Having by this adroit remonstrance spiked the wrath, as it were, of the stout and angry woman he had jammed in the gate, he permitted the resumption of the trickle of impatient passengers.

Mr. Brimsdown followed with his eye the pretty girl who had been forgetful enough to give up a return ticket instead of a half one.  She had stopped outside the barrier, gazing round with a troubled face at the immensity of the station and the throngs of hurrying people.

The lawyer looked at her hard, from a little distance.  “Where have I seen that face before?” he murmured to himself.

Her beauty was of a sufficiently rare type to attract attention anywhere, except, perhaps, at a London railway station at midnight.  She was unused to her surroundings and she was not a city product.  So much was obvious, though her clear pale face and slim young figure did not suggest rusticity.  Her dark eyes glanced quickly and nervously around her, and then she started to walk slowly towards one of the main entrances.

A luggage porter hurried towards her, intent on tips.  The broad back of a policeman was outlined in the entrance.  The girl looked wistfully from the policeman to the porter, then appeared to make up her mind.  She extracted a silver coin from her purse, and proffered it timidly to the porter.  The porter showed no timidity in accepting it.

“Luggage, miss, in the van?” he asked.  “Just you wait ’ere.”

“I have no luggage,” Mr. Brimsdown heard her say.  Her eyes wandered downward to the little handbag she carried.  “I wanted to ask you—­I am a stranger to London.  Can you tell me a place where I could stay; for the night—­somewhere quiet and respectable?”

Mr. Brimsdown found himself listening anxiously for the porter’s reply.  By all the laws of Romance he should have had an old mother in a clean and humble home who would have been delighted to give the girl shelter for the sight of her pretty face.  But pretty girls are plentiful in London, and kind-hearted old women are rare.  The porter seemed surprised at the inquiry.  He pushed his blue cap back from a shock of red hair, and pondered the question deeply.  Then he made a valiant feint of earning his shilling by throwing out suggestions of temperance hotels in Russell Square and the Euston Road.  He warmed to the subject and depicted the attractions of these places.  Quiet and cheap, and nothing respectabler in the ’ole city of London.  They was open at all hours.  His own sister stayed in one when she come to town.

“Would you give me the address?” the girl wistfully asked.

The porter shook his head cautiously.  He had evidently no intention of pawning his sister’s reputation for a shilling given him by a strange girl who might have designs on the spoons of temperance hotels.

“How do I get to Euston Road?” asked the girl with a quick realization of the fact that she had obtained London value for her shilling.