Page:The Fate of Fenella (1892).djvu/288

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

CHAPTER XXII.

BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN.

"Mersey Street, sir? Oh, yes; first to the right, second to the left, and then third to the right."

Frank Onslow nodded his thanks and hurried away, trying hard to retain the sequence of rights and lefts in his confused brain; while the police-man whom he had questioned stood looking after him and beating his gloves.

"What does he want down Mersey Street? No accounting for these swells."

Onslow had not noticed the man's manner, but he could not help hesitating for a moment as he reached the street named; and he hesitated again as he paused at the open door of No. 10—open, as he thought, like a trap.

But the intense desire to test the value of the promised information bore down everything else; and, forgetting the aspect of the coarse-looking women and ruffianly men loafing about at public-house doors and the corners of the streets, he knocked sharply.

"I will not go in," he said to himself. "Ronny

273