"Oh!" wailed Lady Watson, as the door closed on the daughter who rejected her; "how like your father--how very like!" Beatrice walked calmly down the stairs, and opening the front door herself, returned to the hotel to think over the matter. At the door of the little inn she found the stout landlady arguing with a red-haired, foxy man. "Waterloo!" said Beatrice, drawing back. "There," chuckled the rogue, grinning at the landlady, "she knows me does the young lydy.--Miss, come at once--Durban's dying." "Durban dying!" "He'll be dead in a jiffy," said Waterloo, grinning. "You come, miss." Then dropping his voice, "He wants to tell you who killed your father." CHAPTER XXII REVELATIONS "Don't go with him, miss," urged Mrs. Quail. "He's a bad one: look at his eyes." Beatrice had no need to look at them. She knew well the evil that they held, and shrank, as she always did, from contact with this creature of the night. Certainly Waterloo was much better dressed than when she had seen him last. He wore a somewhat shabby frock coat, a pair of smart patent-leather boots, a fashionable collar, and a silk hat which glistened like the sun. The tramp actually reeked of some fashionable scent, and swung a dandy cane with a genteel air. He wore a wig, from under which his natural red hair peeped; and his false teeth looked aggressively white and new. On the whole, Waterloo evidently considered that he was now a perfect buck, and ogled the comely landlady and the shrinking girl with an assured air. "You are not deceiving me?" asked Beatrice, forcing herself to be civil to the man, for obvious reasons. "S'elp me Bob! no," leered the rejuvenated wreck. "Durban, he come up t'town t'other day, an' wos run h'over by a bus as wos drivin' motor-car fashions--more miles an hour than sense, miss. He ses t'me--an ole pal of his--as he wanted to see you, and tell you wot y'should know. He ses es he'll tell you who killed your par an' th' ole Alpenny bloke." This remark decided Beatrice. Come what may, she determined to learn the truth at last. Also, Durban was her best and oldest friend, and from what Lady Watson had said he had evidently been a better friend to her than she knew. After a moment or two she made up her mind, and turned to Mrs. Quail, who was gazing disdainfully at the leering Waterloo. "I must go, Mrs. Quail," she said decisively; "if Durban is ill I must help him." "But with this man?" "Oh! I'm saif, laidy. No 'arm about me. Oh no, not at all." "If Mr. Paslow comes," said Beatrice, addressing the landlady, and taking no notice of Waterloo, "tell him I have gone with Waterloo to see Durban.--Where is he?" she asked the man. "In a room in a 'ouse, Malta Street, Stepney--No. 50," said Waterloo quickly, and passed along a scrap of dirty paper to Mrs. Quail. "If the young laidy don't come back saif an' sound, you'll find me 'ere."