ety bar is closed," said the man.

"Then home," said Michael, with the same cheerfulness.

"Where to, sir?"

"I don't remember, I'm sure," said Michael, entering the vehicle, "drive
Shcotlan' Yard and ask."

"But you'll have a card," said the man, through the little aperture in
the top, "give me your card-case."

"What imagi--imagination in a cabby!" cried the lawyer, producing his
card-case, and handing it to the driver.

The man read it by the light of the lamp. "Mr. Michael Finsbury, 233
King's Road, Chelsea. Is that it, sir?"

"Right you are," cried Michael, "drive there if you can see way."

CHAPTER X

GIDEON FORSYTH AND THE BROADWOOD GRAND

The reader has perhaps read that remarkable work, "Who Put Back the
Clock?" by E. H. B., which appeared for several days upon the railway
bookstalls and then vanished entirely from the face of the earth.
Whether eating Time makes the chief of his diet out of old editions;
whether Providence has passed a special enactment on behalf of authors;
or whether these last have taken the law into their own hand, bound
themselves into a dark conspiracy with a password, which I would die
rather than reveal, and night after night sally forth under some
vigorous leader, such as Mr. James Payn or Mr. Walter Besant, on their
task of secret spoliation--certain it is, at least, that the old
editions pass, giving place to new. To the proof, it is believed there
are now only three copies extant of "Who Put Back the Clock?" one in the
British Museum, successfully concealed by a wrong entry in the
catalogue; another in one of the cellars (the cellar where the music
accumulates) of the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh; and a third, bound
in morocco, in the possession of Gideon Forsyth. To account for the very
different fate attending this third exemplar, the readiest theory is to
suppose that Gideon admired the tale. How to explain that admiration
might appear (to those who have perused the work) more difficult; but
the weakness of a parent is extreme, and Gideon (and not his uncle,
whose initials he had humorously borrowed) was the author of "Who Put
Back the Clock?" He had never acknowledged it, or only to some intimate
friends while it was still in proof; after its appearance and alarming
failure, the modesty of the novelist had become more pressing, and the
secret was now likely to be better kept than that of the authorship of
"Waverley."

A copy of the work (for the date of