“Nonsense, he calls it! And excellent nonsense, too! Haven’t you heard? Has no one told you? Don’t you know? Charming sister of my dear friend Tom, to-day the coroner’s been sitting on my corpse--as I live, upon my corpse! Ferguson’s been there as witness. They wanted him to say, it seems, that you had killed me--yes, you, with your own two small hands; but he wouldn’t. He said he’d see them--warmer first; as warm as I am now. I can’t think where, at this time of the year, the heat can come from. I’m on fire inside and out. So they talked of sending him to gaol. “But, bless their simple souls, they didn’t know their man; how that he was a fellow of infinite jest. For when they talked of locking him up, he locked them up instead; marched straight out, turned the key in the lock, with them on the other side of the door--coroner and jury, counsel and witnesses, audience and policeman--the whole noble, gallant company. And so he left them, sitting on my corpse.” As might have been expected, the rabble, which still hung round us like a fringe, hearing what he said, caught something of his meaning. They bandied it from mouth to mouth. “That’s Ferguson, that there tall bloke. He’s the cove as locked the coroner up this afternoon, Imperial Mansions murder case. Didn’t you hear the other bloke a-saying so? No lies! I tell you it is!” While the gutter-snipes wrangled, playing fast and loose with my name--with my reputation, too--the lady whispered in my ear. Despite the noise they made I heard her plain. “So that’s why you came to fetch me? Now I understand; the secret’s out. It’s another service you have done me! Aren’t you afraid that the weight of obligation will be more than I can carry? Yet you needn’t fear! They’re the kind of debts I don’t at all mind owing--you, since one day I hope to pay them every one.” “You exaggerate. And Lawrence is a fool.” “Yes. So are we all fools; perhaps that’s why some of us are wise.” I liked to hear her voice; to feel her hand upon my arm. Yet, every moment, my concern was getting greater. The crowd was growing, both in numbers and in impudence. Any second they might make an ugly rush, then there would be trouble; and that was not a scene in which I should wish the lady to play a part. Lawrence was marching on as if he meant to march for ever. I began seriously to ask myself if he was not playing us still another of his tricks; if he was not leading us he himself did not know where. On a sudden, he determined the question by stopping before a building which, outwardly, was more like a warehouse than a private residence. “At last,” he cried, “we are arrived. The Goddess waits for us within.” “Is this your place?” “It is--and hers. _Enter omnes!_” He threw open the door as if he were offering the whole crowd the freedom of the premises. I placed myself in front of it. “I’m hanged if it shall be _enter omnes!_ In you go.” I thrust him in. “Now you and I together!”