seemed to bring me the sound of angry voices.

 

Chapter IV.

 

The Adventure of the Radical Candidate

 

You may picture me driving that 40 h.p. car for all she was worth over the crisp

moor roads on that shining May morning; glancing back at first over my shoulder,

and looking anxiously to the next turning; then driving with a vague eye, just

wide enough awake to keep on the highway. For I was thinking desperately of what

I had found in Scudder’s pocket-book.

 

The little man had told me a pack of lies. All his yarns about the Balkans and

the Jew-Anarchists and the Foreign Office Conference were eyewash, and so was

Karolides. And yet not quite, as you shall hear. I had staked everything on my

belief in his story, and had been let down; here was his book telling me a

different tale, and instead of being once-bitten-twice-shy, I believed it

absolutely.

 

Why, I don’t know. It rang desperately true, and the first yarn, if you

understand me, had been in a queer way true also in spirit. The fifteenth day of

June was going to be a day of destiny, a bigger destiny than the killing of a

Dago. It was so big that I didn’t blame Scudder for keeping me out of the game

and wanting to play a lone hand.