So he said his farewell words, at the door of the hotel. Kind, genial, clever--but oh, how easily prejudiced, how shockingly obstinate in holding to his own opinion! And _what_ an opinion! I shuddered as I thought of it. CHAPTER XXXV. MR. PLAYMORE’S PROPHECY. WE reached London between eight and nine in the evening. Strictly methodical in all his habits, Benjamin had telegraphed to his housekeeper, from Edinburgh, to have supper ready or us by ten o’clock, and to send the cabman whom he always employed to meet us at the station. Arriving at the villa, we were obliged to wait for a moment to let a pony-chaise get by us before we could draw up at Benjamin’s door. The chaise passed very slowly, driven by a rough-looking man, with a pipe in his mouth. But for the man, I might have doubted whether the pony was quite a stranger to me. As things were, I thought no more of the matter. Benjamin’s respectable old housekeeper opened the garden gate, and startled me by bursting into a devout ejaculation of gratitude at the sight of her master. “The Lord be praised, sir!” she cried; “I thought you would never come back!” “Anything wrong?” asked Benjamin, in his own impenetrably quiet way. The housekeeper trembled at the question, and answered in these enigmatical words: “My mind’s upset, sir; and whether things are wrong or whether things are right is more than I can say. Hours ago, a strange man came in and asked”--she stopped, as if she were completely bewildered--looked for a moment vacantly at her master--and suddenly addressed herself to me. “And asked,” she proceeded, “when _you_ was expected back, ma’am. I told him what my master had telegraphed, and the man says upon that, ‘Wait a bit,’ he says; ‘I’m coming back.’ He came back in a minute or less; and he carried a Thing in his arms which curdled my blood--it did!--and set me shaking from the crown of my head to the sole of my foot. I know I ought to have stopped it; but I couldn’t stand upon my legs, much less put the man out of the house. In he went, without ‘_with_ your leave,’ or ‘_by_ your leave,’ Mr. Benjamin, sir--in he went, with the Thing in his arms, straight through to your library. And there It has been all these hours. And there It is now. I’ve spoken to the police; but they wouldn’t interfere; and what to do next is more than my poor head can tell. Don’t you go in by yourself, ma’am! You’ll be frightened out of your wits--you will!” I persisted in entering the house, for all that. Aided by the pony, I easily solved the mystery of the housekeeper’s otherwise unintelligible narrative. Passing through the dining-room (where the supper-table was already laid for us), I looked through the half-opened library door.