IN AND ABOUT LONDON
I
A LONDON THRILL
The scene was Gerrard Street: a rather curious thoroughfare notable for possessing three or four restaurants dear to Bohemia, the great West End telephone exchange, the homes of Dryden and Edmund Burke, a number of cinema offices, and many foreign inhabitants.
The time was three o'clock in the afternoon.
In the middle were two or three big vans, loading or unloading and filling the roadway, thus cutting the street into two so effectively that I, approaching from the east, had no knowledge of anything happening in the western half. I therefore attached no significance to the hurrying steps of a policeman in front of me, but was a little surprised to see him pick his way almost on tiptoe between the vans—yet not sufficiently surprised to anticipate drama.
But the drama was there, awaiting me, on the other side of the vans, and the policeman—this being London drama—was naturally one of the performers. For there never was a street play yet—comedy, tragedy, or farce—without a policeman in the cast. It is a convention to say—as every one has in his time said and will say again—that a policeman is never there when he is wanted; but that is true only in the dull sense: what we mean is that the policeman is never there before the curtain rises, or, in other words, in time to prevent the performance altogether. How tame if he were! As a matter of fact, by delaying his arrival until the affair is in good train he takes his proper part as a London entertainer; that is to say, he is there when he is wanted—wanted to complete the show.