Five minutes later Triffitt pulled himself and Trixie up with a gasp. The chase had come to an end—for that moment, at any rate. Boldly, openly, with absolute nonchalance, Burchill walked into a brilliantly-lighted entrance of the Herapath Flats!
CHAPTER XXXII
the yorkshire proverb
In the course of Triffitt’s brief and fairly glorious journalistic career, he had enjoyed and suffered a few startling experiences. He had been fastened up in the darker regions of a London sewer in flood, wondering if he would ever breathe the fine air of Fleet Street again or go down with the rats that scurried by him. He had been down a coal-mine in the bad hour which follows an explosion. He had several times risked his neck; his limbs had often been in danger; he had known what it was to feel thumpings of the heart and catchings of the breath from sheer fright. He had come face to face with surprise, with astonishment, with audacious turnings of Fortune’s glass. But never in all his life had he been so surprised as he now was, and after one long, low whistle he relieved his feelings by quoting verse:
“Is things what they seem?
Or is visions about?
“Trixie!” he went on in a low, concentrated voice. “This licks all! This bangs Banagher! This—but words fail me, Trixie!”
“What is it, Herbert?” demanded Trixie anxiously. “What does it all mean?”