ed the
table, the mantelpiece, and the small bookcase, and the fire was laid
in the grate, while a bright copper kettle stood on a movable hob. Mr.
Van Torp struck a match and lighted the kindling before he took off
his overcoat, and in a few minutes a cheerful blaze dispelled the
gathering gloom. He went to a small old-fashioned cupboard in a corner
and brought from it a chipped cup and saucer, a brown teapot, and a
cheap japanned tea-caddy, all of which he set on the table; and as
soon as the fire burned brightly, he pushed the movable hob round with
his foot till the kettle was over the flame of the coals. Then he took
off his overcoat and sat down in the shabby easy-chair by the hearth,
to wait till the water boiled.

His proceedings, his manner, and his expression would have surprised
the people who had been his fellow-passengers on the _Leofric_, and
who imagined Mr. Van Torp driving to an Olympian mansion, somewhere
between Constitution Hill and Sloane Square, to be received at his own
door by gravely obsequious footmen in plush, and to drink Imperial
Chinese tea from cups of Old Saxe, or Bleu du Roi, or Capo di Monte.

Paul Griggs, having tea and a pipe in a quiet little hotel in Clarges
Street, would have been much surprised if he could have seen Rufus Van
Torp lighting a fire for himself in that dingy room in Hare Court.
Madame Margarita da Cordova, waiting for an expected visitor in her
own sitting-room, in her own pretty house in Norfolk Crescent, would
have been very much surprised indeed. The sight would have plunged her
into even greater uncertainty as to the man's real character, and it
is not unlikely that she would have taken his mysterious retreat to be
another link in the chain of evidence against him which already seemed
so convincing. She might naturally have wondered, too, what he had
felt when he had seen that board beside the door, and she could hardly
have believed that he had gone in without so much as glancing at the
yellowish letters that formed the name of Bamberger.

But he seemed quite at home where he was, and not at all uncomfortable
as he sat before the fire, watching the spout of the kettle, his
elbows on the arms of the easy-chair and his hands raised before him,
with the finger-tips pressed against each other, in the attitude
which, with most men, means that they are considering the two sides of
a question that is interesting without being very important.

Perhaps a thoughtful o