In a quarter of an hour a little calm was restored to him, though by this time the rapid electric service of the Electric Traction Syndicate had carried him far beyond the limits of Croydon. He got out at a roadside office, wrote out and tore up again half a dozen telegrams, seized a time-table, determined that after all the train was his best refuge, and catching the 12.17 at Norwood Junction, found himself in the heart of the City before half-past one. A hansom took him to his office after several intolerable but unavoidable delays in the half-mile it had to traverse. His visible perturbation was a matter of comment to his subordinates, who were not slow to inform him before he opened his mouth that the documents had not yet arrived. Exhaustion followed so much feverish activity, an anxiety, deeper if possible than any he had yet shown, settled upon Mr. Clutterbuck's features. He forgot to lunch, he walked deliberately to the warehouse, only to be asked what his business might be, and to be told that the particular section of eggs which he named were the property of Messrs. Czernwitz and Boyle, and could be visited by no one without their written order. The tone in which this astonishing message was delivered would have stung a man of less sensitiveness and breeding than Mr. Clutterbuck; he turned upon his heel in a mood to which anger was now added, and immediately sought the office of that firm. But he was doomed to yet further delay. No one was in who could give him any useful information, nor even any one of so much responsibility as to be able to explain to him the extraordinary occurrences of the last few days. He was at the point of a very grave decision--I mean of going on to his lawyers and perhaps disturbing to no sort of purpose the most delicate of commercial relations--when there moved past him into the office the ponderous and well-clad form of a gentleman past middle age, with such magnificent white whiskers as adorn the faces of too many Continental bankers, and wearing a simple bowler hat of exquisite shape and workmanship. He was smoking a cigar of considerable size and of delicious flavour, and by the deference immediately paid to him upon his entry, Mr. Clutterbuck, as he stood in nervous anxiety by the door, could distinguish the head of the firm. It was characteristic of the Baron de Czernwitz, and in some sort an explanation of his future success in our business world, ever so suspicious of the foreigner, that the moment he had heard Mr. Clutterbuck's name and business, he turned to him, in spite of his many preoccupations, with the utmost courtesy and said: "It iss myself you want? You shall come hier." With these words he put his arm in the most gentlemanly manner through that of his exhausted visitor, and led him into an inner room furnished with all the taste and luxury which the Baron had learnt in Naples, Wurtemburg, Dantzig, Paris, and New York.