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Near Buckingham Palace he turned back, walking by the way he had come, and leaving the park at the new gate.

He crossed the plexus of ways where Northumberland Avenue debouches on Trafalgar Square. It was near twelve o’clock, and the first evening papers were out. A hawker with a bundle of papers under his arm and a yellow poster in front of him like an apron, drew his attention; at least the poster did.

“Suicide of an American in London!” were the words on the poster.

Jones, remembering his penny, produced it and bought a paper.

The American’s suicide did not interest him, but he fancied vaguely that something of Rochester’s doings of the night before might have been caught by the Press through the Police news. He thought it highly probable that Rochester, continuing his mad course, had been gaoled.

He was rewarded. Right on the first page he saw his own name. He had never seen it before in print, and the sight and the circumstances made his tongue cluck back, as though checked by a string tied to its root.