“The whole thing is a ramp,” we said. “Now take this matter about the Jews. We have been distinctly given to understand that this Lane is full of Jews--but what do we see? Two ’buses and a policeman. But that leads us to an interesting speculation: can a policeman be a Jew? Has such a thing as a Jewish policeman ever been seen or heard of? And if not, what is it that prevents a policeman from being a Jew? Is the religious feeling among policemen stronger than that among Privy Councillors?” “Let’s ask him,” I suggested. The policeman was decorating the corner of Upper Brook Street. Tarlyon asked him, and the policeman said that Vine Street was not so far off as all that, while as for Marlborough Street, it was even nearer. He wasn’t there to be accosted, he wasn’t, said the policeman wickedly. “Ho!” said Tarlyon. “And have you been arresting any more respectable old clergymen in Hyde Park for talking to women without an introduction from a bishop? Blast me but I wouldn’t dream of entering Hyde Park nowadays, not at night anyway, without a battalion of chaps fringed with torpedo-netting.” “Good-night, constable,” I said hurriedly. “Good-night, sir,” said he--a discreet man. “Pah!” said Tarlyon. We walked up Park Lane. And suddenly Tarlyon gripped my arm, and waved his stick and whispered-- “Look at that! Ralph, just look at that!” Ten yards or so ahead of us loomed the back of a giant. He was striding on with huge steps, a black cloak was flung about him, and he wore no hat. Maybe it was the cloak, swaying this way and that, and one end flapping over a shoulder, that made the man seem taller than he really was--but it was a colossal back. “It’s reminiscent,” Tarlyon murmured. “I can’t help a feeling about that back--it’s reminiscent.” “It’s reminiscent,” I whispered, “of a back I once lent money to. One hundred pounds it was....” We quickened our pace. The huge figure passed under the light of a lamp, and the light fell on his bare head, and his hair flamed up like fire. The huge figure, the arrogant walk, the flaming ginger hair.... “Red Antony!” I murmured. “And we thought he was dead!” muttered Tarlyon--as though Red Antony could have died without the noise of his death-rattle confounding the thunder of the guns that killed many better men! Could a man who lived so noisily die as other men? And yet, because the lean years of peace had passed without sight or sign of him, we had believed the rumour that had had it that Sir Antony Poole had risen to be sergeant in a Canadian storm battalion and had then died; which had seemed natural in a kind of way, for the worst German shot couldn’t, one thought, have consistently missed six-foot-four under a crown of flaming hair.