e understood that Randall meant to keep himself to
himself. Or was it, Mercier wondered, his young wife that he meant to
keep?

And wondering, he smiled more atrociously than ever. It pleased him, it
excited him to think that young Randall regarded him as dangerous.

But Randall did not regard him as dangerous in the least. To Ranny,
Jujubes, in his increasing flabbiness, was too disgusting to be
dangerous. And his conversation, his silly goat's talk, was disgusting,
too. Ranny had thought that Violet would find Jujubes and his
conversation every bit as disagreeable as he did.

Even now, while some instinct warned him of impending crisis, he still
regarded Leonard Mercier as decidedly less dangerous than disgusting.
He wasn't going to have the flabby fellow living in his house. That was
all; and it was enough.

And in this moment that his instinct recognized as critical, he acquired
a wisdom and a guile that ages of experience might have failed to teach
him. With no perceptible pause, and in a voice utterly devoid of any
treacherous emotion, he inquired what Mercier was doing there, and
learned that Mercier was leaving Wandsworth next week, on the
thirteenth, and would be established as chief assistant in the new
chemist's shop in Acacia Avenue.

He remembered. He remembered how last year he had seen Jujubes coming
out of the chemist's shop and looking about him. So _that_ was what he
was after! There had been no chance for him last year; but Southfields
was a rising suburb, and this summer the new chemist was able to
increase his staff.

It was not surprising that Mercier should want to leave Wandsworth, nor
that the new chemist should desire to increase his staff, nor that these
two desires should coincide in time. Nothing, indeed, could be more
natural. But still Ranny's instinct told him that there had been a
curious persistency about old Eno.

Well, he would have to interview old Eno, that was all.

He waited a whole hour, to show that he was not excited; and then,
without saying a word to Violet, he whirled himself furiously down to
Wandsworth.

The interview took place very quietly over his father's counter. He
found his quarry alone there in the shop.

Leonard Mercier greeted him with immense urbanity. He could afford to be
urbane. He was dressed, and knew that he was dressed, with absolute
correctness in the prevailing style, a style that disguised and
restrained his increasing flabbiness, whereas,