'This of course,' he said, 'alters considerably any understanding we may have come to, sonny. All idea of a partnership is now out of the question. I wish you well, but I have no further use for you. Somewhere in this great city the Little Nugget is hiding, and I mean to find him--entirely on my own account. This is where our paths divide, Mr Burns. Good night.' Chapter 10 When Sam had left, which he did rather in the manner of a heavy father in melodrama, shaking the dust of an erring son's threshold off his feet, I mixed myself a high-ball, and sat down to consider the position of affairs. It did not take me long to see that the infernal boy had double-crossed me with a smooth effectiveness which Mr Fisher himself might have envied. Somewhere in this great city, as Sam had observed, he was hiding. But where? London is a vague address. I wondered what steps Sam was taking. Was there some underground secret service bureau to which persons of his profession had access? I doubted it. I imagined that he, as I proposed to do, was drawing the city at a venture in the hope of flushing the quarry by accident. Yet such was the impression he had made upon me as a man of resource and sagacity, that I did not relish the idea of his getting a start on me, even in a venture so uncertain as this. My imagination began to picture him miraculously inspired in the search, and such was the vividness of the vision that I jumped up from my chair, resolved to get on the trail at once. It was hopelessly late, however, and I did not anticipate that I should meet with any success. Nor did I. For two hours and a half I tramped the streets, my spirits sinking more and more under the influence of failure and a blend of snow and sleet which had begun to fall; and then, tired out, I went back to my rooms, and climbed sorrowfully into bed. It was odd to wake up and realize that I was in London. Years seemed to have passed since I had left it. Time is a thing of emotions, not of hours and minutes, and I had certainly packed a considerable number of emotional moments into my stay at Sanstead House. I lay in bed, reviewing the past, while Smith, with a cheerful clatter of crockery, prepared my breakfast in the next room. A curious lethargy had succeeded the feverish energy of the previous night. More than ever the impossibility of finding the needle in this human bundle of hay oppressed me. No one is optimistic before breakfast, and I regarded the future with dull resignation, turning my thoughts from it after a while to the past. But the past meant Audrey, and to think of Audrey hurt. It seemed curious to me that in a life of thirty years I should have been able to find, among the hundreds of women I had met, only one capable of creating in me that disquieting welter of emotions which is called love, and hard that that one should reciprocate my feeling only to the extent of the mild liking which Audrey entertained for me.