As
for Colonel Clay, with a nervous laugh, he bolted off at full speed
in his evening coat, and vanished round a corner.
It was some seconds before I had sufficiently recovered my breath to
pick myself up again, and examine my bruises. By this time Charles
and the other pursuers had come up, and I explained my condition to
them. Instead of commending me for my zeal in his cause--which had
cost me a barked arm and a good evening suit--my brother-in-law
remarked, with an unfeeling sneer, that when I had so nearly caught
my man I might as well have held him.
"I have his coat, at least," I said. "That may afford us a clue."
And I limped back with it in my hands, feeling horribly bruised and
a good deal shaken.
When we came to examine the coat, however, it bore no maker's name;
the strap at the back, where the tailor proclaims with pride his
handicraft, had been carefully ripped off, and its place was taken
by a tag of plain black tape without inscription of any sort. We
searched the breast-pocket. A handkerchief, similarly nameless,
but of finest cambric. The side-pockets--ha, what was this? I drew
a piece of paper out in triumph. It was a note--a real find--the
one which the servant had handed to our friend just before at the
Senator's.
We read it through breathlessly:--
"DARLING PAUL,--I _told_ you it was too dangerous.
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