Imperial Palace

Evelyn came down by the lift into the great front-hall. One of the clocks there showed seven minutes to four; the other showed six minutes to four. He thought: "I should have had time to shave. This punctuality business is getting to be a mania with me." He smiled sympathetically, forgivingly, at his own weakness, which the smile transformed into a strength. He had bathed; he had drunk tea; he was correctly dressed, in the informal style which was his--lounge-suit, soft collar, soft hat, light walking-stick, no gloves; but he had not shaved. No matter. There are dark men who must shave every twelve hours; their chins are blue. Evelyn was neither dark nor fair; he might let thirty hours pass without a shave, and nobody but an inquisitive observer would notice the negligence.

The great front-hall was well lighted; but the lamps were islands in the vast dusky spaces; at 2 a.m. the chandeliers--sixteen lamps apiece--which hung in the squares of the panelled ceiling ceased to shower down their spendthrift electricity on the rugs and the concrete floor impressively patterned in huge lozenges of black and white. Behind the long counters to the right of the double revolving doors at the main entrance shone the two illuminated signs, "Reception" and "Enquiries," always at the same strength day and night. The foyer down the steps, back beyond the hall, had one light. The restaurant down the steps beyond the foyer had one light. The reading-room, cut out of the hall by glass partitions, had no light. The grill-room, which gave on a broad corridor opposite the counters, had several lights; in theory it opened for breakfasts at 6 a.m., but in fact it was never closed, nor its kitchen closed.

Reyer, the young night-manager, in stiff shirt and dinner-jacket, was sitting at the Reception counter, his fair, pale, bored, wistful face bent over a little pile of documents. An Englishman of French extraction, he was turning night into day and day into night in order to learn a job and something about human nature. He would lament, mildly, that he never knew what to call his meals; for with him dinner was breakfast and breakfast dinner; as for lunch, he knew it no more. He had been night-manager for nearly a year; and Evelyn had an eye on him, had hopes of him--and he had hopes of Evelyn.

As Evelyn approached the counter Reyer respectfully rose.

"Morning, Reyer."

"Good morning, Mr. Orcham. You're up early."

"Anything on the night-report?" Evelyn asked, ignoring Reyer's remark.

"Nothing much, sir. A lady left suite 341 at three o'clock."

"Taxi or car?"

"Walked," said Reyer the laconic.

"Let me see the book."

Reyer opened a manuscript volume and pushed it across the counter. Evelyn read, without any comment except "Um!" At 10 a.m. the night-report would be placed before him, typewritten, in his private office. He moved away. Near the revolving doors stood Samuel Butcher (referred to, behind his back, as Long Sam), the head night-porter, and a couple of his janissaries, all in blue and gold.

"Well, Sam," Evelyn greeted the giant cheerfully.

"Morning, sir," Sam saluted.

The janissaries, not having been accosted, took care not to see Evelyn.

"I gather you haven't had to throw anyone out to-night?" Evelyn waved his cane.

"No, sir." Sam laughed, proud of the directorial attention. Evelyn pulled out a cigarette. Instantly both the janissaries leapt to different small tables on which were matches. The winner struck a match and held it to Evelyn's cigarette.

"Thanks," Evelyn murmured, and, puffing, strolled towards the back of the hall, where he glanced at himself in a mighty square column faced with mirror.

2.

No! The nascent beard was completely invisible. Suit correct, stylish. Handkerchief peeping correctly out of the pocket. Necktie--he adjusted the necktie ever so little. Shoes correct--not a crease in them. Well, perhaps the features lacked distinction; the angle of the nose was a bit too acute; the lower lip heavy, somewhat sensual. But what friendly keen brown eyes! What delicate ears! And the chin--how enigmatic! The chin would puzzle any reader of the human countenance. Forty-seven. Did he feel forty-seven? Could he even believe that he was forty-seven? He felt thirty--thirty-one. And the simpleton thought that he looked at most thirty-five. In two and a half years, however, he would be fifty. God! What a prospect! Well, he didn't care one damn how old he was, or looked, so long as he felt ... On the whole, quite a presentable creature. But nobody would glance twice at him in the street. Nobody could possibly guess that he was anyone out of the ordinary. A pity, possibly. Yet what is, is, and must be accepted with philosophy. Nevertheless, he was acquainted with idiots, asses, greenhorns and charlatans whose appearance was so distinguished that they could not enter a restaurant without arousing respectful curiosity. Funny world.

The séance at the mirror lasted three seconds--time to adjust the necktie, no more. He moved off. The clock over the counter showed five minutes to four. Clocks had their moods; they raced, they stood still, in discordance with the mood of the beholder, maliciously intent on exasperating him.

Within recent months Evelyn had hung the walls of the great hall with large, old coloured prints of antique, sunk or broken-up Atlantic liners, and underneath each a smaller photograph of a modern vessel. He glanced at an American print of a French liner of the sixties, paddle and sail. He read the quaint legend beneath: "Length 375 feet. Breadth of beam 46.Depth of hold 33. Burthen 3,500 tons. Horse-power, 1,250."Burthen. Comic! Yet in her time this ship had been a crack. Under the print was a photograph of the "Ile-de-France." Yes, this idea of his of marine prints in the hall had been extremely successful. It was aimed at American visitors, who constituted sixty per cent. of the clientele, and it hit them all day and every day. Difficult at certain hours to pass through the great hall without seeing an American gazing entranced at a marine print.

That contrarious clock still showed five minutes to four. Long Sam stood moveless; his janissaries stood moveless; young Reyer sat moveless. The electric lamps burned with the stoical endurance of organisms which have passed beyond time into eternity. The great hall seemed to lie under an enchantment. Its darkened extensions, the foyer and the immeasurable restaurant, seemed to lie under an enchantment. The brighter corridor and grill-room seemed to lie under an enchantment. Diminished men awaited with exhaustless patience the birth of day, as they might have awaited the birth of a child.

Sound and lights of a big car, heard and seen through the glazed frontage of the hall! Revolution of the doors! Long Sam was already outside; his janissaries were outside; the doors were whizzing with the speed of the men's exit. Reyer came round the counter. The enchantment was smashed to bits: phenomenon as swift and unexpected as a street-accident. Evelyn wondered who could be arriving with such a grandiose pother at four o'clock in the morning. But his chief concern was the clock, which now showed three minutes to four. If Jack Cradock did not appear within three minutes the stout, faithful little man would be late for his rendezvous. And it was Jack's business to be not merely on time but before time. Evelyn was uneasy. Uneasily he glanced down the dim vista of the foyer and the restaurant, his back to the doors through which Jack ought to enter. He heard voices: Long Sam's, Reyer's and another's.

He turned, in spite of himself, at the tones of that third voice, polite, but curt, assured, authoritative. Between a felt hat and a huge overcoat he saw a face with which he was not unacquainted, Sir Henry Savott's (baronet). Then he remembered that Sir Henry, passenger by the "Caractacus"--45,000 tons--from New York, had reserved two suites overlooking the park. A small, spry, rather desiccated face, with small, searching eyes, a clipped, iron-grey military moustache, and a bony, imperious chin. Staring curiously about as he talked to Reyer, Sir Henry descried Evelyn, and, unceremoniously leaving Reyer, stepped spryly towards the Director, who advanced to meet him in the middle of the hall. False youthfulness, thought Evelyn, proud of his own comparative youthfulness. The fellow must be fifty-seven, and pretending to be forty-seven--unsuccessfully! The two shook hands with mutual smiles.

"Hope you haven't got up specially to meet us," said Sir Henry. "Too bad!"

"No," said Evelyn quietly and carelessly.

The infernal impudence of these spoilt millionaires! To imagine that he, Evelyn, would get up specially to meet anybody on earth!

"I'm glad," said Sir Henry, who was sorry, hiding all consciousness of a rebuff.

"See. You've come by the 'Caractacus'?"

"Yes. My daughter has driven me and her maid and some of the light stuff up from Southampton. She's the devil's own driver, Gracie is, particularly at night. There are two or three cars behind us. But most of the passengers preferred to have their sleep out on the ship and wait for the boat-train."

"You're three days late," said Evelyn.

"Yes," Sir Henry admitted.

"Funny rumours about that ship," said Evelyn.

"Yes," said Sir Henry darkly, in a manner definitely to close the subject of rumours. He was a large shareholder in the company which owned the line.

Evelyn perceived two girls in conversation with an assiduous and impressed Reyer. The young man's deportment was quite good, if a trifle too subservient. One of the girls wore a magnificent leather coat. Doubtless Gracie, celebrated in the illustrated press for her thrilling performances at the wheel at Brooklands. The other, less warmly clad, must be the maid.

Gracie looked suddenly round, and Evelyn saw her face, which however he hardly recognised from the photographs of it in illustrated papers. At a distance of twenty feet he felt the charm of it--vivacious, agreeable, aware of its own power. Perhaps very beautiful, but he could not be sure. Anyhow, the face--and the gestures--of an individuality. Evelyn at once imagined her as a mistress; and as he fenced amiably with the amiable Sir Henry, who he had some reason to believe would one day soon be trying to engage him in high finance, his mind dwelt upon the idea of her as a mistress. He was not an over-sensual man; he was certainly not lascivious. He was guilty of no bad taste in conceiving this girl, whom he now saw for the first time, as a mistress in the privacy of his heart. What goes on in a man's heart is his own affair. And similar thoughts, on meeting young and attractive women, wander in and out of the hearts of the most staid and serious persons, unsuspected by a world of beholders apt to reason too conventionally. Evelyn's was an entirely serious soul, but it had a mortal envelope. He was starved of women. For years women had been his secret preoccupation. He desired intimacy with some entrancing, perfect woman. Not the marital intimacy. No. Never again the marital intimacy. He would make sacrifices for the desired intimacy. But not the supreme sacrifice. Work first, career first, woman second, even were she another Helen.

For nearly twenty years Evelyn had been a widower. Six weeks after his marriage a daily series of inescapable facts had compelled him to admit to himself that his wife was a furiously self-centred neurotic who demanded as a natural right everything in exchange for nothing. An incurable. He had excused her on the ground that she was not to be blamed for her own mental constitution. He had tolerated her because he was of those who will chew whatever they may have bitten off. He had protected himself by the application of the theory that all that happens to a man happens in his own mind and nowhere else, and therefore that he who is master of his own mind is fortified against fate. A dogma; but it suited his case. At the end of three years Adela had died, an unwilling mother with a terrific grievance, in childbed; and the child had not survived her. The whole experience was horrible. Evelyn mourned. His sorrow was also a sigh of transcendent relief. Agonising relief, but relief. Not till the episode was finished did he confess to his mind how frightfully he had suffered and how imperfectly he had been master of his mind. He had never satisfactorily answered the great, humiliating question: "How could I have been such a colossal fool, so blind, so deaf, so utterly mistaken in my estimate of a woman?" He was left with a quiet but tremendous prejudice against marriage. I have had luck this time, he thought. Once is enough. Never again! Never again! He divided wives into those who were an asset and those who were a liability; and his strong inclination was to conclude, in the final judgment, that of all the wives he knew not one was an asset. One or two of them might have the appearance of an asset, yet if you could penetrate to essentials, if you could learn the inner conjugal secrets, was there one who was not a liability? He tried to stand away from himself and see that he was prejudiced, but he could never honestly convict himself of a prejudice in this matter.

He saw the maid and Reyer pass towards the lift like apparitions. He noticed that the pretty but tired maid was well-dressed, probably in clothes that a few months earlier her mistress had been wearing; but that nevertheless every nervous movement and glance of the girl divulged her station. He heard Sir Henry's voice and his own like faint echoes. He saw the janissaries pass towards the lift like apparitions carrying ghostly suit-cases. He saw Miss Savott herself go towards the doors like an apparition, then hesitate and glide towards her father like an apparition. And in those brief seconds the sole reality of his mind was the three years of marriage with Adela, years whose thousand days and a day swept in detail through his memory with the miraculous rapidity of a life re-lived by a drowning man.

"Gracie, this is my friend, Mr. Orcham, the king of his world--I've told you. My daughter."

And now Gracie was the reality. Instinctively he put one hand to his chin as he raised his hat with the other. Why had he not shaved? The hair on his enigmatic chin seemed half an inch long.

"I do hope you haven't got up specially to meet us," said Gracie.

Her father's words, but spoken differently! What a rich, low, emotional, sympathetic voice, full of modulations! A voice like shot silk, changing at every syllable!

