ster Square. Mr. Prohack,
washed, dressed, and amply fed, was pretending to be very busy with
correspondence in his study, but he was in fact much more busy with Eve
than with the correspondence. She came in to him every few minutes, and
each time needed more delicate handling. After one visit Mr. Prohack had
an idea. He transferred the key from the inside to the outside of the
door. At the next visit Eve presented an ultimatum. She said that Mr.
Prohack must positively do something about his daughter. Mr. Prohack
replied that he would telephone to his solicitors: a project which
happily commended itself to Eve, though what his solicitors could do
except charge a fee Mr. Prohack could not imagine.

"You wait here," said he persuasively.

He then left the room and silently locked the door on Eve. It was a
monstrous act, but Mr. Prohack had slept too well and was too fully
inspired by the instinct of initiative. He hurried downstairs, ignoring
Brool, who was contemplating the grandeur of the entrance hall, snatched
his overcoat, hat, and umbrella from the seventeenth-century panelled
cupboard in which these articles were kept, and slipped away into the
Square, before Brool could even open the door for him. As he fled he
glanced up at the windows of his study, fearful lest Eve might have
divined his purpose to abandon her and, catching sight of him in flight,
might begin making noises on the locked door. But Eve had not divined
his purpose.

Mr. Prohack walked straight to Bruton Street, where Oswald Morfey's
Japanese flat was situated. Mr. Prohack had never seen this flat, though
his wife and daughter had been invited to it for tea--and had returned
therefrom with excited accounts of its exquisite uniqueness. He had
decided that his duty was to inform Ozzie of the mysterious
disappearance of Sissie as quickly as possible; and, as Ozzie's
theatrical day was not supposed to begin until noon, he hoped to catch
him before his departure to the beck and call of the mighty Asprey
Chown.

The number in Bruton Street indicated a tall, thin house with four
bell-pushes and four narrow brass-plates on its door-jamb. The deceitful
edifice looked at a distance just like its neighbours, but, as the array
on the door-jamb showed, it had ceased to be what it seemed, the home of
a respectable Victorian family in easy circumstances, and had become a
Georgian warren for people who could reconcile themselves to a common
staircase provided