CHAPTER XXIII
It was on the Tuesday before Christmas that I caught Boyde; the day also before the White Star steamers sailed. The cold was Arctic, a biting east wind swept the streets. There was no sun. If ever there was a Black Tuesday for me it was that 18th of December, 1892.
Towards evening, the doctor, I knew, would expect me as usual; there was nothing to prevent my going; and yet each time the thought cropped up automatically in my mind I was aware of a vague, indeterminate feeling that somehow or other I should not go. This dim feeling also was automatic. There was nothing I knew of to induce, much less to support it. I did not mention it to Kay. I could not understand whence it came nor what caused it, but it did not leave me, it kept tugging at my nerves. "You're not going to the doctor's to-night," it said, "you're going elsewhere."
After dark this odd feeling became more and more insistent, and then all at once it connected itself with Boyde. Quite suddenly this happened. I had not been thinking of Boyde at the moment; now, abruptly, up cropped his name and personality. I was to go out and catch him.
My mind resisted this idea. Several things, besides, were against it. In the first place, we had voluntarily given up the hunt and I was resigned to his escape; secondly and thirdly, I dreaded being out in the bitter cold, and I badly needed the "assuaging balm" of old Huebner's needle. If the first two were negative inhibitions, the third was decidedly positive. All three had to be conquered if I was to obey the strange prompting which whispered, and kept on whispering: "Go out and look. You'll find him."
