The thunder of pursuit drew nearer. Possessed by some instinct she
never offered to explain, Yasmini stepped to the gate, drew back the
bolt, and opened it a matter of inches. In shot Tom Tripe's dog, with
his tongue hanging out and the fear of devils blazing in his eyes. Yasmini
slammed the gate again in the very face of a raging elephant, and shot
the bolt in the nick of time to take the shock of his impact.

It was only a charge in half-earnest or he would have brought the gate
down. An elephant is a very short-sighted beast, and it was pitch-dark.
He could not believe that a dog could disappear through a solid iron
gate, and after testing the obstruction for a moment or two, grumbling
to himself angrily, he stood to smell the air and listen. There was a
noise farther along the street of a stampede of some kind. That was
likely enough his quarry, probably frightening other undesirables along
in front of him. With a scream of mingled frenzy and delight he went
off at once full pelt.

"Oh, Trotters! Good dog, Trotters!" sobbed Tess, kneeling down to
make much of him, and giving way to the reaction that overcomes men
as well as women. "Where's your master? Oh, if you could tell me
where my husband is!"

She did not have long to wait for the answer to that. It took the two men
a matter of seconds to get the horse on his feet, and no fire-engine
ever left the station house one fraction faster than Dick tooled that dog-cart.
The horse was all nerves and in no mood to wait on ceremony, which
accounted for a broken spoke and a fragment of the gate-post hanging
in the near wheel. They forgot to unlash the wheels before they started,
so the dog-cart came up-street on skids, as it were, screaming holy
murder on the granite flags--which in turn saved the near wheel from