“Come in!” said the voice. A rich masculine voice that seemed scarcely two yards away.
Bealby became rigid. Then after a long interval he moved—as softly as he could.
The voice soliloquized.
Bealby listened intently, and then when all was still again crept forward two paces more towards the gleam. It was a peephole.
The unseen speaker was walking about. Bealby listened, and the sound of his beating heart mingled with the pad, pad, of slippered footsteps. Then with a brilliant effort his eye was at the chink. All was still again. For a time he was perplexed by what he saw, a large pink shining dome, against a deep greenish grey background. At the base of the dome was a kind of interrupted hedge, brown and leafless....
Then he realized that he was looking at the top of a head and two enormous eyebrows. The rest was hidden....
Nature surprised Bealby into a penetrating sniff.
“Now,” said the occupant of the room, and suddenly he was standing up—Bealby saw a long hairy neck sticking out of a dressing-gown—and walking to the side of the room. “I won’t stand it,” said the great voice, “I won’t stand it. Ape’s foolery!”
Then the Lord Chancellor began rapping at the panelling about his apartment.
“Hollow! It all sounds hollow.”