Part 4

_Turk._ "YES--OFTEN!"]

_In the City of Under_ (ARNOLD) shows Miss EVELYNE RYND to have quite a pretty talent in the not unattractive _genre_ of fantastic incoherence something after the pattern of _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_, though in a less robustious mood. But I doubt if talent (however pretty) is altogether sufficient to carry the reader through three hundred pages with no possible clue as to what it is really all about. All the same I do, in justice and most gladly, say that the author keeps one piqued to the extent of wishing to find out; one also loses all suspicion of its being an improving book, and distinctly likes that uncharacteristic Cheltenham boy, _Augustus Clickson_, who helps little _John Hazard_ to find a job. _John_ was very small and ineffectual and engaging, and his V.C. father had left the family wofully ill off, and _John_ felt it was up to him to do something about it. He meets the _Hawker_, who has a comforting habit of turning up at odd moments and assuring people that there's a way out of every difficulty, whereas the old lady, _Mrs. Letitlie_, asserted roundly and frequently that there was none. Then we have a nice wild unpractical Professor and a perplexed archæologist who get tangled in the skein; as also a spy, and, in fact, any old person and thing that occurred to the writer. There's enough good stuff and good humour in this queer patchwork to make me sure that any defect is one merely of form, and I would wager that it was the Notting Hill hero, before alluded to, that was responsible for setting our author on a dangerous path.

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_The Seventh Post Card_ (GREENING) was one of a series written anonymously, as harbingers of sudden death, to motor-car drivers whose bad luck or bad management had made them run over a fellow-creature with capital consequences. Capital, also, for helping on the plot of the story; for the sudden death really did come off in such a considerable number of cases that we should have been quite justified in feeling worried when the delightful _Joanna_, driving the car belonging to her equally delightful _Jack_, was unfortunate enough to knock down a tramp; even though the immediate consequences when _Jack_ found her awakening from unconsciousness by the roadside were--well, delightful too, and such as could be expected. Indeed, the sadly-worn word "delightful" seems somehow applicable to the entire string of clues, deductions, inquests, murders and other horrid thrills, or, at any rate, to Mr. FLOWERDEW'S telling of them. Is my capability for melodramatic emotion declining, that I thread this maze of tragic mystery in a mood no more intense than that of comfortable content? Perhaps; or it may be only the soothing effect of the author's clean English, coupled with the conviction that so long as he takes care to keep _Sir Julian Daymont_--the famous novelist-detective--on their side, no serious harm can come to the people we care about most. So, although a really nasty charge of murdering his grandfather turns up against the hero just when things (but for the number of pages left) are beginning to look prosperous, I can defy you to get seriously uneasy about his future; and, sure enough, _Sir Conan_--I mean _Sir Julian_--solves the problem in convenient time to pack the lovers safely off on their honeymoon. And, really, what more could you ask for?