cabby; and on we went.

It was a paltry device, perhaps, this trick of giving one direction in
the hearing of the hotel servants, and then another when the hotel was
out of sight. But, as the reader must know, this kind of thing is always
done in novels--particularly in detective stories.

And recollections had come to me of some of Gaboriau's tales which long
ago I had helped to place before the English public. It might be that the
renowned Monsieur Lecoq or his successor, or perchance some English
_confrere_ like Mr. Sherlock Holmes, would presently be after us, and so
it was just as well to play the game according to the orthodox rules of
romance. After all, was it not in something akin to a romance that I was
living?



IV

A CHANGE OF QUARTERS

It should be mentioned that the departure of Messrs. Zola and Desmoulin
from the Grosvenor Hotel took place almost immediately after Wareham had
returned to his office. We were not to meet our friend the solicitor