"Couldn't be sure. Maybe it was 'im I saw sleepin' on the bench by the Shelter 'Ouse in Piccadilly 'bout four this morning. There was a bloke there with a soft 'at and a brown coat."
Cranbourne produced another fiver and pushed it into the man's hand.
"You're the best fellow I've met in years," he said. Then turning to the taxi driver, "Get home as best you can. I'm going to look for a lift. Here's my card. I'll stand your losses on this."
He looked over his shoulder at the sound of a persistent croaking. A long grey Vauxhall car with a special body was coming down the road at speed. Cranbourne ran forward in its track, waving his arms. The man at the wheel looked over and braked. The big car did a double two way skid, tore serpentine ruts on the metalled road surface and stopped.
"Trying to get killed?" asked its owner sweetly. "'Cos you seem to have got the right idea of doing it."
"I want to get to Town and get there quick," said Cranbourne.
"So do I," said the man at the wheel, grinning amiably, "but it's a daily habit of mine. In you get!"
"By gad," said Cranbourne, leaping in as the car began to move, "I believe you come straight from heaven."
"I come from the Slough Trading Company as a matter of fact," said the young man, running through his gears from first to top like a pianist playing a scale. "Hope you don't mind a bit of noise. She talks some when she's moving."
He trod hard on the accelerator and somewhere behind a machine gun opened fire, at first articulately and then, as the pace increased, becoming an inarticulate solid roar. The beat of the engine, the sense of speed and the rush of the wind past his ears infected Cranbourne with a fierce exhilaration.