“Er--” he began, looking at the card in his hand, “what can I do for you--at this hour?” he smiled again. “I have called to see you in the matter of the late--er--Mr. Reale.” He saw and watched the minister’s face. Beyond looking a little puzzled, the Home Secretary made no sign. “Good!” thought Spedding, and breathed with more freedom. “I’m afraid----” said the minister. He got no further, for Spedding was at once humility, apology, and embarrassment. What! had the Home Secretary not received his letter? A letter dealing with the estate of Reale? You can imagine the distress and vexation on Mr. Spedding’s face as he spoke of the criminal carelessness of his clerk, his attitude of helplessness, his recognition of the absolute impossibility of discussing the matter until the Secretary had received the letter, and his withdrawal, leaving behind him a sympathetic minister of State who would have been pleased--would have been delighted, my dear sir, to have helped Mr. Spedding if he’d received the letter in time to consider its contents. Mr. Spedding was an inventive genius, and it might have been in reference to him that the motherhood of invention was first identified with dire necessity. Out again in the courtyard, Spedding found a cab that carried him to his club. “Angel bluffed!” he reflected with an inward smile. “My friend, you are risking that nice appointment of yours.” He smiled again, for it occurred to him that his risk was the greater. “Two millions!” he murmured. “It is worth it: I could do a great deal with two millions.” He got down at his club, and tendered the cabman the legal fare to a penny. CHAPTER XI THE QUEST OF THE BOOK When Piccadilly Circus, a blaze of light, was thronged with the crowds that the theaters were discharging, a motor-car came gingerly through the traffic, passed down Regent Street, and swinging along Pall Mall, headed southward across Westminster Bridge. The rain had ceased, but underfoot the roads were sodden, and the car bespattered its occupants with black mud. The chauffeur at the wheel turned as the car ran smoothly along the tramway lines in the Old Kent Road and asked a question, and one of the two men in the back of the car consulted the other. “We will go to Cramer’s first,” said the man. Old Kent Road was a fleeting vision of closed shops, of little knots of men emerging from public-houses at the potman’s strident command; Lewisham High Road, as befits that very respectable thoroughfare, was decorously sleeping; Lea, where the hedges begin, was silent; and Chislehurst was a place of the dead. Near the common the car pulled up at a big house standing in black quietude, and the two occupants of the car descended and passed through the stiff gate, along the graveled path, and came to a stop at the broad porch. “I don’t know what old Mauder will say,” said Angel as he fumbled for the bell; “he’s a methodical old chap.”