as just coming
out of the flats, that a man detached himself from the crowd and
started across the road. He was a big, fat, greasy person in a bowler
hat.

"Here," he said. "You wait a bit. What d'ye mean by throwing that pore
man in the river?"

I opened the door of the taxi and Joyce jumped in.

"What's it got to do with you, darling?" asked Tommy affably.

"What's it got to do with me!" he repeated indignantly. "Why, it's
just the mercy o' Gawd--"

"Come on, Tommy," I said.

Tommy took a step forward, but the man clutched him by the arm.

"No yer don't," he said, "not till ... Ow!"

With a sudden vigorous shove Tommy sent him staggering back across the
pavement, and the next moment we had both jumped into the taxi and
banged the door.

"Right away," I called out.

I think there was some momentary doubt amongst the other spectators
whether they oughtn't to interfere, but before they could make up
their minds our sympathetic driver had thrust in his clutch, and we
were spinning away down the Embankment.

Joyce, who was sitting next to me, slipped her hand into mine.

"I love to see you both laughing," she said, "but I _should_ like
to know what's happened! At present I feel as if I was acting in a
cinematograph play."

We told her--told her in quick, eager sentences of how the danger and
mystery that had hung over us so for long had at last been scattered
and destroyed. It was a broken, inadequate sort of narrative, jerked
out as we bumped over crossings and pulled by behind buses, but I
fancy from the light in her eyes and the pressure of her hand that
Joyce was quite contented.

"It's--it's like waking up after some horrible dream," she said, "and
suddenly finding that everything's all right. Oh, I knew it would be
in the end--I knew it the whole time--but I never dreamed it would
happen all at once like this."

"Neither did George," chuckled Tommy. "How long had he been with you,
Joyce?"

"About twenty minutes," she said. "He came straight to me from
Harrod's, where he's spent most of the day buying stores for his
yacht. He had quite made up his mind I was coming with him. I don't
believe he's got the faintest idea about what's happened this
morning."

"He will have soon," I said. "That's why I threw him in the river.
He's bound to go back to the house for a change of clothes, and he'll
find the police waiting for him there."

"That'll be just right," observed Tommy complacently. "There's n