We've had the bicycle identified, and we have a description of our man; so that's a long step on our journey."
It was clear, therefore, that if a man had come over with a bicycle it was from Tunbridge Wells that he might be expected to have come.
He had left the hotel after breakfast yesterday morning on his bicycle, and no more was heard of him until our inquiries."
We know that an American calling himself Hargrave came to Tunbridge Wells two days ago with bicycle and valise.
"If we had a
bicycle here, we might demonstrate the correctness of the young man's reasoning, Monsieur Robert Darzac.
He failed to observe that the type of motor-car, like the type of
bicycle, was settling-down and losing its adventurous quality.
I believe that for one moment the shrewd instructor was taken in, but as I reached the steps I heard him asking his pupils whether any of them had seen any bicycles outside.
We were in the shrubbery, Raffles with his electric torch drawn and blazing, when we heard the kicking at the pantry door, and in the drive with our bicycles before man and boys poured pell-mell down the steps.
She overtook the bicycle, and they went together through the gates and by the highroad to the scene the old man had described.
Erskine had discreetly slipped away, and was in the road, tightening a screw in his bicycle. The few persons who remained were out of earshot.
Holmes, you'll hardly believe it, but ever since that girl has been in my employment I never once let her go past this house, where I knew the rascals were lurking, without following her on my bicycle, just to see that she came to no harm.
She was leaving me this week-end, and I had got a trap to take her to the station, but I was so uneasy in my mind that I followed her on my bicycle. She had got a start, however, and before I could catch her, the mischief was done.
"It is part of the settled order of Nature that such a girl should have followers," said Holmes, he pulled at his meditative pipe, "but for choice not on bicycles in lonely country roads.
"I couldn't make your man understand me at the station," she said at last, when her mind was at rest about her
bicycle; "I asked him how far it was, and what the roads were like, and he only smiled.
Instantly I stepped out into the street, picked up the box, and replaced it in the cart: in the next moment the
bicycle had spun round the corner, passed the cart without let or hindrance, and soon vanished in the distance, in a cloud of dust.
