“’E thanks me!” gasped the small seedy man. “’Ere, and ain’t you even going to give me a little bit of somethink extra so’s I’ll remember this ewneek occasion?”
“I’m very afraid,” said Mr. Maturin, feeling carefully in all his pockets, “that this note you have brought me is all I have. I am really very sorry. By the way, don’t forget what I said about the salmon. And be very careful of what you drink. For what, let’s face it, do they know of dyspepsia, who only Kia-Ora know?”
“’Ere!” whined the small seedy man, but Mr. Maturin, crossing Piccadilly where the glare of an arc-lamp stamped the mire with a thousand yellow lights, was already lost in the shadow of the great walls of Devonshire House. In Clarges Street, near the corner, he came upon a long, closed car. The chauffeur, a boy, looked sleepily at him.
“I believe you have your directions,” said Mr. Maturin.
“And I’ve had them for hours!” said the boy sleepily. A nice boy.
II
We live in a world of generalisations, which the wise never tire of telling the foolish to mistrust and with which the foolish never tire of pointing the failures of the wise. There is one, for instance, that lays it down that a bad conscience is a sorry bedfellow. Yet Mr. Maturin, whose conscience could not have been but in the blackest disorder, immediately went to sleep in the car: to awake only when, the car having stopped, the young chauffeur flung open the door of the tonneau and said:
“If you please, sir!”
Mr. Maturin found himself before the doors of a mansion of noble proportions. From the head of the broad steps he looked about him and recognised the long narrow park of trees as that of Eaton Square. A voice said:
“Come in, Mr. Maturin. A wretched night.”