Jennerton & co (E. Phillips Oppenheim)

Impatient of the numerous checks which had held up his car all the way from Croydon, Gerald Jennerton let down the window and looked out. London, he realised at once, was swallowing him up. Not the London upon which he had gazed half an hour ago from his earthward-gliding aeroplane–a huge, tumbled chaos of obscurity, with its far-spreading myriads of lights–but an engulfing wilderness of endless streets, through which cars from every direction seemed to be racing to some magnetic centre.