"And if there _is_ a door, he must have been mortal sly over it," resumed the young gentleman. "He must have gone right out from here, and in at the side gate of the garden, and got in that way. I wonder what he did it for?" "It isn't any business of ours," said Jan. "Then I think it is," retorted Master Cheese. "I'd like to know how many times he has been in there, listening to us, when we thought him a mile off. It's a shame!" "It's nothing to me who listens," said Jan equably. "I don't say things behind people's backs, that I'd not say before their faces." "I do," acknowledged young Cheese. "Wasn't there a row! Didn't he and the man go on at each other! They shut themselves up in that room, and had it out." "What did the man want?" asked Jan. "I'd like to know. He and old West had it out together, I say, but they didn't admit me to the conference. Goodness knows where he had come from. West seemed to know him. Jan, I heard something about him and the Chalk Cottage folks yesterday." "You had better take yourself to a safe distance," advised Jan. "If this goes off with a bang, your face will come in for the benefit." "I say, though, it's you that must take care and not let it go off," returned Master Cheese, edging, nevertheless, a little away. "But about that room? If old West----" The words were interrupted. The door of the room in question was pushed open, and Dr. West came out of it. Had Master Cheese witnessed the arrival of an inhabitant from the other world, introduced by the most privileged medium extant, he could not have experienced more intense astonishment. He had truly believed, as he had just expressed it, that Dr. West was at that moment a good mile away. "Put your hat on, Cheese," said Dr. West. Cheese put it on, going into a perspiration at the same time. He thought nothing less than that he was about to be dismissed. "Take this note up to Sir Rufus Hautley's." It was a great relief; and Master Cheese received the note in his hand, and went off whistling. "Step in here, Mr. Jan," said the doctor. Jan took one of his long legs over the counter, jumped off, and stepped in--into the doctor's sanctum. Had Jan been given to speculation, he might have wondered what was coming; but it was Jan's method to take things cool and easy, as they came, and not to anticipate them. "My health has been bad of late," began the doctor. "Law!" cried Jan. "What has been the matter?" "A general disarrangement of the system altogether, I fancy," returned Dr. West. "I believe that the best thing to restore me will be change of scene--travelling; and an opportunity to embrace it has presented itself. I am solicited by an old friend of mine, in practice in London, to take charge of a nobleman's son for some months--to go abroad with him." "Is he ill?" asked literal Jan, to whom it never occurred to ask whether Dr. West had first of all applied to his old friend to seek after such a post for him.