. No responsive gleam!

"Machin!" called Mr. Prohack, as it were plaintively.

No sound.

"I am a fool," thought Mr. Prohack.

He struck a match and walked forward delicately, peering. He descried an
empty portmanteau lying on the stairs. He shoved against the dining-room
door, which was ajar, and lit another match, and started back. The
dining-room was full of ghosts, furniture sheeted in dust-sheets; and a
newspaper had been made into a cap over his favourite Chippendale clock.
He retreated.

"Put those bags into the car again," he said to Carthew, who stood
hesitant on the vague whiteness of the front-step.

How much did Carthew know? Mr. Prohack was too proud to ask. Carthew
was no longer an authority on women lunching with an equal; he was a
servitor engaged and paid on the clear understanding that he should not
speak until spoken to.

"Drive to Claridge's Hotel," said Mr. Prohack.

"Yes, sir."

At the entrance to the hotel the party was received by gigantic
uniformed guards with all the respect due to an Eagle. Ignoring the
guards, Mr. Prohack passed imperially within to the reception office.

"I want a bedroom, a sitting-room and a bath-room, please."

"A private suite, sir?"

"A private suite."

"What--er--kind, sir? We have--"

"The best," said Mr. Prohack, with finality. He signed his name and
received a ticket.

"Please have my luggage taken out of the car, and tell my chauffeur I
shall want him at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, and that he should take
the car to the hotel-garage, wherever it is, and sleep here. I will have
some tea at once in my sitting-room."

The hotel-staff, like all hotel-staffs, loved a customer who knew his
mind with precision and could speak it. Mr. Prohack was admirably
served.

After tea he took a bath because he could think of nothing else to do.
The bath, as baths will, inspired him with an idea. He set out on foot
to Manchester Square, and having reached the Square cautiously followed
the side opposite to the noble mansion. The noble mansion blazed with
lights through the wintry trees. It resembled the set-piece of a
pyrotechnic display. Mr. Prohack shivered in the dank evening. Then he
observed that blinds and curtains were being drawn in the noble mansion,
shutting out from its superb nobility the miserable, crude,
poverty-stricken world. With the exception of the glow in the fan light
over the majestic portals, the noble mansion was now as dark as Mr.
P