_The Photograph_
From the moment of Mrs. Challice's remarks in favour of matrimonial
agencies Priam Farll's existence became a torture to him. She was what
he had always been accustomed to think of as "a very decent woman"; but
really...! The sentence is not finished because Priam never finished it
in his own mind. Fifty times he conducted the sentence as far as
'really,' and there it dissolved into an uncomfortable cloud.
"I suppose we shall have to be going," said she, when her ice had been
eaten and his had melted.
"Yes," said he, and added to himself, "But where?"
However, it would be a relief to get out of the restaurant, and he
called for the bill.
While they were waiting for the bill the situation grew more strained.
Priam was aware of a desire to fling down sovereigns on the table and
rush wildly away. Even Mrs. Challice, vaguely feeling this, had a
difficulty in conversing.
"You _are_ like your photograph!" she remarked, glancing at his face
which--it should be said--had very much changed within half-an-hour. He
had a face capable of a hundred expressions per day. His present
expression was one of his anxious expressions, medium in degree. It can
be figured in the mask of a person who is locked up in an iron
strongroom, and, feeling ill at ease, notices that the walls are getting
red-hot at the corners.
"Like my photograph?" he exclaimed, astonished that he should resemble
Leek's photograph.
"Yes," she asseverated stoutly. "I knew you at once. Especially by the
nose."
"Have you got it here?" he asked, interested to see what portrait of
Leek had a nose like his own.
And she pulled out of her handbag a photograph, not of Leek, but of
Priam Farll. It was an unmounted print of a negative which he and Leek
had taken together for the purposes of a pose in a picture, and it had
decidedly a distinguished appearance. But why should Leek dispatch
photographs of his master to strange ladies introduced through a
matrimonial agency? Priam Farll could not imagine--unless it was from
sheer unscrupulous, careless bounce.
She gazed at the portrait with obvious joy.
"Now, candidly, don't _you_ think it's very, very good?" she demanded.
"I suppose it is," he agreed. He would probably have given two hundred
pounds for the courage to explain to her in a few well-chosen words that
there had been a vast mistake, a huge impulsive indiscretion. But two
hundred thousand pounds would not have bought that courage.
"I love it," she ejaculated fervently--with heat, and yet so nicely! And
she returned the photograph to her little bag.
She lowered her voice.
"You haven't told me whether you were ever married. I've been waiting
for that."
He blushed. She was disconcertingly personal.
"No," he said.
"And you've always lived like that, alone like; no home; travelling
about; no one to look after you, properly?" There was distress in her
voice.
He nodded. "One gets accustomed to it."
"Oh yes," she said. "I can understand that."
"No responsibilities," he added.
"No. I can understand all that." Then she hesitated. "But I do feel so
sorry for you... all these years!"
And her eyes were moist, and her tone was so sincere that Priam Farll
found it quite remarkably affecting. Of course she was talking about
Henry Leek, the humble valet, and not about Leek's illustrious master.
But Priam saw no difference between his lot and that of Leek. He felt
that there was no essential difference, and that, despite Leek's
multiple perfections as a valet, he never had been looked
after--properly. Her voice made him feel just as sorry for himself as
she was sorry for him; it made him feel that she had a kind heart, and
that a kind heart was the only thing on earth that really mattered. Ah!
If Lady Sophia Entwistle had spoken to him in such accents...!
The bill came. It was so small that he was ashamed to pay it. The
suppression of gratuities enabled the monarch of this bevelled palace to
offer a complete dinner for about the same price as a thimbleful of tea
and ten drachms of cake a few yards away. Happily the monarch,
foreseeing his shame, had arranged a peculiar method of payment through
a little hole, where the receiver could see nothing but his blushing
hands. As for the conjurers in evening dress, they apparently never
soiled themselves by contact with specie.
Outside on the pavement, he was at a loss what to do. You see, he was
entirely unfamiliar with Mrs. Challice's code of etiquette.
"Would you care to go to the Alhambra or somewhere?" he suggested,
having a notion that this was the correct thing to say to a lady whose
presence near you was directly due to her desire for marriage.
"It's very good of you," said she. "But I'm sure you only say it out of
kindness--because you're a gentleman. It wouldn't be quite nice for you
to go to a music-hall to-night. I know I said I was free for the
evening, but I wasn't thinking. It wasn't a hint--no, truly! I think I
shall go home--and perhaps some other----"
"I shall see you home," said he quickly. Impulsive, again!
