And almost before he knew where he was, two commissionaires were helping him into an auto-cab, and the terrific enterprise had begun.

The auto-cab would easily have won the race for the Gordon Bennett Cup.

It was of about two hundred h.p., and it arrived in Dean's Yard in less time than a fluent speaker would take to say Jack Robinson.

The rapidity of the flight was simply incredible.
"I'll keep you," Priam Farll was going to say, as he descended, but he thought it would be more final to dismiss the machine; so he dismissed it.
He rang the bell with frantic haste, lest he should run away ere he had rung it.

And then his heart went thumping, and the perspiration damped the lovely lining of his new hat; and his legs trembled, literally! He was in hell on the Dean's doorstep.
The door was opened by a man in livery of prelatical black, who eyed him inimically.
"Er----" stammered Priam Farll, utterly flustered and craven.