"No, I didn't," he replied. "But if I'd known you'd be here so early I certainly might have done. The fact is, I've got up to go with my meat-buyer to Smithfield Market."

He looked and saw the faithful Cradock standing meekly expectant at the entrance. The dilatory clock at last showed four.

"I must just lock up the car," said Gracie. "Shan't be two minutes." She ran off.

"I'm going to bed," Sir Henry called after her.

"All right, daddy," she called back, not stopping.

"I'm fortunate enough to be able to sleep whenever I want to!" said Sir Henry to Evelyn. "Useful, eh?"

"Very," Evelyn agreed.

Wonderful with what naïve satisfaction these millionaires attributed to themselves the characteristics of Napoleon! He accompanied Napoleon to the lift, and stayed for a moment chatting about the hotel. It was as if they were manœuvring for places before crossing the line in a yacht race.

2.

When Evelyn returned to the hall Gracie Savott also was returning. She now carried the leather coat on her arm, revealing a beige frock.

"No, no," she said when he offered to take the coat. "But have you got a gasper?"

"I never smoke anything else," said Evelyn.

"Neither do I," said Gracie. "Thanks."

He thought: "What next?"

The next was that Gracie moved a few feet to a table, Evelyn following, and put the newly lighted cigarette on an ash-tray, opened her bag, and began to titivate her face. She was absorbed in this task, earnest over it; yet she could talk the while. He somehow could not examine her features in detail; but he could see that she had a beautiful figure. What slim ankles! What wrists! Les attaches fines. She had a serious expression, as one engaged on a matter of grave importance. She dabbed; she critically judged the effect of each dab, gazing closely at her face in the hand-mirror. And Evelyn unshaved!

"Has daddy really gone to bed?" she asked, not taking her eyes off the mirror.

"He has."

"He's a great sleeper before the Lord. I suppose he told you about our cockleshell the 'Caractacus.'"

"Not a word. What about it? We did hear she'd been rolling a bit."

"Rolling a bit! When we were a day out from New York, she rolled the dining-room windows under water. The fiddles were on the tables, but she threw all the crockery right over the fiddles. I was the only woman at dinner, and there wasn't absolutely a legion of men either. They said that roll smashed seventeen thousand pounds' worth of stuff. I thought she'd never come up again. The second officer told daddy next day that he never thought she'd come up again. It was perfectly thrilling. But she did come up. Everyone says she's the worst roller that ever sailed the seas."

During this narration Gracie's attention to the mirror did not relax.

"Well," said Evelyn calmly. "Of course it must have been pretty bad weather to make a big ship like that three days late."

"Weather!" said Gracie. "The weather was awful, perfectly dreadful. But it wasn't the weather that made her three days late. She split right across. Yes, split right across. The observation-deck. A three-inch split. Anyhow I could put my foot into it. Of course it was roped off. But they showed it to daddy. They had to. And I saw it with him."

"Do you mean to say--" Evelyn began, incredulous.

"Yes, I do mean to say," Gracie stopped him. "You ask daddy. Ask anyone who was on board. That's why she's going to be laid up for three months. They talk about 're-conditioning.' But it's the split."

"But how on earth--?" Evelyn was astounded more than he had ever been astounded.

"Oh! Strain, or something. They saidit was something to do with them putting two new lifts in, and removing a steel cross-beam or whatever they call it. But daddy says don't you believe it. She's too long for her strength, and she won't stand it in any weather worth talking about. Of course she was German built, and the Germans can't build like us. Don't you agree?"

"No. I don't," said Evelyn, with a smile to soften the contradiction, slightly lifting his shoulders.

"Oh, you don't? That's interesting now."

Evelyn raised his cane a few inches to greet Jack Cradock, who replied by raising his greenish hard hat.

"Now," thought Evelyn, somewhere in the midst of the brain-disturbance due to Gracie's amazing news. "This is all very well, but what about Smithfield? She isn't quite a young girl. She must be twenty-five, and she knows that I haven't got up at four o'clock for small-talk with women. Yet she behaves as if I hadn't anything to do except listen to her. She may stay chattering here for half an hour."

He resented this egotistical thoughtlessness so characteristic of the very rich. At the same time he was keenly enjoying her presence. And he liked her expensive stylishness. The sight of a really smart woman always gave him pleasure. In his restaurant, when he occasionally inspected it as a spy from a corner behind a screen, he always looked first for the fashionable, costly frocks, and the more there were the better he was pleased. He relished, too, the piquancy of the contrast between Gracie's clothes and the rough masculinity of her achievements on Brooklands track in the monstrous cars which Sir Henry had had specially built for her, and her night-driving on the road from Southampton. Only half an hour ago she had probably been steering a big car at a mile a minute on a dark curving road. And here with delicate hands she was finishing the minute renewal of her delicate face. Her finger-nails were stained a bright red.

So the roll from which nobody hoped that the ship would recover, the roll which had broken seventeen thousand pounds' worth of stuff, was merely 'thrilling' to her. And she had put her little foot into the split across the deck. What a sensation that affair ought to cause! What unique copy for the press! Nevertheless, would it cause a sensation? Would the press exploit it? He fancied not. The press would give descriptive columns to the marvels and luxuries of a new giant liner. But did anybody ever read in any paper--even in any anti-capitalistic paper--that a famous vessel rolled, or vibrated, or shook? Never! Never a word in derogation! As for the incredible cross-split, result of incorrect calculations of the designer, no editor would dare to refer to it in print. To do so would damage Atlantic traffic for a whole season--and incidentally damage the hotel business. The four-million-pound crack was protected by the devoted adherence of the press to the dogma that transatlantic liners are perfect. And let no one breathe a word concerning the relation between editors and advertisement-managers.

Miss Savott had kept the leather coat on her arm while doing her face. The face done, and her bag shut again, she dropped the cloak on the small table by her side. Womanish! Proof of a disordered and inconsequent mind. She resumed the cigarette, which had been steadily sending up a vertical wavering wisp of smoke.

"Mr. Orcham," she said ingratiatingly, intimately, stepping near to him, "will you do something for me? . . .I simply daren't ask you."

"If I can," he smiled. (Had experience taught her that she was irresistible?)

"Oh, you can! I've been dying for years to see Smithfield Market in the middle of the night. Would you mind very much taking me with you? I would drive you there. The car's all ready. I didn't lock it up after all."

Here was his second amazement. These people were incredible--as incredible as the split in the 'Caractacus.' How did she suppose he could transact his business at Smithfield with a smart young woman hanging on to him?

She added, like an imploring child:

"I won't be in the way. I'd be as small as a mouse."

They read your thoughts.

Not 'as quiet as a mouse.' 'As small as a mouse.' Better. She had a gift for making her own phrases.

"But surely you must be terribly tired. I've had four and a half hours' sleep."

"Me! Tired! I'm like father--and you--I'm never tired. Besides, I slept my head off on the ship."

She looked appealingly up at him. Yes, irresistible! And she well knew it!

"Well, if you really aren't too tired, I shall be delighted. And the market is very interesting."

And in fact he was delighted. There were grave disadvantages, naturally; but he dismissed them from his mind, to make room for the anticipation of being driven by her through the night-streets of London. Sitting by her! He was curious to see one of these expert racing drivers, and especially the fastest woman-driver in the world, at the wheel.

"You're frightfully kind," said she. "I'll just--"

"How did you know I'm never tired?" he interrupted her.

"I could see it in your shoulders," she answered. "You aren't, are you?"

"Not often," he said, proud, thrilled, feverish.

"See it in my shoulders," he thought. "Odd little creature. Her brain's impish. That's what it is. Well, perhaps she can see it in my shoulders." Indeed he was proud.

"I'll just fly upstairs one moment. Shan't keep you. Where's the lift?" But she had descried the lift and was gone.

"Reyer," he called. "Just see Miss Savott to her suite."

Reyer ran. The lift-man judiciously waited for him.

And Evelyn, Nizam of the immense organism of the hotel, reflected like an ingenuous youth:

"I know everyone thinks I'm very reserved. And perhaps I am. But she's got right through that, into me. And she's the first. She must have taken a liking to me. Here I've only known her about six minutes and she's--" Somewhere within him a point of fire glowed. He advanced rather self-consciously towards the waiting Cradock. And, advancing, he remembered that, on her first disappearance, after saying she would be two minutes, Gracie Savott had been away only half a minute. She was not the sort of girl to keep a man waiting. No!. . . But barely half his own age.

Jack Cradock's age was fifty-nine. He was short, stoutish, very honest, and very shrewd. His clothes were what is called 'good,' that is to say, of good everlasting cloth well sewed; but they had no style except Jack's style. His income nearly touched a thousand a year. With his savings he bought house-property. No stocks and shares for him. He had as fine an eye for small house-property as for a lamb's carcass. He had always been in the Smithfield trade. His father had been a drover when cattle strolled leisurely to London over roads otherwise empty. He went to bed at eight o'clock, and rose at three--save on Sundays. Daylight London seemed to him rather odd, unnatural.

He had been meat-buyer to the hotel in the years when it was merely a hotel among hotels, before Evelyn took control of it. In those years there existed in the buying departments abuses which irked Jack's honesty. He saw them completely abolished. He saw the hotel develop from a hotel among hotels into the unique hotel, whose sacred name was uttered in a tone different from the tone used for the names of all other hotels. He recognised in Evelyn a fellow-devotee of honesty in a world only passably honest; a man of scrupulous fairness, a man of terrific industry, a man of most various ability and most quiet authority, a real swell. Jack had heard that Evelyn gave lectures on wines to his own wine-waiters, that he tasted every wine before purchase, and chose every brand of cigar himself; and Jack marvelled thereat. He had heard, further, that Evelyn knew everything about vegetables; but Covent Garden, which he regarded as a den of thieves, had no interest for Jack. Apart from potatoes and occasional broad beans and spring onions, he never ate vegetables; salads he could not bear.

Of course Evelyn did not know as much about meat as Jack--who did?--but he knew a lot, and he did not pretend to more knowledge than he possessed. That was what Jack liked in Evelyn: absence of pretence. He adored Evelyn with a deep admiration and a humble, sturdy affection equally deep. Evelyn often asked after his wife, and the boy in the navy.

He was now waiting for his august governor with impatience well concealed. He saw Gracie run off to the lift. He himself had never been in any but the service-lifts. He had never seen the restaurant except when it was empty and the table-tops dark green instead of white, and the chairs packed; but he knew the restaurant-kitchen, and had frequent interviews with the gesticulatory and jolly French chef in the chef's office outside whose door two clerks worked. He had never been in any bedroom. He imagined all manner of strange and even unseemly happenings in the suites. He rarely had glimpses of the hotel's clientele, and his shrewd notion was that he would be antipathetic to it. Still, it wanted the best meat, and he provided the best meat; and that was something. He strove conscientiously to think well of the clientele.

He did not like the look of Miss Gracie Savott. She coincided too closely with what he would describe in his idiom as 'a bit too tasty.' He was aware that women, more correctly ladies, smoked, but he objected to their smoking, especially the young ones; his married daughter, nevertheless a fine and capricious piece, did not smoke, and had she attempted to do so would probably have been dissuaded from persevering by physical violence at the joint hands of her father and her husband. As a boy he had seen ancient hags smoking short clay pipes on the house-steps of large villages. A hag, however, was a hag, and a cutty pipe suited her indrawn lips. But that a fresh young girl, personable, virginal, should brazenly puff tobacco--that was different.

Nor could he approve of Gracie's general demeanour towards the governor. Too bold, too insinuating, too impudent. Hardly decent! Most shocking of all was the spectacle of Gracie daring--daring to paint and powder her saucy face in the presence of the governor. Shameless! And the governor tolerated it! If the governor had not been above all criticism Jack would have ventured in his heart to criticise the demeanour of the governor towards Gracie. Too boyish, too youthful; a hint of the swain about it! Well, the chit was gone now.

2.

The governor strolled slowly down the hall to the doors where Jack stood waiting. A little self-conscious, the governor was, in his walk. Seldom before had Jack seen the governor self-conscious. His confidence in the governor was a great solid rock. He felt a momentary tremor in the rock. It ceased; it was not a tremor; it was imperceptible: he had been mistaken. Yet...

"Morning, Jack. Sorry to keep you. Shan't be a minute."

"Morning, governor. No hurry, but we ought to be getting along. I have a taxi waiting." The customary tranquil benevolence of the governor's tone reassured him.

"Just tell me again about that Jebson young man. I want to know exactly before I see him. You said he's only recently come into the business."

