He was neatly dressed, with a white collar. It was only on a second glance that his genteel shabbiness became apparent. His soft brown hat was pulled low, and the remnant of a cigarette had burned to his fingertips. He dropped it listlessly on the pavement and as listlessly set his foot on it—a well-shaped, well-mended shoe. As he did so he became conscious of the still bronze face above him, veiled in mist, the eyes fixed down river, watching, waiting....

For a moment the young man glared up at it, and it ignored him. Then he spoke to it aloud, but very low.

“All right, you!” he said to it, with half a lifetime of suppressed fury in the way the words came out between his teeth. “Go on, then—smile, damn you—smile!”

At once he glanced about him hastily to make sure no one had heard, and was glad of the muffling mist which pressed towards him from the River. He drifted up against the stone balustrade, and it was clammy to his hand. He peered over the edge. Mist hung between him and the water. It looked an endless drop. It looked attractive and peaceful and final. It looked so easy....

“Steady,” said Hilary very quietly, emerging from the mist below the column. “None of that, my boy.”

The young man glanced once behind him, and seemed to see an empty pavement. His eyes returned to where he knew the water must be. His left knee bent and began to move stealthily upward along the stone, his weight was shifting to his hands, which rested on the top....

“It won’t do, you know,” said Hilary, standing there on the step beneath the column. “Come out of it.”

“Here!” cried a voice from the mist to the left of them. “Here! Hi! I say!”

Sir Reginald Forsyth had lacked a cab to take him to the club in Piccadilly, after dining with a friend in the Temple. The port had been excellent. In fact, he had taken just that one last glass—. And then there weren’t any cabs. Very well, he would walk, by Jove. No sort of walk at all, for a man in good condition, from the Temple to Piccadilly. To Sir Reginald, striding along the Embankment that evening with his top hat at the slightest angle and his white silk scarf floating free, even the mist was rosy. The Needle already, by Jove. He swung his stick in a gesture of greeting to the watching sphinxes. It was only then that he saw something which put him out of step with himself.

“Here! Hi! I say! You can’t do that!” he cried, lunging forward with astounding agility for his age, weight, and state of repletion.

The slight, boyish figure was limp and docile in his grasp as he pulled it back off the stone balustrade.