“The last thing my ‘cousin’ did, as we stepped into the dark, was to raise his eyebrows for me to follow. He stalked like a great cat down an alley, which is one of the ways to the Castle. There were sundry loafers in the lane, of course. Two policemen, who touched their hats to us, let us through the gate. “It was too dark to see anything. We seemed to be crossing a great yard. We skirted the lower edge of this, and the ghost of a charming chapel moved past us, as foggy land goes past a steamer. We stalked along a line of dreary buildings into a doorway among many other doorways, and up a dirty wooden stairway. There were landings, and doors which had not seen paint for years, and on the door was the word ‘Intelligence.’ We mounted turn after turn, and came presently to a shabby room with packing cases and odds and ends of ammunition in it and nothing else. With a lift of his eyebrows and a wave of his hand, my ‘cousin’ went off on his toes, and I sat on a packing case cooling my heels. The electric light burned through a smeary globe, there was nothing to look at--odds and ends of uniform, odds and ends of ammunition. Outside the windows the dark was curling like a fog, and there were occasional shouts from the yard. I waited a full ten minutes, tapping my heels and feeling wonderfully safe. “I seemed on land, and you”--he nodded to his wife--“out in the city, a waif swimming in a friendless sea. Here were people ready to defend my beliefs. Here were people who upheld my traditions. That profound loneliness, which is the tragedy of an agent’s life, for a brief space was no longer mine.” 47 had dropped his chin in his hands, and was looking into the fire. He threw up his head. “My ‘cousin’ came back. He was standing in the doorway before I heard him. He lifted his eyebrows, and I slid off my packing case, and we passed down the passage into another room with a cheerful fire and people at work. This room was crowded with papers and typewriters, and though the people there sat in glum silence and went on with their work, nevertheless it seemed the best room I had ever been in. “The fire was burning up, and in a box to the right was a mongrel bitch with a litter of blind pups. They were never still, and tugged at her all the time, rolling over with warmth and pleasure. A man sat on a stool gazing at the coals, and now and then he would put his hand among those rolling things, and the bitch would lick it. I envied that family. “Another man smoked on the edge of a table, and a third man, a man who worked so furiously that he never raised his head, was standing with his back to a window, leaning over a high desk overwhelmed with papers. On a sheet he had an endless list of names, down which he was running a finger. With another hand he opened a directory and looked up addresses, and constantly he referred to the stack of papers.