“Ready for what? There is nothing to be done here.” Hyacinth stared. “Then why the deuce do you come?” “I dare say I shan’t come much more. This is a place you have always overestimated.” “I wonder if I have overestimated you,” Hyacinth murmured, gazing at his friend. “Don’t say that—he’s going to introduce us to Hoffendahl!” Schinkel exclaimed, putting away his pipe in a receptacle almost as large as a fiddle-case. “Should you like to see the genuine article, Robinson?” Muniment asked, with the same unusual absence of jocosity in his tone. “The genuine article?” Hyacinth looked from one of his companions to the other. “You have never seen it yet—though you think you have.” “And why haven’t you shown it to me before?” “Because I had never seen you on the stump.” This time Muniment smiled. “Bother the stump! I was trusting you.” “Exactly so. That gave me time.” “Don’t come unless your mind is made up, _mon petit_,” said Poupin. “Are you going now—to see Hoffendahl?” Hyacinth cried. “Don’t shout it all over the place. He wants a genteel little customer like you,” Muniment went on. “Is it true? Are we all going?” Hyacinth demanded eagerly. “Yes, these two are in it; they are not very artful, but they are safe,” said Muniment, looking at Poupin and Schinkel. “Are _you_ the genuine article, Muniment?” asked Hyacinth, catching this look. Muniment dropped his eyes on him; then he said, “Yes, you’re the boy he wants. It’s at the other end of London; we must have a growler.” “Be calm, my child; _me voici!_” And Eustache Poupin led Hyacinth out. They all walked away from the ‘Sun and Moon’, and it was not for some five minutes that they encountered the four-wheeled cab which deepened so the solemnity of their expedition. After they were seated in it, Hyacinth learned that Hoffendahl was in London but for three days, was liable to hurry away on the morrow, and was accustomed to receive visits at all kinds of queer hours. It was getting to be midnight; the drive seemed interminable, to Hyacinth’s impatience and curiosity. He sat next to Muniment, who passed his arm round him, as if by way of tacit expression of indebtedness. They all ended by sitting silent, as the cab jogged along murky miles, and by the time it stopped Hyacinth had wholly lost, in the drizzling gloom, a sense of their whereabouts. BOOK THIRD XXII