I dashed across to the island and dodged in front of the nose of a horse; but I could not see the hansom. There were four directions in which it could have gone: up Regent Street, Glasshouse Street, Shaftesbury Avenue, or east past the Pavilion. Then a taxi slowed down immediately in front of me, and I found myself standing on the step of it, holding the door open with one hand and with the other pointing past the driver's head. "That hansom in front--follow that hansom----" We tried Regent Street first, for I remember seeing the revolving doors of the Piccadilly; but no hansom was to be seen. I thrust my head out of the window again. "Quick--turn--try Shaftesbury Avenue," I cried. He turned, but not quickly. It was a good two minutes before we reached the Grill Room entrance of the Monico. Then I lost my temper. "A _hansom_, man--damn it, a _hansom_! Can't you follow the only hansom left in London? Ask that man on point-duty----" But I got the impression that the police do not look with too much favour on roving orders to follow other vehicles to unspecified addresses. The constable was curt. "There was a hansom a minute ago. If you've got his number try Scotland Yard. Come along, you can't stop here----" I sank back cursing. In the very moment when pure chance had given him to me I had lost him again. By this time he was probably half a mile away. There was nothing whatever to be done. "Where to now?" grunted the driver. Nothing to be done--nothing whatever. "Cambridge Circus, 120," I said. As well there as anywhere else. He might just possibly be on his way there. He still had a key the duplicate of which was in my own pocket. I descended at Cambridge Circus, let myself in and mounted to his rooms. He was not there, for no light showed under the door. I switched on, hung up my hat in his little recess, and sat down on his sofa. Then, mortified, but trying to tell myself that I was not actually any worse off, I sought to dissect that momentary impression of him that was all that remained to me. A hansom, and his beard again! That antiquated black-mutton-chop-shape balanced on two spidery wheels, and that fair and tender sprouting! Both were anachronistic, and yet there was a certain suitability about both. Comparatively few young Englishmen have beards nowadays, but then comparatively few young Englishmen are in their forties and their thirties at the same time. He had always looked handsome in his beard, rather like something from a Greek or Roman gallery come to life again, and so he was right to have let it grow. As for the hansom, he might have taken it merely because it was the last vehicle left on the rank, refused by everybody, else, or there might have been a subtler reason for his choice. A browny-gold beard and a hansom! Yes, both were "in the picture."