a side street broader than the asphalt thoroughfare,
but with scarcely a break in either phalanx of drab mediocre dwellings,
and not a creature stirring except themselves and a few who followed. The
hog's back of a still more deserted bridge arched itself at the foot of
the street, its suspension cables showing against the sky in foreshortened
curves. As they ran a peculiarly shrill whistle cut the morning air like
a streak of sound.

"P'lice!" screamed one of those bringing up the rear, and they easily
spurted past father and son, each already contending with his own
infirmity. Mr. Upton was dangerously scarlet in the neck, and Pocket
panting as he had not done for days. In sad labour they drew near the
suspension bridge, to a crescendo accompaniment on the police whistle. It
was evidently being blown on the Embankment to the right of the bridge,
and already with considerable effect. As the pair were about to pass an
intermediate turning on the right, a constable flew across it on a
parallel course, and they altered theirs with one accord. Pocket panted
after the constable, and his father thundered after Pocket, into a narrow
street debouching upon a fenced strip of greenery, not too dense to hide
broad pavement and low parapet on its further side, with a strip of brown
river beyond that, and a skyline of warehouses on the Surrey shore.

The narrow garden had not been opened for the day. There was a gate
opposite the end of the road, another gate leading out on the Embankment
opposite that. Between the two gates a grimy statue rose upon a granite
pedestal, a meditative figure clad to the heels in some nondescript
garment, and gazing across the river as he sat with a number of discarded
volumes under his chair. It was a peculiarly lifelike monument, which
Pocket would have been just the boy to appreciate at any other time; even
now it struck him for an instant, before his attention was attracted to
the group of commonplace living people on the Embankment beyond the narrow
garden. They were standing together on the far side of one of the fixed
seats. There was the policeman who had blown the whistle, and a small but
motley crew who had answered to the call. Conspicuous units were a
gentleman in dressing-gown and pyjamas, a couple of chimneysweeps, and a
labouring cyclist on his way to work. They had formed a circle about some
hidden object on the ground; and long before the new-comers could run
round and jo