"Would you really like to? Can you?" In the bluish glare of an
electricity that made the street whiter than day, she blushed. Yes, she
blushed like a girl.
She led him up a side-street where was a kind of railway station
unfamiliar to Priam Farll's experience, tiled like a butcher's shop and
as clean as Holland. Under her direction he took tickets for a station
whose name he had never heard of, and then they passed through steel
railings which clacked behind them into a sort of safe deposit, from
which the only emergence was a long dim tunnel. Painted hands, pointing
to the mysterious word 'lifts,' waved you onwards down this tunnel.
"Hurry up, please," came a voice out of the spectral gloom. Mrs.
Challice thereupon ran. Now up the tunnel, opposing all human progress
there blew a steady trade-wind of tremendous force. Immediately Priam
began to run the trade-wind removed his hat, which sailed buoyantly back
towards the street. He was after it like a youth of twenty, and he
recaptured it. But when he reached the extremity of the tunnel his
amazed eyes saw nothing but a great cage of human animals pressed
tightly together behind bars. There Was a click, and the whole cage sank
from his sight into the earth.
He felt that there was more than he had dreamt of in the city of
miracles. In a couple of minutes another cage rose into the tunnel at a
different point, vomited its captives and descended swiftly again with
Priam and many others, and threw him and the rest out into a white mine
consisting of numberless galleries. He ran about these interminable
galleries underneath London, at the bidding of painted hands, for a
considerable time, and occasionally magic trains without engines swept
across his vision. But he could not find even the spirit of Mrs. Alice
Challice in this nether world.
_The Nest_
On letter-paper headed "Grand Babylon Hotel, London," he was writing in
a disguised backward hand a note to the following effect: "Duncan Farll,
Esq. Sir,--If any letters or telegrams arrive for me at Selwood Terrace,
be good enough to have them forwarded to me at once to the above
address.--Yours truly, H. Leek." It cost him something to sign the name
of the dead man; but he instinctively guessed that Duncan Farll might be
a sieve which (owing to its legal-mindedness) would easily get clogged
up even by a slight suspicion. Hence, in order to be sure of receiving a
possible letter or telegram from Mrs. Challice, he must openly label
himself as Henry Leek. He had lost Mrs. Challice; there was no address
on her letter; he only knew that she lived at or near Putney, and the
sole hope of finding her again lay in the fact that she had the Selwood
Terrace address. He wanted to find her again; he desired that ardently,
if merely to explain to her that their separation was due to a sudden
caprice of his hat, and that he had searched for her everywhere in the
mine, anxiously, desperately. She would surely not imagine that he had
slipped away from her on purpose? No! And yet, if incapable of such an
enormity, why had she not waited for him on one of the platforms?
However, he hoped for the best. The best was a telegram; the second-best
a letter. On receipt of which he would fly to her to explain.... And
besides, he wanted to see her--simply. Her answer to his suggestion of a
music-hall, and the tone of it, had impressed him. And her remark, "I do
feel so sorry for you all these years," had--well, somewhat changed his
whole outlook on life. Yes, he wanted to see her in order to satisfy
himself that he had her respect. A woman impossible socially, a woman
with strange habits and tricks of manner (no doubt there were millions
such); but a woman whose respect one would not forfeit without a
struggle!
He had been pushed to an extremity, forced to act with swiftness, upon
losing her. And he had done the thing that comes most naturally to a
life-long traveller. He had driven to the best hotel in the town. (He
had seen in a flash that the idea of inhabiting any private hotel
whatever was a silly idea.) And now he was in a large bedroom
over-looking the Thames--a chamber with a writing-desk, a sofa, five
electric lights, two easy-chairs, a telephone, electric bells, and a
massive oak door with a lock and a key in the lock; in short, his
castle! An enterprise of some daring to storm the castle: but he had
stormed it. He had registered under the name of Leek, a name
sufficiently common not to excite remark, and the floor-valet had proved
to be an admirable young man. He trusted to the floor-valet and to the
telephone for avoiding any rough contact with the world. He felt
comparatively safe now; the entire enormous hotel was a nest for his
shyness, a conspiracy to keep him in cotton-wool. He was an autocratic
number, absolute ruler over Room 331, and with the right to command the
almost limitless resources of the Grand Babylon for his own private
ends.
As he sealed the envelope he touched a bell.
