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THE MAN THEY COULDN'T ARREST

across the teeming City to post a letter-card to Scotland Yard-a letter-card, moreover, which was printed and not written, blocked up in tiny perpendicular capitals, which completely disguised his handwriting, and which, for some definite reason known only to himself, contained his own right thumb-print pressed firmly into the sealing-wax.
He drove along till he got into the mazy heart of the streets that clutter the East End. Round by the Aldgate Pump he went and pulled up finally at a garage in the Mile End Road.
" Petrol, sir ?" asked the blue-jeaned mechanic.
" Please. Two gallons."
It was indicative of the man that, instead of asking for a can, he asked for the exact liquid measurement he required.
Though petrol was the ostensible reason for his pulling up at that particular garage, his real reason was that there was a pillar-box immediately in front of it.
He took out his wallet to pay the mechanic, gave him a pound note, and while the mechanic went inside to get his change he nonchalantly dropped the letter-card into the gaping maw of the scarlet box.
And that, as he subsequently realised, was the fatal action of his life, the simple little gesture that was to lead, finally and without a halt or hindrance, to his undoing. It was a gauntlet thrown with the indifference bred of long immunity at the face of Fate, the thirty-fourth gauntlet he had flung at her