"Yonder lamp is ready for use," said the Professor, pointing to the corner near the fireplace, "and certainly it is growing unusually dark, although it is scarcely five o'clock. A fog is descending on the verdant earth." He went to the window and looked out. "Yes, a dense fog. Have you noted, Mr. Maunders, how rapidly these autumnal fogs descend on London?" "Yes. But I should have thought that you were too far away to have them here," replied Maunders in an easy conversational tone, which did great credit to his powers of self-control. "No, sir; no. The fuliginous haze does not spare even our rural suburb, if I may so term it." He swept aside the curtain with a tragic gesture. "Mark how the cloudy mists, darkened with smoke, swallow up house after house and road after road; mark how a brown pall is drawn over the fair green looks of earth and how the----" "One would have to be in a balloon to see all that," said Maunders rudely. "I hope you won't mind, Professor, but I have private business to discuss with my friends here. If Mr. Hest comes in, please tell him I shall see him in his bedroom as soon as my friends go." "Do nothing of the sort, Professor," snapped the Colonel. "I have come here to see Mr. Hest, and he must meet me in this room." But the speech of Maunders had offended the touchy old actor. "I have nothing to do with these things," he said, stalking towards the door, "and, in the good old English fashion, my guests are at liberty to act as they please. Mr. Hest need be told nothing, and when he returns he will certainly enter this room, as is his custom." "But----" began Maunders, only to be cut short by the indignant Professor. "You are not my guest, sir, but the guest of Mr. Hest," he said in his deepest tones, "and you have told me to leave my own room. These manners are suited to the Hyperboreans of the Far North." "I wish to explain----" "Explain nothing, sir," cried Gail in the ponderous manner of Dr. Samuel Johnson. "You may have a front like Mars to threaten and command, but I am no menial to be so hectored." He swept an imaginary mantle over his left shoulder and mouthed blank verse: "We must not stint Our necessary actions in the fear To cope malicious censurers." "Therefore," ended Mr. Gail, returning to prose, "I shall retire to my couch, and so good-day to one and all." When he had made his exit, for it could scarcely be said that he took his departure in a conventional manner, Maunders gave vent to a weak, tittering laugh, doubtless to cloak the real nervousness he felt. "The old fool," he observed with his characteristic shrug. "Let us hope you will not prove to be a young one by withholding from us the truth of this shady business you have been engaged in," said Colonel Towton in a caustic manner, for his sympathies were with the retired actor.