ould leave them free for immorality--and yet in your heart you
tolerated them entirely. Now you _know_ that I am an honest man, and you
are mad against me, as I am against you. Yes, that's it. You can't be
angry with bad men. But a good man in the wrong--why one thirsts for his
blood. Yes, you open for me a vista of thought."

"Don't run into anything," said Evan, immovably.

"There's something in that view of yours, too," said Turnbull, and shut
down the trap.

They sped on through shining streets that shot by them like arrows. Mr.
Turnbull had evidently a great deal of unused practical talent which was
unrolling itself in this ridiculous adventure. They had got away with
such stunning promptitude that the police chase had in all probability
not even properly begun. But in case it had, the amateur cabman chose
his dizzy course through London with a strange dexterity. He did not
do what would have first occurred to any ordinary outsider desiring to
destroy his tracks. He did not cut into by-ways or twist his way through
mean streets. His amateur common sense told him that it was precisely
the poor street, the side street, that would be likely to remember
and report the passing of a hansom cab, like the passing of a royal
procession. He kept chiefly to the great roads, so full of hansoms that
a wilder pair than they might easily have passed in the press. In one of
the quieter streets Evan put on his boots.

Towards the top of Albany Street the singular cabman again opened the
trap.

"Mr. MacIan," he said, "I understand that we have now definitely settled
that in the conventional language honour is not satisfied. Our action
must at least go further than it has gone under recent interrupted
conditions. That, I believe, is understood."

"Perfectly," replied the other with his bootlace in his teeth.

"Under those conditions," continued Turnbull, his voice coming through
the hole with a slight note of trepidation very unusual with him, "I
have a suggestion to make, if that can be called a suggestion, which
has probably occurred to you as readily as to me. Until the actual event
comes off we are practically in the position if not of comrades, at
least of business partners. Until the event comes off, therefore
I should suggest that quarrelling would be inconvenient and rather
inartistic; while the ordinary exchange of politeness between man and
man would be not only elegant but uncommonly practical."

"You are perfectl