ker than any live servants
I've ever known, if you know which knob to press. But I'll never deny,
between ourselves, that such servants have their disadvantages, too."

"Indeed?" said Angus; "is there something they can't do?"

"Yes," replied Smythe coolly; "they can't tell me who left those
threatening letters at my flat."

The man's motor was small and swift like himself; in fact, like his
domestic service, it was of his own invention. If he was an advertising
quack, he was one who believed in his own wares. The sense of something
tiny and flying was accentuated as they swept up long white curves of
road in the dead but open daylight of evening. Soon the white curves
came sharper and dizzier; they were upon ascending spirals, as they say
in the modern religions. For, indeed, they were cresting a corner of
London which is almost as precipitous as Edinburgh, if not quite so
picturesque. Terrace rose above terrace, and the special tower of flats
they sought, rose above them all to almost Egyptian height, gilt by
the level sunset. The change, as they turned the corner and entered the
crescent known as Himylaya Mansions, was as abrupt as the opening of a
window; for they found that pile of flats sitting above London as above
a green sea of slate. Opposite to the mansions, on the other side of the
gravel crescent, was a bushy enclosure more like a steep hedge or dyke
than a garden, and some way below that ran a strip of artificial water,
a sort of canal, like the moat of that embowered fortress. As the car
swept round the crescent it passed, at one corner, the stray stall of
a man selling chestnuts; and right away at the other end of the curve,
Angus could see a dim blue policeman walking slowly. These were the only
human shapes in that high suburban solitude; but he had an irrational
sense that they expressed the speechless poetry of London. He felt as if
they were figures in a story.

The little car shot up to the right house like a bullet, and shot out
its owner like a bomb shell. He was immediately inquiring of a tall
commissionaire in shining braid, and a short porter in shirt sleeves,
whether anybody or anything had been seeking his apartments. He was
assured that nobody and nothing had passed these officials since his
last inquiries; whereupon he and the slightly bewildered Angus were shot
up in the lift like a rocket, till they reached the top floor.

"Just come in for a minute," said the breathless Smythe. "I w