And the good-natured enthusiast, who was a terror to many of his friends, ran off to secure another victim. Philip had sent his hansom home. Shortly before eleven he quitted the club, intending to walk to Park Lane by a circuitous route, long enough to consume a big cigar. He chanced to pass the hall in which the concert was to take place. A few people were hurrying from the stage door. Evidently a rehearsal had just taken place. A short man, with a huge cluster of flowing locks, that offered abundant proof of his musical genius, ran out with a violin case in his hand. He was about to enter a hansom waiting near the curb, but the driver said: "Engaged, sir." The man did not seem to understand, so the cabby barred his way with the whip and shook his head. Then the stranger rushed to a neighboring cab rank--evidently an excitable gentleman, with the high-strung temperament of art. A lady quitted the hall a few seconds later. "Are you engaged?" Philip heard her ask the cabman. "No, miss." "Take me to No. 44, Maida Crescent, Regent's Park," she said. After arranging her skirts daintily, she entered the vehicle. "That is odd," thought Philip, who had witnessed both incidents in the course of a six yards' walk. He glanced at the cabman, and fancied the man gave a peculiar look of intelligence toward a couple of fashionably dressed loungers who stood in the shadow of the closed public entrance. The two men, without exchanging a word to Philip's hearing, went to a brougham standing at some little distance. They entered. The coachman, who received no instructions, drove off in the same direction as the hansom, and, as if to make sure he was being followed, the cab driver turned to look behind him. Once, in Naples, Philip saw a man stealthily following a woman down an unlighted alley. Without a moment's hesitation he went after the pair, and was just in time to prevent the would-be assassin from plunging an uplifted stiletto into the woman's back. The recollection of that little drama flashed into his mind now; there was a suggestion of the Neapolitan bravo's air in the manner in which these men stalked a girl who was quite unaware of their movements. He asked himself why a cabman should refuse one fare and pick up another in the same spot. The affair was certainly odd. He would see further into it before he dismissed it from his thoughts. The distance to Maida Crescent was not great. While thinking he was acting. He sprang into the nearest hansom. "A brougham is following a hansom up Langham Place," he said to the driver. "Keep behind them. If they separate, follow the brougham. When it stops, pull up at the best place to avoid notice." The man nodded. Nothing surprises a London cabman. Soon the three vehicles were spinning along the Outer Circle.