The Lord Chancellor slipped on his dressing-gown of purple silk. Very softly indeed did he open his bedroom door and very warily peep out. He heard the soft pad of feet upon the staircase. He crept across the broad passage to the beautiful old balustrading. Down below he saw Mergleson—Mergleson again!—in a shameful deshabille—going like a snake, like a slinking cat, like an assassin, into the door of the study. Rage filled the great man’s soul. Gathering up the skirts of his dressing-gown he started in a swift yet noiseless pursuit. He followed Mergleson through the little parlour and into the dining-room, and then he saw it all! There was a panel open, and Mergleson very cautiously going in. Of course! They had got at him through the priest hole. They had been playing on his nerves. All night they had been doing it—no doubt in relays. The whole house was in this conspiracy. With his eyebrows spread like the wings of a fighting cock the Lord Chancellor in five vast noiseless strides had crossed the intervening space and gripped the butler by his collarless shirt as he was disappearing. It was like a hawk striking a sparrow. Mergleson felt himself clutched, glanced over his shoulder and, seeing that fierce familiar face again close to his own, pitiless, vindictive, lost all sense of human dignity and yelled like a lost soul.... § 9 Sir Peter Laxton was awakened from an uneasy sleep by the opening of the dressing-room door that connected his room with his wife’s. He sat up astonished and stared at her white face, its pallor exaggerated by the cold light of dawn. “Peter,” she said, “I’m sure there’s something more going on.” “Something more going on?” “Something—shouting and swearing.” “You don’t mean—?” She nodded. “The Lord Chancellor,” she said, in an awe-stricken whisper. “He’s at it again. Downstairs in the dining-room.” Sir Peter seemed disposed at first to receive this quite passively. Then he flashed into extravagant wrath. “I’m _damned_,” he cried, jumping violently out of bed, “if I’m going to stand this! Not if he was a hundred Lord Chancellors! He’s turning the place into a bally lunatic asylum. _Once_—one might excuse. But to start in again.... _What’s that?_” They both stood still listening. Faintly yet quite distinctly came the agonized cry of some imperfectly educated person,—“’Elp!” “Here! Where’s my trousers?” cried Sir Peter. “He’s murdering Mergleson. There isn’t a moment to lose.” § 10 Until Sir Peter returned Lady Laxton sat quite still just as he had left her on his bed, aghast. She could not even pray. The sun had still to rise; the room was full of that cold weak inky light, light without warmth, knowledge without faith, existence without courage, that creeps in before the day. She waited.... In such a mood women have waited for massacre.... Downstairs a raucous shouting....