ked up a bunch of keys from a basket
on a little table.

"You might just unlock that desk for me, will you?" she said. And,
further, as she went through the keys one by one to select the right
key: "Each quarter I've put your precious Mr Herbert Calvert's rent in a
drawer in that desk. ... Here's the key." She held up the whole ring by
the chosen key, and he accepted it. And she lay back once more in her
chair, exhausted by her exertions.

"You must turn the key sharply in the lock," she said weakly, as he
fumbled at the locked part of the desk.

So he turned the key sharply.

"You'll see a bag in the little drawer on the right," she murmured.

The key turned round and round. It had begun by resisting, but now it
yielded too easily.

"It doesn't seem to open," he said, feeling clumsy.

The key clicked and slid, and the other keys rattled together.

"Oh yes," she replied. "I opened it quite easily this morning. It
_is_ a bit catchy."

The key kept going round and round.

"Here! I'll do it," she said wearily.

"Oh no!" he urged.

But she rose courageously, and tottered to the desk, and took the bunch
from him.

"I'm afraid you've broken something in the lock," she announced, with
gentle resignation, after she had tried to open the desk and failed.

"Have I?" he mumbled. He knew that he was not shining.

"Would you mind calling in at Allman's," she said, resuming her chair,
"and tell them to send a man down at once to pick the lock? There's
nothing else for it. Or perhaps you'd better say first thing to-morrow
morning. And then as soon as he's done it I'll call and pay you the
money myself. And you might tell your precious Mr Herbert Calvert that
next quarter I shall give notice to leave."

"Don't you trouble to call, please," said he. "I can easily pop in
here."

She sped him away in an enigmatic tone. He could not be sure whether he
had succeeded or failed, in her estimation, as a man of the world and a
partaker of delicate teas.

"Don't _forget_ Allman's!" she enjoined him as he left the room. He
was to let himself out.

III

He was coming home late that night from the Sports Club, from a
delectable evening which had lasted till one o'clock in the morning,
when just as he put the large door-key into his mother's cottage he grew
aware of peculiar phenomena at the top end of Brougham Street, where it
runs into St Luke's Square. And then in the gas-lit gloom of the warm
summer night he perceiv