Need I say that under these conditions no cabs were obtainable? In
other words it was one of those days, so common of late, when other
people engage the cabs first. They were plentiful enough, full. One
could have been run over and killed by them twenty times between
Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus, but all teemed with selfish
life. Men of ferocious concentration and women detestable in their
purposefulness were to be seen through the passing windows. It was a
day on which no one ever got out of a cab at all, except to tell it
to wait. No flag was ever up. Since the blessing of peace began to be
ours these days have been the rule.

Not only were the cabs all taken and reserved till to-morrow, but the
'buses were overcrowded too. A line of swaying men, steaming from the
deluge, intervened in every 'bus between two rows of seated women,
also steaming. It was a day on which the conductors and conductresses
were always ringing the bell three times.

There was also (for we are very thorough in England) a strike on the
Tube and the Underground.

Having to get to Harley Street, I walked up Regent Street, doing
my best to shelter beneath an umbrella, and (being a believer in
miracles) turning my head back at every other step in the hope that a
cab with its flag up might suddenly materialise; but hoping against
hope. It was miserable, it was depressing, and it was really rather
shameful: by the year 1919 A.D. (I thought) more should have been
achieved by boastful mankind in the direction of weather control.

And then the strange thing happened which it is my purpose and pride
to relate. A taxi drew up beside me and I was hailed by its occupant.