Fanny Lambert: A Novel

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

When, emerging from the bar, he had perceived his quarry he had followed them at a safe distance. When they went into the Vienna Café he waited; it seemed to him that he waited three hours: it was, in fact, an hour and a quarter. For, having finished her ice and its accompaniments, Fanny had declared that she was quite ready for luncheon, and had proposed that they should proceed to the meal at once without seeking a new café.

When they came out, Bridgewater took up the pursuit. They got into a hansom: he got into another, and ordered the driver to pursue the first vehicle at a safe distance. He did this from instinct, not as a result of having read Gaboriau, or the "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes."

The long wait, the upset of all his usual ways, and the fact that he had not lunched, coupled with his dread of a hansom—hitherto when he had moved on wheels it had always been on those of a four-wheeler or omnibus—conspired to reduce him mentally to the condition of an over-driven sheep.

They left the part of the town he knew, and passed through streets he knew not of, streets upon streets, and still the first vehicle pursued its way with undiminished speed. He felt now a dim certainty that his employer was going to be married, and now he tried to occupy his scattered wits in attempting to compute what this frightful cab journey would cost.

At the Zoo gates the first hansom stopped.

"Pull up," cried Bridgewater, poking his umbrella through the trap.

He alighted a hundred yards from the gates. At the turnstile he paid his shilling and went in, but Fanny and her companion had vanished as completely as if the polar bear had swallowed them up.

He wandered away through the gardens aimlessly, but keeping a sharp look-out. He had never been to the Zoo before, but guessed it was the Zoo because of the animals. The whole adventure had the complexion of a nightmare, a complexion not brightened by the melancholy appearance of the eagles and vultures and the distant roaring and lowing of unknown beasts.

He saw an elephant advancing towards him swinging its trunk like a pendulum; to avoid it he took a path that led to the Fish House. His one desire now was to get out of the gardens and get home. He recognised now that he had made a serious mistake in entering the gardens at all. To have returned at once to Miss Hancock with the information that her brother had simply taken Miss Lambert to the Zoo would have been the proper and sensible course to have pursued.