The Phantom Car by Fred M. White — Read

Manthon parted with Faber presently, and went back to his desk, there to resume work on his latest book which he had been neglecting terribly of late. But after sitting for a quarter of an hour, staring blankly at his portable typewriter, he snapped down the lid of the machine impatiently and strode through the open French window into the garden.

He had not told Faber what was in the back of his mind, and how a certain theory had shaped itself the moment he had caught sight of Wilde propelling himself down the road. It was such a strange theory that he was half ashamed of it himself. Perhaps, later on, when he had time to think it out, he might mention it to Basil Faber, but for the present, at any rate, he was going to keep it himself. He walked up and down the tennis lawn in front of the house, and, after smoking a couple of ruminative cigarettes, he went back to his library and took up the morning paper which, so far, he had forgotten to scan as was his usual habit. First of all, he looked to see if there were any further developments in connection with the Burlington Square tragedy, but though there were a couple of columns of it, very little information was concealed in the clever journalistic verbiage by which the average newspaper man contrives to make bricks without straw.