As they crossed the
Strand, the man looked back. A red glow was in the sky.

"A great blaze!" he said. "What you might call--in fact what the
papers _will_ call--a holocaust. Quite a treat for the populace."

"Do you think they will be able to put it out?"

"Not a chance. It's got too much of a hold. It's a pity you hadn't
that garden-hose of yours with you, isn't it?"

Jill stopped, wide-eyed.

"Garden-hose?"

"Don't you remember the garden-hose? I do! I can feel that clammy
feeling of the water trickling down my back now!"

Memory, always a laggard by the wayside that redeems itself by an
eleventh-hour rush, raced back to Jill. The Embankment turned to a
sun-lit garden, and the January night to a July day. She stared at
him. He was looking at her with a whimsical smile. It was a smile
which, pleasant to-day, had seemed mocking and hostile on that
afternoon years ago. She had always felt then that he was laughing at
her, and at the age of twelve she had resented laughter at her
expense.

"You surely can't be Wally Mason!" "I was wondering when you would
remember." "But the programme called you something else--John
something."

"That was a cunning disguise. Wally Mason is the only genuine and
official name. And, by Jove! I've just remembered yours. It was
Mariner. By the way,"--he paused for an almost imperceptible
instant--"is it still?"

CHAPTER IV

THE LAST OF THE ROOKES TAKES A HAND

I

Jill was hardly aware that he had asked her a question. She was
suffering that momentary sense of unreality which comes to us when the
years roll away and we are thrown abruptly back into the days of our
childhood. The logical side of her mind was quite aware that there was
nothing remarkable in the fact that Wally Mason, who had been to her
all these years a boy in an Eton suit, should now present himself as a
grown man. But for all that the transformation had something of the
effect of a conjuring-trick. It was not only the alteration in his
appearance that startled her: it was the amazing change in his
personality. Wally Mason had been the _bete noire_ of her childhood.
She had never failed to look back at the episode of the garden-hose
with the feeling that she had acted well, that--however she might have
strayed in those early days from the straight and narrow path--in that
one particular crisis she had done the right thing. And now she had
taken an instant liking for him. Easily as she made friends,