The driver of the taxi heard nothing. Sir Charles looked through the star of broken glass for a moment, then cautiously lowered the sash. He put his head out again, smiling almost to the point of laughter, and asked the driver whether he had noticed the absurd pomposity of the two sentries and the policemen outside Marlborough House. The taxi man simply said “Yes sir,” and went on driving.
For a few minutes Sir Charles was silent, ruminating and smiling within. Then he put his head out again.
“Yes, but did you?” he asked.
And just at that point the traffic was stopped to allow a cross current from another street to pass.
“What a fool a man can make of himself,” said Sir Charles suddenly to nobody, communing half aloud with his own soul. “It’s an amazing thing! I can’t conceive why I should put my head out of a window like that to tell him the way.... I suppose I was telling him the way ... but my head is so bad!... What a fool a man can make of himself!” The sternness of his expression returned. He remembered that the taxi-man knew his address and he bethought him how to escape from humiliation. When they had driven up to his house he would pretend it was the wrong number and drive somewhere else.
Yet again his mood changed and he burst into an explosion of laughter as he remembered the sentries. Then the name over a shop which recalled to him certain mortgages tickled his fancy. He almost stopped the taxi to get out and have a bout of fun with the proprietors of that shop but he was going swiftly through the streets and he preferred his ease.
Long before they reached the Marble Arch he had forgotten all about his intention of secrecy. Nay, he had forgotten about his dinner; he only knew he was going home. And when he got out he saw upon the little machine the notice “1/10.”
“The register marks one and tenpence,” he said slowly and gravely to the driver, upon whose honest and happy face the tendency to astonishment was hardly controlled. “Now I don’t think these machines are infallible—far from it—but it isn’t worth my while, you understand, to argue it. So there’s one and tenpence.” He laboriously counted out the money. “Wait a moment,” he said, “give me back three coppers.”
The man hesitated.
“Give me back three coppers,” snapped Sir Charles testily, “I want to get rid of a thruppeny-bit,” and he handed over the offensive coin.