He worked steadily, paid his debts, and for the first time in his life began gradually to save money.
That autumn his father asked him if he wouldn't return home to live.
"Alfred's left us," said the old man.
"Has he?" asked Ernie surprised. "Where's he gone then?"
"He's gone to live above his garage," replied the other. "Something's happening to Alfred," he added. "I don't know what."
Alf, in fact, was changing; and Mr. Trupp was watching the evolution of his chauffeur with a detached scientific interest that his wife defined as inhuman.
And that evolution was proceeding apace. Alf was living alone above his garage; he had introduced a girl into his office; and he was no longer getting on.
Mr. Trupp noted the last as far the most significant symptom of the three.
Alf had climbed in his career to a certain point, and there he stuck fast. His business neither went ahead nor back. He was still doing well and saving money. The wonder was that he was not doing better.
But the reason was clear enough to the penetrating eye of the old surgeon, to whom his chauffeur was an absorbing study in mental pathology: Alf was no more a man of one idea; his energies were no longer concentrated solely on getting on to the exclusion of all else. The emotional side of him, battered down from infancy, was revenging itself at last. Desperately it was seeking an outlet, no matter how perverted: certainly it would find one.