im was that he could not, even in secret,
consult his own doctor. How could he go to old Plott and say: "Plott,
old man, I've been ill and my wife insisted upon having another doctor,
but I've come to ask you to tell me whether or not the other doctor's
right?" The thing was impossible. Yet he badly wanted to verify Veiga by
Plott. He still mistrusted Veiga, though his mistrust lessened daily,
despite his wish to see it increase.

Mrs. Prohack had benevolently suggested that he should run down to his
club, but on no account for a meal--merely "for a change." He had
declined, without giving the reason, and she had admitted that perhaps
he was right.

He attributed all the worries to his wife.

"I pay a fine price for that woman," he thought as he left the house, "a
rare fine price!" But as for her price, he never haggled over it. She,
just as she existed in her awful imperfection, was his first necessary
of life. She had gone out after dinner to see an acquaintance about a
house-maid (for already she was reorganising the household on a more
specious scale); she was a mile off at least; but she would have
disapproved of him breaking loose into his clubs at night, and so the
Terror of the departments stole forth, instead of walking forth,
intimidated by that moral influence which she left behind her.
Undoubtedly since the revolt of the duodenum her grip of him had
sensibly tightened.

Not that Mr. Prohack was really going to a club. He had deceitfully told
himself that he _might_ stroll down to his principal club, for the sake
of exercise (his close friends among the members were lunchers not
diners), but the central self within himself was aware that no club
would see him that evening.

A taxi approached in the darkness; he knew by its pace that it was
empty. He told the driver to drive to Putney. In the old days of eleven
days ago he would not have dared to tell a taxi-driver to drive to
Putney, for the fare would have unbalanced his dizzy private weekly
budget; and even now he felt he was going the deuce of a pace. Even now
he would prudently not have taken a taxi had not part of the American
hundred thousand pounds already materialised. Mr. Softly Bishop had been
to see him on the previous day, and in addition to being mysteriously
sympathetic about his co-heir's ill-health had produced seven thousand
pounds of the hundred thousand. A New York representative had cabled
fourteen thousand, not because Mr. Prohack w