“All cobwebs,” he said, “beastly cobwebs!” Then all the dreadful fears that he had felt ... they were all nothing! It would have broken Pauline’s heart. “She’s had such rough times, little woman,” he said, “such beastly rough times.” But though his cobwebs had been imbecile enough, the remembrance of the pain made him wince. “By Jove! I was nearly mad,” he said. He had felt insane desires to ask strangers--perfect strangers in the street--whether they were the men who had rung up 4,259 Mayfair. “By Jove!” he repeated again, “by Jove! And now it’s all over.” He leaned back luxuriously in his chair; he stretched his long legs. “Never so fit in my life,” he said; and he extended his long hand to take from the desk at his side a little carved box that Pauline had bought of a Japanese to hold his nail-scissors. He had observed a little speck of dirt beneath the nail of his forefinger. And in the pleasant well-being of the world he half dozed away, the box held nearly to his nose. It exhaled a faint musky odour, and suddenly his eyes opened as he jerked out of his day-dream. “Etta!” he said, for the box exhaled the scent that Etta Hudson always had about her--a sweet, musky, cobwebby odour.... “By God!” he said; and he crossed himself as he had learned to do in St. Andrew’s, Holborn, where his wife worshipped. The lines of his face seemed to decompose; his head fell forward; his mouth opened. Pauline was closing the door after her silent entry. It was a long, dusky slice of the rear-house, and he watched her approach, wide-eyed and panic-stricken, as if she held an animal-trainer’s whip. The little smile was about her lips when she stood over his huddled figure in the light of the stained-glass window that had been put in to hide the dreary vision of house-backs. She held out her little gloved hand; her face was quite tranquil. “She knows all about it,” he said, “Good God!” “Dudley, dear,” she said, “I know all about it.” IV ROBERT GRIMSHAW was pushing the electric button beside the Leicesters’ entry when, hatless, the daylight falling on his ruffled hair, Dudley Leicester flung open the door and ran down the street. “Oh, go after him; go after him!” Pauline cried from the hall. If Dudley Leicester had done anything at all in his life it was to run at school. Thus it was a full minute before Grimshaw came to the door of the little dark hat-ironing shop, in the middle of which Leicester stood, leaning over the counter, holding by the waistcoat a small man with panic-stricken blue eyes. Afterwards he heard that Leicester had asked where his man Saunders was. But for the moment he had ceased to shake the little hatter. And then, suddenly, he asked: “Are you the chap who rang up 4,259 Mayfair?” “Sir! sir!” the little man cried out. Dudley Leicester shook him and shook him: a white band-box fell from the counter and rolled almost into the street. “Are you? Are you?” Dudley Leicester cried out incessantly.