I got down in the Whitechapel Road, that wide and unlovely thoroughfare, and, feeling hungry, went into a dingy little restaurant partitioned off in boxes. The tablecloth was of stained oil skin, the guests the seediest type of minor clerks, but I do remember that for ninepence I had a little beefsteak and kidney pudding to myself which was as good as anything I have ever eaten. As I went out I saw my neighbor of the omnibus who had spoken so eloquently of freedom, walking by with a little black bag, as in an aimless way I hailed a taxicab from the rank opposite a London hospital and told the man to drive slowly westwards.
He did so, and when we came to the Embankment a gleam of afternoon sunshine began to enlighten what had been a leaden day. Thinking a brisk walk from Black Friars to Westminster would help my thoughts, I dismissed the cab and started.
It was with an odd little thrill and flutter of the heart that far away westwards, to the left of the Houses of Parliament, I saw three ghostly lines, no thicker than lamp posts, it seemed, springing upwards from nothingness. At Cleopatra's Needle, I felt the want of a cigarette and stopped to light one.
At the moment there were few people on the pavement, though the unceasing traffic in the road roared by as usual. I lit the cigarette, put my case back in my pocket, and was about to continue my stroll when I heard some one padding up behind me with obvious purpose.
I half turned, and there again I saw the man with the weak mouth and the big mustache.
It flashed upon me, for the first time, that I was being followed, had been followed probably during the whole of my wanderings.
As I said, there was nobody immediately about, so I turned to rabbit-face and challenged him.
"You're following me, my man, why? Out with it or I'll give you in charge."
"Yer can't," he said. "This is a free country, freedom is my 'progative as well as yerself, Sir Thomas Kirby. I've done nothing to annoy yer, have I?"
I shrugged my shoulders.