oud. I suppose it is that I can
hear, but it sounds like the distant singing of the moon. I have come
here to count up my theories, to count them and pile them up like money,
in heaps, according to their value. Theories are such beautiful things,
there must be some use in them. Or perhaps they are like money from a
distant country, and not in currency here. Yet just as sheer metal, they
must have some value.... It is wonderful that such happiness should come
to me, and that it should last. I have the Sea and a Friend; there is
nothing in the world I lack, and nothing that I regret...."

"What better clue could you want?" asked Mrs. Gustus. "We will take
Christina round the sea-coast."

"Looking for silver cliffs and a golden sea," sighed Kew.

I don't know if I have mentioned or conveyed to you that Mrs. Gustus was
a determined woman. At any rate she was, and it would therefore be waste
of time to describe the gradual defeat of Kew. The final stage was the
despatch of Kew to call on Nana in the Brown Borough. Jay's letter had
the Brown Borough postmark, so it had apparently been sent to Nana to
post. Nana might be described as the Second Clue in the pursuit of Jay.
She was the Family's only link with Jay. The one drawback of Nana as a
clue was that she was never to be found. Mrs. Gustus had called six
times, but had been repulsed on each occasion by a totally dumb front
door. But then Nana never had liked Anonyma. Nana was simple herself in
an amateurish, unconscious sort of way, and I expect she disliked
Anonyma's professional rivalry in the matter of simplicity. But Kew was
always a favourite.

The 'bus roared up the canyons of the City, and its voice accompanied Kew
in his tuneful meditations. A 'bus is not really well adapted for
meditation. On my feet I can stride across unseen miles musing on love,
in a taxi I can think about to-morrow's dinner, but on a 'bus my thoughts
will go no further than my eyes can see. So Kew, although he thought he
was thinking of Jay, was really considering the words in front of him--To
Stop O'Bus strike Bell at Rear.[Footnote: He must have changed at the
Bank into a Tilling 'bus.] He deduced from this that it was an Irish
'bus, and supposed that this accounted for its rather head-long
behaviour. He spent some moments in imagining the MacBus, child of a
sterner race, which would run gutturally without skids, and wear a
different cut of bonnet.

He dismounted into a faint yellow fog