"Yes, sir," Jack began. "And if you ask me, he thinks he's the emperor of Smithfield. His uncle's a tough 'un, but nothing to young Charlie Jebson. I get on pretty comfortably with everybody in the markets except him. Tries to make out he don't care whether he does business or not. But he can't put that across me. No! And everybody but him knows he can't. His uncle knows it. Ten shilling a stone's the right price for the best Scotch. And Charlie knows that too. But 'ten and six,' he says. 'Ten and two,' I say, wishing to meet him. 'Ten and two! You've got the b. ten and two fever, Cradock,' he says. 'And you've got the b. half-guinea fever.' I says. 'Don't ask me to come back,' I says. 'Because I shan't. I've got my best coat on,' I says. Then he turns on me and gives me a basinful, and I give him one. Nothing doing, governor. And his uncle's afraid of him. It was all over the Market."

"Well," said Evelyn, with a faint, mild smile. "We'll give him a miss in future."

"Yes, governor," said Jack anxiously. "But supposing he takes it, supposing he accepts of it! Jebsons have the finest Scotch beef in the market. It was Charlie's grandfather as started the Scotch beef trade in Smithfield. And the best Scotch--it's none so easy to come by. Sometimes three days and I don't see a side I fancy--not what you may call the best."

"Try him with ten and four."

"Yes, governor, and have all the rest of 'em jumping at me. Besides, I told him ten and two was my last word."

"That's enough," said Evelyn. "If you said it you said it, and we shan't go back on you, even if we have to buy Argentine!" He soothingly patted Jack's shoulder.

Jack was more than soothed--he was delighted. This was the rock, and never had it quivered.

"The fact is," said Jack in an easier tone, "Charlie's got it into his head that I'm making a bit on it. And that's why when you said you'd come up with me one morning and show yourself, I thought it 'ud be a good move. If that won't settle Master Charlie, I don't know what will."

To himself Jack was thinking: "Well then, why doesn't he come? I could have told him all this in the taxi. And this is the first time I've ever had to tell him anything twice. I'm going to be late."

"Listen!" said Evelyn, after some more unnecessary talk. "You go on. Take the taxi you've got. I'll follow. I'll ask for Jebsons', and you'll find me somewhere near it. Sir Henry Savott--very important customer and a very important man too, in the City--wants me to take his daughter and show her Smithfield. Bit awkward. Couldn't refuse though. They have a car here. I might get there before you, Jack." Evelyn laughed.

Jack mistrusted the laugh. He had no suspicion that the paragon of honesty had told him a lie; but he mistrusted the tone of voice as well as the laugh. Something a wee bit funny about it.

"Do you mean that young lady you were talking to, governor?" Jack asked in a voice that vibrated with apprehension.

"Yes, that's the one. Off you go now."

Jack passed quickly in silence through the revolving doors. He was thunderstruck. He could hardly have been more perturbed if the entire hotel had fallen about his ears. The entire hotel had indeed fallen about his ears. The governor, the pattern, the exemplar, the perfect serious man, taking that prancing hussy into Smithfield Market! Of all places! There was never a woman to be seen in Smithfield before nine o'clock, unless it might be a street-singer with her man going home after giving a show outside the Cock Tavern. The talk to-morrow morning! The jokes he'd have to hear afterwards--and answer with better jokes! Rock? The rock was wobbling from side to side, ready to crash, ready to crush him. He climbed heavily into the taxi, sighing.

For the first ten minutes of waiting Evelyn forgave the girl. During the second ten minutes he grew resentful. It was just like these millionaires to assume that nothing really mattered except their own convenience. Did she suppose that he had risen at three-thirty for the delight of frittering away twelve, sixteen, nineteen irrecoverable minutes of eternity while she lolled around in her precious suite? Monstrous! Worse, he was becoming a marked man to Reyer, Long Sam, and the janissaries. They did not yet know that he was waiting for a girl; but they would know the moment she appeared and went off with him. Worse still, she was destroying the character with which he had privately endowed her. She arrived, smiling. And in an instant he had forgotten the twenty minutes, as one instantly forgets twenty days of bad weather when a fine day dawns.

"Sorry to keep you. Complications," said she, with composure.

He wondered whether the complications had been caused by a forbidding father.

She had changed her hat, and put on a thin, dark, inconspicuous cloak.

The car was Leviathan. A landaulette body, closed. She opened one of its front-doors, and picked up a pair of loose gloves from the driver's seat. An attendant janissary found himself forestalled, and had to stand unhelpful.

"Open?" she asked, in a tone expecting an affirmative answer.

"Rather."

"No. I'll do it. This is a one-girl hood. You might just wind down the window on your side."

In ten seconds the car was open.

"But I'm going to sit by you," said Evelyn.

She was lowering the glass partition behind the driver's seat.

"Of course," said she. "But I like it all open so that the wind can blow through."

By the manner in which she manœuvred Leviathan out of the courtyard, which an early cleaner had encumbered with a long gushing hose-pipe, Evelyn knew at once that she was an expert of experts. In a moment they were in Birdcage Walk. In another moment they were out of Birdcage Walk, and slipping into Whitehall. In yet another moment they were in the Strand. It was still night. The sun had not given the faintest announcement to the revolving earth's sombre eastern sky that he was mounting towards the horizon. There was an appreciable amount of traffic. She never hesitated, not for the fraction of a second. Her judgment was instantaneous and infallible. Her accelerations and decelerations, her brakings, could hardly be perceived. Formidable Leviathan was silent. Not a murmur beneath the bonnet. But what speed--in traffic! Evelyn saw the finger of the speedometer rise to forty--forty-two.

"Do you know the way?" he asked.

"I do," she replied.

Strange that she should know the way to Smithfield.

Suddenly she said:

"What brought you into the hotel business?"

He replied as suddenly:

"The same thing that brought you to motoring. Instinct. I was always fond of handling people, and organising."

"Always? Do you mean even when you were a boy?"

"Yes, when I was a boy. You know, clubs and things, and field-excursions. I managed the refreshment department at Earl's Court one year. Then through some wine-merchant I got the management of the Wey Hotel at Weybridge. I rebuilt that. Then I had to add two wings to it."

"But this present show of yours?"

"Oh! Well. They wanted a new manager here, and they sent for me. But I wouldn't leave the Wey. So to get me they bought the Wey."

"And what happened to the Wey?"

"Nothing. I'm still running it. Going down there this morning. Can't go every day. When you've got the largest luxury-hotel in the world on your hands--"

"The largest?"

"The largest."

"Have you been to America? I thought in America--"

"Yes. All over America. I expected to learn a bit in America, but I didn't. You mean those '2,000 bedrooms--2,000 bathrooms' affairs. Ever stayed in one? No, of course you haven't. Not your sort. Too wholesale and rough-and-ready. Not what we call luxury-hotels. Rather behind the times. They haven't got past 'period'-furnishing. Tudor style. Jacobean style. Louis Quinze room. And so on. And as for bathrooms--well, they have to come to my 'show' to see bathrooms."

He spoke as it were ruthlessly, but very simply and quietly. When she spoke she did not turn her head. She seemed to be speaking in a trance. He could examine her profile at his ease. Yes, she was beautiful.

2.

At Ludgate Circus, a white-armed policeman was directing traffic under electric lamps just as in daylight.

"How funny!" she said, swinging round to the left so acutely that Evelyn's shoulder touched hers.

In no time they would reach their destination. For this reason and no other he regretted the high speed. The fresh wind that precedes the dawn invigorated and sharpened all his senses. He recalled Dr. Johnson's remark that he would be content to spend his life driving in a postchaise with a pretty woman. But the pretty woman would not have been driving. This girl was driving. She profoundly knew the job. Evelyn always had a special admiration for anybody who profoundly knew the job. She even knew the streets of commercial and industrial London. Before he was aware of it, the oddest thoughts shot through his mind.

"Her father might object. But I could handle her father. Besides--what a girl! Lovely, and can do something! No one who drives like her could possibly not have the stuff in her. I've never met anybody like her. She likes me. No nonsense about her! What a voice! Her voice is enough. It's like a blooming orchestra, soft and soothing, but so. . . Here! What's this? What's all this. It isn't an hour since I met her. I'm the wildest idiot ever born. Marriage? Never. A mistress? Impossible. Neither she nor any other woman. The head of a 'show,' as she calls it, like mine with a mistress!"

He laughed inwardly, awaking out of a dream. And as he awoke he heard her beautiful voice saying, while her eyes stared straight ahead:

"What I admire in you is that you don't act. I know you must be a pretty biggish sort of a man. Well, father's pretty big--at least I'm always being told so--but father can't help acting the big man, acting what he is. He's always feeling what he is. You're big and so you must know you're big; but you just let it alone. It doesn't worry you into acting the part. I know. I've seen lots of big men."

"Oh!" murmured Evelyn, cautious, non-committal, and short of the right words. But he was thinking rapidly again:

"And she hadn't met me an hour ago! What a girl! No girl ever said anything as extraordinary as what she's just said. And it's true, what she says. Didn't I see it in her father? I was afraid I might have seemed boastful, the way I talked about me and my 'show.' But apparently she didn't misunderstand me. Most girls would have misunderstood. Really she is a bit out of the ordinary."

Smithfield Markets with their enclosed lighted avenues shone out twinkling in the near distance, on the other side of a large, dark, irregular open space of ground. Gracie glanced to right and left, decided where she would draw up, and, describing a long, evenly sustained curve, drew up in a quiet corner, slow, slower, slowest--motion expiring without a jar into immobility. She clicked the door and jumped down with not a trace of fatigue after a bedless night nearly ended. Her tongue said nothing, but her demeanour said: "And that's that! That's how I do it!"

"Well," remarked Evelyn, still in the car. "You said something about me. I'll say something about you. You can drive a car."

Gracie answered: "I don't drive any more."

"What do you mean--you don't drive any more?"

"I mean race-track driving. I've given it up. This isn't driving."

"Had an accident?"

"An accident? No! I've never touched a thing in my life. But I might have done. I thought it wasn't good enough--the risk. So I gave it up. I thought I might as well keep the slate clean." She smiled ingenuously, smoothing her cloak.

"And what a slate! What a nerve to retire like that!" Evelyn reflected, and said aloud: "You're amazing!" He had again the sensation of the romantic quality of life. He was uplifted high.

"So here we are," said Gracie, suddenly matter-of-fact.

A policeman strolled into the vicinity.

"Can I leave my car here, officer?" she questioned him briskly, authoritatively.

The policeman paused, peering at her in the dying night.

"Yes, miss."

"It'll be quite safe?"

"I'll keep an eye on it, miss."

"Thank you."

Evelyn, accustomed to take charge of all interviews, parleys, and pow-wows, had to be a silent spectator. As he led her into the Market, he trembled at the prospect of the excitement, secret and overt, which her appearance would cause there.

Gracie, though for different reasons, felt perhaps just as nervous as Evelyn himself when they entered the meat-market; but within the first few moments her nervousness was utterly dissolved away in the strong sense of romance which surged into her mind and destroyed everything else therein.

The illimitable interior had four chief colours: bright blue of the painted constructional ironwork, all columns and arches; red-pink-ivories of meat; white of the salesmen's long coats; and yellow of electricity. Hundreds of bays, which might or might not be called shops, lined with thousands of great steel hooks from each of which hung a carcass, salesmen standing at the front of every bay, and far at the back of every bay a sort of shanty-office in which lurked, crouching and peering forth, clerks pen in hand, like devilish accountants of some glittering, chill inferno.

One long avenue of bays stretched endless in front, and others on either hand, producing in the stranger a feeling of infinity. Many people in the avenues, loitering, chatting, chaffing, bickering! And at frequent intervals market-porters bearing carcasses on their leather-protected shoulders, or porters pushing trucks full of carcasses, sped with bent heads feverishly through the avenues, careless of whom they might throw down or maim or kill. An impression of intense, cheerful vitality, contrasting dramatically with the dark somnolence of the streets around! A dream, a vast magic, set in the midst of the prosaic reality of industrial sleep! You were dead; you stepped at one step into the dream; you were alive.

Everything was incredibly clean. The blue paint was shining clean; the carcasses were clean; the white coats of the salesmen were clean; the chins of the salesmen were clean and smooth; many of them showed white, starched collars and fancy neckties under the white coats. Very many of them had magnificent figures, tall, burly, immense, healthy, jolly. None of them had any air of fatigue or drowsiness or unusualness. The hour was twenty minutes to five, and all was as customary as the pavements of Bond Street at twenty minutes to noon. And the badinage between acquaintances, between buyers and sellers, was more picturesque than that of Bond Street. Gracie caught fragments as she passed. "You dirty old tea-leaf." "Go on, you son of an unmarried woman."

