The suddenness of the move gave him an initial advantage.  He was halfway down the first block before the vanguard of the pursuit poured out of the side street.  Continuing to travel well, he skimmed past a large dray which had pulled up across the road, and moved on.  The noise of those who pursued was loud and clamorous in the rear, but the dray hid him momentarily from their sight, and it was this fact which led Archie, the old campaigner, to take his next step.

It was perfectly obvious—­he was aware of this even in the novel excitement of the chase—­that a chappie couldn’t hoof it at twenty-five miles an hour indefinitely along a main thoroughfare of a great city without exciting remark.  He must take cover.  Cover!  That was the wheeze.  He looked about him for cover.

“You want a nice suit?”

It takes a great deal to startle your commercial New Yorker.  The small tailor, standing in his doorway, seemed in no way surprised at the spectacle of Archie, whom he had seen pass at a conventional walk some five minutes before, returning like this at top speed.  He assumed that Archie had suddenly remembered that he wanted to buy something.

This was exactly what Archie had done.  More than anything else in the world, what he wanted to do now was to get into that shop and have a long talk about gents’ clothing.  Pulling himself up abruptly, he shot past the small tailor into the dim interior.  A confused aroma of cheap clothing greeted him.  Except for a small oasis behind a grubby counter, practically all the available space was occupied by suits.  Stiff suits, looking like the body when discovered by the police, hung from hooks.  Limp suits, with the appearance of having swooned from exhaustion, lay about on chairs and boxes.  The place was a cloth morgue, a Sargasso Sea of serge.

Archie would not have had it otherwise.  In these quiet groves of clothing a regiment could have lain hid.

“Something nifty in tweeds?” enquired the business-like proprietor of this haven, following him amiably into the shop, “Or, maybe, yes, a nice serge?  Say, mister, I got a sweet thing in blue serge that’ll fit you like the paper on the wall!”

Archie wanted to talk about clothes, but not yet.

“I say, laddie,” he said, hurriedly.  “Lend me, your ear for half a jiffy!” Outside the baying of the pack had become imminent.  “Stow me away for a moment in the undergrowth, and I’ll buy anything you want.”

He withdrew into the jungle.  The noise outside grew in volume.  The pursuit had been delayed for a priceless few instants by the arrival of another dray, moving northwards, which had drawn level with the first dray and dexterously bottled up the fairway.  This obstacle had now been overcome, and the original searchers, their ranks swelled by a few dozen more of the leisured classes, were hot on the trail again.

“You done a murder?” enquired the voice of the proprietor, mildly interested, filtering through a wall of cloth.  “Well, boys will be boys!” he said, philosophically.  “See anything there that you like?  There some sweet things there!”