te of high complex
emotion, partly due to apprehensiveness about the violent changing of
the habits of a quarter of a century, and partly due to nervous pride.

Maggie and Mrs Nixon had gone to the new house half an hour earlier, to
devise encampments therein for the night; for the Clayhangers would
definitely sleep no more at the corner of Duck Square; the rooms in
which they had eaten and slept and lain awake, and learnt what life and
what death was, were to be transformed into workshops and stores for an
increasing business. The premises were not abandoned empty. The shop
had to function as usual on that formidable day, and the printing had to
proceed. This had complicated the affair of the removal; but it had
helped everybody to pretend, in an adult and sedate manner, that nothing
in the least unusual was afoot.

Edwin loitered on the pavement, with his brain all tingling, and
excitedly incapable of any consecutive thought whatever. It was his
duty to wait. Two of Foster's men were across in the vaults of the
Dragon; the rest were at Bleakridge with the first and smaller van.
Only one of Foster's horses was in the dropped double-shafts, and even
he had his nose towards the van, and in a nosebag; two others were to
come down soon from Bleakridge to assist.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TWO.

A tall, thin, grey-bearded man crossed Trafalgar Road from Aboukir
Street. He was very tall and very thin, and the peculiarity of his walk
was that the knees were never quite straightened, so that his height was
really greater even than it seemed. His dark suit and his boots and hat
were extraordinarily neat. You could be sure at once that he was a
person of immutable habits. He stopped when, out of the corner of his
eye, whose gaze was always precisely parallel to the direction of his
feet, he glimpsed Edwin. Deflecting his course, he went close to Edwin,
and, addressing the vacant air immediately over Edwin's pate, he said in
a mysterious, confidential whisper--"when are you coming in for that
money?"

He spoke as though he was anxious to avoid, by a perfect air of
nonchalance, arousing the suspicions of some concealed emissary of the
Russian secret police.

Edwin started. "Oh!" he exclaimed. "Is it ready?"

"Yes. Waiting."

"Are you going to your office now?"

"Yes."

Edwin hesitated. "It won't take a minute, I suppose. I'll slip along
in two jiffs. I'