Gracie was delighted. A world of males, of enormous and solid males. She was the only woman in the prodigious, jostling market. A million males, and one girl. She savoured the contrast between the one and the million, belittling neither. Of course Evelyn and she were marked for inquisition by curious, glinting eyes. They puzzled curiosity. They ought to have been revellers, out to see the night-life of London. But the sedate, reserved Evelyn looked no reveller, nor did she in her simple, dark cloak. But, she thought, they knew a thing or two, did those males! With satisfaction she imagined the free imaginings behind their eyes. She was proud to be the one against the million. Let them think! Let their imaginations work! She felt her power. And never, not even at 100 m.p.h. on the race-track, had she lived more exultantly. She was always demanding life, and seldom getting it. Now she was getting it--the full cup and overflowing.

2.

Withal, at a deeper level than these Dionysiac sensations, was a sensation nobler, which rose up through them. The desire for serious endeavour. At the wheel of a racing-car, built specially for her to her father's order, Gracie had been conscious of a purpose, of a justification. The track involved an austere rule of life; abstinence, regularity, early hours, the care of nerves, bodily fitness. Eight or ten months ago she had exhausted the moral potentialities of racing. Racing held nothing more for her. She had tired of it as a traveller tires of an island, once unknown, which he has explored from end to end. She had abandoned it. Her father had said: "You can't stick to anything." But her father did not understand.

She had fallen into sloth and self-indulgence, aimless, restless, unhappy. Her formidable engine-power was wasting itself. She had rejoined her smart friends, formed the habit of never wanting to go to bed and never wanting to get up, scattered her father's incalculable affluence with both hands, eaten, drunk, gambled, refused herself no fantastic luxury (Sir Henry being negligently, perhaps cynically, compliant), lived the life furiously. And the life was death. Against his inclination, her father had taken her with him to America. She had had hopes of the opportunities and the energy of America. They were frustrated. In New York she had lived the life still more furiously. And it was worse than death. While in New York Sir Henry had put through one of his favourite transactions: sold his splendid London house at a rich profit. He had a fondness for selling London homes over the heads of himself and Gracie. He had two country-houses; but the country meant little to Gracie, and less to him. Hence, this night, the hotel. The man would reside in hotels for months together.

Gracie had reached the hotel, in the middle of the night, without any clear purpose in mind. She had loved with violence more than once, but never wisely. She had now no attachment--and only one interest: reading. She had suddenly discovered reading. Shakspere had enthralled her. On the Atlantic voyage she had gulped down two plays of Shakspere a day. At present, for her, it was Shakspere or nothing. The phenomenon was beyond her father; but it flattered his paternal vanity, demonstrated to him that he had begotten no common child. First racing, now Shakspere! Something Homeric about Gracie, and she his daughter! Out of Shakspere and other special reading, a project was beginning to shape in the girl's soul, as nebulae coalesce into a star. But it was yet too vague to be formulated. Then the hotel. Then Evelyn Orcham, whose name Sir Henry had casually mentioned to her with candid respect. Then the prospect of fabled Smithfield before dawn. Evelyn had impressed her at the first glance: she did not know why. And she divined that she in turn had impressed him. She admired him the more because he had not leapt at her suggestion of going with him to Smithfield, because for a few moments he had shown obvious reluctance to accept it. Not a man to be swept off his feet. A self-contained, reserved man. Shy. Quiet. Almost taciturn, with transient moods of being confidential, intimate. Mysterious. Dangerous, beneath a conventional deportment. You never knew what might be hidden in the depths of a man like that. Enigmatic. Diffident; but very sure of himself. In short. . . was he married? Had he a hinterland? Well, his eyes didn't look as if he had.

And now she was in Smithfield, and her prophetic vision of it, her hopes of it, had been right. Smithfield had not deceived her. A romantic microcosm of mighty males, with a redoubtable language of their own. A rude, primeval, clean, tonic microcosm, where work was fierce and impassioned. A microcosm where people got up early and thought nothing of getting up early, and strove and haggled and sweated, rejoicing in the purchase and sale of beef and mutton and pork. To get up early and strive, while the dull world was still asleep: this it was that appealed to Gracie. Freshness and sanity of earliest dark cool mornings! She wanted to bathe in Smithfield as in a bath, to drench herself in it, to yield utterly to it. Smithfield was paradise, and a glorious hell.

"Ah! There's Cradock," said Evelyn. "He's our buyer. I'll introduce him to you. The little man there. The one that's sticking a skewer into that lamb."

Gracie recognised the man who had been waiting in the great hall of the hotel. Having stuck the skewer into the carcass, Jack pulled it out and put it to his nose. Then, while Evelyn and Gracie watched, he stuck a skewer into the next lamb, and finally left a skewer in each lamb: sign that they were his chosen.

"Chines and ends," Gracie heard him say, as he scribbled in a note-book.

He saw Evelyn.

"Here we are, Cradock," said Evelyn. "This is Miss Savott. Knows all about motor-racing. Now she wants to know all about Smithfield."

Jack clasped her slim hand in his thick one.

"I do think your market is marvellous, Mr. Cradock!" Gracie greeted him, genuine enthusiasm in her emotional low voice. Her clasp tightened on the thick hand, and held it.

"Glad to meet you, miss."

"It's so big and so clean. I love this blue paint."

"Glad to hear that, miss. There's some of 'em would sooner have the old green. . . a bit of it over there." He pointed.

"That's nice too. But I prefer the blue, myself."

Jack was conquered at once, not by her views on blue and green paint, but by her honest manner, by her beauty, and by the warmth of her trifling, fragile, firm fingers. He thought, "Governor knows what's what. Trust him!" And since the relations of men and women are essentially the same in all classes, and his ideas concerning them had been made robust and magnanimous by many contacts with meat-salesmen of terrific physique, he began privately to wish the governor well in whatever the governor might be about. Anyhow it was none of his business, and the governor could indeed be trusted, had nothing to learn.

"You see those lambs, sir," he murmured. "I guarantee there isn't ten lambs like them in all London to-day!"

Evelyn nodded. The carcasses were already lifted off their hooks. Gracie saw them put on a huge carving block, and watched a carver in bloody blue divide them with a long razor-knife and a saw. In a moment the operation was performed, and so delicately and elegantly that it had no repulsiveness. The carvers were finished surgeons for Gracie, not butchers.

"That's got to be served, for lunch at the hotel this morning," said Jack to her. "We hang the beef for five or six days--used to hang it for twelve or fourteen. But you ladies and gentlemen alter your tastes, you see, miss, and we have to follow. You see all that calves' liver there. Not so many years ago, I could buy as much as I wanted at sixpence a pound. Would you believe me, it costs me two shillings these days! All because them Harley Street doctors say it's good for anæmia." He turned to Evelyn: "That's Charlie Jebson, governor. Next door." He jerked his head.

"Let's go and talk to him," said Evelyn, easily.

Mr. Charles Jebson was a very tall man, with a good figure, and dandiacal in dress.

"This is my governor, Mr. Orcham, Charlie. And this is Miss Savott, come to see what we do up here. Mr. Charles Jebson."

Charles became exceedingly deferential. He shook hands with Gracie like a young peer in swallow-tails determined to ingratiate himself with a chorus-girl. Gracie smiled to herself, thinking: "What a dance I could lead him!"

"You do get up early here, Mr. Jebson," she said. "When do you sleep?"

"I don't, miss," he replied, smirking. "At least--well, three or four hours. Make it up Sundays. Perhaps you know the Shaftesbury, in Shaftesbury Avenue. Express lunch and supper counter. That's mine. They call me 'the governor' there, when I go in of a night to tackle the books and keep an eye on things. Not so much time for sleep, you'll freely admit." Gracie's notion of him was enlarged. White coat before dawn. Restaurateur in the centre of theatre-land at supper-time! A romantic world!

"It's all too marvellous!" she said admiringly.

Charlie showed pride. A procession of four laden porters charged blindly down the avenue, shouting. Gracie received a glancing blow on the shoulder. She spun round, laughing. Jack moved her paternally away to shelter. A nun, hands joined in front, eyes downcast, walked sedately along the avenue, a strange, exotic visitant from another sphere. The spectacle startled Gracie, shaking all her ideals, somehow shaming her.

"Why is she here?" she demanded of Jack with false casualness.

"I couldn't say, miss, for sure. Little Sister of the Poor, or something. Come for what she can get. Food for orphans, I shouldn't be surprised. They're very generous in the Market." He added discreetly, as Gracie made as if to return to Evelyn, "Governor's got a bit of business with Mr. Jebson."

"Oh yes." And she asked him some questions about what she saw.

"Refrigerators," he said. "Thirty years ago when I first came here there wasn't an ice-box in the place."

Gracie could overhear parts of the conversation between Charlie and Evelyn. Evelyn laughed faintly. Charlie laughed loudly. It went on.

"I hope we shall be able to continue to do business together, Mr. Jebson," Evelyn said at length.

"It won't be my fault if we don't, sir," Charlie deferentially replied.

"That's good," said Evelyn. "I know there's no beef better than yours. I didn't know you had a restaurant. I've often noticed the Shaftesbury. One night I shall come in. I'm rather interested in restaurants." He laughed.

"Thank you, sir. It'll be a great honour when you do."

General handshaking, which left Charlie Jebson well satisfied with the scheme of the universe. The three proceeded along the avenue.

2.

"That'll be all right now, I think," Gracie heard Evelyn murmur to Jack Cradock. And she recalled what Evelyn had said to her about an instinct for handling people. As it was extremely difficult to walk three abreast in the thronged avenues, Jack, now elated, walked ahead. But sometimes he lagged behind. Everybody knew him. Everybody addressed him as Jack. (The Smithfield world was as much a world of Christian names as Gracie's own.) Nevertheless the affectionate familiarity towards Jack was masked by the respect due to a man who was incapable of being deceived as to the quality of a carcass, who represented the swellest hotel in London, who had a clerk, who spent an average of a hundred pounds sterling a day, and who would take nothing but the best.

Cradock stopped dead, in the rear.

"Hello, Jim. I want a hundred pounds of fat."

"Two and four," was the reply.

"That's where you're wrong. Two shillings."

"And that's where you're wrong."

"Two and two," said Jack.

"Oh," said Jim, with feigned disgust. "I'll give it you for your birthday. I know how hard up you are."

Jack scribbled in his book and strode after the waiting pair. But a heavy hand was laid on his shoulder.

"Hello, Jack. Not seen you lately. Had a fair holiday?"

"Yes," said Cradock. "I have had a fair holiday. I'm not like some of you chaps. When I go for a holiday I take my wife." He hurried on.

"Excuse me, miss," he apologised to Gracie.

The trio arrived at a large fenced lift.

"Miss Savott might like to go down," Evelyn suggested.

Cradock spoke to the guardian, and the chains were unfastened.

"If you'll excuse me, governor. I'll see you afterwards." And to Gracie, with a grin: "I've got a bit to do, and time's getting on. If I don't keep two ton o' meat in stock down at the Imperial Palace the governor would pass me a remark." With a smile kindly and sardonic, benevolent and yet reserved, Jack Cradock stood at the edge of the deep well as the rough platform, slowly descending, carried the governor and young lady beyond his sight.

"What a lovely man!" said Gracie, appreciative.

"You heard that phrase in America!" was Evelyn's comment.

They smiled at one another. The hubbub and brightness of the vast market vanished away above their heads. The lift shuddered and stopped. They were in silence and gloom. They were in a crypt. And the crypt was a railway station, vaster even than the Market, and seeming still vaster than it was by reason of the lowness of its roof.

"As big?" said the lift-attendant disdainfully in response to an enquiry. "It's a lot bigger than Euston or St. Pancras or King's Cross. If you ask me, it's the longest station in London...No, the meat trains are all come and gone an hour ago." An engine puffed slowly in the further obscure twilight. "No, that's only some empties."

Vague, dull sounds echoed under the roof: waggons being hauled to and fro by power-winches, waggons swinging round on turn-tables. Men like pigmies dotted the endless slatternly expanse. The untidy platforms were littered with packages: a crate of live fowls, a case of dead rabbits, a pile of tarpaulins. The pair walked side by side along a platform until they were held up by a chasm through which a waggon was being dragged by a hawser. When the chasm was covered again they walked on, right to the Aldersgate end of the station, whence the Farringdon Road end was completely invisible in the gloom. Neither spoke. Both were self-conscious.

