"Yep!" answered Mr. Collop. "I do."
"A window?" repeated the statesman, remembering the shutters, the curtains, the fire, all the scene.
"A winder was left open," insisted bovinely Mr. Collop. "I'll lay to that. And if you'll settle that p'int you'll see 'ow the rest'll follow. I tell you I 'ave me clue; it's more than a clue; it's a find. Ye'll see!"
The mechanism of a great house (delightful thought!) involves a hierarchy. The Home Secretary rang, and asked for the butler. An underling sought Mr. George Whaley, and Mr. George Whaley arrived. There was that in his eye which might have alarmed or warned the Head of the de Bohuns; but the Head of the de Bohuns was passing weary in the head just now, and he noted nothing.
"Oh!" he said, "I wanted you, Whaley ... to ask you—er—whether ... yes, to ask you who it is who does the room here in the early morning? Who, for instance, would be in the room here, say, well, before anybody else?"
George Whaley coughed discreetly.
"By rights, sir," he said, "it ought to be Annie. But it is possible, of course, that the Boy——"
"Ah! yes," said the Home Secretary. "The Boy. Of course!" He had vaguely heard that the Boy was the servant of the servants of the gods. "Well then, you think it would be the Boy? Send me the Boy!"
"Very good, sir," said George Whaley. But as there had been that in his eyes, so there was now that in his more manly gesture, as he turned round to pass majestically through the door, which might have warned once more, his master that he, George Whaley, had acquired new powers. There was a sense of approaching equality with the Great in George Whaley's waddle as he went through the door. From the mere dependent he was attaining the higher and political rank of blackmailer. But all these indications fell without effect upon the jaded de Bohun.
The Boy appeared. He stood at attention, after a fashion he had seen at the pictures. He stared with gooseberry eyes at his employer. The head of the de Bohuns was kind to him.