They passed out as she spoke and entered the narrow lift where a saddened-looking individual clung to the rope like a drowning man. Mrs. Merrod glanced at him, recognizing a new porter.
"Slowly, please,"—she commanded. "I hate..." she explained to McTaggart—"to feel my feet running up my spine. Once when I went into the City to see my lawyer the lift went down at such a terrible pace, mon Dieu!—I found a boot-button in my hair."
"You're sure it wasn't the top of a hat-pin?"
McTaggart's voice was studiously grave.
"Mais non! A button. But I'm not quite certain whether it came off a boot..."
The sad-looking porter, his back turned, relaxed into a sudden grin. He saw the pair into their taxi and stood for a moment watching them.
"There goes a little bit of all right!"—he confided to the world at large. Then he solemnly spat on McTaggart's shilling "for luck" and burrowed back into the lift.
CHAPTER VIII
The Restaurant "Au Bon Bourgeois" faced on a dingy Soho street, the newly painted white door flanked by myrtle-trees in tubs. The entrance was through a narrow passage which led to a low room in the rear, divided from the one in front by a partition of plate glass.