t really, Fane. Let's see, that is your
name? Thought it was. I don't often forget a name. No, without swank,
Fane, I've been hounded off my legs lately. I'm living in Leppard
Street. Pimlico way."

"I'd like to come and see you some time," said Michael.

"Here, straight, what _is_ your game?" Barnes could not conceal his
suspicion.

"Inquisitiveness," Michael declared again. "Also I rather want a Sancho
Panza."

"Oh, of course, any little thing I can do to oblige," said Barnes very
sarcastically.

It took Michael a long time to convince him that no plot was looming,
but at last he persuaded him to come to 173 Cheyne Walk, and after that
he knew that Barnes could not refuse to show him Leppard Street.

CHAPTER IV

LEPPARD STREET

While they were driving to Cheyne Walk, Michael extracted from Barnes an
outline of his adventures since last they had met. The present narrative
was probably not less cynical than the account of his life related to
Michael on various occasions in the past; but perhaps because his
imagination had already to some extent been fed by reality, he could no
longer be shocked. He received the most sordid avowals calmly, neither
blaming Barnes nor indulging himself with mental goose-flesh. Yet amid
all the frankness accorded to him he could not find out why Barnes had
changed his name. He was curious about this, because he could not
conceive any shamelessness too outrageous for Barnes to reveal. It would
be interesting to find out what could really make even him pause; no
doubt ultimately, with the contrariness of the underworld, it would turn
out to be something that Michael himself would consider trivial in
comparison with so much of what Barnes had boasted. Anyway, whether he
discovered the secret or not, it would certainly be interesting to study
Barnes, since in him good and evil might at any moment display
themselves as clearly as a hidden substance to a reagent flung into a
seething alembic. It might perhaps be assuming too much to say that
there was any good in him; and yet Michael was unwilling to suppose that
all his conversions were merely the base drugs of a disordered morality.
Apart from his philosophic value, Barnes might very actually be of
service in the machinery of finding Lily.

At 173 Cheyne Walk Barnes looked about him rather bitterly.

"Easy enough to behave yourself in a house like this," he commented.

Here spoke the child who imagines that grown-up people