“Well, the war’s done one thing at any rate. It’s got rid of those damned awful railings.”

Bruce Mallaig lighted another cigarette and stood still to get his bearings in the dark. The railings to which he had referred were those which had once divided Regent’s Park from the roadway of the Outer Circle. Bruce, who was now thirty years old, had known Regent’s Park all his life, and had often regretted the fact that at sunset, when the wide stretches of the Park seemed so desirable in the misty twilight, the public were sternly driven out into the streets. Standing in the darkness of war-time London on a moonless night, Bruce Mallaig conjured up the shout of the park-keepers in peace-time: “All out! All out!” Ghostly echoes of their call seemed to come to him now from the blackness beyond the lake. It was a very dark night. “If I didn’t know exactly where I was, damn it, I might be anywhere,” he said to himself.