t-axe. It was only
after he had read this through twice in a spirit of gentle approval that
it occurred to him that J. B. Wheeler was uncommonly late at the
tryst. He looked at his watch, and found that he had been in the studio
three-quarters of an hour.

Archie became restless. Long-suffering old bean though he was, he
considered this a bit thick. He got up and went out on to the landing,
to see if there were any signs of the blighter. There were none. He
began to understand now what had happened. For some reason or other the
bally artist was not coming to the studio at all that day. Probably he
had called up the hotel and left a message to this effect, and Archie
had just missed it. Another man might have waited to make certain that
his message had reached its destination, but not woollen-headed Wheeler,
the most casual individual in New York.

Thoroughly aggrieved, Archie turned back to the studio to dress and go
away.

His progress was stayed by a solid, forbidding slab of oak. Somehow or
other, since he had left the room, the door had managed to get itself
shut.

"Oh, dash it!" said Archie.

The mildness of the expletive was proof that the full horror of the
situation had not immediately come home to him. His mind in the first
few moments was occupied with the problem of how the door had got
that way. He could not remember shutting it. Probably he had done it
unconsciously. As a child, he had been taught by sedulous elders that
the little gentleman always closed doors behind him, and presumably his
subconscious self was still under the influence. And then, suddenly, he
realised that this infernal, officious ass of a subconscious self had
deposited him right in the gumbo. Behind that closed door, unattainable
as youthful ambition, lay his gent's heather-mixture with the green
twill, and here he was, out in the world, alone, in a lemon-coloured
bathing suit.

In all crises of human affairs there are two broad courses open to a
man. He can stay where he is or he can go elsewhere. Archie, leaning on
the banisters, examined these alternatives narrowly. If he stayed where
he was he would have to spend the night on this dashed landing. If he
legged it, in this kit, he would be gathered up by the constabulary
before he had gone a hundred yards. He was no pessimist, but he was
reluctantly forced to the conclusion that he was up against it.

It was while he was musing with a certain tenseness on these things that