Luckily, the streets quickly widened, and my companion was a driver of a thousand. Scores of foot-passengers and pole-bearing coolies and native barrows he missed by a bare hair's breadth; several corners in succession he took on two wheels, but never for an instant slackened the pace; and within five minutes the last uneasy sounds of pursuit had died away. Still we continued to press on. The pair of us seemed to realise by silent agreement that it would be a good thing for us to vanish at once into some burrow where we could take counsel together on the best way to elude the allied hostility of Law and Disorder. The Chinaman drove westward for some distance, into that part of the city where I had crossed the Soochow Creek several hours before. Then we turned south, and in a few moments were spinning down the broad, bright-lit Nanking Road, with its queer blend of western paving with eastern shops and their garishly carved and gilded fronts. Some way farther on we turned east once more into the fringes of the French Concession, and at last drew up at a compact bungalow standing in its own grounds at the point where town and country meet. We seemed to have been expected, for no sooner had the noise of our horn broken on the quiet night than I saw a wide wooden gate swing open, and my companion had driven the car straight into its garage. The gate was immediately closed. Nobody watching in the street a moment later would have had a notion of our arrival. There was no light whatever to be seen in the house. The Chinaman jumped down, leading the way along a path hidden in shrubbery, into a side door of the bungalow. This opened on a long dark passage. My companion disappeared down this, leaving me in charge of the native servant who had opened the gate to us. Together we entered a small room richly furnished in Chinese style, with one or two fine old scroll-pictures hung round the walls, and cabinets through the glass doors of which I could see a collection of carvings in choice white jade, and on top of the cabinets several vases of Ming porcelain. The boy left me for a moment, returning with hot water and lint and bandages for my wounded wrist, which I had roughly bound with a handkerchief. He made a swift workmanlike job of the stab--fortunately it had touched no big blood--and withdrew, leaving me sitting in a wide silk-cushioned settee of blackwood and wondering what breed of Chinaman it could be that drove a car like Gordon Bennett and swung full-grown bodies about his head like Eric Brighteyes.