She laughed.  She looked very attractive when she laughed.  She had a small, piquant, vivacious face.  Jimmy, as he looked at it, had an odd feeling that he had seen her before—­when and where he did not know.  That mass of red-gold hair seemed curiously familiar.  Somewhere in the hinterland of his mind there lurked a memory, but he could not bring it into the open.  As for the girl, if she had ever met him before, she showed no signs of recollecting it.  Jimmy decided that, if he had seen her, it must have been in his reporter days.  She was plainly an American, and he occasionally had the feeling that he had seen every one in America when he had worked for the Chronicle.

“That’s right,” he said approvingly.  “Always look on the bright side.”

“I only arrived in London yesterday,” said the girl, “and I haven’t got used to your keeping-to-the-left rules.  I don’t suppose I shall ever get back to New York alive.  Perhaps, as you have saved my life, you wouldn’t mind doing me another service.  Can you tell me which is the nearest and safest way to a restaurant called the Regent Grill?”

“It’s just over there, at the corner of Regent Street.  As to the safest way, if I were you I should cross over at the top of the street there and then work round westward.  Otherwise you will have to cross Piccadilly Circus.”

“I absolutely refuse even to try to cross Piccadilly Circus.  Thank you very much.  I will follow your advice.  I hope I shall get there.  It doesn’t seem at all likely.”

She gave him a little nod, and moved away.  Jimmy turned into that drug-store at the top of the Haymarket at which so many Londoners have found healing and comfort on the morning after, and bought the pink drink for which his system had been craving since he rose from bed.  He wondered why, as he drained it, he should feel ashamed and guilty.

A few minutes later he found himself, with mild surprise, going down the steps of the Regent Grill.  It was the last place he had had in his mind when he had left the steamship company’s offices in quest of lunch.  He had intended to seek out some quiet, restful nook where he could be alone with his thoughts.  If anybody had told him then that five minutes later he would be placing himself of his own free will within the range of a restaurant orchestra playing “My Little Grey Home in the West”—­and the orchestra at the Regent played little else—­he would not have believed him.

Restaurants in all large cities have their ups and downs.  At this time the Regent Grill was enjoying one of those bursts of popularity for which restaurateurs pray to whatever strange gods they worship.  The more prosperous section of London’s Bohemia flocked to it daily.  When Jimmy had deposited his hat with the robber-band who had their cave just inside the main entrance and had entered the grill-room, he found it congested.  There did not appear to be a single unoccupied table.