"I'll do my best for you," Colin assured him. "I'll have a general inspection of all the nurses at the hospital to-morrow morning, and if there's a stray angel amongst them I'll send her along. I shouldn't bank on it though, not from what I remember of them." Mark pulled out his note case and beckoned to the waiter. "I must be off," he observed resentfully. "Which way are you going--back to the hospital?" Colin shook his head. "This is my day out. I shall roll along to the garage and spend a nice messy afternoon tinkering at the car. There are several odd jobs that want doing, and I should like to get them cleared off before I start chasing burglars." Mark paid the bill, and, leaving the restaurant, the two friends walked together as far as Charing Cross Underground, where they came to a halt on the bridge inside the barrier. "Well, thanks for an excellent lunch," said Colin, shaking his host's hand. "Remember that if you ever want my advice it's always available on the same terms." Mark grinned. "You must come down and thank Mary," he said. "It was she who suggested the Savoy. If it had been left to me I should probably have taken you to Lockhart's." As he spoke an East End train clanked noisily out of the opposite tunnel, and with a hurried good-bye he darted away toward the steps and disappeared from view. About twenty minutes later, with the stump of a cigar in his mouth, and feeling remarkably at peace with the world, Colin emerged from Sloane Street Station and strolled across the pavement in the direction of the barracks. He kept his car in a small garage at the bottom of Church Street, a place which, in addition to being cheap and within easy reach of the hospital, also possessed the unusual distinction of having an honest proprietor. It was about three-quarters of a mile from the Square, but as he was in no hurry, and the weather was extraordinarily genial for an afternoon in late November, he dismissed his first intention of taking a motor bus and started off at a leisurely pace along the King's Road. He had got as far as the corner of Radnor Street when his progress was suddenly arrested by a muffled outbreak of shouts and oaths. The next moment the door of a small public house opposite burst violently open, and from its gas-lit interior a tangled cluster of struggling men swayed out into the main thoroughfare. One of them was evidently a policeman, for his blue helmet was clearly visible in the centre of the melee. For a second or two the whole mass reeled backward and forward, then a stick swung up into the air, and, coming down with crashing force on the back of the constable's head, stretched him out an inert mass in the gutter. CHAPTER TWO However underpaid it may be, the training of a house surgeon at a London hospital induces a certain readiness of action. Before any of the other passers-by had ceased to gape helplessly at this unusual spectacle Colin was halfway across the street.