Whither Thou Goest By William Le Queux Published by Herbert Jenkins Ltd, 3 York Street, St James's, London. This edition dated 1920. Whither Thou Goest, by William Le Queux. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ WHITHER THOU GOEST, BY WILLIAM LE QUEUX. PREFACE. WHAT THIS STORY IS ABOUT. The Earl of Saxham was vastly annoyed when his son, Guy, fell in love with a "penniless nobody," and announced that he would marry her against all opposition. He determined to separate the lovers; to which end he persuaded an influential friend in the Foreign Office to secure an appointment for Guy in the Embassy at Madrid. He little knew that he was sending his son into the centre of a hotbed of anarchism, that Guy's footsteps were to be dogged by a vindictive and revengeful woman, that his life was to hold many a thrilling moment and not a few narrow escapes. Mr Le Queux has written a thrilling story of anarchism and its deadly secret plotting, a story through which there runs, nevertheless, a rich vein of romance. PROLOGUE. A hot July evening on the calm Biscayan coast of Spain. The sun had disappeared like a globe of molten metal into the sapphire sea, and now, in the breathless blood-red afterglow which tinged the unruffled glassy waters away to the Atlantic, the whole populace of the peaceful old-world town of Fonterrabia had come forth from their houses to breathe again after the intense heat and burden of the blazing day. Dusty green sun-shutters were being opened everywhere, while upon the golden beach the clear waters hardly rippled, for the summer tide was upon the turn. Across the bay lay a cluster of gaily-painted sardine boats in reds and greens, awaiting a breeze, and along the sea-front, so fiercely swept in winter, stood the quaint mediaeval houses, crumbling and sun-blanched, with their wide overhanging roofs and many balconies, palpitating with the heat, now rapidly receding. It had been a scorching day in Spain. In the stunted tamarisks which sprang, dust-covered and twisted, from the yellow, shifting sands the grasshoppers still chirped merrily, though it was sunset, and from the sun-blanched sea-front came of a sudden the high, tuneful twanging of a mandoline, and a man's tenor voice singing that ancient love-song which one hears everywhere in the wine lands of the Guipuzcoa. _Pase cantivo amor entus prisones_. From the houses came forth the many mixed odours of the evening _cena_, the appetising smell of rich _ollas_, mostly flavoured with garlic, be it said, while from the shops which sold eatables there emanated that faint and peculiar perfume which only those who have lived in hot climates can know, and can justly appreciate.