"What are you thinking about?" Gracie asked curtly.

"If you want to know, I was thinking about that split ship of yours. And you?"

Gracie's low, varied voice wavered as she replied:

"I was only thinking of those lambs, when they were in the fields, wagging their silly little tails while they sucked milk in."

Evelyn saw the gleam of tears in her eyes. He offered no remark. Nervously Gracie pulled her cloak off and put it on her arm.

"It's so hot. I mean I'm so hot," she said.

She had indeed for a moment thought of the lambs. But the abiding sensation in her mind, in her heart and soul, was the sensation of the forlorn sadness of the deserted dark crypt, called by the unimaginative a railway station, and of the bright, jostling back-chatting world of men suspended over it on a magical system of steel girders. All the accomplishment of adventurous and determined laborious men--men whom her smart girl friends would not look twice at, because of the cut of their coats, or their accent, or their social deportment! She wanted ardently to be a man among men; she felt that she was capable of being a man among men. Her ideals, shaken before, were thrown down and smashed. She liked Evelyn for his sympathetic silence. She persuaded herself that he knew all her thoughts. By a shameless secret act, she tried to strip her mind to him, tear off every rag of decency, expose it to him, nude. And not a word said.

"Ah!" she reflected with a yearning. "His instinct for handling people! Could he handle me? Could he handle me?"...

When they regained the surface, Jack Cradock was waiting for them. She was astounded to see by the market-clocks that the hour was after half-past six. Then something disturbingly went out. A whole row of electric lights in the broad arched roof of the central avenue! New shadows took the place of the old. She glanced at the roof. Grey light showed through its glass. Dawn had begun. Never in Gracie's experience was a dawn so mysterious, so disconcerting, so heartrending. Jack Cradock was very amiable, respectful, self-respecting, and matter-of-fact.

Outside she resumed her dark cloak, tipped the policeman before Evelyn could do so, and slowly climbed into the car. She drove to the hotel slowly, not because of the increased traffic in the lightening streets, but as it were meditatively.

"I might write down my impressions of all that," she murmured to Evelyn once, half-emerging for an instant from her meditation.

In the courtyard of the hotel a lorry loaded with luggage was grinding and pulsating its way out. The courtyard had dried after its morning souse.

"That's the last of the big luggage for the 'Leviathan'," Evelyn explained, as Gracie brought the car to a standstill in front of the revolving doors and the two janissaries. "Special train leaves Waterloo at 8.20. Passengers hate to have to catch it, but they always do manage to catch it--somehow."

Gracie made no reply. A chauffeur, who had been leaning against the rail of the luggage-hoist in a corner of the yard, advanced towards the car.

"Good morning, Compton," Gracie greeted him, as she followed Evelyn out of the car. "How long have you been here?"

"About an hour, miss."

"Have you had the big stuff sent upstairs?"

"Oh yes, miss."

"There's the beginning of a rattle in the bonnet here. Have a look at it."

"Yes, miss. Certainly, miss. Any orders, miss?"

"Not to-day. But I don't know about Sir Henry."

"No, miss."

"Better put the car in the hotel garage, and tell them to clean her. If I want her I'll get her out myself. I'm going to bed. You ought to get some sleep, too."

"Very good, miss."

In her beautiful voice Evelyn noticed the nonchalance of fatigue. He was glad she was tired, just as earlier he was glad she had not been tired.

On the steps under the marquise she took off her cloak; then preceded Evelyn to the spinning doors.

"There's something at the back of your left shoulder," said Evelyn, in the doorway.

"What?" She did not turn round.

"A stain. Why! It's blood."

"Blood?"

"Yes. You must have got it after we came up into the Market again. You weren't wearing your cloak then. You were wearing it before. And you couldn't have got it down in the station."

"What a detective you are!" she said, still not turning round.

Evelyn saw a deep flush gradually suffuse her neck. How sensitive she was! No doubt she hated the thought of blood on her frock.

"The valet will take it out for you, if your maid can't. They're very good at that, our valets are."

"At getting out blood-stains?"

"Any stains." Evelyn gave one of his short laughs, though her tone had rather disturbed him. The blood-stain was obscene upon her. He hated it.

She glanced back, not at Evelyn, but at the janissaries, who, well-trained, averted their eyes. He wished that she would put on her cloak again, and in the same instant she put it on, while her bag slapped against her corsage. Then she entered. On the outer mahogany of the head-porter's desk hung a framed card: "s.s. Leviathan. The special boat-train will leave Waterloo at 8.20a.m.," followed by the date.

"How many departures by the 'Leviathan' this morning, Sam?" Evelyn asked. Long Sam was half-hidden within his lair.

"Eighteen, sir," said Sam, consulting a book that lay open on the desk.

''Hm!"

The great hall had much the same nocturnal aspect as when they had left it, but with a new touch of lugubriousness, and a more intense expectancy--expectancy of the day, impatient now and restless. Day had begun in the streets and roads and in St. James's Park, but not in the hall. The fireman was handing to Reyer his time-clock, which checked the performance of his duties more exactly and ruthlessly than any overseer could have done. Reyer, comatose and pale from endless hours of tedium, accepted it negligently.

A high pile of morning newspapers lay on the counter near the still-closed book-and-news shop. Evelyn strode eagerly towards it, and examined paper after paper.

"Not a word," he called to Gracie.

"Not a word about what?"

"Your split ship. I looked at the posters in Fleet Street. Nothing on them. Of course there wouldn't be. Terrific thing, and yet they can hush it up. And there isn't a newspaper office in London that doesn't know all about it by this time. And you'll see it won't be in the evening papers either."

Gracie, standing hesitant, said nothing. She was too weary, or too depressed, to be interested any more, even in her complexion. Reaction! But Evelyn felt no fatigue. His imagination was now no longer responsively awake to the fatigue of Gracie. On the contrary he felt extraordinarily alive.

"See," he said, pointing through glass walls to the grill-room, where a couple of men, attended by two waiters, were already breakfasting, "my hotel's waking up for the day. You're just in time to see my hotel waking up. It's a great moment."

He loved to watch his hotel waking up. Something dramatic, poignant, in the spectacle of the tremendous monster stirring out of its uneasy slumber.

A youngish woman in a short black frock approached through the dark vista of the restaurant and the foyer. She tripped vivaciously up the first flight of steps, then up the second. She entered the hall.

"Good morning, Miss Maclaren."

"Good morning, sir." Bright Scottish accent, but serious.

"Housekeeper," he murmured to Gracie. "That is to say, one of our housekeepers. We have eight, not counting the head-housekeeper, who's the mother of us all." Affection in his eager voice.

Gracie stared and said nothing.

"Isn't Miss Brury on duty to-day, Miss Maclaren?" he continued.

"She's unwell, sir."

"Sorry to hear that. Things are a bit late this morning."

"Yes, sir. Something wrong with the clocking apparatus. Turnstile wouldn't turn. Mr. Maxon couldn't explain it, but he got it put right."

"Everyone except heads of departments has to clock in," Evelyn explained to Gracie. "Thirteen hundred of 'em, not counting the Laundry and the works department--outside."

"What a swarm!" Gracie spoke at last; there was no answering enthusiasm in her tone, but Evelyn was not dashed. He had forgotten the split ship and the blood-stain. He was the creative artist surveying and displaying his creation--the hotel. He was like a youth.

A procession of girls and women followed Miss Maclaren through the vista of the restaurant and the foyer into the great hall. They wore a blue uniform with brown apron, and carried pails, brooms, brushes and dusters. Some of them swerved off into the corridor leading towards the grill-room. Others began to dust the Enquiries and Reception counters. Others were soon on their knees, in formation, cleaning the immense floor of the hall. Miss Maclaren spoke sharply, curtly, now and then to one or other of them.

"You always have to be at them, but they're a very decent lot," she murmured as it were apologetically to Evelyn, her hands folded in front of her, nun-like, while surreptitiously she summed up Gracie with hostility.

"Yes," thought Evelyn, enjoying the scene as though he had never witnessed it before. "The women-guests are fast asleep on their private embroidered pillows upstairs, all in silk pyjamas and nighties, and these women here have cleaned their homes and got breakfasts and washed children and been sworn at probably, some of them, and walked a mile or two through the streets, and put on their overalls, and here they are swilling and dusting like the devil!" And aloud he said to Gracie: "Come and see the restaurant. Won't take a moment."

They went down steps and down steps. (The earth's surface was level beneath, but the front part of the hotel had been built over a basement; the back part had not.) One lamp still kept watch over the main part of the dead restaurant; but in a far corner was another lamp, and beneath it a fat man was furiously cleaning about a thousand electroplated cruets. Rows of cruets. Trays of cruets. Beyond, a corridor leading to the ball-room in the West Wing.

"Yes," said Gracie feebly.

They returned.

"Here's the ladies' cloak-room," said Evelyn, even more animated, and turned aside.

He took her arm and led her in. Room after room. Table after table. Chair after chair. Mirror after mirror. Clock after fancy clock. In the dim twilight of rare lamps the long suite of highly decorated apartments looked larger even than it was. A woman was polishing a mirror.

"It's a wonderful place," said Gracie politely. "I think I must go to bed, though."

He escorted her to the lift. Leaving the liftman to wait, she stood back from the ornate cage--such a contrast with the shuddering wooden platform at Smithfield--and glancing up at Evelyn, her eyes and face suddenly as shining and vivacious as his, she said to him in her richest voice, low, emotional, teasing:

"Do you know what you are?"

"What am I?"

"You're a perfect child with a toy!"

What would his co-directors, the heads of departments, the head-housekeeper, Jack Cradock, have thought, to hear him thus familiarly and intimately addressed by a smart chit who was also a stranger?

"Am I? I do believe I am," he answered, enraptured.

2.

But when the lift had taken her up out of sight, he thought, though lightly: "Who does she think she is, cheeking me, after inviting herself to Smithfield and all that? Never saw her in my life until this morning, and she has the nerve to call me a child!" Nevertheless, her impudent remark did please him. He indeed admitted, proudly, that he was a child--one part of him, which part had carelessly forgotten to grow up.

The mishap with the turnstiles was prominent in his mind. The organisation of the hotel was divided into some thirty departments, and the head of each had a fixed conviction that his department was the corner-stone of the success of the hotel. Evelyn, Machiavellian, impartially supported every one of these convictions, just as he consistently refrained from discouraging the weed of interdepartmental jealousies inevitably sprouting from time to time in the soil of strenuous emulation which he was always fertilising. Thus the head Floors-waiter did not conceal his belief that the room-service was the basis of prosperity; the Restaurant-manager knew that the restaurant was the life-blood of the place; the manager of the grill-room was not less sure that the grill, where at lunch and at supper the number of celebrities and notorieties far surpassed that of the restaurant (though it cost the hotel not a penny for bands), was the chief factor of prosperity; the Audit-manager was aware that without his department the hotel would go to hell in six months; the Bills-manager had no need to emphasise his supremacy; the head of the Reception, who could draw from memory a plan of every room with every piece of furniture in it, and who knew by sight and name and number every guest, and had a file-record of every guest, including the dubious, with particulars of his sojourns, desires, eccentricities, rate of spending, payments--even to dishonoured cheques, who could be welcoming, non-committal, cool, cold and ever tactful in five languages--this marvel had never a doubt as to the identity of the one indispensable individual in the hierarchy of the hotel. And so on.

And there were others--especially those mightinesses the French, Italian and Viennese chefs. Evelyn always remembered the ingenuous, sincere remark of the chief engineer, who passed his existence in the lower entrails of our revolving planet, where daylight was utterly unknown. "You see those things," the chief engineer had said to a visitor. "If they shut up, the blessed hotel would have to shut right up." 'Those things' were the boilers, which made the steam, which actuated the engines, which drew the water from the artesian wells, made the electric light and the electric power, heated the halls, restaurants and rooms, froze or chilled perishable food, baked the bread, cooked the meat, boiled the vegetables, cleansed and dried the very air, did everything except roast the game over a wood fire.

Evelyn had admitted, to himself, the claim to pre-eminence of the chief engineer. But now he began to wonder whether the turnstile and clocking-in satrap was not entitled to precedence over even the chief engineer. For if the hotel depended on the engine-hall the engine-hall depended on the presence of its workmen. He smiled at the fanciful thought as he descended by tiled and concrete slopes and narrow iron staircases, glimpsing non-uniformed humble toilers of both sexes in soiled, airless rooms and enclosures, towards the cave of the Staff-manager's second-in-command who watched and permitted or forbade the entrances and exits of thirteen hundred employees.

