‘When will she be in?’ he asked.
The porter said he couldn’t say; and Christopher disliked the porter.
He went away and walked about in the park, on wet earth and with heavy drops falling on him in showers from the trees.
At half-past four he was back again. Tea time. She would be in to tea, unless she had it in some one else’s house; in which case he would call again when she had had time to finish it.
She was still out.
‘I’ll go up and ask for myself,’ said Christopher, who disliked the porter more than ever; and at this the porter began to dislike Christopher.
‘There’s only this one way in,’ said the porter, his manner hardening. ‘I’d be bound to have seen her.’
‘Which floor?’ said Christopher briefly.
‘First,’ said the porter, still more briefly.
The first-floor flat of a building in Hertford Street seemed removed, thought Christopher as he walked up to it on a very thick carpet, and ignored the lift, which had anyhow not been suggested by the hardened porter, from the necessity for travelling by tube. Yet she had said she always went to The Immortal Hour by tube. Was it possible that there existed people who enjoyed tubes? He thought it was not possible. And to emerge from the quiet mahoganied dignity of the entrance hall of these flats and proceed on one’s feet to the nearest tube instead of getting into at least a taxi, caused wonder to settle on his mind. A Rolls-Royce wouldn’t have been out of the picture, but at least there ought to be a taxi.