y, how narrowly he had escaped from slamming the
door behind him. This was an act which might have been suicidal in
its stupidity; for to give any sign of his presence there after that
thundering summons at the door would have been to betray himself beyond
redemption. He inserted his latch-key noiselessly, and, crouching to
escape imagined observers, drew the door gently after him, and turned
the key slowly in the lock. As he did this he heard a footstep and a
cough together close at hand, and, turning with a start, beheld a pale
and slender man of brief stature, who scraped his lantern jaws with
apologetic thumb and finger, and looking at him with a startled
meekness, as if he would fain propitiate anger for a possible intrusion,
sidled to the foot of the stairs, mounted the stairway with a backward
glance and a second cough of apology, and so disappeared.

Young Mr. Barter, with his nerves already shaken by this small episode,
walked into the main thoroughfare and merged with the crowd, bearing
Mr. Bommaney's eight thousand pounds with him. When he had walked for a
while he hailed a cab, and was driven home. He had, or prided himself on
having, an exceptional eye for horseflesh, but it was not his faculty
in this direction which had led him to choose a cab horsed by a brute
of unusual symmetry and swiftness. This was an accident, but, like other
accidents in this perplexed world, it served its purpose. It landed him
at the paternal door in Harley Street almost at the instant at which
Bommaney arrived there in pursuit of him.

Now, although young Mr. Barter had not calculated on meeting Bommaney
so soon, and although the meeting was naturally something of a shock to
him, he had already schooled himself for interview and inquiry. He went
a little paler than common as he grasped his father's old friend by the
hand for the third time that evening, and trembled ever so little as he
spoke.

'I half expected to find you here,' he said. 'I could see how moved you
were by the news of my father's illness.' The door stood open, and the
old-fashioned man-servant within had been in the act of closing it upon
Bommaney's retreating figure when cab number two had driven up, and the
young master of the house had alighted from it. 'Is the news worse
or better?' He laid both hands upon Bommaney's arms as he put this
question.

The elderly servitor, who had never had reason given to him to believe
that young Mr. Barter was above the