“Where is this man now?”

“With the cabman in a small hotel across the road.  I had not the nerve to bring them here.  If we have any more adventures, the management will turn us out.  I fancy they think our behaviour is hardly respectable.  The instant Robert or I endeavour to leave the door we are used to clean up a portion of the roadway.”

“Miss Layton, would you mind joining the others for a few minutes.  Mr. Hume is going out with Mr. Winter and myself.”

The barrister’s request took Helen by surprise.

“Is there any need for further risk?” she faltered.  “Moreover, Margaret will see at once that something has gone wrong.  I am a poor hand at deception where—­where Davie is concerned.”

“Have no fear.  Tell them everything.  Mr. Hume will be very seriously injured—­in to-morrow morning’s papers.  This expert in street accidents must be led to believe he has succeeded.  In any case, aided by a miserable fowl, he is far enough from here at this moment.  We will return in twenty minutes.”

The girl was so agitated that she hardly noticed Brett’s words.  But their purport reassured her, and she left them.

The three men passed out into the drizzling rain.  Owing to the Strand being “up,” a continuous stream of traffic flowed through the Avenue.  Hume pointed out the gap through which the horse was forced, and then they darted across the roadway.

“I fell here,” he said, indicating a muddy flood of road scrapings, in which were embedded many splinters from the wreckage of the hansom.

Brett, careless of the amazement he caused to hurrying pedestrians, waded through the bed of mud, kicking up any objects encountered by his feet.

He uttered an exclamation of triumph when he produced a stick from the depths.

“I thought I should find it,” he said.  “When the horse fell it was a hundred to one against the stick being extricated from the reins, and its owner could not wait an instant.  You and the stick, my dear Hume, lay close together.”

A small crowd was gathering.  The barrister laughed.

“Gentleman,” he said, “why are you so surprised?  Which of you would not dirty his boots to recover such a valuable article as this?”

Some people grinned sympathetically.  They all moved away.

In an upper room of the neighbouring public-house were a suffering “runner” and a disconsolate “cabby.”  The “runner” could tell them nothing tangible concerning the man he pursued.

“I sawr ’im bring the hoss dahn like a bullick,” he whispered, for the poor fellow had received a terrible blow.  “I went arter ’im, dodged rahnd the fust corner, an’, bli-me, ’e gev me a punch that would ’ave ’arted Corbett.”

“What with—­his fist?” inquired Brett.

“Nah, guv’nor—­’is ’eel, blawst ’im.  I could ’ave dodged a square blow.  I can use my dukes a bit myself.”

“What was the value of the punch?”