Number Seventeen

by Louis Tracy, 1915


CHAPTER I

THE OUTCOME OF ARTISTIC CURIOSITY

"Taxi, sir? Yes, sir. No. 4 will be yours."

A red-faced, loud-breathing commissionaire, engaged in the lucrative
task of pocketing sixpences as quickly as he could summon cabs,
vanished in a swirl of macintoshes and umbrellas.

People who had arrived at the theater in fine weather were emerging
into a drizzle of rain. "All London," as the phrase goes, was flocking
to see the latest musical comedy at Daly's, but all London, regarded
thus collectively, is far from owning motor cars, or even affording
taxicabs, so the majority of the play-goers were hurrying on foot
towards tube railways and omnibus routes.

Still, a popular light opera could hardly fail to draw many patrons
from the upper ranks of society, and, in the crush at the main exit,
Francis Berrold Theydon, hesitating whether to walk or wait the hazard
of a cab, deemed himself fortunate when a panting commissionaire
promised to secure a taxi "in half a minute."

Automobiles of every known variety were snorting up to the curb and
bustling off again as promptly as their users could enter and bestow