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puzzled him. In the circumstances they seemed so ridiculous that he almost laughed.
    It was at that precise moment that the cab turned to the right in Gray’s Inn Road and he caught a glimpse of a quiet tree-lined Bloomsbury square. Then, and not until then, did it dawn upon him with a sudden throb and quickening of his pulse that the chance of picking up a taxi accidentally at three o’clock in the morning in Wembley Road, Clerkenwell was one in a million, and secondly, that the likelihood of any ordinary cabman mistaking him in his present costume for a potential fare was nothing short of an absurdity. He bent forward and ran his hand along the doors. There were no handles. The windows too appeared to be locked.
    Considerably startled, but almost ashamed of himself for suspecting a danger for which he was hardly eligible, he rapped vigorously on the window behind the driver.
    Even as Gyrth watched him, the man bent over his wheel and trod heavily on the accelerator.

CHAPTER 2
Little Pink Cakes
    â€”
    V AL sat forward in the half-darkness and peered out. The old cab was, he guessed, travelling all out at about thirty-five miles an hour. The streets were rain-swept and deserted and he recognized that he was being carried directly out of his way.
    On the face of it he was being kidnapped, but this idea was so ridiculous in his present condition that he was loth to accept it. Deciding that the driver must be drunk or deaf, he thundered again on the glass and tried shouting down the speaking tube.
    â€˜I want Bottle Street – off Piccadilly.’
    This time he had no doubt that his driver heard him, for the man jerked his head in a negative fashion and the cab rocked and swayed dangerously. Val Gyrth had to accept the situation, absurd though it might be. He was a prisoner being borne precipitately to an unknown destination.
    During the past eighteen months he had discovered himself in many unpleasant predicaments, but never one that called for such immediate action. At any other time he might have hesitated until it was too late, but tonight the cumulative effects of starvation and weariness had produced in him a dull recklessness, and the mood which had permitted him to follow such a fantastic will-o’-the-wisp as his name on a discarded envelope, and later to accept the hardly conventional invitation of the mysterious Mr Campion, was still upon him. Moreover, the kindly ministrations of Mr Lugg had revived his strength and with it his temper.
    At that moment, hunched up inside the cab, he was a dangerous person. His hands were knotted together, and the muscles of his jaw contracted.
    The moment the idea came into his head he put it into execution.
    He bent down and removed the heavy shoe with the thin sole, from which the lace had long since disappeared. With this formidable weapon tightly gripped in his hand, he crouched in the body of the cab, holding himself steady by the flower bracket above the spare seats. He was still prodigiously strong, and put all he knew into the blow. His arm crashed down like a machine hammer, smashing through the plate glass and down on to the driver’s skull.
    Instantly Gyrth dropped on to the mat, curling himself up, his arms covering his head. The driver’s thick cap had protected him considerably, but the attack was so sudden that he lost control of his wheel. The cab skidded violently across the greasy road, mounted the pavement and smashed sickeningly into a stone balustrade.
    The impact was terrific: the car bounded off the stone work, swayed for an instant and finally crashed over on to its side.
    Gyrth was hurled into the worn hood of the cab, which tore beneath his weight. He was conscious of warm blood trickling down his face from a cut across his forehead, and one of his shoulders was wrenched, but he had been prepared for the trouble and was not seriously injured. He was still angry, still savage. He fought his way out through the torn fabric on to the