retain, in tie direction of my lost property. Wisdom suggested that I
should run; but I felt that the spectacle of a young man, hatless but
otherwise decently dressed and adequately protected from the severity of
the weather, needed but the suggestion of impatience to make it wholly
ridiculous. My vanity was rightly served. I was still about thirty paces
from my objective, when the limousine drew out from the pavement and
into the stream of traffic which was hurrying east.

As my lips framed a particularly unpleasant expletive a bell rang
sharply, and I turned to see a taxi, which had that moment been
dismissed.

"Oxford Circus," I cried, flinging open the door.

A moment later we were near enough for me to indicate the large
limousine and to instruct my driver to follow her.

As we swept into Regent's Park, I began to wonder whether I should not
have been wiser to drive to Bond Street and buy a new hat. By the time
we had been twice round the Ring I had no longer any doubt on this
point; but my blood was up, and I was determined to run my quarry to
earth, even if it involved a journey to Hither Green.

More than once we were almost out-distanced, three times we were caught
in a block of traffic, so that my taxi's bonnet was nosing the
limousine's tank. Once I got out, but, as I stepped into the road, the
waiting stream was released, and the car slid away and round the hull of
a 'bus from under my very hand. My escape from a disfiguring death
beneath the wheels of a lorry was so narrow that I refrained from a
second attempt to curtail my pursuit, and resigned myself to playing a