“Can’t get rid of ’im no ’ow. Afride it ain’t much good, sir.”
Mr Bunker passed up five shillings more.
“Keep your tail up. You’ll do it yet,” he exhorted. “Try a turn north; you may bother him among the squares.”
So they doubled north, and as the evening closed in [pg 112] their wearied horse was lashed through a maze of monotonous streets and tarnished Bloomsbury Squares. And still the other cab stuck to their trail. But when they emerged on the Euston Road, Mr Bunker was as cheerful as ever.
“They can’t last much longer,” he said to his driver. “Turn up Regent’s Park way.”
A little later he put the usual question and got the same unvarying answer.
The horse was evidently beginning to fail, and he saw that this chariot-race must soon come to an end. The street-lamps and the shop windows were all lit up by this time, and the dusk was pretty thick. It seemed to him that he might venture to try his luck on foot, and he began to look out for an opening where a cab could not follow.
They were flogging along a noisy stone-paved road where there was little other traffic; on one side stood an unbroken row of houses, and on the other were small semi-detached villas with little strips of garden about them. All at once he saw a doctor’s red lamp over the door of one of these half villas, and an inspiration came upon him.
“One can always visit a doctor,” he said to himself, and smiled in great amusement at something in the reflection.
He stopped the cab, handed the man half a sovereign, and saying only, “Drive away again, quickly,” jumped out, glanced at the name on the plate, and pulled the bell. As he waited on the step he saw the other cab stop a little way back, and his pursuer emerge.