The valet entered.
"You've got the evening papers?" asked Priam Farll.
"Yes, sir." The valet put a pile of papers respectfully on the desk.
"All of them?"
"Yes, sir."
"Thanks. Well, it's not too late to have a messenger, is it?"
"Oh _no_, sir." ("'Too late' in the Grand Babylon, oh Czar!" said the
valet's shocked tone.)
"Then please get a messenger to take this letter, at once."
"In a cab, sir?"
"Yes, in a cab. I don't know whether there will be an answer. He will
see. Then let him call at the cloak-room at South Kensington Station and
get my luggage. Here's the ticket."
"Thank you, sir."
"I can rely on you to see that he goes at once?"
"You can, sir," said the valet, in such accents as carry absolute
conviction.
"Thank you. That will do, I think."
The man retired, and the door was closed by an expert in closing doors,
one who had devoted his life to the perfection of detail in valetry.
_Fame_
He lay on the sofa at the foot of the bed, with all illumination
extinguished save one crimson-shaded light immediately above him. The
evening papers--white, green, rose, cream, and yellow--shared his couch.
He was about to glance at the obituaries; to glance at them in a
careless, condescending way, just to see the _sort_ of thing that
journalists had written of him. He knew the value of obituaries; he had
often smiled at them. He knew also the exceeding fatuity of art
criticism, which did not cause him even to smile, being simply a bore.
He recollected, further, that he was not the first man to read his own
obituary; the adventure had happened to others; and he could recall how,
on his having heard that owing to an error it had happened to the great
so-and-so, he, in his quality of philosopher, had instantly decided what
frame of mind the great so-and-so ought to have assumed for the perusal
of his biography. He carefully and deliberately adopted that frame of
mind now. He thought of Marcus Aurelius on the futility of fame; he
remembered his life-long attitude of gentle, tired scorn for the press;
he reflected with wise modesty that in art nothing counts but the work
itself, and that no quantity of inept chatter could possibly affect, for
good or evil, his value, such as it might be, to the world.
Then he began to open the papers.
The first glimpse of their contents made him jump. In fact, the physical
result of it was quite extraordinary. His temperature increased. His
heart became audible. His pulse quickened. And there was a tingling as
far off as his toes. He had felt, in a dim, unacknowledged way, that he
must be a pretty great painter. Of course his prices were notorious. And
he had guessed, though vaguely, that he was the object of widespread
curiosity. But he had never compared himself with Titanic figures on the
planet. It had always seemed to him that _his_ renown was different from
other renowns, less--somehow unreal and make-believe. He had never
imaginatively grasped, despite prices and public inquisitiveness, that
he too was one of the Titanic figures. He grasped it now. The aspect of
the papers brought it home to him with tremendous force.
Special large type! Titles stretching across two columns! Black borders
round the pages! "Death of England's greatest painter." "Sudden death
of Priam Farll." "Sad death of a great genius." "Puzzling career
prematurely closed." "Europe in mourning." "Irreparable loss to the
world's art." "It is with the most profound regret." "Our readers will
be shocked." "The news will come as a personal blow to every lover of
great painting." So the papers went on, outvying each other in
enthusiastic grief.
He ceased to be careless and condescending to them. The skin crept along
his spine. There he lay, solitary, under the crimson glow, locked in his
castle, human, with the outward semblance of a man like other men, and
yet the cities of Europe were weeping for him. He heard them weeping.
Every lover of great painting was under a sense of personal bereavement.
The very voice of the world was hushed. After all, it was something to
have done your best; after all, good stuff _was_ appreciated by the mass
of the race. The phenomena presented by the evening papers was certainly
prodigious, and prodigiously affecting. Mankind was unpleasantly stunned
by the report of his decease. He forgot that Mrs. Challice, for
instance, had perfectly succeeded in hiding her grief for the
irreparable loss, and that her questions about Priam Farll had been
almost perfunctory. He forgot that he had witnessed absolutely no sign
of overwhelming sorrow, or of any degree of sorrow, in the thoroughfares
of the teeming capital, and that the hotels did not resound to sobbing.
He knew only that all Europe was in mourning!
"I suppose I was rather wonderful--_am_, I mean"--he said to himself,
dazed and happy. Yes, happy. "The fact is, I've got so used to my own
work that perhaps I don't think enough of it." He said this as modestly
as he could.
