But Washington is far from London, isn't it? And it is London that
interests us most--though father's constituents must not know that. It
is really a wonderful, an astounding city, once you have got the feel of
the tourist out of your soul. I have been reading the most enthralling
essays on it, written by a newspaper man who first fell desperately
in love with it at seven--an age when the whole glittering town was
symbolized for him by the fried-fish shop at the corner of the High
Street. With him I have been going through its gray and furtive
thoroughfares in the dead of night, and sometimes we have kicked an
ash-barrel and sometimes a romance. Some day I might show that London
to you--guarding you, of course, from the ash-barrels, if you are that
kind. On second thoughts, you aren't. But I know that it is of Adelphi
Terrace and a late captain in the Indian Army that you want to hear now.
Yesterday, after my discovery of those messages in the Mail and the call
of Captain Hughes, passed without incident. Last night I mailed you my
third letter, and after wandering for a time amid the alternate glare
and gloom of the city, I went back to my rooms and smoked on my balcony
while about me the inmates of six million homes sweltered in the heat.
Nothing happened. I felt a bit disappointed, a bit cheated, as one might
feel on the first night spent at home after many successive visits to
exciting plays. To-day, the first of August dawned, and still all was
quiet. Indeed, it was not until this evening that further developments
in the sudden death of Captain Fraser-Freer arrived to disturb me. These
developments are strange ones surely, and I shall hasten to relate them.