out and headed out for the eastern
suburbs. The place was unfamiliar to me at the time--I hadn't the
faintest idea of the street the man lived in--and in the face of what
happened later I made no enquiries. As a matter of fact the rush of
events crowded all such petty details out of my mind.

"Can you drive a car?" he asked abruptly.

"I can drive anything but an Andean mule," I told him. "I tried once in
the Chilian foot-hills, but after the animal dislocated my shoulder I
sort of lost heart."

"I gather from the retiring modesty of your last remark," he smiled,
"that you consider yourself an expert as regards all other forms of
animal and mechanical traction."

"Quite so. I can always do anything on principle, and I've yet to meet
the job that I'm unwilling to tackle!"

He glanced sideways at me. I didn't like the look he gave me. There was
too much of appraisement in it, something that was alien to the nature
of the man, a sort of cold, calculating shrewdness that made me wonder
again if I had not been mistaken in my estimate of him and the extent of
his good-nature.

"If you keep on admiring me instead of looking where you're going," I
hinted, "you'll end up in a funeral. That motor-bus isn't the sort of
thing I'd care to hit."

He twisted the wheel over a fraction and edged out beyond the motor-bus
before he replied. "Life is full of thrills," he remarked when at last
we reached the comparative security of open space. There was a challenge
in his voice that I thought it well to ignore.

"It is," I agreed. "Too much so."

For all the lightness of his speech and the careless ease with which he
took unnecessary and avoidable risks I had a feeling that there was deep
design under everything he did. Though I couldn't have proved it if I'd
been asked, I felt sure that he was trying my nerve. After all there's
no better test of that than the crowded traffic of a big city. I've met
men who'd cheerfully face a crowd of howling cannibals and yet would
develop a very bad case of jumps if asked to cross a street roaring and
humming with traffic. Yes, clearly he was testing me.

With a jerk that nearly shot me out of my seat the car pulled up. I
stared about me. We had stopped outside a substantial red-tiled house,
built in the bungalow fashion. There was a well-kept lawn in front of
it, with here and there a trim flower-bed to relieve the monotony of the
expanse of grass.

"This is the place," Bryce said. "Just s