The cave was a room of irregular shape, full of machines and pigeon-holes and cognate phenomena. The second-in-command, a dignified and authoritative specimen of the middleclass aged fifty or so, sat on one side of a counter. On the other side stood a young woman starting on her day out, dressed and hatted and shod and powdered and rouged for the undoing or delight of some young male: in her working-hours a chamber-maid. Between them, on the counter, lay a dispatch case, on which the girl kept a gloved hand.

"You can't leave with that thing until I've seen inside it," said authority.

"But why? It's mine."

"How long have you been here? Not long, eh?"

"A month."

"Well, when you've been here a month of Sundays you'll have got into your head that nobody can take anything out of here without me seeing what it is."

"I call it a wicked shame."

"It may be. But it's the rule of the hotel. Last year I caught a girl slipping out with a pair of sheets where they oughtn't to be."

"This despatch-case won't hold a pair of sheets," said the girl. "Anyone can see that."

Authority made no reply, but glanced inquisitively at a small group of men who were clocking in. The girl sulkily opened the despatch-case. Authority looked into it.

"That necklace yours?"

"Yes."

"Where did you get it from?"

"A lady gave it me."

"What floor? What number? What name? Is she still here?"

Question and answer; question and answer.

"Off you go," said authority, having written down the details on the slip-permit which the girl had handed to him:

"You'll know next time."

Off the girl went, haughtily. Evelyn felt sorry for her, as he emerged from the doorway where he had been listening to the encounter.

"Good morning, sir." Authority had suddenly changed to subservience.

"I hear you had some trouble with the turnstiles this morning, Maxon," said Evelyn benevolently.

"Trouble, sir? Turnstiles?" replied subservience, as if quite at a loss to understand the sinister allusion.

"Yes. Some charwomen were kept waiting."

"Oh! I see what you mean, sir. That wasn't turnstiles, sir. They've told you wrong. I'll show you what it was." Subservience sprang round the counter.

The two bent together over a steel contraption, and subservience explained.

"No turnstiles about that, sir. Clocking."

"Why didn't you let 'em through, for once?" Evelyn asked.

"Well, sir, I thought I should get it right every minute. Only a touch. And it wasn't long. It wasn't above five minutes. And it won't happen again. And if it does happen again, and it's your wish, sir--"

Evelyn changed the subject. After some general chat, whose sole object was to indicate to the excellent Maxon that Maxon enjoyed his special regard, he departed, having first jotted a reminding note for himself. The rule about outgoing packages irked his feeling for decency. But it was absolutely necessary. There was simply no end to the running of a hotel. How would Gracie Savott have behaved if confronted with the rule? A certain liveliness for authority! She was getting into bed now. Nothing had been said as to a further meeting.

3.

When Evelyn returned to the great hall Monsieur Adolphe, the perfectly attired, rosy-cheeked Reception-manager, who was an Alsatian but who had submerged the characteristics of his origin under a cosmopolitanism acquired during twenty-five years of activity in continental and London hotels, was hurrying busily about; for the "Leviathan" departures had begun.

American women, with the drawn, set faces of too-early rising, and great bouquets of flowers, were appearing, followed by placatory men who desired tranquillity even at the price of honour. If husbands and fathers suffered unjustly from wives and daughters, the injustice was at once passed on by husbands and fathers to baggage-porters and other officials. Adolphe's role was to establish an illusion of general loving-kindness. He fulfilled it: that was his life-work. But Evelyn stood always first in his mind, and for Evelyn's sake he cut short the oration of a Chicago millionaire.

"Sir Henry Savott has just telephoned down to enquire what time it would be convenient for you to see him to-day, sir. I've sent the message up to your room."

"Why did the message come to you, Adolphe?"

"I suppose because you'd been seen once or twice in the hall, and you weren't in your rooms. Excuse me, sir." Adolphe hastened away into the courtyard, half running.

Day had at length dawned in the great hall, which lived again, after the coma of the interminable night.

"If that fellow Savott really is Napoleon," Evelyn reflected, "he ought to be fast asleep now, instead of pursuing me with telephone-messages that take everything for granted. How does he know that I've not gone to bed same as he has?" He smiled in anticipation of protracted, fierce, and yet delicately manœuvred tussles with Savott. The fight for and against the rumoured hotel-merger was going to start sooner than he had expected. He smiled a second time, because he had firm hold of something that Sir Henry passionately wanted. Great fun! He reflected further: "It'll do that fellow no harm to cool his heels for a day or two."

Then he went to the counter, and wrote a reply to Sir Henry:

"Mr. Orcham is very sorry to say that he has outside appointments which will keep him away from the hotel all day." Nothing about to-morrow or the next day? No. More effective to say nothing about to-morrow or the next day. He had the goods, and delay and uncertainty would only inflame the desirer and so impair the desirer's skill in negotiation.

"What number--Sir Henry Savott?" he demanded, looking up across the counter at a clerk. "Page!" he called. "Telephone. Sir Henry Savott, 365."

Adolphe came in hurrying, explaining with a laugh: "I had to give Senator Gooden an extra shake of the hand because he came to us from another hotel, and I don't want him to go back there ever."

"Good," said Evelyn. "I've seen to Sir Henry Savott. You know nothing."

"Quite, sir," said Adolphe comprehendingly, and dashed off.

Car after car was now leaving the courtyard for Waterloo. Mowlem, the day head-porter, was at his grandest at the revolving doors. Evelyn ascended, and, looking at his watch, entered his private apartments. 7.45. At 7.45 he breakfasted. There, on the centre-table in the sitting-room, was his breakfast, with the newspapers arranged in what Evelyn had decided was the order of their importance to him. There, on the buffet, the spirit-lamp burned under a silver dish. There, near the door, stood his own man, with a smile of greeting. Evelyn shut the door on the whole world. He had half-an-hour to himself. No mail was ever brought to his rooms. Telephoning was harshly discouraged. Punctuality. Everything in its place. All the angles were right-angles. A logical orderliness. No will but his own functioned in those two rooms. He sat down, sipped at iced water, opened a newspaper, cleared his throat, stretched his legs, tore up the now answered telephone-message from Sir Henry Savott.

"All right, Oldham," he gave the signal. "Bit colder this morning, eh? Autumn." His voice was full of happy kindliness.

"Yes, sir," Oldham agreed, content, and with ceremonious gestures served the bacon and poured out the Costa Rica coffee.

Fresh rolls. Fresh toast. Piles of butter on ice. It was heaven, a heavenly retreat.

"I'll shave after breakfast, Oldham."

"Yes, sir. I have put out the things."

"Good."

Evelyn was secure and at ease. He had many matters on his mind: the clocking-in; the chambermaid--no insult intended; Sir Henry Savott; the relations between Jack Cradock and Charlie Jebson; a hundred others big and little. But they did not trouble him, because he knew he could deal with them all. He loved them. He needed them. They exhilarated him. They were his life. Without them he would have sunk into tedium. His life was perfect. Nobody could interfere with it, nobody disarrange it.

And then the tiny thought sneaked into his mind on tip-toe like a thief: was his life perfect? Yes! It was perfect. And it was full. Was it full? Was no corner of it empty? Did nothing lack? Yes! No! His life lacked nothing. It was balanced. Its equilibrium was stable. Supposing a woman, a beautiful woman, came into that sacrosanct room, as of right, flaunting her right, and began fussing about his health, commenting on his pallor, demanding to look at his tongue, fussing about the flowers and the exact disposition of the flowers, opening a newspaper and leaving it inside out on the floor, complaining of her loneliness in the world, complaining of her dressmaker, asking him whether he thought she looked five years younger than her real age, and, having been answered in the affirmative, asking him whether he really thought she looked five years younger than her real age; asking him whether he loved her, suggesting that he was disappointed in her! And so on and so on.

He knew it all. He had 'been there.' Intolerable! Delicious at rare moments, hell the rest of the time! His life was full. Another drop, and the glass would splash over. He had for years been lightly dreaming of a mistress. Silly! Boyish! A mistress would be a liability, not an asset. His career came first, with his usefulness to society, his duty to shareholders. He was a serious man with a conscience, not a gambler; commerce with women was the equivalent of gambling; it was staking tranquillity of conscience, staking his very soul, against a smile, a kiss, an embrace, the elegance of frocks and jewels. He opened a paper, gazed at the lines of type, and, engaged secretly in the controversy which beyond all others had agitated ambitious and powerful men for thousands of years and never been satisfactorily settled, he could make absolutely no sense of the news. Suddenly it occurred to him that Sir Henry might be wanting to see him, not about the scheme for a merger, but about his excursion with Gracie Savott into the wilds of London in the middle of the night. The girl might have wakened and told her father.

"Another slice, sir?"

"I think I will. I was up rather early. Remind me to shave."

When Gracie entered the drawing-room of her suite, she went straight to the windows and opened them wide, looked at St. James's Park below, along whose avenues men and girls were already hurrying earnestly northward in the direction of the Green Park and Piccadilly; she thirstily drank in large draughts of the foliage-perfumed air, for it seemed to her that she could still smell Smithfield's meat. The flame-tinted new curtains waved their folds high into the room. Naturally Tessa the maid had forgotten the standing instruction to open windows on arrival. After a few cleansing moments Gracie passed into her bedroom. It was dark. She impatiently switched on the electricity. A suitcase, unfastened, lay on the floor, and a jewel-case, shut, on the bed. No other sign of habitation! The dressing-table was bare, save for the customary hotel pin-cushion and small china tray. The curtains had not been opened, nor the blinds raised.

"Tessa!" she called, after opening the window. No answer. She had a qualm of apprehension. She passed into the bathroom. Not a sign of habitation in the bathroom either. It might have been a dehumanised bathroom in a big furniture store. The next door, ajar, led to a smaller bedroom, Tessa's. Gracie pushed against it. Darkness there too. Gracie turned the switch. Tessa was stretched asleep on, not in, the bed. Gracie could see the left wrist which she herself had bandaged two or three hours earlier, and on the bandage was a very faint reddish discoloration. Gracie, who several years earlier after witnessing rather helplessly a motor-accident at Brooklands had qualified for a first-aid certificate, examined the bandage in silence. No danger. The wrist had bled since the bandaging, but was bleeding no longer. Tessa slept undisturbed. Her pretty face was so pale, tragic, and exhausted in sleep that Gracie crept out of the bedroom and softly closed the door in a sudden passion of quasi-maternal pity. The qualm of apprehension recurred.

In the bathroom she threw down her hat and cloak, and pulled off the beige frock. Yes, the blood on the shoulder was very plain. The swift, startling realisation of its origin had alone caused her to blush when Evelyn remarked on it. That blood came not from Smithfield, nor was it the blood of any slain animal. When Gracie had come up to the suite for two minutes before starting for Smithfield she had found Tessa in the maid's bedroom, a vague figure in the unlit gloom, and had summoned her very sharply--sharpness of excitement working above secret fatigue. A sudden alarmed cry from Tessa: "Oh! I've cut myself with the scissors!" A hand knocking against her shoulder in the gloom. How had the girl contrived to injure her wrist, and what was she doing with the scissors in the dark? Gracie, too hurried to pursue the enquiry, had dragged Tessa into the light of the bathroom, found the simple first-aid apparatus without which she never travelled, and bound up the wrist. The wound was somewhat sanguinary, but not at all serious. Tessa was an efficient maid, but apart from the performance of her duties lackadaisical, characterless, and slothful. She could sit idle for hours, not even reading, and when she read she read sentimental drivel. She was older by two years than Gracie, who always regarded her as a junior. A doctor had once pronounced her anæmic. The wrist duly nursed, Gracie had soothed and enheartened Tessa and told her to sit down for a bit; then, after changing hat and cloak, had run out. Thus in the suite had been spent the twenty minutes that Evelyn had spent waiting in the great hall.

