I had held my breath in vain.
But this is the unvarnished record of an odious hour, and it passed
without further aggravation from without; only, as I drove to Sloane
Street, the news was on all the posters, and on one I read of "a clew"
which spelt for me a doom I was grimly resolved to share.

Already there was something in the nature of a "run" upon the Sloane
Street branch of the City and Suburban. A cab drove away with a chest
of reasonable dimensions as mine drove up, while in the bank itself a
lady was making a painful scene. As for the genial clerk who had
roared at my jokes the day before, he was mercifully in no mood for
any more, but, on the contrary, quite rude to me at sight.

"I've been expecting you all the afternoon," said he. "You needn't
look so pale."

"Is it safe?"

"That Noah's Ark of yours? Yes, so I hear; they'd just got to it when
they were interrupted, and they never went back again."

"Then it wasn't even opened?"

"Only just begun on, I believe."

"Thank God!"

"You may; we don't," growled the clerk. "The manager says he believes
your chest was at the bottom of it all."

"How could it be?" I asked uneasily.

"By being seen on the cab a mile off, and followed," said the clerk.

"Does the manager want to see _me_?" I asked boldly.

"Not unless you want to see him," was the blunt reply. "He's been at
it with others all the afternoon, and they haven't all got off as
cheap as you."

"Then my silver shall not embarrass you any longer," said I grandly.
"I meant to leave it if it was all right, but after all you have said
I certainly shall not. Let your man or men bring up the chest at once.
I dare say they also have been 'at it with others all the afternoon,'
but I shall make this worth their while."

I did not mind driving through the streets with the thing this time.
My present relief was too overwhelming as yet to admit of pangs and
fears for the immediate future. No summer sun had ever shone more
brightly than that rather watery one of early April. There was a
green-and-gold dust of buds and shoots on the trees as we passed the
park. I felt greater things sprouting in my heart. Hansoms passed with
schoolboys just home for the Easter holidays, four-wheelers outward
bound, with bicycles and perambulators atop; none that rode in them
were half so happy as I, with the great load on my cab, but the
greater one off my heart.

At Mount Street it just went into the lift; that was a s