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“But another might come. I must be prepared. Above all, I must not compromise the Embassy. I ordered our carriage to move on, and I engaged what you call a hackney coach. Then I spoke to the driver, and gave him a guinea. He understood that it was a special service.

“‘You shall have another guinea if you do what you are told,’ said I.

“‘All right, master,’ said he, turning his slow eyes upon me without a trace of excitement or curiosity.

“‘ If I enter your coach with another gentleman, you will drive up and down Harley Street, and take no orders from anyone but me. When I get out, you will carry the other gentleman to Watier’s Club, in Bruton Street.’

“‘All right, master,’ said he again.

“So I stood outside Milord Hawkesbury’s house, and you can think how often my eyes went up to that window in the hope of seeing the candle twinkle in it. Five minutes passed, and another five. Oh, how slowly they crept along! It was a true October night, raw and cold, with a white fog crawling over the wet, shining cobblestones, and blurring the dim oil-lamps. I could not see fifty paces in either direction, but my ears were straining, straining, to catch the rattle of hoofs or the rumble of wheels. It is not a cheering place, monsieur, that street of Harley, even upon a sunny day. The houses are solid and very respectable over yonder, but there is nothing of the feminine about them. It is a city to be inhabited by males. But on that raw night, amid the damp and the fog, with the anxiety gnawing at my heart, it seemed the saddest, weariest spot in the whole wide world. I paced up and down slapping my hands to keep them warm, and still straining my ears. And then suddenly out of the dull hum of the traffic down in Oxford Street I heard a sound detach itself, and grow louder and louder, and clearer and clearer with every instant, until two yellow lights came flashing through the fog, and a light cabriolet whirled up to the door of the Foreign Minister. It had not stopped before a young fellow sprang out of it and hurried to the steps, while the driver turned his horse and rattled off into the fog once more.

“Ah, it is in the moment of action that I am best, monsieur. You, who only see me when I am drinking my wine in the Cafe de Provence, cannot conceive the heights to which I rise. At that moment, when I knew that the fruits of a ten years’ war were at stake, I was magnificent. It was the last French campaign and I the general and army in one.

“‘Sir,” said I, touching him upon the arm, ‘are you the messenger for Lord Hawkesbury?’

“‘Yes,’ said he.

“‘I have been waiting for you half an hour,’ said I. ‘You are to follow me at once. He is with the French Ambassador.’

“I spoke with such assurance that he never hesitated for an instant. When he entered the hackney coach and I followed him in, my heart gave such a thrill of joy that I could hardly keep from shouting aloud. He was a poor little creature, this Foreign Office messenger, not much bigger than Monsieur Otto, and I–monsieur can see my hands now, and imagine what they were like when I was seven-and-twenty years of age.

“Well, now that I had him in my coach, the question was what I should do with him. I did not wish to hurt him if I could help it.

“‘This is a pressing business,’ said he. ‘I have a despatch which I must deliver instantly.’

“Our coach had rattled down Harley Street now, in accordance with my instruction, it turned and began to go up again.