as I could not help seeing the girl Jenny from the window.
Twice in a week I learned from this objectionable child that the ailing
woman had again eaten all the tapioca. Then I became suspicious of
William. I will tell why.

It began with a remark of Captain Upjohn's. We had been speaking of the
inconvenience of not being able to get a hot dish served after 1 A.M.,
and he said:

"It is because these lazy waiters would strike. If the beggars had a
love of their work they would not rush away from the club the moment one
o'clock strikes. That glum fellow who often waits on you takes to his
heels the moment he is clear of the club steps. He ran into me the other
night at the top of the street, and was off without apologising."

"You mean the foot of the street, Upjohn," I said; for such is the way
to Drury Lane.

"No; I mean the top. The man was running west."

"East."

"West."

I smiled, which so annoyed him that he bet me two to one in sovereigns.
The bet could have been decided most quickly by asking William a
question, but I thought, foolishly doubtless, that it might hurt his
feelings, so I watched him leave the club. The possibility of Upjohn's
winning the bet had seemed remote to me. Conceive my surprise, therefore
when William went westward.

Amazed, I pursued him along two streets without realising that I was
doing so. Then curiosity put me into a hansom. We followed William,
and it proved to be a three-shilling fare, for, running when he was in
breath and walking when he was out of it, he took me to West Kensington.

I discharged my cab, and from across the street watched William's
incomprehensible behaviour. He had stopped at a dingy row of workmen's
houses, and knocked at the darkened window of one of them. Presently a
light showed. So far as I could see, some one pulled up the blind and
for ten minutes talked to William. I was uncertain whether they talked,
for the window was not opened, and I felt that, had William spoken
through the glass loud enough to be heard inside, I must have heard him
too. Yet he nodded and beckoned. I was still bewildered when, by setting
off the way he had come, he gave me the opportunity of going home.

Knowing from the talk of the club what the lower orders are, could I
doubt that this was some discreditable love-affair of William's?
His solicitude for his wife had been mere pretence; so far as it was
genuine, it meant that he feared she might recover. He probably told