A grubby man appeared.
I inquired for Quast.

Quast had left that morning in a van, taking his cages of cats with him.
He had gone abroad and was never coming back again, not if he knew
it, said the grubby man. The cats were poison and Quast was a low-down
foreigner, and it would cost him a year's rent to put the place in order
again. Whereupon he slammed the door in my face and left me disconsolate
on the doorstep.

The only other person with whom I knew Lola to be on friendly terms was
Sir Joshua Oldfield. I entered the first public telephone office I
came to and rang him up. He had not seen Lola for a week, and had heard
nothing from her relating to her sudden departure. I went sadly home
to my bird-cage in Victoria Street, feeling that now at last the
abomination of desolation had overspread my life.

Why had she gone? What was the meaning of it? Why not a line of
explanation? And the simultaneous disappearance of Quast and the
cats--what did that betoken? Had she been summoned, for any reason, to
the Maison de Sante, where Anastasius Papadopoulos was incarcerated? If
so, why this secrecy? Why should Lola of all people side with Destiny
and make a greater Tom Fool of me than ever? This could be no other than
the final jest.

I do not care to remember what I did and said in the privacy of my
little room. There are things a man locks away even from himself.

I was in the midst of my misery when the bell of my tiny flat rang. I
opened the door and found my sister Agatha smiling on the threshold.

"Hallo!" said I, gazing at her stupidly.

"You're not effusive in your welcome, my dear Simon," she remarked.
"Won't you ask me to come in?"

"By all means," said I. "Come in!"

She entered and looked round my little sitting-room. "What a pill-box in
the sky! I had no idea it was as tiny as this. I think I shall call you
Saint Simon Stylites."

I was in no mood for Agatha. I bowed ironically and inquired to what I
owed the honour of the visit.

"I want you to do me a favour--a great favour. I'm dying to see the new
dances at the Palace Theatre. They say they dance on everything except
their feet. I've got a box. Tom promised to take me. Now he finds he
can't. I've telephoned all over the place for something uncompromising
in or out of trousers to accompany me and I can't get hold of anybody.
So I've come to you."

"I'm vastly flattered!" said I.

She dismissed my sarcasm with bird-like impatience.

"Don't be