“Have you seen Doctor Feng lately?” I asked him, before he rang off.
“No; I think he must be in Paris. He told me he was going over,” was the reply.
About a quarter to eight that night I emerged from the lift at Hampstead station, and having inquired for Heathermoor Gardens, walked through the rain to a highly respectable road of large detached houses, each wherein dwelt prosperous city men, merchants, barristers and the like. The night was dark, and even though the street lamps shone, it was with some difficulty that I found Number Fourteen.
The house proved to be a large corner one, of two stories and double-fronted. Certainly it was the largest and best of them all and had big bay windows, and possessed an air of prosperity akin to that of my friend, the Anglo-Turkish financier.
The door was opened by a round-faced clean-shaven young man-servant who asked me into the spacious lounge-hall in which a wood fire burned brightly, and after taking my hat and coat, ushered me into a small cozy library on the left, where old Mr. Humphreys rose from the fireside, greeting me merrily.
“I’m awfully glad you could come, Yelverton,” was his greeting, “I haven’t asked anybody to meet you, for I thought we’d just have a quiet hour together, so that I can show you round my new home, and we can have a gossip. Sit down. Dinner will be ready in a moment.”
Then he pressed the bell and a moment later the man appeared bearing a tray with two cocktails. We raised our glasses and drank. Mine was delicious. I gazed around the sumptuously furnished room and congratulated him upon it.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve tried to make it as cozy as I can. I thought I would bring my furniture from Constantinople, but on second thought, decided it was too oriental and heavy and would hardly have been in keeping with an English house. So I sold it and have bought this place and furnished it.”
“It is really charming,” I said, noting the taste displayed.
“Yes, I didn’t want it to appear too new, so some of the stuff is second-hand. I hate a place which looks like the palace of a war-profiteer, don’t you?” he laughed.