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CHAPTER IX

The Strategy of the General

Some five hours later General Sadgrove, at his house in Grosvenor Gardens, was taking his morning tub, when a servant tapped at the door of the bathroom and informed him that Mr. Alec Forsyth wanted to see him very urgently. The General as speedily as possible donned his dressing-gown and descended to his sanctum. His keen eyes just glanced at the troubled face of the young man standing on the hearth-rug; then, in his laconic way, he asked:

“What’s wrong, laddie? Your chum Beaumanoir been in the wars?”

Forsyth favored him with a startled stare, and then broke into an uneasy laugh.

“You seem to have been exercising your faculty of second-sight already, Uncle Jem,” he said.

“The man was being stalked,” said the General. “Has anyone caught him?”

“Very nearly,” replied Forsyth; and he pro-

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