The Agony Column - Page 41/59

Wherever I am, dear lady, whatever be the end of this amazing tangle,

you may be sure the thought of you--Confound the man!

YOURS, IN DURANCE VILE.

This fifth letter from the young man of the Agony Column arrived at the

Carlton Hotel, as the reader may recall, on Monday morning, August

the third. And it represented to the girl from Texas the climax of the

excitement she had experienced in the matter of the murder in Adelphi

Terrace. The news that her pleasant young friend--whom she did not

know--had been arrested as a suspect in the case, inevitable as it had

seemed for days, came none the less as an unhappy shock. She wondered

whether there was anything she could do to help. She even considered

going to Scotland Yard and, on the ground that her father was a

Congressman from Texas, demanding the immediate release of her

strawberry man. Sensibly, however, she decided that Congressmen from

Texas meant little in the life of the London police. Besides, she night

have difficulty in explaining to that same Congressman how she happened

to know all about a crime that was as yet unmentioned in the newspapers.

So she reread the latter portion of the fifth letter, which pictured her

hero marched off ingloriously to Scotland Yard and with a worried little

sigh, went below to join her father.