uly high. By trade, the owner was a butcher in Maida
Vale, though his friends in Tooting did not know that; moreover,
besides being a councillor, he was a German by extraction; consequently,
with these two qualifications, it was quite natural that he should own
flats of that kind. In Capetown, where men are crude or brutal in their
ways, a judge and jury between them would probably have assessed his
merits at fifty lashes and two years' hard labour; in London, on the
other hand, not only was his person sacred and his property safe from
police raids, but he also had reasonable grounds for expecting to be
mayor in due course--which often meant a knighthood--whilst even the
greatest prize of all, the chairmanship of the new Electricity
Committee, a body having the giving of six-figure contracts, was not
beyond his grasp. He was quite a personage in the municipal life of West
London, as well as in the social life of Tooting, and, being a married
man with a family, he treated his tenants with righteous severity,
distraining on the slightest excuse when he suspected they possessed
anything of value, knowing well that his victims would not dare seek
redress in the Courts.

It was four o'clock exactly when Jimmy knocked at the door of the flat,
which was opened by Lalage herself. "I've no servant," she explained,
"only a woman who comes in once or twice a week." Then she led the way
into the tiny slip of a sitting-room, where she had tea laid out. "I'm
glad you've come," she added, "I was half afraid you wouldn't."

"Why?" he asked with a smile.

She looked at him seriously, her head a little on one side, as though
she were trying to read his character. "You seemed shy, different from
most men. Are you an Englishman?"

He nodded, and gave her a brief sketch of who he was. She listened with
evident interest. "It must be splendid to travel and see things. I have
always longed to, at least I did once, but now----" She broke off with a
hopeless little sigh, and got up abruptly. "I'll fetch the tea now."

The tea things, like everything else in the place, were of the simplest,
cheapest kind, yet as tasteful as was possible considering their price;
but, on the other hand, the tea itself was good, and there was a plate
of daintily-cut bread and butter and another of sandwiches.

"I was so glad of that tea yesterday." Lalage looked up suddenly. "I
hadn't had anything since some bread and milk at breakfast time, and
that horrible