ise,
thus requiring me to engage in a decidedly unseemly struggle with him
for its possession. I believe I may safely assert that I am not of an
unduly suspicious nature but assuredly the appearance of this man and
his fellows was such as to create doubt as to the honesty of their
ultimate motives. What between turning this way to wave off a
particularly persistent applicant and turning that way again to beg the
pardon of strangers who found themselves in actual collision with me and
my belongings, I was rendered quite dizzy, besides sustaining several
painful bruises upon the nether limbs.

At length I felt I could no longer endure the strain; already my nerves
seemed stretched to the breaking point. After some minutes, I succeeded,
by dint of spoken appeals and gestures, in engaging the ear of a police
officer who appeared to be on duty at a point nearby. To him I gave my
name and calling, and furnished him also with a personal description of
the strangely missing taxicab driver, charging him, the police officer,
to bid the driver to seek me out in my quarters aboard ship when he, the
driver, should reappear with my change.

This matter disposed of, I gathered up my luggage as best I could and
laden like unto a veritable beast of burden wended my way adown the
interior of the long, barn-like structure, pausing at intervals, more or
less annoying in their frequency, to re-collect and readjust certain
small parcels which persistently slipped from beneath my arms or out of
my fingers. The weather being warm, I was presently aglow and in fact
quite moistly suffused with particles of perspiration.

All was noise and excitement. So great was the confusion, so
disconcerting the uproar about me, that I preserve but an indistinct
recollection of my chance meeting with Miss Primleigh and our joint
charges, whom I encountered en masse at a point approximately, I should
judge, midway of the pier. As it developed, they had entered by another
door, thus escaping my notice. I remember pausing to ask whether any of
them had seen and recognised my steamer trunk which on the night before
I had reluctantly entrusted to the custody of a licensed transfer agency
and regarding which I felt some excusable misgivings. It seemed that
none had seen it; so leaving the young ladies in Miss Primleigh's care,
I resumed my difficult and hampered journey in the general direction of
the so-called gangway.

Here persons in fustian who claimed to b