me tearing down the little lane at his
call. When the cabman saw his fares, however, two wild-haired men
in their shirts and socks with naked swords under their arms, he
not unnaturally brought his readiness to a rigid stop and stared
suspiciously.

"You talk to him a minute," whispered Turnbull, and stepped back into
the shadow of the wall.

"We want you," said MacIan to the cabman, with a superb Scotch drawl of
indifference and assurance, "to drive us to St. Pancras Station--verra
quick."

"Very sorry, sir," said the cabman, "but I'd like to know it was all
right. Might I arst where you come from, sir?"

A second after he spoke MacIan heard a heavy voice on the other side of
the wall, saying: "I suppose I'd better get over and look for them. Give
me a back."

"Cabby," said MacIan, again assuming the most deliberate and lingering
lowland Scotch intonation, "if ye're really verra anxious to ken whar a'
come fra', I'll tell ye as a verra great secret. A' come from Scotland.
And a'm gaein' to St. Pancras Station. Open the doors, cabby."

The cabman stared, but laughed. The heavy voice behind the wall said:
"Now then, a better back this time, Mr. Price." And from the shadow
of the wall Turnbull crept out. He had struggled wildly into his coat
(leaving his waistcoat on the pavement), and he was with a fierce pale
face climbing up the cab behind the cabman. MacIan had no glimmering
notion of what he was up to, but an instinct of discipline, inherited
from a hundred men of war, made him stick to his own part and trust the
other man's.

"Open the doors, cabby," he repeated, with something of the obstinate
solemnity of a drunkard, "open the doors. Did ye no hear me say St.
Pancras Station?"

The top of a policeman's helmet appeared above the garden wall. The
cabman did not see it, but he was still suspicious and began:

"Very sorry, sir, but..." and with that the catlike Turnbull tore him
out of his seat and hurled him into the street below, where he lay
suddenly stunned.

"Give me his hat," said Turnbull in a silver voice, that the other
obeyed like a bugle. "And get inside with the swords."

And just as the red and raging face of a policeman appeared above the
wall, Turnbull struck the horse with a terrible cut of the whip and the
two went whirling away like a boomerang.

They had spun through seven streets and three or four squares before
anything further happened. Then, in the neighbourhood of Maida Vale,
t