Every detail in Oswald's experiences, from the moment his body pitched over the bank into Thames current, to present consciousness, passes in vivid review. Each seems ordered by an overruling, kindly care. This luminous retrospect widens, until it rests like benediction upon all life's past, casting forward halo encircling the Beyond.
Wistfully gazing toward that tender radiance-location, Oswald is swiftly borne by a small sail, to where an ocean steamer is anchored. Boarding the ship, he is assigned to a room. At an early morning hour, the vessel weighs anchor.
Oswald sees no rational prospect of cleared future destiny, but feels strangely acquiescent in Fate's opening seals.
Hurrying along a narrow street, are three men, two abreast, and one following apparently unconcerned, but closely watching each movement. Turning into a dark alley, the pair disappear down a rickety stairway. Their "shadow" passes across to a small one-story cabin, with single-light window, commanding a view of that cellar entrance.
Pierre and Paul Lanier, newly disguised, again are in London. Since their departure from Calcutta, these villains had wandered, making brief stays at various points, always disguised, never without haunting fears. Different aliases had been assumed, each new departure having been most adroitly maneuvered. It seems impossible that such crafty covering of their doubling trails can baffle pursuit, yet each shrewd move sharpens apprehension by suggestions of new dangers. This growing bewilderment and stress of fear had kept them moving in uncertain rounds, varied by occasional abrupt tangents, until within zone of most heinous crimes, when drawn by that gravity existent between the criminal and the venue of his offense, both had landed in London, fearful for the future, without any decisive purposes or settled convictions as to their lines of action.
Sir Donald and Esther were absent from England, but Pierre learned that they had sailed from Calcutta months before. William Dodge had been released from prison, going somewhere unknown to either Lanier. That this formerly subservient assistant in crime is now a foe, they cannot doubt. The desperate, treacherous assault upon husband and wife in Calcutta ended all hope of further coöperation between them and their would-be murderers. Just what line of investigation is being pressed they only can conjecture. Further scheming to silence any of their pursuers would not do.