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Oh, Lord, you millionaires! You don't talk the same language! Climb aboard the

lugger. Here's your ticket. Whittington's your man."

"Me for Whittington!" said Julius darkly. The train was just starting as he swung

himself aboard. "So long, Tommy." The train slid out of the station.

Tommy drew a deep breath. The man Boris was coming along the platform

towards him. Tommy allowed him to pass and then took up the chase once more.

From Waterloo Boris took the tube as far as Piccadilly Circus. Then he walked up

Shaftesbury Avenue, finally turning off into the maze of mean streets round Soho.

Tommy followed him at a judicious distance.

They reached at length a small dilapidated square. The houses there had a

sinister air in the midst of their dirt and decay. Boris looked round, and Tommy

drew back into the shelter of a friendly porch. The place was almost deserted. It

was a cul-de-sac, and consequently no traffic passed that way. The stealthy way

the other had looked round stimulated Tommy's imagination. From the shelter of

the doorway he watched him go up the steps of a particularly evil-looking house

and rap sharply, with a peculiar rhythm, on the door. It was opened promptly, he

said a word or two to the doorkeeper, then passed inside. The door was shut to

again.

It was at this juncture that Tommy lost his head. What he ought to have done,

what any sane man would have done, was to remain patiently where he was and

wait for his man to come out again. What he did do was entirely foreign to the

sober common sense which was, as a rule, his leading characteristic. Something,

as he expressed it, seemed to snap in his brain. Without a moment's pause for

reflection he, too, went up the steps, and reproduced as far as he was able the

peculiar knock.

The door swung open with the same promptness as before. A villainous-faced

man with close-cropped hair stood in the doorway.

Well?" he grunted.

It was at that moment that the full realization of his folly began to come home to

Tommy. But he dared not hesitate. He seized at the first words that came into his

mind.

"Mr. Brown?" he said.

The Secret Adversary