"Look here, it may be a joke to you, but I don't fancy myself coming
down the mountains at night."
"The last train goes at one o'clock, if that's any good to you."
"All the good in the world," I said joyfully. "Then I needn't walk." I
looked at my watch. "That gives us five minutes more. I could almost
tell you all about myself in that time."
"It generally takes longer than that," said Miss White. "At least it
seems to." She sighed and added, "My partners have been very
autobiographical to-night."
I looked at her severely.
"I'm afraid you're a Suffragette," I said.
As soon as the next dance began I hurried off to find my hostess. I had
just caught sight of her when----
"Our dance, isn't it?" said a voice.
I turned and recognised a girl in blue.
"Ah," I said, coldly cheerful, "I was just looking for you. Come along."
We broke into a gay and happy step, suggestive of twin hearts utterly
free from care.
"Why do you look so thoughtful?" asked the girl in blue after ten
minutes of it.
"I've just heard some good news," I said.
"Oh, do tell me!"
"I don't know if it would really interest you."
"I'm sure it would."
"Well, several miles from here there may be a tram, if one can find it,
which goes nobody quite knows where up till one-thirty in the morning
probably. It is now," I added, looking at my watch (I was getting quite
good at this), "just on one o'clock and raining hard. All is well."
The dance over, I searched in vain for my hostess. Every minute I took
out my watch and seemed to feel that another tram was just starting off
to some unknown destination. At last I could bear it no longer and,
deciding to write a letter of explanation on the morrow, I dashed off.
My instructions from Miss White with regard to the habitat of trams
(thrown in by her at the last moment in case the train failed me) were
vague. Five minutes' walk convinced me that I had completely lost any
good that they might ever have been to me. Instinct and common sense
were the only guides left. I must settle down to some heavy detective
work.
The steady rain had washed out any footprints that might have been of
assistance, and I was unable to follow up the slot of a tram conductor
of which I had discovered traces in Two-hundred-and-fifty-first Street.
In Three-thousand-eight-hundred-and-ninety-seventh Street I lay with my
ear to the ground and listened intently, for I seemed to hear the
ting-ting of the electric car, but nothing came of it; and in
Four-millionth Street I made a new resolution. I decided to give up
looking for trams and to search instead for London--the London that I
knew.
I felt pretty certain that I was still in one of the Home Counties, and
I did not seem to remember having crossed the Thames, so that if only I
could find a star which pointed to the south I was in a fair way to get
home. I set out to look for a star; with the natural result that, having
abandoned all hope of finding a man, I immediately ran into him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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