"Oh, I'll take a cab too. I'll walk a little way though. Up here--this seems a likely place for cabs----" We took one of the minor streets that led to the King's Road. There I hailed a hansom that was returning eastwards. I had put her into it when a thought struck me. "By the way," I said, "what is your name--your business name, I mean?" She smiled, as if at a wasted care. "Oh, the same," she said. "Does Billy Izzard know you know me?" "No. That is, he didn't." "Well, he does by this time probably. If Evie and he have been talking----" ("'Urry up, gov'nor!" growled the cabman.) "He'll think it odd I didn't speak to you. Never mind. Where can I hear from you?" "Your office----?" "Yes--no, I mean, not there." I had suddenly remembered Miss Levey. "Give me your address." She gave it to me, and I gave it to the cabman. "You really will take a cab?" she said, looking anxiously at me as the vehicle pivoted round. "Yes, yes." And she was off. I was in the King's Road, without a penny. It was a quarter to two when I passed the Post Office near Sloane Square, and it was twenty past by the time I reached Park Lane. After Park Lane I lost count of the time. I came out of the doze in which I walked to find myself at various times in Upper Baker Street, near Lords, and, I don't know how long after that, on the point of missing the turning into Fitzjohns Avenue. The day began to break greyly. I still walked, sleeping as I went. It was only as I ascended Heath Street, hardly a quarter of a mile from home, that I came sufficiently out of my torpor to begin to wonder what account I should give of my absence to Evie. FOOTNOTE: [1] See "In Accordance with the Evidence." IV Three weeks or a month after that night on which I had reopened, so to speak, a bottle containing a grim and familiar genie, an incident happened that riled me exceedingly. This was nothing less than an unexpected meeting, on one of our Sunday visits to Hampton Court, with Miss Levey. Under other circumstances this meeting would have been too ludicrous for annoyance. It happened in the Maze, of all places, where, in some moment of physiological high spirits, I had taken Evie, threatening to lose her and leave her there. As a matter of fact, I had lost both her and myself. Perhaps you know the Maze. Its baffling windings of eight-foot hedges have their single legitimate way out, which you may find if you can; but, for the release of burrowers at turning-out time, there is also a locked iron gate, as impossible to miss as the true exit is to find. Half-a-dozen times, believing ourselves to be at last in the proper alley of green, we had been brought up by this gate; and it was at the gate that we met Miss Levey.