"I guess he's at the door, counting the money," said the policeman.

"Well, he'll have to give it back if he don't look out!"

"Maybe he will. I'll let _him_ in if he comes, but he's the only one.
She is on now," the policeman added, without emotion.

His ear had caught the first faint murmur of another explosion of sound.
This time, unmistakably, it was applause--the clapping of multitudinous
hands, mingled with the noise of many throats. The demonstration,
however, though considerable, was not what might have been expected, and
it died away quickly. Mr. Pardon stood listening, with an expression of
some alarm. "Merciful fathers! can't they give her more than that?" he
cried. "I'll just fly round and see!"

When he had hurried away again, Ransom said to the policeman--"Who is
Mr. Filer?"

"Oh, he's an old friend of mine. He's the man that runs Miss
Chancellor."

"That runs her?"

"Just the same as she runs Miss Tarrant. He runs the pair, as you might
say. He's in the lecture-business."

"Then he had better talk to the public himself."

"Oh, _he_ can't talk; he can only boss!"

The opposite door at this moment was pushed open again, and a large,
heated-looking man, with a little stiff beard on the end of his chin and
his overcoat flying behind him, strode forward with an imprecation.
"What the h---- are they doing in the parlour? This sort of thing's
about played out!"

"Ain't she up there now?" the policeman asked.

"It's not Miss Tarrant," Ransom said, as if he knew all about it. He
perceived in a moment that this was Mr. Filer, Olive Chancellor's agent;
an inference instantly followed by the reflexion that such a personage
would have been warned against him by his kinswoman and would doubtless
attempt to hold him, or his influence, accountable for Verena's
unexpected delay. Mr. Filer only glanced at him, however, and to
Ransom's surprise appeared to have no theory of his identity; a fact
implying that Miss Chancellor had considered that the greater discretion
was (except to the policeman) to hold her tongue about him altogether.

"Up there? It's her jackass of a father that's up there!" cried Mr.
Filer, with his hand on the latch of the door, which the policeman had
allowed him to approach.

"Is he asking for a doctor?" the latter inquired dispassionately.

"You're the sort of doctor he'll want, if he doesn't produce the girl!
You don't mean to say they've locked themselves in? What the plague are