But he was not so indignant as Eustace returning to his hotel. "Silly fools!" he said, wrathfully, to himself. "They'd juggle with a man's life just to get their costs. Frank sha'n't show up, to be slaughtered by them, if I can help it. That negro! H'm! And Balkis is a negress. I wonder if the man was a spy of Berry's trying to find out the whereabouts of Frank? I must think this over. Upon my word!" lamented Eustace, hailing a hansom, "the more I go into this case the more mysterious it seems. Well, there's one comfort, the sealed letter may give us a clue to the mystery. I'll go down by the six train, and may know all about it before retiring to rest." At his hotel he alighted and went in. Then he suddenly recollected that he had not sent a wire to Frank. To be on the safe side, although he was sending it to O'Neil, he went to the telegraph-office himself. On his way hither he, knowing the neighbourhood well, took a short cut through some by-streets. As he was turning a corner he heard a fresh young voice singing some song, the burden of which was "Tamaroo! Tamaroo!" Hardly believing his ears, Eustace dashed round the corner to hear who was repeating the last word which poor murdered Anchor had uttered. He came nearly on top of a ragged urchin, a true guttersnipe, who was dancing gaily in the gutter to the music of his own minstrelsy: "Oh, he gits a 'eavy screw, Tamaroo! Tamaroo! An' 'is father is a Jew, Tamaroo! Tamaroo!" "Where did you hear that song?" interrupted Eustace, seizing the boy. "Garn away with y'. It's m'own words an' music. 'Ow Tamaroo!'" "Where did you hear the word?" "That's my business. Tie it up, cocky," said the brat. "See here, my lad, you tell me where you got the word Tamaroo and I'll give you a shilling." "Wot! a whole bob? Right y'are, gov'ner. 'Twas 'Melia told it me. 'Melia kin read an' she got it orf a wall a hour ago. It 'ull be all over Londing soon. 'Ow Tamaroo! Tamaroo!' Ain't it a prime word?" "Show me where Amelia got it?" Eustace saw that the melody of the word had caught the boy's ear, but he could not understand what he meant. The boy conducted him down one street and up another, till he brought him up against a huge hoarding before some houses in the course of erection. There appeared the huge placard of a Scarlet Bat with outspread wings, as on Frank's arm. Beneath, was printed in gigantic red letters the mysterious word "Tamaroo!" CHAPTER XV A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE