This again might lead to unpleasantness, and I could see that the master was gradually growing anxious. By this time, however, we had reached St. James's Park, and there, as we seated ourselves on some chairs beside the ornamental water, I led the conversation into another channel by producing an evening newspaper, and reading therefrom successive narratives of how M. Zola had sailed for Norway, how he had taken train at the Eastern Terminus in Paris, and how he had been bicycling through the Oberland on his way to some mysterious Helvetian retreat. Then we laughed--ah! those journalists!--and fears were at an end. The ducks paddled past us, the drooping foliage of the island trees stirred in the warm breeze. On a bench near at hand a couple of vagrants sat dozing, with their toes protruding through their wretched footgear. Then a soldier, smart and pert, strolled up, a flower between his lips and a good-looking girl beside him. Away in front of us were the top windows and the roofs of St. Anne's Mansions. Farther, on the left, the clock tower of Westminster glinted in the sun-rays. 'Fine ducks!' said M. Zola. 'A pretty corner,' added Desmoulin, waving his hand towards some branches that drooped to the water's edge. And suddenly I remembered and told them of another French exile, the epicurean St. Evremond, whose needs were relieved by Charles II. appointing him governor of yonder Duck Island at a salary of three hundred pounds a year. 'Well, I have little money in my pocket,' quoth Zola, 'but I don't think I shall come to that. I hope that my pen alone will always yield me the little I require.' But Big Ben struck the hour. It was six o'clock. So we separated, Messrs. Zola and Desmoulin to retire to the dungeon at the Grosvenor, and I to go in search of my friend the solicitor at his private house at Wimbledon. III DANGER SIGNALS That evening, I called upon my friend--Mr. F. W. Wareham, of Wimbledon, and Ethelburge House, Bishopsgate Street--and laid before him the legal points. I afterwards arranged to see him on the following morning in town, when I hoped to fix a meeting between him and M. Zola. My first call on Thursday, July 21, was made to the Grosvenor Hotel, where I found both the master and M. Desmoulin in a state of anxiety. M. Zola, for his part, felt altogether out of his element. After the excitement of his trial and his journey to England, and the novelty of finding himself stranded in a strange city, a kind of reaction had set in and he was extremely depressed. M. Desmoulin on his side, having procured several morning newspapers, had explored their columns to ascertain whether the ladies by whom the master had been recognised in the street on the previous day, had by any chance noised the circumstance abroad. However, the Press was still on the Norway and Holland scents, and as yet not a paper so much as suggested M. Zola's presence in England.