But it was only rumour. I 'ad not enough to be sure of my news. Stephen here and I--we could do nozzing--we 'ad no time--I did not know where Oblotzky was--this girl 'ere did not know--I could do nozzing--Peter, believe me, believe me--"

The man was no scoundrel. It was plain enough as he stood there, his eyes simple as a child's, pleading still like a small boy.

A minute ago Peter had hated him, now he crossed over and put his hand on his shoulder.

"You have been wonderfully good to me," he said. "I owe you everything.

But I must go--all this has only made sure what I have been knowing this long time that I ought to do. I can't--I mustn't--depend on your charity any longer--it has been too long as it is. I must be on my own and then one day, when I have proved myself, I will come back to you."

"No--Peter, Boy--come with me now. I will show you wonderful things all over Europe; we will have adventures. There is gold in Cornwall in a place I know. There is a place in Germany where there is treasure--ze world is full of ze most wonderful things that I know and you and I--we two--Oh! ze times we all 'ave--"

"No," ... Peter drew back. "That is not my way. I am going to make my living here, in London--or die for it."

"No--you must not. You will succeed--you will grow fat and sleepy and ze good things of the world and ze many friends will kill your soul. I know it ... but come with me, first and we will 'ave adventures ... and _zen_ you shall write."

But Peter's face was set. The time for the new life had come. Up to this moment he had been passive, he had used his life as an instrument on which others might play. From henceforward his should be the active part.

The crowds were pouring up the street on their homeward way. Bands were playing the soldiers back to the barracks. Soon the streets would have only the paper bags left to them for company. The little bookshop hung, with its misty shelves about the three men.... Somewhere in another room, a girl was staring with white set face and burning eyes in front of her, for her lover was dead and the world had died with him.

After a little time amongst the second-hand novels Mr. Zanti sat, his great head buried in his hands, the tears trickling down through his fingers, and Herr Gottfried, motionless from behind his counter watched him in silent sympathy.

Peter and Stephen had gone together.

CHAPTER V

A NARROW STREET

I

The bomb was, that evening, the dominant note of the occasion. Through the illuminated streets, the slowly surging crowds--inhuman in their abandon to the monotonous ebb and flow as of a sweeping river--the cries and laughter and shouting of songs, that note was above all.

An eye-witness--a Mr. Frank Harris, butcher of 82 Cheapside--had his veracious account journalistically doctored.

"I was standing quite close to the man, a foreigner of course, with a dirty hanging black moustache--tall, big fellow, with coat up over his ears--I must say that I wasn't looking at him. I had Mrs. Harris with me and was trying to get her a place where she could see better, you understand. Then suddenly--before one was expecting it--the Procession began and I forgot the man, the foreigner, although he was quite up close against me. One was excited of course--a most moving sight--and then suddenly, when by the distant shouting we understood that the Queen was approaching, I saw the man break through. I was conscious of the man's vigour as he rushed past--he must have been immensely strong--because there he was, through the soldiers and everybody--out in the middle of the street. It all happened so quickly of course. I heard vaguely that some one was shouting and I think a policeman started forward, but anyhow the man raised his arm and in an instant there was the explosion. It went off before he was ready I suppose, but the ground rocked under one's feet. Two soldiers fell, unhurt, I have learnt since.

There was a hideous dust, horses plunging and men shouting and then suddenly silence. The dust cleared and there was a hole in the ground, stones rooted up ... no sign of the man but some pieces of cloth and men had rushed forward and covered something up--a limb I suppose.... I was only anxious of course that my wife should see nothing ... she was considerably affected...."

So Mr. Harris of Cheapside, with the assistance of an eager and talented young journalist. But the fact remained in the heart of the crowd--blasted foreigner had had a shot at the Old Lady and missed her, therefore whatever gaiety may have been originally intended let it now be redoubled, shouted into frenzy--and frenzy it was.

"There was no clue," an evening paper added to the criminal's identity.... The police were blamed, of course.... Such a thing must never be allowed to occur again. It was reported that the Queen had in no way suffered from the shock--was in capital health.

Outside the bookshop Stephen and Peter had parted.

"I'll meet you about half-past ten, Trafalgar Square by the lion that faces Whitehall; I must go back to Brockett's, have supper and get my things, and say good-bye. Then I'll join you ... half-past ten."

"Peter boy, we'll have to rough it--"

"Oh! at last! Life's beginning. We'll soon get work, both of us--where do you mean to go?"

