"It shall be done," said Mr. Nape coldly and professionally. He said "good-bye," to his visitor on the doorstep and walked back to his "laboratory" slowly and importantly.
He found the scattered manuscript of his monologue and mechanically tidied it together. He missed the dummy newspaper "agony" and looked round for it. He saw a cutting on the floor, picked it up and put it away with the manuscript. Then he sat down to plan out his campaign.
He had a number of disguises in his room upstairs....
Two hours later a grimy workman with a heavy moustache and a bag of tools called, at 64 "to examine the gas fittings."
VII
The Duke looked at the workman tinkering awkwardly with a pendant. The "workman" in his inmost soul was fervently praying that this would be the last job. For an hour and a half he had sweated and toiled. The Duke had received him on his arrival, figuratively speaking, with open arms.
"You are just the man we want," he said enthusiastically, and had put him through a short catechism. Did he know anything about plumbing? Yes, said the workman doubtfully; and glazing and fixing water pipes, and gardening? added Hank.
The workman who was not quite sure whether all these accomplishments were comprehended in the profession of gas-fitter, thought however that it would be wisest to be on the safe side, and had answered "Yes."
So the Duke had led him to the little cellar, where he laboured hotly at a refractory electric battery, and Hank had pushed him up through a trap door out of the roof, where he, trembling, fixed a misplaced slate, and the Duke had insisted upon the ground being opened in the garden so that a defective drain-pipe might be repaired. After digging industriously, if unskilfully, for half an hour, it was discovered that the drain-pipe was in another part of the garden altogether.
Then he was taken into the common-room to fix the gas. Between the fear that his excessive exertions and their attendant perspiration, would melt the wax that affixed his noble moustache and the desire for information, Mr. Nape was more than ordinarily embarrassed. For there is little one may learn in a four-foot excavation, and the news whispered abroad on suburban housetops is scarcely worth remembering. Therefore he welcomed the adjournment to the common-room. Whilst he tinkered, the men talked, and at their first words Roderick pricked up his ears.