is one he put bit by bit
into his mouth, chewing the paper into a pulp till he swallowed it.
When he had done this, and had re-locked his own drawers, he walked
across to the other table, Mr Longestaffe's table, and pulled the
handle of one of the drawers. It opened;--and then, without touching
the contents, he again closed it. He then knelt down and examined the
lock, and the hole above into which the bolt of the lock ran. Having
done this he again closed the drawer, drew back the bolt of the door,
and, seating himself at his own desk, rang the bell which was close to
hand. The servant found him writing letters after his usual hurried
fashion, and was told that he was ready for breakfast. He always
breakfasted alone with a heap of newspapers around him, and so he did
on this day. He soon found the paragraph alluding to himself in the
'Pulpit,' and read it without a quiver in his face or the slightest
change in his colour. There was no one to see him now,--but he was
acting under a resolve that at no moment, either when alone, or in a
crowd, or when suddenly called upon for words,--not even when the
policemen with their first hints of arrest should come upon him,--
would he betray himself by the working of a single muscle, or the loss
of a drop of blood from his heart. He would go through it, always
armed, without a sign of shrinking. It had to be done, and he would do
it.

At ten he walked down to the central committee-room at Whitehall
Place. He thought that he would face the world better by walking than
if he were taken in his own brougham. He gave orders that the carriage
should be at the committee-room at eleven, and wait an hour for him if
he was not there. He went along Bond Street and Piccadilly, Regent
Street and through Pall Mall to Charing Cross, with the blandly
triumphant smile of a man who had successfully entertained the great
guest of the day. As he got near the club he met two or three men whom
he knew, and bowed to them. They returned his bow graciously enough,
but not one of them stopped to speak to him. Of one he knew that he
would have stopped, had it not been for the rumour. Even after the man
had passed on he was careful to show no displeasure on his face. He
would take it all as it would come and still be the blandly triumphant
Merchant Prince,--as long as the police would allow him. He probably
was not aware how very different was the part he was now playing from
that which he had assumed at th