"There's a place I been before--down East End--not much of a place for your sort, but just for a bit...."

For a moment Peter's thoughts swept back to the shop.

"Poor Zanti!" He half turned. "After so many years ... the good old chap." Then he pulled himself up and set his shoulders. "Well, half-past ten--"

The streets were, at the instant, almost deserted. It was about five o'clock now and at seven o'clock they would be closed to all traffic.

Then the surging crowds would come sweeping down.

Peter, furiously excited, hurried through the grimy deserts of Bloomsbury, to Brockett's. To his singing, beating heart the thin ribbon of the grey street with the faint dim blue of the evening sky was out of place, ill-judged as a setting to his exultations. He had swept in the tempestuous way that was natural to him, the shop and all that it had been to him, behind him. Even Brockett's must go with the rest. Of course he could not stay there now that the weekly two pounds had stopped. He quite savagely desired to be free from all business. These seven years had been well enough as a preparation; now at last he was to be flung, head foremost, into life.

He could have sung, he could have shouted. He burst through the heavy doors of Brockett's. But there, inside the quiet and solemn building, another mood seized him. He crept quietly, on tiptoe, up to his room because he did not want to see any of them before supper. After all, he was leaving the best friends that he had ever had, the only home that he had ever really known. Mrs. Brockett, Norah Monogue, Robin, the Signor.... Seven years is a long time and one gets fond of a place. He closed his bedroom door softly behind him. The little room had been very much to him during all these years, and that view over the London roofs would never be forgotten by him. But he wondered, as he looked at it, how he had ever been able to sit there so quietly and write "Reuben Hallard." Now, between his writing and himself, a thousand things were sweeping. Far away he saw it like the height of some inaccessible hill--his emotions, his adventures, the excitement of life made his thoughts, his ideas, thinner than smoke. He even, standing there in his little room and looking over the London roofs, despised the writer's inaction.... Often again he was to know that rivalry.

A quarter of an hour before supper he went down to say good-bye to Miss Monogue. She was sitting quietly reading and he thought suddenly, as he came upon her, there under the light of her candles in the grey room, that she did not look well. He had never during their seven years'

friendship, noticed anything before, and now he could not have said what it was that he saw except perhaps that her cheeks were flushed and that there were heavy dark lines beneath her eyes. But she seemed to him, as he took her, thus unprepared, with her untidy hair and her white cheap evening dress that showed her thin fragile arms, to be something that he was leaving to face the world alone, something very delicate that he ought not to leave.

Then she looked up and saw him and put her book down and smiled at him and was the old cheerful Norah Monogue whom he had always known.

He stood with his legs apart facing her and told her:

"I've come to say good-bye."

"Good-bye?"

"Yes--I'm going to-night. What I've been expecting for so long has happened at last. There's been a blow up at the bookshop and I've got to go."

For an instant the colour left her face; her book fell to the ground and she put her hand back on the arm of the chair to steady herself.

"Oh! how silly of me ... never mind picking it up.... Oh thank you, Peter. You gave me quite a shock, telling me like that. We shall all miss you dreadfully."

His affection for her was strong enough to break in upon the great overwhelming excited exultation that had held him all the evening. He was dreadfully sorry to leave her!... dear Norah Monogue, what a pal she'd been!

"I shall miss you horribly," he said with that note in his voice that showed that, above all things, he wished to avoid a scene. "We've been such tremendous pals all this time--you've been such a brick--I don't know what I should have done...." He pulled himself up. "But it's got to be. I've felt it coming you know and it's time I really lashed out for myself."

"Where are you going?"

"Ah! I must keep that dark for a bit. There's been trouble at the bookshop. It'll be all right I expect but I don't want Mother Brockett to stand any chance of being mixed up in it. I shall just disappear for a week or two and then I'll be back again."

She smiled at him bravely: "Well, I won't ask what's happened, if you don't want to tell me, but of course--I shall miss you. After seven years it seems so abrupt. And, Peter, do take care of yourself."

"Oh, I shall be all right." He was very gruff. He felt now a furious angry reluctance at leaving her behind. He stormed at himself as a fool; one of the things that the strong man must learn of life is to be ruthless in these partings and breaking of relations. He stood further away from her and spoke as though he hated being there.

She understood him with wonderful tenderness.

"Well," she said cheerfully, "I daresay it will be better for you to try for a little and see what you can make of it all. And then if you want anything you'll come back to us, won't you?... You promise that?"

"Of course."