And he went out and banged the door behind him. He walked the streets furiously angry with Herold. He had gone to consult him on a baffling problem. Herold had suggested a maiden aunt as a solution. He had but one, his mother's sister. Her name was Gladys. What was a woman of over fifty doing with such an idiot name? His Aunt Gladys lived at Croydon and spent her time solving puzzles and following the newspaper accounts of the doings of the royal family. She knew nothing. He remembered when he was a boy at school coming home for the holidays cock-a-whoop at having won the high jump in the school athletics sports. His Aunt Gladys, while professing great interest, had said, “But what I don't understand, dear, is--what do you get on to jump down from?” He had smiled and explained, but he had felt cold in the pit of his stomach. A futile lady. His opinion of her had not changed. In these days John was rather an intolerant fellow. Chance willed it, however, that when he reached Fenton Square he found a letter which began “My dearest John” and ended “Your loving Aunt Gladys.” And it was the letter of a very sweet-natured gentlewoman. John sat down at his desk to work, but ideas would not come. At last he lit his pipe, threw himself into a chair in front of the fire, and smoked till past midnight, with his heavy brows knitted in a tremendous frown. CHAPTER VI THE same frown darkened Risca's brow the next day as he waited for admittance at his Aunt Gladys's door. It was such a futile little door to such a futile little house; he could have smashed in the former with a blow of his fist, and he could have jumped into the latter through the first-floor windows. With his great bulk he felt himself absurdly out of scale. The tragedy looming huge in his mind was also absurdly out of scale with his errand. The house was one of a row of twenty perky, gabled, two-storied little villas, each coyly shrinking to the farthermost limit of its tiny front garden, and each guarding the privacy of its interior by means of muslin curtains at the windows, tied back by ribbons, the resultant triangle of transparency being obscured by a fat-leafed plant. The terrace bore the name of “Tregarthion Villas,” and the one inhabited by Miss Lindon was called “The Oaks.” It was a sham little terrace full of sham little gentilities. John hated it. What could have induced his mother's sister to inhabit such a sphere of flimsiness?