natched his stick, half crazy
with the contradiction in mere arithmetic, and swung out of the swinging
doors, leaving his coffee untasted. An omnibus going to the Bank went
rattling by with an unusual rapidity. He had a violent run of a
hundred yards to reach it; but he managed to spring, swaying upon the
splash-board and, pausing for an instant to pant, he climbed on to the
top. When he had been seated for about half a minute, he heard behind
him a sort of heavy and asthmatic breathing.

Turning sharply, he saw rising gradually higher and higher up the
omnibus steps a top hat soiled and dripping with snow, and under
the shadow of its brim the short-sighted face and shaky shoulders of
Professor de Worms. He let himself into a seat with characteristic care,
and wrapped himself up to the chin in the mackintosh rug.

Every movement of the old man's tottering figure and vague hands, every
uncertain gesture and panic-stricken pause, seemed to put it beyond
question that he was helpless, that he was in the last imbecility of
the body. He moved by inches, he let himself down with little gasps
of caution. And yet, unless the philosophical entities called time and
space have no vestige even of a practical existence, it appeared quite
unquestionable that he had run after the omnibus.

Syme sprang erect upon the rocking car, and after staring wildly at the
wintry sky, that grew gloomier every moment, he ran down the steps. He
had repressed an elemental impulse to leap over the side.

Too bewildered to look back or to reason, he rushed into one of the
little courts at the side of Fleet Street as a rabbit rushes into a
hole. He had a vague idea, if this incomprehensible old Jack-in-the-box
was really pursuing him, that in that labyrinth of little streets he
could soon throw him off the scent. He dived in and out of those crooked
lanes, which were more like cracks than thoroughfares; and by the time
that he had completed about twenty alternate angles and described an
unthinkable polygon, he paused to listen for any sound of pursuit. There
was none; there could not in any case have been much, for the little
streets were thick with the soundless snow. Somewhere behind Red Lion
Court, however, he noticed a place where some energetic citizen had
cleared away the snow for a space of about twenty yards, leaving the
wet, glistening cobble-stones. He thought little of this as he passed
it, only plunging into yet another arm of the maze. B