CHAPTER IV

BLIND ALLEY A girl with auburn hair stared out of a window. It was a blazing afternoon. Immediately below her the traffic of Piccadilly advanced in an everlasting series of short rushes, like infantry going into action. The laboured breathing of the 'buses in the intervals between their spurts at once lent colour to the illusion and made up a stertorous foundation of uproar, above which little but coughs and hoots of warning, the sudden storm of an engine or the crash of a taxi's gears managed to rise. Beyond, ra…