along Guildford Street.
I wonder if that is our strenuous friend from the station. If so, he has
slipped past the hooligans."

We were just entering Doughty Street, and, as Thorndyke spoke, a man on
a bicycle was visible for an instant at the crossing of the two streets.
When we reached Guildford Street we both looked down the long,
lamp-lighted vista, but the cyclist had vanished.

"We had better go straight on into Theobald's Road," said Thorndyke, and
we accordingly pursued our way up the fine old-world street, from whose
tall houses our footfalls echoed, so that we seemed to be accompanied by
an invisible multitude, until we reached that part where it
unaccountably changes its name and becomes John Street.

"There always seems to me something very pathetic about these old
Bloomsbury streets," said Thorndyke, "with their faded grandeur and
dignified seediness. They remind me of some prim and aged gentlewoman in
reduced circumstances who--Hallo! What was that?"

A faint, sharp thud from behind had been followed instantly by the
shattering of a ground-floor window in front.

We both stopped dead and remained, for a couple of seconds, staring into
the gloom, from whence the first sound had come; then Thorndyke darted
diagonally across the road at a swift run and I immediately followed.

At the moment when the affair happened we had gone about forty yards up
John Street, that is, from the place where it is crossed by Henry
Street, and we now raced across the road to the further corner of the
latter street. When we reached it, however, the little thoroughfare was
empty, and, as we paused for a moment, no sound of retreating footsteps
broke the silence.

"The shot certainly came from here!" said Thorndyke; "come on," and he
again broke into a run. A few yards up the street a mews turns off to
the left, and into this my companion plunged, motioning me to go
straight on, which I accordingly did, and in a few paces reached the top
of the street. Here a narrow thoroughfare, with a broad, smooth
pavement, bears off to the left, parallel with the mews, and, as I
arrived at the corner and glanced up the little street, I saw a man on a
bicycle gliding swiftly and silently towards Little James' Street.

With a mighty shout of "Stop thief!" I started in hot pursuit, but,
though the man's feet were moving in an apparently leisurely manner, he
drew ahead at an astonishing pace, in spite of my efforts to overtake
him; and it t