Dudley Leicester put the receiver to his ear. A peremptory “Are you 4,259 Mayfair?” made him suddenly afraid, as if a schoolmaster had detected him in some crime. Hitherto he had had no feeling of crime. It was as if he had merely existed in the tide of his senses. An equally peremptory “_Don’t go away_” was succeeded by the words: “Get down,” and then: “Is that Sir William Hudson’s?” Leicester answered--he had the words clearly fixed in his mind--but already he was panting: “Yes, but Sir William’s in Paris, and Lady Hudson in bed.” And he did not omit to add “sir.” Through his mind, quickened by his emotions of fear, there shot the idea that now they must go away; that it was all over; that he was very tired; that he must sit down and rest. Then suddenly--still low, distinct, stealthy, and clear--the voice of the invisible man asked: “Isn’t that Dudley Leicester speaking?” He answered “Yes,” and then with a sudden panic he hung the receiver upon the hooks. And Etta Hudson, descending the stair with the letter in her hand, saw him sitting dishevelled and dejected, as if all his joints had been broken, in the messenger-boy’s chair beside the heavy, dark table. He rose suddenly, exclaiming: “You’ve got me into this scrape; you’ve got to get me out of it. What’s to be done?” Standing on the bottom step of the stairs, she laughed at him, and she laughed still more while she listened: “How do I know who it was?” He poured forth disjointed sentences. “I told you somebody would see us in Regent Street. It might have been your husband, or some blackmailer. London’s full of them. I can’t possibly ring them up again to ask who it was. Perhaps they spoke from a call-office. What’s to be done? What in the name of God is to be done?” A certain concern and pity were visible in her eyes: she opened her lips and was about to speak, when he exclaimed: “It would break Pauline’s heart. What’s to be done?” The line of her brows hardened, and she uttered a hard little laugh. “Don’t you know,” she said; “why, my dear Dudley, the answer is: ‘That’s the bare’s business.’” His first action on awakening was always to stretch out his hand for the letters that his silent man would have placed by his side, and to glance at the clock on his dressing table to see how many hours he had slept. And, indeed, next morning his first sensation was one of bodily well-being and of satisfaction because the clock appeared to inform him that he had slept for three hours longer than was his habit. But with a slight feeling of uneasiness he remembered how late he had been the night before, and stretching out his hand for the letters, he heard a voice say: “Are you 4,259 Mayfair?”