frock coat, but he wore them
as such solemn things were meant to be worn; he wore the silk hat as if
it were a mitre, and the frock coat as if it were the ephod of a high
priest. He not only hung his hat up on the peg, but he seemed (such was
his stateliness) almost to ask permission of the hat for doing so, and
to apologise to the peg for making use of it. When he had sat down on
a wooden chair with the air of one considering its feelings and given a
sort of slight stoop or bow to the wooden table itself, as if it were an
altar, I could not help some comment springing to my lips. For the man
was a big, sanguine-faced, prosperous-looking man, and yet he treated
everything with a care that almost amounted to nervousness.

For the sake of saying something to express my interest I said, "This
furniture is fairly solid; but, of course, people do treat it much too
carelessly."

As I looked up doubtfully my eye caught his, and was fixed as his was
fixed in an apocalyptic stare. I had thought him ordinary as he entered,
save for his strange, cautious manner; but if the other people had seen
him then they would have screamed and emptied the room. They did not see
him, and they went on making a clatter with their forks, and a murmur
with their conversation. But the man's face was the face of a maniac.

"Did you mean anything particular by that remark?" he asked at last, and
the blood crawled back slowly into his face.

"Nothing whatever," I answered. "One does not mean anything here; it
spoils people's digestions."

He limped back and wiped his broad forehead with a big handkerchief; and
yet there seemed to be a sort of regret in his relief.

"I thought perhaps," he said in a low voice, "that another of them had
gone wrong."

"If you mean another digestion gone wrong," I said, "I never heard of
one here that went right. This is the heart of the Empire, and the other
organs are in an equally bad way."

"No, I mean another street gone wrong," and he said heavily and quietly,
"but as I suppose that doesn't explain much to you, I think I shall have
to tell you the story. I do so with all the less responsibility, because
I know you won't believe it. For forty years of my life I invariably
left my office, which is in Leadenhall Street, at half-past five in the
afternoon, taking with me an umbrella in the right hand and a bag in the
left hand. For forty years two months and four days I passed out of the
side office door, walk