e of the very important business in London.

For a moment, left alone, he was at a loss. Then, snorting, he went to
the table and extinguished the lamp. He was now in darkness. The light
in the hall showed him the position of the door.

He snorted again. "Oh, very well then!" he muttered. "If that's it!...
I'm hanged if I don't go to London!... I'm hanged if I don't go to
London!"

CHAPTER III

WILKINS'S

I

The early adventures of Alderman Machin of Bursley at Wilkins's Hotel,
London, were so singular, and to him so refreshing, that they must be
recounted in some detail.

He went to London by the morning express from Knype, on the Monday
week after his visit to the music-hall. In the meantime he had had
some correspondence with Mr. Bryany, more poetic than precise, about
the option, and had informed Mr. Bryany that he would arrive in
London several days before the option expired. But he had not given
a definite date. The whole affair, indeed, was amusingly vague; and,
despite his assurances to his wife that the matter was momentous,
he did not regard his trip to London as a business trip at all, but
rather as a simple freakish change of air. The one certain item in the
whole situation was that he had in his pocket a quite considerable sum
of actual money, destined--he hoped, but was not sure--to take up the
option at the proper hour.

Nellie, impeccable to the last, accompanied him in the motor to Knype,
the main-line station. The drive, superficially pleasant, was in
reality very disconcerting to him. For nine days the household had
talked in apparent cheerfulness of father's visit to London, as
though it were an occasion for joy on father's behalf, tempered by
affectionate sorrow for his absence. The official theory was that all
was for the best in the best of all possible homes, and this theory
was admirably maintained. And yet everybody knew--even to Maisie--that
it was not so; everybody knew that the master and the mistress of
the home, calm and sweet as was their demeanour, were contending in
a terrific silent and mysterious altercation, which in some way was
connected with the visit to London.

So far as Edward Henry was concerned he had been hoping for some
decisive event--a tone, gesture, glance, pressure--during the drive to
Knype, which offered the last chance of a real concord. No such event
occurred. They conversed with the same false cordiality as had marked
their relations since