Mr. Bailey remained for an hour and more gazing at the fire; then he rang the bell and ordered dinner with the most precise care, choosing just those articles which could be cooked lightly and quickly, insisting to the cook whom he saw in person, that they should follow in a precise order and at precise intervals of time, and adding, as was his invariable custom after each item:
"If you haven't got it, send for it."
At half-past eight this repast was to be ready, and for him alone. He puzzled at Zachary's mysterious adventure for some moments and longer, could make nothing of it, and in order perhaps to relieve his uneasy sense of incapacity, took refuge in reading one evening newspaper after another, and passing upon each some silent, facile, cynical comment as he read.
Meanwhile Mr. Bevan had reported at Barnett House. He was at once admitted.
He found the aged statesman and philanthropist before the Adams chimney-piece, a mass of papers upon a what-not beside him, his telephone mobilised upon the great central table, and a pile of bank-notes standing by the side of it under a paper-weight of bronze representing the Ariadne of Knidos, a bust the poor Master of Kendale had especially admired.
Mr. Bevan stood waiting at the door. The Duke of Battersea with exquisite good breeding waved his aged hand towards a chair, but Mr. Bevan preferred to remain standing, and he was not pressed. He first broke the silence:
"I've done the job proper, my lord—your grace, I mean," he said; "heavy, too."
"I ask you to tell me quite shortly what you have found," said the Duke, without lifting his eyes.
It was almost the same order that Mr. Bailey was giving to his servant at that same moment some two or three hundred yards away, but what a gulf between the two men! The strong and secure architect of his own and of his country's successes, sitting in the splendour of Barnett House, doing, controlling all—and the poor egoist whose feeble good-nature or vanity had been the chief feature of the interview in Bruton Street! Mr. Bevan told his story with precision, described the well-dressed gentleman leaving the house in Bruton Street; his disgraceful adventures in a lower rank; his assumed name of "Zachary Hemmings." The Duke asked the detective whether he were sure Mr. Bailey used that false name. Mr. Bevan said "Quite sure, your grace," and completed his tale with the story of the drunkenness, the taxi, and all the nasty business. When he had done he pulled out the piece of paper which had accompanied him throughout the day and to which he had added a few lines in the Bull and Flummery, on his way from Bond Street to Barnett House.