Flickers of suspicious surmising had gleamed at intervals in Gracie's mind. She recalled having explained to Tessa, many months ago, a few picturesque details of anatomy learnt in the first-aid course--how there was a certain part of the wrist which, etc., etc.--how an incision upon that part would be just as effective, and assuredly less painful and messy, than an attack on the throat with a razor, etc. Playful teasing. Nothing more. Forgotten as soon as said. Remembered now. Had not Tessa's manner been sometimes strange on board the ship? Had not Gracie sometimes fancied that she might be victimised by an unrequited love--in the style of her novelettes? Absurd. Yet not wholly absurd. No one more capable of a desperate act when roused than your silly, taciturn, lackadaisical anæmic. Gracie was rendered solemn, was snatched momentarily away from self-contemplation, by the idea that she had perhaps for days been terribly close to a mortal tragedy without guessing it...However, Tessa was asleep. The peril of a tragedy, if peril there had been, was over. No wonder that, quitting the bedroom, Gracie had gazed on the maid as a mature mother on a senseless child.

2.

In her own bedroom Gracie knelt down and unpacked the suit-case; then arranged the toilet-table; then undressed completely, turned on the water in the bathroom and bathed. She opened the door of Tessa's room to make sure that the noise of the water had not wakened the girl. Not a sound there. She put on blue silk pyjamas, and surveyed herself, moving to and fro, in the wardrobe mirror. She laid her small, elaborately embroidered travelling pillow on the hotel pillow, lit the bed-lamp, drew the blinds, closed the curtains, got into bed, switched off the lamp. She shut her eyes.

She was intensely conscious of her body, of the silkiness of her pyjamas, of the soft ridges of embroidery in the pillow. Luxurious repose. Extreme exhaustion; not merely physical; emotional. Exhaustion induced by the violence of her sensations and her aspirations in Smithfield Central Market and in the crypt below it. Thoughts of Tessa had receded. Once again she was absorbed in self-contemplation. Despite fatigue, an impulse to initiate immediately her secret project grew in her. It became imperious. She fought it, was beaten. She lit the lamp, hesitated, arose, put on the rich dressing-gown from the foot of the bed, passed into the drawing-room, carrying with her the jewel-case. It was locked--of course. The key was probably in Tessa's bag. She was bound to go back to Tessa's room. Still no sound nor movement there. She found the bag; she found the key-chain. Now, she was no more interested in Tessa.

In the drawing-room she opened the jewel-case, and took from it a morocco manuscript-book, virginal, which she had bought in New York. It had a lock, and the tiny key hung from the lock by a silk thread coloured to match the binding of the gilt-edged book. She sat herself at the desk, with the book opened in front of her, and seized a pen. The moment, she judged, was critical in her life. It might, it should and would, mark the beginning of a new life.

Slowly had been forming in her the resolution to write--to write literature. She had written one or two poems, and torn them up. No doubt they were worthless. But she knew them by heart. And perhaps they were not worthless. She had determined to write a journal of her impressions. She wrote the word 'London,' with the date, and underlined it, her hand trembling slightly from excitement, her mind thrilled by the memory of acute sensations felt in Smithfield. Her sensations seemed marvellous, unique. If only she could put them on paper. Formidable enterprise!

Her eye fell on a three-signal bell-tablet on the desk, 'waiter, valet, maid.' She must have some tea. She pressed the little knob for the waiter. True, she needed tea, but what influenced her as much as the need was a wish to delay the effort of writing the first momentous sentence in the book, the inception of the new life.

When the waiter had received her order he said:

"If you please, miss, there is a telephone-message for Sir Henry; he does not answer the telephone and his bedroom door is locked."

"What next?" thought Gracie, startled; and asked the waiter in a casual tone:

"What is the message?"

The waiter gave her a telephone-slip. She read: "Mr. Orcham is very sorry to say that he has outside appointments which will keep him away from the hotel all day." She said to the waiter: "All right. I'll see that Sir Henry gets the message."

She was alarmed. She knew her father. If he had been suggesting an interview with Mr. Orcham, and this was the reply to the suggestion, there would certainly be an explosion, and trouble between the two men. The Napoleonic Henry Savott was just about the last man to tolerate such a curt message--especially from a hotel-manager! And somehow she could not bear the prospect of trouble between these two powerful individualities. ("Why can't I?" she asked herself.) After she had drunk the celestial tea, she rang up her father in the next suite. Fortunately Napoleon had wakened.

"I say, dad--yes, it's me--do you know you've been fast asleep and they've been trying to get a message to you, from Mr. Orcham. He says he'll let you know as soon as possible later in the day. He's frightfully sorry, but he's just had to go out on very urgent business." She rang off.

Well, there it was! She'd done it. She had ravelled the skein, and she would have to unravel it. How? She would face the problem later. Such was Gracie's method. Anyhow she would have to communicate with Mr. Orcham. But later. A rush of the most vivid impressions of Smithfield, sensations at Smithfield, swept from her brain down her right arm. She could actually feel their passage. She began to write. She wrote slowly, with difficulty, with erasures. Everything but Smithfield vanished from her mind. The concentration of her mind was positively awful; that is to say, it awed her. The new life had opened for her.

That morning Evelyn called the ten o'clock daily conference of heads of departments in his own office. In the absence of instructions to the contrary, it was held in the office of Mr. Cousin. Emile Cousin, the hotel-manager (whose name was pronounced in the hotel in the English way), was a Frenchman, similar to Evelyn in build, and of about Evelyn's age, but entirely grown up, whereas bits of the boy remained obstinately embedded in Evelyn's adult constitution.

'Director' was Evelyn's official title, short for 'managing director'--the medium of communication between the organism of the hotel and the Board of Directors of the company which owned both the Palace and the Wey. The authority of the Board (of which Evelyn was vice-chairman) stood above Evelyn's in theory, though not in practice.

It was out of a sort of private bravado that Evelyn presided that morning at the conference, which had not seen him for over a week. He had been up extremely early; he had been to Smithfield; he had trotted about the place; he had accomplished all the directorial correspondence; and a full day's work lay before him. But his appointment at the Laundry was not till eleven o'clock. He had, as usual, time in hand, and he would not waste it; he would expend it remuneratively. He was tired. More correctly, he would have been tired if he had permitted himself to be tired. He did not permit. He exulted in the exercise of the function of management, and especially under difficulties. Could any private preoccupation, could any hidden fatigue, impair his activity? To ask was to answer. Nothing could disconcert, embarrass, hamper, frustrate his activity. "You understand," he would joyously, proudly, say to himself, "nothing!" It was in the moments which made the heaviest demand upon his varied faculties that he lived most keenly; and it was in those moments, too, that his demeanour was lightest.

The room was spacious; it had been enlarged some years earlier by the removal of a wall, and so changed from an oblong into the shape of an L. It had two vases of flowers, and there were plants in a box on the window-sill. (The spacious window framed a view of the picturesque back of a Queen Anne house and the garden thereof.) Evelyn did not particularly want the flowers and the plants. But Miss Cass did.

Miss Cass was Evelyn's personal secretary, aged an eternal thirty, well dressed, with earnest features and decided movements. She had a tremendous sense of Evelyn's importance. She was his mother, his amanuensis, and his slave. She could forge his signature to perfection. Among her seventy and seven duties, two of the chief, for her, were the provision of flowers, and the maintenance of a supply of mineral water on Evelyn's huge, flat desk. She had to make a living, and her salary was good; but the richest reward of her labours came on the infrequent occasions when Evelyn pulled a blossom from a vase and stuck it in his button-hole.

At conferences Evelyn sat behind the desk, with his back to the window; Miss Cass sat on his left at the desk, and Mr. Cousin on his right. The other members of the conference--being, principally, the Reception-manager, the Audit-manager, the Staff-manager, the Banqueting-manager, the chief engineer, the chief Stocktaker, the Bands-and-Cabaret-manager, the Publicity-manager, the Works-manager, and the white-haired head-housekeeper (only woman in the conference, for secretarial Miss Cass was not in the conference but at it)--sat about the room in odd chairs. Two of them were perched like twins each on the arm of an easy-chair. Neither the Restaurant-manager nor the Grill-room manager was in attendance, both having been at work very late. Their statistics, however, were in the hands of Miss Cass. The nationalities represented were Italian, French, Swiss and British, the last being in a minority. Evelyn and the sedate, reserved Mr. Cousin were smoking cigars. The rest--such as smoked--contented themselves with cigarettes. Subtle distinction between seraphim and cherubim in the hierarchy!

"Who's No. 341, 2 and 3?" asked Evelyn, glancing casually at a paper--the typed night-report.

"A Mr. Amersham--Australian," answered the Reception-manager instantly. "Why, sir?"

"Nothing. I only happened to notice that a lady couldn't persuade herself to leave his rooms till three o'clock this morning. Colonials are always so attractive," Evelyn continued without a pause, extinguishing several smiles: "Give me yesterday's figures for the restaurant, Miss Cass."

Miss Cass obeyed. "Ah! Nineteen pounds up on last year, but twenty-one more meals served. So it can't be that people aren't satisfied with the music or the cabaret. Average bill slightly less, and consumption of champagne per head distinctly less than last year. If we go on at this rate our £100,000 stock of wine will last for about fifty years. In fact Prohibition would serve no purpose. Might suggest to Maître Planquet that he ought to season his dishes with a view to inducing thirst."

Maître Planquet was the chef and grand vizier of the restaurant kitchens, and had been decorated by the French Government with the Academic Palms.

General deferential mirth. Everybody loved the Director's occasional facetiousness. Even Mr. Cousin, who never laughed, would smile his mysterious, scarcely perceptible smile. Everybody was relieved that the Director could joke about those statistics. A discussion broke out, for the most part in imperfect if very fluent English.

"I'd like to see the comparative graphs to-night, Miss Cass," Evelyn tried to end it, interrupting the wordy Banqueting-manager.

Evelyn knew, and they all knew, that the public tendency towards sobriety at meals could not be checked. The clientèle was a wind which blew where it listed. But there was good comfort in the fact that the clientèle, if increasingly austere, continued to grow in numbers. Evelyn, however, perceived that he could not end the discussion; at any rate he could not end it without a too violent use of his powers. It proceeded. He listened, watchful, and with satisfaction. Most of those men, and the woman, he had trained in their duties. And he had trained all of them in the great principle of loyalty to the hotel. They showed indeed more than loyalty; they showed devotion; they lived devotion.

The majority of them had homes, wives, children, in various parts of London; real enough, no doubt; cherished; perhaps loved. But seen from within the hotel these domestic backgrounds were far distant, dim, shadowy, insubstantial. When the interests of the hotel clashed with the interests of the backgrounds, the backgrounds gave way, eagerly, zealously. The departmental heads had their hours of daily service, but these hours were elastic; that is to say, they would stretch indefinitely--never contract. Urgently summoned back too soon from a holiday, the heads would appear, breathless--and smiling; eager for the unexpected task. One or other of them was continually being tempted to a new and more splendid post; but nobody ever yielded to the temptation unless Evelyn, frankly consulted, advised yielding. (He did occasionally so advise, and the hotels and restaurants of Europe, and some in America, were dotted with important men whose prestige sprang from their service at the Imperial Palace.) There were many posts, but there was only one Imperial Palace on earth. The Palace was their world and their religion; its pre-eminence their creed, its welfare their supreme aim. They respected and adored Evelyn. He was their god. Or, if the Palace was the god, Evelyn was the god-maker, above god.

There they sat, fiercely disputing, some in the correctness of morning-coats, others (who had no contacts with the clientèle), in undandiacal lounge-suits, smoking, gesticulating, wrangling, the Englishmen and Mr. Cousin taciturn, the other foreigners shooting new foreign lights on the enigma of the idiosyncrasies of the British and American clientèle: not one of them advancing a single constructive suggestion for fostering the appetites of the exasperating clientèle And there sat Evelyn, the creator of the modernised Palace, and of the religion of the Palace, and of the corporate spirit of its high-priests; a benevolent expression on his face, but an expression with a trace of affectionate derision in it. He let them rip, not because they were furthering the cult of the god by their noise, but because he enjoyed the grand spectacle of their passion. He deeply felt, then, that he had created something more marvellous than even the hotel. He knew that he was far their superior in brains, enterprise, ingenuity, tact; and this conviction lurked in his steady, good-humoured smile; but he knew also that in strenuous selfless loyalty he was not their superior. After all, the rewarding glory of success was his, not theirs.

2.

The altercation flagged, and, seeing her chance, Mrs. O'Riordan, the head-housekeeper, sixty-two years of age and as slim and natty as a girl in her black artificial silk, killed it with a question. Mrs. O'Riordan, who lived her whole life in two small rooms on the eighth floor, could only simulate an interest in the appetites of the incomprehensible clientele. What occupied her incessant attention was the upholstery of the chairs on which people sat, the carpets which they trod, the rooms in which they slept, the cloak-rooms to which the ladies retired, etc. She ate little, and somewhat despised cookery.

