him, him not being able to do
the stairs, of course. 'This is my--my den,' he introduced it, 'where I
sit about and read and try to do a bit of work.'

"There didn't look to be much signs of either that I could see, and I
said so. And old Sabre, who'd been hobbling about the room in a rather
uncomfortable sort of way, exclaimed suddenly, 'I say, Hapgood, it's
absolutely ripping having you here talking like this. I never can settle
down properly in this room, and I've got a jolly place upstairs where
all my books and things are.'

"'Let's go up then,' I said.

"'I can't get up.'

"'Well, man alive, I can get you up. Come on. Let's go.'

"He seemed to hesitate for some reason I couldn't understand. 'It's got
to be in a chair,' he said. 'It's a business. I wonder--' That kind of
thing, as though it was something he oughtn't to do. 'But it would be
fine,' he said. 'I've not been up for days. I could show you some of my
history I'm going to take up again one of these days--one of these
days,' said he, with his nut rather wrinkled up. And then suddenly,
'Come on, let's go!'

"At the door he called out, 'I say, you Jinkses!' and two servant girls
came tumbling out rather as if they were falling out of a trap and each
trying to fall out first. 'I say,' old Sabre says, 'Mistress not back
yet, is she?' and when they told him No, 'Well', d'you think you'd like
to get me upstairs on that infernal chair?' he says.

"'Oh, we _will_, sir,' and they got out one of those invalid chairs and
started to lift him up. Course I wanted to take one end, but they
wouldn't hear of it. 'If you please, we like carrying the master, sir,'
and all that kind of thing; and they fussed him in and fiddled with his
legs, snapping at one another for being rough as if they were the two
women taking their disputed baby up to old Solomon.

"They'd scarcely got on to the stairs when the front door opened and in
walks his wife. My word, I thought they were going to drop him. She says
in a voice as though she was biting a chip off an ice block, 'Mark, is
it _really_ necessary--' Then she saw me and took her teeth out of the
ice. 'Oh, it's Mr. Hapgood, isn't it? How very nice! Staying to lunch,
of course? Do let's come into the drawing-room.' Very nice and affable.
I always rather liked her. And we went along, I being rather captured
and doing the polite in my well-known matinee idol manner, you
understand; and I heard old Sabre saying, 'Well, let me out