"Have I?" he mumbled. He knew that he was not shining.
"Would you mind calling in at Allman's," she said, resuming her chair,
"and tell them to send a man down at once to pick the lock? There's
nothing else for it. Or perhaps you'd better say first thing to-morrow
morning. And then as soon as he's done it I'll call and pay you the
money myself. And you might tell your precious Mr Herbert Calvert that
next quarter I shall give notice to leave."
"Don't you trouble to call, please," said he. "I can easily pop in
here."
She sped him away in an enigmatic tone. He could not be sure whether he
had succeeded or failed, in her estimation, as a man of the world and a
partaker of delicate teas.
"Don't _forget_ Allman's!" she enjoined him as he left the room. He
was to let himself out.
III
He was coming home late that night from the Sports Club, from a
delectable evening which had lasted till one o'clock in the morning,
when just as he put the large door-key into his mother's cottage he grew
aware of peculiar phenomena at the top end of Brougham Street, where it
runs into St Luke's Square. And then in the gas-lit gloom of the warm
summer night he perceived a vast and vague rectangular form in the slow
movement towards the slope of Brougham Street.
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