t ask _me_. I named it Clapham. 'To your
tents, O Clapham!' I shouted as I went: but the warning was
superfluous. As the poet--wasn't it Wordsworth?--remarked on a
famous occasion, Dear God! the very houses seemed asleep. . . .'

"It must have been five or six minutes later that our petrol gave out
and my trusted taxi came gently to a halt in the middle of the
roadway. I climbed out, opened the door and explained. 'Step out,
quick,' said I, 'and make down this street to the left. We must
tangle the track a bit, with this piece of evidence behind us.'

"The Lady Petunia considerately took Farrell's arm. 'Why, he can
walk!' she announced. 'I'm all ri'!' Farrell assured her. 'You may
be yet,' she answered, 'if you keep your head shut.' Farrell asked
me if I considered that a ladylike expression. To this she retorted
that she couldn't bear for anyone to speak crossly to her: it broke
her heart.

"'Capital!' said I. 'Voices a tone lower, please--but keep it up,
and you're husband and wife, returning from an evening at the
theatre. Taxi broken down--wife peevish at having to walk remaining
distance. Keep it up, and I'll undertake to steer you past half the
police in London.'

"Well, I steered them past two, and without a question. Not one of
us knew our bearings, but we were making excellent weather of it, and
at length came out by the by-streets upon a fine broad thoroughfare
with an arc-lamp at the corner.

"I stared up at the building on my left, against which he lamp shone.
There was no street-sign at the angle, and an inscription in large
gilt letters on the facade was not very hopeful--ROYAL SOUTH LONDON
PICTUREDROME--yet to some extent reassuring. We were at any rate
lost in London; and not in Byzantium, as we might have deduced from
other architectural details.

"'And yet I am not wholly sure,' said I. 'We will ask the next
policeman. _Picturedrome_ now--barbaric union of West and East.--
Surely the word must be somewhere in Gibbon. Ever met it in Gibbon,
Farrell?'

"'No, I haven't,' he answered testily. 'Never was in Gibbon, to my
knowledge. Where is it? . . . But I'll tell you what!' he wound up,
fierce and sudden; 'I've met with too many policemen to-night;
avenuesh, we've been passin'. Seems to me neighb'rhood infested.
Not like Soho. 'Nequal dishtribush'n bobbies. 'Nequal distribush'n
everything. Cursh--curse--modern shivilzash'n--damn!'

"'Our taxi,' I mused, 'may have been a