"I haven't got much time," said Mrs. O'Riordan. "What is going to be done about that mink-fur business?" And her glance said: "You are males. You ought to know. Answer me."

Mrs. O'Riordan, though she had no disinclination for the society of men, exhibited always a certain slight sex-bias, half-defensive, half-challenging. She was a widowed Yorkshire gentlewoman, had had two Irish military husbands, and still possessed three sons, one of whom regularly sent flowers to her with his best love on her birthday, while the other two, in India, only wrote to her in reply to her rare letters to them. In the solitude of her eyrie on the eighth floor, absorbed morning and night in the direction of her complex department, she sometimes found a minute to regret that neither of her husbands had given her a daughter. She would have liked a girl in those houses in County Meath. Together, she and a daughter would have formed a powerful opposition to the male ascendancy.

"Mink?" asked Evelyn, his tone conveying astonishment that he should be in ignorance of any happening within the hotel.

"I only heard of it myself an hour since," said Mr. Cousin.

"You were not in your office at half-past twelve last night, Mr. Cousin," Mrs. O'Riordan addressed the French manager, with a polite implication of reproach for slackness.

"No," said Mr. Cousin. "I went home at a quarter to twelve."

"Ah!" said Mrs. O'Riordan drily. "This happened at twelve-thirty."

She then related to Evelyn how a lady who had been dining with two other ladies had presented a ticket in the ladies' cloak-room, and on receiving a fur in exchange for it had asked for her 'other fur,' alleging positively that she had deposited two furs, the second one a priceless mink, given to her by a deceased friend in Chicago. The head of the cloak-room (who was better acquainted with the secret nature of women than the most experienced man in the universe), while admitting the deposit of several minks that evening by other guests (who had reclaimed them and departed), denied any knowledge of the fur from Chicago. Unfortunately, the ground-floor housekeeper, Miss Brury, was by chance in the cloak-room, and, being the head-attendant's official superior, she had taken charge of the dispute on behalf of the hotel. Unfortunately--because Miss Brury was very tired and nervous after an exhausting day of battle with the stupidity and obstinacy of subordinates and she had been over-candid to the guest, who had surpassed her in candour. The episode had finished with a shocking display of mutual recrimination. Both women had had hysterics. Guests of both sexes had paused at the open door of the cloak-room to listen to the language; and finally the owner of the alleged missing fur had burst through them, and rushed frantically across the hail crying aloud that the hotel was the resort of thieves, that the hotel-staff was in league with thieves, and that she would have the law on the lot of them.

Mrs. O'Riordan concluded:

"Long Sam told me that by the time she reached the doors she was demanding about a million pounds damages. No, she hadn't a car and she wouldn't have a taxi--said she wouldn't, not for a million pounds--another million pounds--be beholden to the hotel for anything...Oh yes, I came downstairs. I was reading. They fetched me--for Alice Brury...No, the two companions of the infuriated lady had left earlier. She'd stayed talking to someone...Miss Brury's in bed today."

Even Evelyn blenched at this terrible story, unique in the annals of the hotel. It was utterly incredible, but he had to believe it. And it was less incredible than the fact that he had been about, off and on, since four in the morning and yet no rumour of it had reached him. It was not on the night-report. Well, it could not have been on the night-report, whose records did not begin till one o'clock. But Reyer must have heard of the thing. Long Sam also. Suddenly the obvious explanation of the mystery occurred to him. Everybody had been assuming that he was already familiar with the details of the episode, he who always knew everything. And if he kept silence about the horror, what underling would care or dare to refer to it in his presence?

He saw shame on every face in the room. And well might there be shame on every face, for the pride of every person was profoundly humiliated.

"I've just been talking to O'Connor," said Mr. Cousin, impassible. "He's coming at once. He says he thinks he may have heard of the lady before. He's calling at the Yard."

O'Connor was the private detective of the hotel.

"I daresay he has," Evelyn observed. "The woman is almost certainly--well, doesn't matter what she is. She may get away with it. And if we have to pay her her million pounds or the National Debt, of course we shall pay it and look pleasant, and that will be that. It's that scene that matters. You're sure Miss Brury started it, Mrs. O'Riordan?"

"She admits it herself," answered the Irishwoman. "But when you think of the provocation--"

"There can't be any such thing as provocation in this hotel," Evelyn interrupted her blandly. "There never has been before, and there mustn't be again. If the customer is Judas Iscariot, he's still the customer till he's safely outside the hotel. That's a principle. The hotel turns the other cheek every time. I'm afraid we shall have to find another job for Miss Brury."

Murmurs of assent.

"The poor thing says she wouldn't stay on here for anything."

"Well then," said Evelyn. "We must struggle on as best we can without her."

"Yes," retorted Mrs. O'Riordan, rendered audacious and contrarious by nerves. "It's all very well for you men to talk like that. But if you knew the difficulties--" She glanced at Mr. Semple, the Staff-manager, as if for moral support. But the prudent Mr. Semple gave no response.

"We'll have a chat later," said Evelyn.

He was thinking that at least a year was required for the training of a housekeeper, and that Mrs. O'Riordan had referred not long ago to the dearth of really good candidates. Mrs. O'Riordan was in favour of engaging women of her own class, her theory being that gentlewomen could exercise better authority over chambermaids and valets, and also could deal more effectively with peevish and recalcitrant visitors; and Evelyn had agreed with her, had thought that he agreed with her; at any rate he had expressed agreement. Miss Brury was of a lower origin. She had failed to stand the racket. Her failure had seriously smirched the hotel. Would a gentlewoman have done better? Possibly, he thought. But he was by no means sure. Still, he would support Mrs. O'Riordan's desire for gentlewomen on the Floors. Mrs. O'Riordan, invaluable, irreplaceable (not quite, of course, but nearly), showed the independent attitude which comes from the possession of a small private income. He had known himself to accept her ideas against his own judgment. The fact was that she had a certain quality of formidableness...

Delicate situation, this, arising out of the scene and out of the dearth of good candidates. But he had complete confidence in his ability to resolve it. What a damned nuisance women were, gentlewomen as well as their social inferiors! He knew that the Banqueting-manager was boiling up for a commotion with the head-housekeeper about the use of a room near the ball-room. Tact--The telephone bell rang, and Miss Cass answered it.

"S O S from Weybridge, sir," said Miss Cass to Evelyn.

"Some difficulty with the contractors over the alterations to the restaurant. The work is at a standstill. Mr. Plott would be very much obliged if you could run down there at once, instead of this afternoon. But you can't. You are due at the Laundry at eleven. It's after half-past ten."

"Why can't I?" said Evelyn instantly. "I could go to the Laundry this afternoon. Tell them I'll be there at three--no, four. And tell Mr. Plott I'm coming to him now. And ask if my car is waiting."

"It's bound to be, sir. Brench is always early."

"I'll leave the rest to you, Cousin," Evelyn murmured to the hotel-manager.

In twenty seconds he was quitting the office, with gay nods and smiles, and a special smile for Mrs. O'Riordan. He was not gravely alarmed about the Wey restaurant. Nor was he flinching from problems at the Palace. Nor was his gaiety assumed. Problems were his meat and drink. He saw in the longish drive to Weybridge an opportunity for full happy reflection. He knew that he would return to the Palace, with detailed solutions whose ingenuity would impress everybody. His life was of enthralling interest to him. No other kind of life could be as interesting. To-morrow, in addition to the General Meetings of the Company, there would be Sir Henry Savott to manipulate. Perhaps if he conferred with Sir Henry in the latter's suite, as he properly might, he would encounter Gracie again. But the figure of Gracie had slipped away, like a ship standing out to sea.

The already famous Imperial Palace Hotel Laundry occupied part of a piece of freehold ground in a broad, tram-enlivened street in Kennington. The part unbuilt upon was a rather wild garden in which were many flowers. Evelyn foresaw the time when the Laundry would have to be enlarged, and the garden would cease to be. But at present the garden flourished and bloomed, and work-girls were taking their tea and bread-and-butter in it under the bright, warm September sun.

The spectacle of the garden and the lolling, lounging tea-spilling work-girls delighted Evelyn on his arrival that afternoon, as it always delighted him. He would point out to visitors the curving flagged paths, the scientifically designed benches, the pond with authentic gold-fish gliding to and fro therein, and the vine. The vine bore grapes, authentic grapes. True, they were small, hard, sour and quite uneatable, but they were grapes, growing in the open air of Kennington, within thirty feet of roaring, red trams. He was perhaps prouder of the garden as a pleasance for work-girls than of the Laundry itself. He had created the Laundry. He had not designed the buildings nor the machinery, nor laid brick on brick nor welded pipe to pipe, nor dug the Artesian wells nor paved the yards. But he had thought the whole place and its efficiency and its spirit into being--against some opposition from his Board of Directors.

It was a success. It drew over half a million gallons of water a week from the exhaustless wells; it often used six thousand gallons of water in an hour. It employed over two hundred immortal souls, chiefly the enigmatic young feminine. It fed these girls. It taught them to sing and to act and to dance and to sew and to make frocks. It kept a doctor and a dentist and a nurse for them. It washed all the linen of the Imperial Palace and the Wey hotels and all the linen that the hotel guests chose to entrust to it. It served also three hundred private customers, and its puce-tinted motor-vans were beginning to be recognised in the streets. It paid ten per cent. on its capital, and, with the aid of the latest ingenuities of American and English machinery, it was estimated to increase the life of linen by one-third. And considering the price of linen...Americans who inspected the Imperial Palace Hotel Laundry said that while there were far larger laundries in the United States, there was no laundry comparable with Evelyn's, either industrially or socially. Evelyn believed them. What he had difficulty in realising was that without his own creative thought and his perseverance in face of obstruction, the Laundry would never have existed. To him it always had the air of a miracle. Such as it was, it was his contribution towards the millennium, towards a heaven on earth.

As he entered the precincts a few of the uniformed girls smiled diffidently to greet him, and he smiled back and waved his stick, and passed into the building. He was a quarter of an hour late, but this lamentable fact did not disturb him. For he had done over four hours' concentrated hard work down at Weybridge. He had telephoned for the architect and for the principal partner of the contracting firm of builders, and they had both obeyed the summons. He and they and the manager of the Wey had measured, argued, eaten together, argued again and measured again, and finally by dint of compromises had satisfactorily emerged from a dilemma which, Evelyn softly maintained, common sense and foresight ought to have been able to avoid. Oh yes, he awarded part of the blame to himself! He had quitted the Wey in triumph. He had left the manager thereof in a state of worshipping relief, and the architect and the contractor in a state of very deferential admiration. He was content with Evelyn Orcham. A hefty fellow, Evelyn Orcham!

The one stain on the bright day was that he had settled nothing in his mind on the way down about the Miss Brury calamity; and on the way up to London he had been too excited by his achievement in the suburb to think about anything else. (Assuredly he was not completely grown up.) However, there was time enough yet to think constructively upon the Miss Brury calamity. He was conscious of endless reserves of energy, and as soon as he had dealt with the simmering trouble at the Laundry he would seize hold of the Palace problem and shake it like a rat!

And there stood Cyril Purkin, the manager of the Laundry, in the doorway leading to the staff dining-room. A short, fairly thin figure; a short but prominent pawky nose; small, cautious, 'downy,' even suspicious eyes; light ruffled hair; and a sturdy, half-defiant demeanour. A Midlander, aged thirty-eight, Evelyn sometimes wondered where the man bought his suits. They were good and well-fitting suits, but they had nothing whatever of a West End cut. The origin of his very neat neckties was similarly a mystery to Evelyn. His foot was small and almost elegant.

Mr. Purkin had begun life as a chemical engineer; he had gone on to soap-making, then laundry management, then soap-making again, then laundry management again. One day, when the foundations of the Imperial Palace Hotel Laundry had hardly been laid, Evelyn had received a letter which began: "Sir--Having been apprised that you are about to inaugurate a laundry on modern lines, I beg respectfully to offer my services as manager. I am at present..." The phrasing of the letter was succinct, the calligraphy very precise, regular and clear, and the signature just as formal as the rest of the writing. The letter attracted Evelyn. How had the man been clever enough to get himself 'apprised' of the advent of a new laundry on modern lines? And how came he to have the wit to write to Evelyn personally? Evelyn's name was never given out as the manager of the Imperial Palace. Mr. Purkin's qualifications proved to be ample; his testimonials were beyond cavil. His talk in