Page:The Yellow Book - 08.djvu/143

the fog above and fog around, and below the greasy planks sighing and soughing as they collided in the movement of the water.

In the hurried journey back to the office, the events of the day pattered through my brain, and the long fingers of Imagination stretched before me, pointing to strange and fantastic developments. I heard nothing, saw nothing as we raced through the lighted streets, except a nimble paper seller who flashed an eager hatchet face through the cab window. I bought one, a halfpenny sheet, I forget which—receiving a contemptuous comment because I demanded the change from my penny. My eye had caught the word Pepperthala on the front page.

When I arrived at the office I chipped a dark stain from the woodwork of the chair in which Mayfair had been sitting, and then carefully studied the prospect from the window. The opposite houses were still wrapped in fog. Good! The blood-guiltiness of the Yellow Man remained our secret. No human eye could have penetrated that dense envelope, which had grown still more opaque since sunset; I could not even distinguish the outline of the stone parapet that ran in front of my window, practically making a promenade round the building.

Turning away, the evening paper I had purchased caught my eye. The front page contained half a column about the visit of the Raja of Pepperthala. It was invertebrate stuff, all pure conjecture, with an imaginative account of the decay of the State of Pepperthala, and a disquisition on the present parlous condition of its Chief. As to the reason of the Raja's visit to England the reporter was silent, but a paragraph and a portrait at the end of the article roused my interest to the meridian.

It was to the effect that the Raja had been accompanied to England by Mr. Edward Kettle, "so well known a few years backin