"Good man!" he cried, wringing my hand in his impetuous way.
"We start now."

"What, to-night?"

"To-night! I had thought of turning in, I must admit. I have not dared
to sleep for forty-eight hours, except in fifteen-minute stretches.
But there is one move that must be made to-night and immediately.
I must warn Sir Crichton Davey."

"Sir Crichton Davey--of the India--"

"Petrie, he is a doomed man! Unless he follows my instructions
without question, without hesitation--before Heaven, nothing can
save him! I do not know when the blow will fall, how it will fall,
nor from whence, but I know that my first duty is to warn him.
Let us walk down to the corner of the common and get a taxi."

How strangely does the adventurous intrude upon the humdrum;
for, when it intrudes at all, more often than not its intrusion
is sudden and unlooked for. To-day, we may seek for romance
and fail to find it: unsought, it lies in wait for us at most
prosaic corners of life's highway.

The drive that night, though it divided the drably commonplace
from the wildly bizarre--though it was the bridge between the
ordinary and the outre--has left no impression upon my mind.
Into the heart of a weird mystery the cab bore me; and in reviewing
my memories of those days I wonder that the busy thoroughfares
through which we passed did not display before my eyes signs