Another council outside, the commissionaire presiding.
"Take him to the Leicester 'Otel. Why, Lord bless me! the Argyle Rooms has been closed this forty years. Take him round about and let him have a snooze."
The taximan started with the full intention of robbery—not by force, but by strategy. Robbery on the dock. It was not theatre turning-out time yet, and he would have the chance of earning a few dishonest shillings. He turned every corner he could, for every time a taxi turns a corner the "clock" increases in speed. He drove here and there, but he never reached the Leicester 'Otel, for in Full Moon Street, the home of bishops and earls, the noise inside the vehicle made him halt. He opened the door and Simon burst out, radiant with humour and now much steadier on his legs.
"How much?" said Simon, and then, without waiting for a reply, thrust half a handful of coppers and silver into the fist of the taximan, hit him a slap on the top of his flat cap that made him see stars, and walked off.
The man did not pursue, he was counting his takings: eleven-and-fivepence, no less.
"Crazy," said he; then he started his engine and went off, utterly unconscious of the fact that he had entertained and driven something worthy to be preserved in the British Museum—a real live reveller of the sixties.
The full moon was shining on Full Moon Street, an old street that still preserves in front of its houses the sockets for the torches of the linkmen. It does not require much imagination to see phantom sedan chairs in Full Moon Street on a night like this, or the watchman on his rounds, and to-night the old street—if old streets have memories—must surely have stirred in its dreams, for, as Simon went on his way, the night began suddenly to be filled with cat-calls.
A lady airing a Pom whisked her treasure into the house as Simon passed, and shut the door with a bang; such a bang that the knocker gave a jump and Simon a hint.
Ten yards further on he went up steps, paused before a hall door that, in daylight, would have been green, and took the knocker.