ll!"

Archie wanted to talk about clothes, but not yet.

"I say, laddie," he said, hurriedly. "Lend me, your ear for half a
jiffy!" Outside the baying of the pack had become imminent. "Stow me
away for a moment in the undergrowth, and I'll buy anything you want."

He withdrew into the jungle. The noise outside grew in volume. The
pursuit had been delayed for a priceless few instants by the arrival of
another dray, moving northwards, which had drawn level with the first
dray and dexterously bottled up the fairway. This obstacle had now been
overcome, and the original searchers, their ranks swelled by a few dozen
more of the leisured classes, were hot on the trail again.

"You done a murder?" enquired the voice of the proprietor, mildly
interested, filtering through a wall of cloth. "Well, boys will be
boys!" he said, philosophically. "See anything there that you like?
There some sweet things there!"

"I'm inspecting them narrowly," replied Archie. "If you don't let those
chappies find me, I shouldn't be surprised if I bought one."

"One?" said the proprietor, with a touch of austerity.

"Two," said Archie, quickly. "Or possibly three or six."

The proprietor's cordiality returned.

"You can't have too many nice suits," he said, approvingly, "not a young
feller like you that wants to look nice. All the nice girls like a
young feller that dresses nice. When you go out of here in a suit I got
hanging up there at the back, the girls 'll be all over you like flies
round a honey-pot."

"Would you mind," said Archie, "would you mind, as a personal favour to
me, old companion, not mentioning that word 'girls'?"

He broke off. A heavy foot had crossed the threshold of the shop.

"Say, uncle," said a deep voice, one of those beastly voices that only
the most poisonous blighters have, "you seen a young feller run past
here?"

"Young feller?" The proprietor appeared to reflect. "Do you mean a young
feller in blue, with a Homburg hat?"

"That's the duck! We lost him. Where did he go?"

"Him! Why, he come running past, quick as he could go. I wondered what
he was running for, a hot day like this. He went round the corner at the
bottom of the block."

There was a silence.

"Well, I guess he's got away," said the voice, regretfully.

"The way he was travelling," agreed the proprietor, "I wouldn't be
surprised if he was in Europe by this. You want a nice suit?"

The other, curtly expressing a wish that the propriet