ck me. But the ladies with the hats were after
the same thing, so they closed their ranks in front of March's nose, and
swamped him. That's why I didn't get the chance to make sure whether it
was he or his double. I rubbered some more, to see, but there was only a
massed formation of hats where the face had been. There's nothing like
hatpins to drive a man to the wall."

I shivered a little with the same electric thrill which had passed
through me in church. What a soulless thing I had been not to know,
despite a barrier of a hundred hats, by instinct whose eyes had called
mine. But Tony was going mildly on.

"That's all, about the church," he said. "March must have been one of
the first to get out, or he wouldn't have been on the stage in time for
the next act. Sounds like a kind of melodrama now, doesn't it? Act one,
scene one, inside St. George's, Hanover Square; the wedding. Scene two,
outside the church door. Only, in a melodrama, the bridegroom would be
the hero, and the other fellow the villain. There's no villain in this
play."

"Oh, _isn't_ there?" I sneered. "We won't argue the question, though. I
suppose the new motor car didn't come after all, as I hear things about
runaway horses."

"Then you have heard already? What's the good of my repeating----"

"No--no! I've heard scarcely anything. I depended on you. I was sure you
wouldn't fail me."

That encouraged Tony, and soon I knew what he knew. He had been pumping
Captain Beatty, and had learned from him how, before leaving the Savoy
for St. George's, Sidney had received a wire from his chauffeur. It said
that the Grayles-Grice had safely arrived by a later train than
promised, but that something was wrong with the motor. Better not depend
on the car for church, though it would be pretty sure to be all right to
go away in after the reception. This was a blow to Sidney, because he
had grown quite superstitious on the subject of reaching the house from
St. George's. He had told Captain Beatty about repeated dreams of a bomb
startling a pair of horses. And a Bond Street clairvoyant had seen in
her crystal a picture of him and a woman in white driving away from a
church in a black-draped hearse. Captain Beatty had mentioned casually
to Tony that Vandyke used to have as good nerves as the next man, but
that he'd got "jumpy" lately, and Beatty wondered whether it was like
that with all fellows who were going to be married.

The only thing to do had been to o