"I. . . I don't know."
The priest dived forward and extracted a small despatch-box from some unseen receptacle.
"Your keys, please, Monsignor."
The other felt wildly about his person. He saw the steady eyes of the old priest upon him.
"You keep them in your left-hand breast pocket," said the priest slowly and distinctly.
The man felt there, fetched out a bundle of thin, flat keys, and handed them over helplessly. While the priest turned them over, examining each, the other stared hopelessly out of the window, past the motionless servant in purple who waited with his hand on the car-door. Surely he knew this place. . . . Yes; it was Dean's Yard. And this was the entrance to the cloister of the Abbey. But who was "the Prior," and what was it all about?
He turned to the other, who by now was bending over the box and extracting a few papers laid neatly at the top.
"What are you doing, father? Who are you going to see?"
"I am going to take these papers of yours to the Prior—the Prior of Westminster. The Abbot isn't here yet. Only a few of the monks have come."
"Monks! Prior! . . . Father!"