There was no question now of casually glancing at the obituaries. He
could not miss a single line, a single word. He even regretted that the
details of his life were so few and unimportant. It seemed to him that
it was the business of the journalists to have known more, to have
displayed more enterprise in acquiring information. Still, the tone was
right. The fellows meant well, at any rate. His eyes encountered nothing
but praise. Indeed the press of London had yielded itself up to an
encomiastic orgy. His modesty tried to say that this was slightly
overdone; but his impartiality asked, "Really, what _could_ they say
against me?" As a rule unmitigated praise was nauseous but here they
were undoubtedly genuine, the fellows; their sentences rang true!
Never in his life had he been so satisfied with the scheme of the
universe! He was nearly consoled for the dissolution of Leek.
When, after continued reading, he came across a phrase which discreetly
insinuated, apropos of the policeman and the penguins, that
capriciousness in the choice of subject was perhaps a pose with him, the
accusation hurt.
"Pose!" he inwardly exclaimed. "What a lie! The man's an ass!"
And he resented the following remark which concluded a 'special memoir'
extremely laudatory in matter and manner, by an expert whose books he
had always respected: "However, contemporary judgments are in the large
majority of cases notoriously wrong, and it behooves us to remember this
in choosing a niche for our idol. Time alone can settle the ultimate
position of Priam Farll."
Useless for his modesty to whisper to him that contemporary judgments
_were_ notoriously wrong. He did not like it. It disturbed him. There
were exceptions to every rule. And if the connoisseur meant anything at
all, he was simply stultifying the rest of the article. Time be d----d!
He had come nearly to the last line of the last obituary before he was
finally ruffled. Most of the sheets, in excusing the paucity of
biographical detail, had remarked that Priam Farll was utterly unknown
to London society, of a retiring disposition, hating publicity, a
recluse, etc. The word "recluse" grated on his sensitiveness a little;
but when the least important of the evening papers roundly asserted it
to be notorious that he was of extremely eccentric habits, he grew
secretly furious. Neither his modesty nor his philosophy was influential
enough to restore him to complete calm.
Eccentric! He! What next? Eccentric, indeed!
Now, what conceivable justification------?
_The Ruling Classes_
Between a quarter-past and half-past eleven he was seated alone at a
small table in the restaurant of the Grand Babylon. He had had no news
of Mrs. Challice; she had not instantly telegraphed to Selwood Terrace,
as he had wildly hoped. But in the boxes of Henry Leek, safely retrieved
by the messenger from South Kensington Station, he had discovered one of
his old dress-suits, not too old, and this dress-suit he had donned. The
desire to move about unknown in the well-clad world, the world of the
frequenters of costly hotels, the world to which he was accustomed, had
overtaken him. Moreover, he felt hungry. Hence he had descended to the
famous restaurant, whose wide windows were flung open to the illuminated
majesty of the Thames Embankment. The pale cream room was nearly full of
expensive women, and expending men, and silver-chained waiters whose
skilled, noiseless, inhuman attentions were remunerated at the rate of
about four-pence a minute. Music, the midnight food of love, floated
scarce heard through the tinted atmosphere. It was the best imitation of
Roman luxury that London could offer, and after Selwood Terrace and the
rackety palace of no gratuities, Priam Farll enjoyed it as one enjoys
home after strange climes.
Next to his table was an empty table, set for two, to which were
presently conducted, with due state, a young man, and a magnificent
woman whose youth was slipping off her polished shoulders like a cloak.
Priam Farll then overheard the following conversation:--
_Man_: Well, what are you going to have?
_Woman_: But look here, little Charlie, you can't possibly afford to pay
for this!
_Man_: Never said I could. It's the paper that pays. So go ahead.
_Woman_: Is Lord Nasing so keen as all that?
_Man_: It isn't Lord Nasing. It's our brand new editor specially
imported from Chicago.
_Woman_: Will he last?
_Man_: He'll last a hundred nights, say as long as the run of your
piece. Then he'll get six months' screw and the boot.
_Woman_: How much is six months' screw?
_Man_: Three thousand.
_Woman_: Well, I can hardly earn that myself.
_Man_: Neither can I. But then you see we weren't born in Chicago.
_Woman_: I've been offered a thousand dollars a week to go there,
anyhow.
_Man_: Why didn't you tell me that for the interview? I've spent two
entire entr'actes in trying to get something interesting out of you, and
there you go and keep a thing like that up your sleeve. It's not fair to
an old and faithful admirer. I shall stick it in. Poulet chasseur?
