The detective did not need the
wink. His bland, abstracted eyes were already on Fritzing, and he was
making rapid mental notes of the goggles, the muffler, the cap pulled
down over the ears. Truly it is a great art, that of running away, and
needs incessant practice.
And after all there was not a word about the Princess in the papers.
They were full, as the Englishmen on the turbine had been full, of
something the Russians, who at that time were always doing something,
had just done--something that had struck England from end to end into
a blaze of indignation and that has nothing to do with my story.
Fritzing dropped the papers on the platform, and had so little public
spirit that he groaned aloud with relief.
"Shilling and a penny 'alfpenny, please, sir," said the newspaper-boy
glibly. "_Westminster Gazette_, sir, _Daily Mail_, _Sporting and
Dramatic_, one _Lady_, and two _Standards_." From which it will be
seen that Fritzing had seized his handful very much at random.
He paid the boy without heeding his earnest suggestions that he should
try _Tit-Bits_, the _Saturday Review_, and _Mother_, to complete, said
the boy, in substance if not in words, his bird's-eye view over the
field of representative English journalism, and went back to the
Princess with a lighter heart than he had had for months.
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