"If there is one thing I dislike," I said, "it is accosting total
strangers and badgering them for information they don't possess--not
that that will prevent them from giving it. If we start asking the way
we shall find ourselves in Putney or Woolwich in no time!"
"Yes, dear," said Stella soothingly.
"Now I suggest--" My hand went to my pocket.
"No, darling," interposed my wife, hastily; "not a map, please!" It is a
curious psychological fact that women have a constitutional aversion to
maps and railroad time-tables. They would rather consult a half-witted
errand boy or a deaf railroad porter. "Do not let us make a spectacle of
ourselves in the public streets again! I have not yet forgotten the day
when you tried to find the Crystal Palace. Besides, it will only blow
away. Ask that dear little boy there. He is looking at us so wistfully."
Yes; I admit it was criminal folly. A man who asks a London street boy
to be so kind as to direct him to a Home for Lost Dogs has only himself
to thank for the consequence.
The wistful little boy smiled up at us. He had a pinched face and large
eyes.
"Lost Dogs' 'Ome, sir?" he said courteously. "It's a good long way. Do
you want to get there quick?"
"Yes."
"Then if I was you, sir," replied the infant, edging to the mouth of an
alleyway, "I should bite a policeman!" And, with an ear-splitting yell,
he vanished.
We walked on, hot-faced.
"Little wretch!" said Stella.
"We simply asked for it," I rejoined. "What are we going to do next?"
My question was answered in a most incredible fashion, for at this
moment a man emerged from a shop on our right and set off down the
street before us. He wore a species of uniform; and emblazoned on the
front of his hat was the information that he was an official of the
Battersea Home for Lost and Starving Dogs.
"Wait a minute and I will ask him," I said, starting forward.
But my wife would not hear of it.
"Certainly not," she replied. "If we ask him he will simply offer to
show us the way. Then we shall have to talk to him--about hydrophobia,
and lethal chambers, and distemper--and it may be for miles. I simply
couldn't bear it! We shall have to tip him, too. Let us follow him
quietly."
To those who have never attempted to track a fellow creature
surreptitiously through the streets of London on a hot day, the feat may
appear simple. It is in reality a most exhausting, dilatory, and
humiliating exercise. Our difficulty lay not so much in keeping our
friend in sight as in avoiding frequent and unexpected collisions with
him. The general idea, as they say on field days, was to keep about
twenty yards behind him; but under certain circumstances distance has an
uncanny habit of annihilating itself. The man himself was no hustler.
Once or twice he stopped to light his pipe or converse with a friend.
During these interludes Stella and I loafed guiltily on the pavement,
pointing out to one another objects of local interest with the fatuous
officiousness of people in the foreground of hotel advertisements.
Occasionally he paused to contemplate the contents of a shop window. We
gazed industriously into the window next door. Our first window, I
recollect, was an undertaker's, with ready-printed expressions of grief
for sale on white porcelain disks. We had time to read them all. The
next was a butcher's. Here we stayed, perforce, so long that the
proprietor, who was of the tribe that disposes of its wares almost
entirely by personal canvass, came out into the street and endeavored to
sell us a bullock's heart.
Our quarry's next proceeding was to dive into a public house. We turned
and surveyed one another.
"What are we to do now?" inquired my wife.
"Go inside, too," I replied with more enthusiasm than I had hitherto
displayed. "At least, I think I ought to. You can please yourself."
"I will not be left in the street," said Stella firmly. "We must just
wait here together until he comes out."
"There may be another exit," I objected. "We had better go in. I shall
take something, just to keep up appearances; and you must sit down in
the ladies' bar, or the snug, or whatever they call it."
"Certainly not!" said Stella.
We had arrived at this _impasse_ when the man suddenly reappeared,
wiping his mouth. Instantly and silently we fell in behind him.
For the first time the man appeared to notice our presence. He regarded
us curiously, with a faint gleam of recognition in his eyes, and then
set off down the street at a good pace. We followed, panting. Once or
twice he looked back over his shoulder a little apprehensively, I
thought. But we ploughed on.
"We ought to get there soon at this pace," I gasped. "Hello! He's gone
again!"
"He turned down to the right," said Stella excitedly.
The lust of the chase was fairly on us now. We swung eagerly round the
corner into a quiet by-street. Our man was nowhere to be seen and the
street was almost empty.
"Come on!" said Stella. "He may have turned in somewhere."
We hurried down the street. Suddenly, warned by a newly awakened and
primitive instinct, I looked back. We had overrun our quarry. He had
just emerged from some hiding place and was heading back toward the main
street, looking fearfully over his shoulder. Once more we were in full
cry.
For the next five minutes we practically ran--all three of us. The man
was obviously frightened out of his wits, and kept making frenzied and
spasmodic spurts, from which we surmised that he was getting to the end
of his powers of endurance.
"If only we could overtake him," I said, hauling my exhausted spouse
along by the arm, "we could explain that--"
"He's gone again!" exclaimed Stella.
She was right. The man had turned another corner. We followed him round
hotfoot, and found ourselves in a prim little _cul-de-sac_, with villas
on each side. Across the end of the street ran a high wall, obviously
screening a railroad track.
"We've got him!" I exclaimed.