THE CAT'S HOLIDAY
sure. On the other hand, he had already been lured so far from the docks, that now, run as hard as he might, the odds were he would miss the steamer, lose Laura, and have to show for it not even a jewel.
"Make sure of this, anyway," he thought, exasperated. "Cable her at Colombo—catch them on the way Home." And wrenching open the back door, he ran out. In the dusk, through rancid effluvia of Asiatic cooking, he sped after a small, furtive shadow that flitted, with tantalizing ease and swiftness, between disorderly skeleton lines of half-woven baskets.
It scuttled round the corner, into a noisy street. Already the giant lanterns glimmered before Chinese shops, like swinging fire-balloons inscribed with symbols red and black; already the double file of rickshaws, streaming past with a faint wooden rattle and a "slap-slap" of flat soles, bore their jogging lights, as
[ 179 ]
