Free The Fourth Plague by Edgar Wallace

of advertisement. Who cared whether it was Thursday or Friday that had been previously given, presumably, as the evening “out”?
    But the glaring error in the advertisement lay in the last paragraph. The average advertiser would be more anxious to know what wages the newcomer would require, and would most certainly never suggest that the “Cook-General” whose services were sought, should contribute, in addition to her labour, anything in the nature of payment for the privilege.”
    Tillizini looked up at the roof of the carriage in thought. To-day was Monday. Something had been arranged for Thursday. It had been postponed till the following day. For that something a price was to be paid, possibly an advance on the original price agreed upon was demanded. The advertiser would hardly undertake to perform the service without some previous agreement as to price.
    He did not in any way associate the announcement with the recent events at Highlawn; they were but part of the big game which was being played. The emissaries of that terrible society whose machinations he had set himself to frustrate were no doubt travelling by the same train. He was so used to this espionage that he ignored it, without despising it. He was ever prepared for the move, inevitable as it seemed to him, which would be made against his life and against his security.
    It was too much to expect that the “Red Hand” would forgive him the work he had accomplished in America. He had cleared the United States from the greatest scourge of modern times.
    It was no fault of his that they had taken advantage of the lax emigration laws of England to settle in the Metropolis.
    He replaced the papers in his satchel, and just before the train ran into London Bridge he let up the spring blinds of the compartment. It was dark, and wet, and miserable. He made no attempt to alight at the station. It was not a safe place, as he knew by experience, for a threatened man to end his journey.
    There were dark tunnels which led to the main entrance of the station—tunnels in which a man might be done to death, if by chance he were the only passenger negotiating the exit; and no one would be any the wiser for five minutes or so, sufficient time, that, to allow these professional murderers to escape.
    Outside Waterloo he pulled the blinds down again. He did these things automatically, without any fear. He took the same precaution as the everyday citizen takes in crossing the road. He looked from left to right before crossing this dangerous highway of his.
    Flush with the railway bridge which crosses the river to Charing Cross station is a footpath, Old Hungerford footbridge.
    Three men were waiting there at intervals that wet and blusterous night to watch the Burboro’ train come in. They saw it from a position which enabled them, had the opportunity presented, of shooting into the carriage.
    Tillizini did not know this, but he could guess it. It was not an unlikely contingency.
    On the crowded station of Charing Cross he was safe enough. Moreover, there were two men, who had spent the afternoon unostentatiously wandering about the station, who picked him up as he came through the barrier.
    He gave one of them a little nod, which none but the keenest observer would have noticed.
    The two Scotland Yard men, whose duty it was to shadow him in London, walked closely behind him, and remained upon the pavement outside until he had entered the waiting electric brougham.

V. —THE STORY OF THE “RED HAND”
    PROFESSOR ANTONIO TILLIZINI IS a name around which has centred the fiercest controversy. No scientist is ever likely to forget his extraordinary paper read before the Royal Society at Sheffield. It was entitled prosaically, “Some Reflections upon the Inadequacy of the Criminal Code,” and was chiefly remarkable from the layman’s point of view in that the professor in the course of his address calmly admitted that he had found