“You asked for a rocket, Sir John,” said Edward Henry.  “You shall have it.”

He had taken a box of fusees from his pocket.  He struck one, and his companions in the swaying cage now saw that a tremendous rocket was hung to the peak of the other crane.  He lighted the fuse....  An instant of deathly suspense!...  And then with a terrific and a shattering bang and splutter the rocket shot towards the kingdom of heaven and there burst into a vast dome of red blossoms which, irradiating a square mile of roofs, descended slowly and softly on the West End like a benediction.

“You always want crimson, don’t you, Sir John?” said Edward Henry, and the easy cheeriness of his voice gradually tranquillized the alarm natural to two very earthly men who for the first time found themselves suspended insecurely over a gulf.

“I have seen nothing so impressive since the Russian Ballet,” murmured Mr. Alloyd, recovering.

“You ought to go to Siberia, Alloyd,” said Edward Henry.

Sir John Pilgrim, pretending now to be extremely brave, suddenly turned on Edward Henry and in a convulsive grasp seized his hand.

“My friend,” he said hoarsely, “a thought has just occurred to me.  You and I are the two most remarkable men in London!” He glanced up as the cage trembled.  “How thin that steel rope seems!”

The cage slowly descended, with many twists.

Edward Henry said not a word.  He was too deeply moved by his own triumph to be able to speak.

“Who else but me,” he reflected, exultant, “could have managed this affair as I’ve managed it?  Did anyone else ever take Sir John Pilgrim up into the sky like a load of bricks, and frighten his life out of him?”

As the cage approached the platforms of the first story he saw two people waiting there; one he recognized as the faithful, harmless Marrier; the other was a woman.

“Someone here wants you urgently, Mr. Machin!” cried Marrier.

“By Jove!” exclaimed Alloyd under his breath.  “What a beautiful figure!  No girl as attractive as that ever wanted me urgently!  Some folks do have luck!”

The woman had moved a little away when the cage landed.  Edward Henry followed her along the planking.

It was Elsie April.

“I thought you were ill in bed,” he breathed, astounded.

Her answering voice reached him, scarcely audible: 

“I’m only hoarse.  My Cousin Rose has arrived to-night in secret at Tilbury by the Minnetonka.”

“The Minnetonka!” he muttered.  Staggering coincidence!  Mystic heralding of misfortune!

“I was sent for,” the pale ghost of a delicate voice continued.  “She’s broken, ruined; no courage left.  Awful fiasco in Chicago!  She’s hiding now at a little hotel in Soho.  She absolutely declined to come to my hotel.  I’ve done what I could for the moment.  As I was driving by here just now I saw the rocket and I thought of you.  I thought you ought to know it.  I thought it was my duty to tell you.”