_Woman_: Oh no! Couldn't dream of it. Didn't you know I was dieting?
Nothing saucy. No sugar. No bread. No tea. Thanks to that I've lost
nearly a stone in six months. You know I _was_ getting enormous.
_Man_: Let me put _that_ in, eh?
_Woman_: Just try, and see what happens to you!
_Man_: Well, shall we say a lettuce salad, and a Perrier and soda? I'm
dieting, too.
_Waiter_: Lettuce salad, and a Perrier and soda? Yes, sir.
_Woman_: You aren't very gay.
_Man_: Gay! You don't know all the yearnings of my soul. Don't imagine
that because I'm a special of the _Record_ I haven't got a soul.
_Woman_: I suppose you've been reading that book, Omar Khayyam, that
every one's talking about. Isn't that what it's called?
_Man_: Has Omar Khayyam reached the theatrical world? Well, there's no
doubt the earth does move, after all.
_Woman_: A little more soda, please. And just a trifle less impudence.
What book ought one to be reading, then?
_Man_: Socialism's the thing just now. Read Wells on Socialism. It'll be
all over the theatrical world in a few years' time.
_Woman_: No fear! I can't bear Wells. He's always stirring up the dregs.
I don't mind froth, but I do draw the line at dregs. What's the band
playing? What have you been doing to-day? _Is_ this lettuce? No, no! No
bread. Didn't you hear me tell you?
_Man_: I've been busy with the Priam Farll affair.
_Woman_: Priam Farll?
_Man_: Yes. Painter. _You_ know.
_Woman_: Oh yes. _Him_! I saw it on the posters. He's dead, it seems.
Anything mysterious?
_Man_: You bet! Very odd! Frightfully rich, you know! Yet he died in a
wretched hovel of a place down off the Fulham Road. And his valet's
disappeared. We had the first news of the death, through our arrangement
with all the registrars' clerks in London. By the bye, don't give that
away--it's our speciality. Nasing sent me off at once to write up the
story.
_Woman_: Story?
_Man_: The particulars. We always call it a story in Fleet Street.
_Woman_: What a good name! Well, did you find out anything interesting?
_Man_: Not very much. I saw his cousin, Duncan Farll, a money-lending
lawyer in Clement's Lane--he only heard of it because we telephoned to
him. But the fellow would scarcely tell me anything at all.
_Woman_: Really! I do hope there's something terrible.
_Man_: Why?
_Woman_: So that I can go to the inquest or the police court or whatever
it is. That's why I always keep friendly with magistrates. It's so
frightfully thrilling, sitting on the bench with them.
_Man_: There won't be any inquest. But there's something queer in it.
You see, Priam Farll was never in England. Always abroad; at those
foreign hotels, wandering up and down.
_Woman (after a pause)_: I know.
_Man_: What do you know?
_Woman_: Will you promise not to chatter?
_Man_: Yes.
_Woman_: I met him once at an hotel at Ostend. He--well, he wanted most
tremendously to paint my portrait. But I wouldn't let him.
_Man_: Why not?
_Woman_: If you knew what sort of man he was you wouldn't ask.
_Man_: Oh! But look here, I say! You must let me use that in my story.
Tell me all about it.
_Woman_: Not for worlds.
_Man_: He--he made up to you?
_Woman_: Rather!
_Priam Farll (to himself)_: What a barefaced lie! Never was at Ostend in
my life.
_Man_: Can't I use it if I don't print your name--just say a
distinguished actress.
_Woman_: Oh yes, you can do _that_. You might say, of the musical comedy
stage.
_Man_: I will. I'll run something together. Trust me. Thanks awfully.
At this point a young and emaciated priest passed up the room.
_Woman_: Oh! Father Luke, is that you? Do come and sit here and be nice.
This is Father Luke Widgery--Mr. Docksey, of the _Record_.
_Man_: Delighted.
_Priest_: Delighted.
_Woman_: Now, Father Luke, I've just _got_ to come to your sermon
to-morrow. What's it about?
_Priest_: Modern vice.
_Woman_: How charming! I read the last one--it was lovely.
_Priest_: Unless you have a ticket you'll never be able to get in.
_Woman_: But I must get in. I'll come to the vestry door, if there is a
vestry door at St. Bede's.
