gave a whispering cry, rather conspiratorial in tone. And as
Jock offered no response, he hurried after Jock through the door to the
right. This door led to a large apartment which struck Denry as being an
idealisation of a first-class waiting-room at a highly important
terminal station. In a wall to the left was a small door, half open.
Jock must have gone through that door. Denry hesitated--he had not
properly been invited into the Hall. But in hesitating he was wrong; he
ought to have followed his prey without qualms. When he had conquered
qualms and reached the further door, his eyes were met, to their
amazement, by an immense perspective of great chambers. Denry had once
seen a Pullman car, which had halted at Knype Station with a French
actress on board. What he saw now presented itself to him as a train of
Pullman cars, one opening into the other, constructed for giants. Each
car was about as large as the large hall in Bursley Town Hall, and, like
that auditorium, had a ceiling painted to represent blue sky, milk-white
clouds, and birds. But in the corners were groups of naked Cupids,
swimming joyously on the ceiling; in Bursley Town Hall there were no
naked Cupids. He understood now that he had been quite wrong in his
estimate of the room by which he had come into this Versailles. Instead
of being large it was tiny, and instead of being luxurious it was merely
furnished with miscellaneous odds and ends left over from far more
important furnishings. It was indeed naught but a nondescript box of a
hole insignificantly wedged between the state apartments and the outer
lobby.

For an instant he forgot that he was in pursuit of Jock. Jock was
perfectly invisible and inaudible. He must, however, have gone down the
vista of the great chambers, and therefore Denry went down the vista of
the great chambers after him, curiously expecting to have a glimpse of
his long salmon-tinted coat or his cockaded hat popping up out of some
corner. He reached the other end of the vista, having traversed three
enormous chambers, of which the middle one was the most enormous and the
most gorgeous. There were high windows everywhere to his right, and to
his left, in every chamber, double doors with gilt handles of a peculiar
shape. Windows and doors, with equal splendour, were draped in hangings
of brocade. Through the windows he had glimpses of the gardens in their
autumnal colours, but no glimpse of a gardener. Then a carriage flew
pa