“I lost my wind,” he explained, “when that horse fell on me, and everyone promptly imagined I was killed.  I hope, Margaret, the needless excitement of my appearance on a stretcher did not alarm you.  They were going to whip me off to the hospital when I managed to gurgle out the name of the hotel.”

“What happened?” said Brett.

“The most extraordinary thing.  Have you told him, Davie?”

“No, I attributed your first words to me as being due to delirium.  I had no idea you were in earnest.”

“Well, Mr. Brett,” said Frazer, sitting down, for notwithstanding his protests, he was somewhat shaky, “it began to rain after breakfast.”

“Excellent!” cried the barrister, “An Englishman, in his sound mind, always starts with the state of the weather.”

“I am sound enough, thank goodness, but I had a very close shave.  Don’t laugh, Davie.  My ribs are sore.  As the ladies decided not to go out until the weather took up, Davie said he would keep them company whilst I seized the opportunity to visit a tailor.  I left the hotel and walked quickly to the corner of Whitehall.  It was hardly worth while taking a cab to Bond Street, and I intended to cross in front of King Charles’s statue.  It is an awkward place, and a lot of ’buses, cabs, and vans were bowling along downhill from the Strand and St. Martin’s Church.  I waited a moment on the kerbstone, watching for a favourable opportunity, when suddenly I was pitched head foremost in front of a passing ’bus.  My escape from instant death was solely due to the splendid way in which the driver handled his horses and applied his brake.  The near horse was swung round so sharp that he fell and landed almost, not quite, on the top of me.  I could feel his hot, reeking body against my face, and although the greater part of his impact was borne by the road, I got enough to knock the breath out of me.  You will see by the state of my clothes in the other room how I was flattened in the mud.  By the way, Davie, it is your suit.”

Helen choked back something she was going to say, and Frazer continued: 

“A policeman pulled me from under the horse, and I kept my senses sufficiently to note how the near front wheel had gouged a channel in the mud within an inch or so of my head.  It went over my hat.  Where is it?”

Hume ran into the bedroom, and returned with a bowler hat torn to shreds.

“There you are,” said Robert coolly, “Fancy my head in that condition.”

“You used the word ‘pitched.’  Do you mean that someone cannoned against you?”

“Not a bit of it.  It was no accident of a hurrying man blindly following an umbrella.  I have been a sailor, Mr. Brett, and am accustomed to maintaining my balance in a sudden lurch.  I do it intuitively.  It is as much a part of my second self as using my eyes or ears with unconscious accuracy.  Some man—­a big, powerful man—­designedly threw me down, and did so very scientifically, first pressing his knee against the tendons of my left leg, and then using his elbow.  Not one in a thousand Londoners would know the trick.”