_Priest_: It's impossible. You've no idea of the crush. And I've no
favourites.
_Woman_: Oh yes, you have! You have me.
_Priest_: In my church, fashionable women must take their chance with
the rest.
_Woman_: How horrid you are.
_Priest_: Perhaps. I may tell you, Miss Cohenson, that I've seen two
duchesses standing at the back of the aisle of St. Bede's, and glad to
be.
_Woman_: But _I_ shan't flatter you by standing at the back of your
aisle, and you needn't think it. Haven't I given you a box before now?
_Priest_: I only accepted the box as a matter of duty; it is part of my
duty to go everywhere.
_Man_: Come with me, Miss Cohenson. I've got two tickets for the
_Record_.
_Woman_: Oh, so you do send seats to the press?
_Priest_: The press is different. Waiter, bring me half a bottle of
Heidsieck.
_Waiter_: Half a bottle of Heidsieck? Yes, sir.
_Woman_: Heidsieck. Well, I like that. _We're_ dieting.
_Priest: I_ don't like Heidsieck. But I'm dieting too. It's my doctor's
orders. Every night before retiring. It appears that my system needs it.
Maria Lady Rowndell insists on giving me a hundred a year to pay for it.
It is her own beautiful way of helping the good cause. Ice, please,
waiter. I've just been seeing her to-night. She's staying here for the
season. Saves her a lot of trouble. She's very much cut up about the
death of Priam Farll, poor thing! So artistic, you know! The late Lord
Rowndell had what is supposed to be the finest lot of Farlls in England.
_Man_: Did you ever meet Priam Farll, Father Luke?
_Priest_: Never. I understand he was most eccentric. I hate
eccentricity. I once wrote to him to ask him if he would paint a Holy
Family for St. Bede's.
_Man_: And what did he reply?
_Priest_: He didn't reply. Considering that he wasn't even an R.A., I
don't think that it was quite nice of him. However, Maria Lady Rowndell
insists that he must be buried in Westminster Abbey. She asked me what I
could do.
_Woman_: Buried in Westminster Abbey! I'd no idea he was so big as all
that! Gracious!
_Priest_: I have the greatest confidence in Maria Lady Rowndell's taste,
and certainly I bear no grudge. I may be able to arrange something. My
uncle the Dean----
_Man_: Pardon me. I always understood that since you left the Church----
_Priest_: Since I joined the Church, you mean. There is but one.
_Man_: Church of England, I meant.
_Priest_: Ah!
_Man_: Since you left the Church of England, there had been a breach
between the Dean and yourself.
_Priest_: Merely religious. Besides my sister is the Dean's favourite
niece. And I am her favourite brother. My sister takes much interest in
art. She has just painted a really exquisite tea-cosy for me. Of course
the Dean ultimately settles these questions of national funerals,
Hence...
At this point the invisible orchestra began to play "God save the King."
_Woman_: Oh! What a bore!
Then nearly all the lights were extinguished.
_Waiter_: Please, gentlemen! Gentlemen, please!
_Priest_: You quite understand, Mr. Docksey, that I merely gave these
family details in order to substantiate my statement that I may be able
to arrange something. By the way, if you would care to have a typescript
of my sermon to-morrow for the _Record_, you can have one by applying at
the vestry.
_Waiter_: Please, gentlemen!
_Man_: So good of you. As regards the burial in Westminster Abbey, I
think that the _Record_ will support the project. I say I _think_.
_Priest_: Maria Lady Rowndell will be grateful.
Five-sixths of the remaining lights went out, and the entire company
followed them. In the foyer there was a prodigious crush of opera
cloaks, silk hats, and cigars, all jostling together. News arrived from
the Strand that the weather had turned to rain, and all the intellect of
the Grand Babylon was centred upon the British climate, exactly as if
the British climate had been the latest discovery of science. As the
doors swung to and fro, the stridency of whistles, the throbbing of
motor-cars, and the hoarse cries of inhabitants of box seats mingled
strangely with the delicate babble of the interior. Then, lo! as by
magic, the foyer was empty save for the denizens of the hotel who could
produce evidence of identity. It had been proved to demonstration, for
the sixth time that week, that in the metropolis of the greatest of
Empires there is not one law for the rich and another for the poor.
Deeply affected by what he had overheard, Priam Farll rose in a lift and
sought his bed. He perceived clearly that he had been among the
governing classes of the realm.
* * * * *