enly against the
glare of intermittent gaslight and then swallowed again in night. The
intervals between the lights were long, and a fog was thickening the
whole city. Our pace, therefore, had become swift and mechanical between
the lamp-posts; but Basil came to a standstill suddenly like a reined
horse; I stopped also. We had almost run into the man. A great part of
the solid darkness in front of us was the darkness of his body.

At first I thought he had turned to face us. But though we were hardly a
yard off he did not realize that we were there. He tapped four times on
a very low and dirty door in the dark, crabbed street. A gleam of gas
cut the darkness as it opened slowly. We listened intently, but the
interview was short and simple and inexplicable as an interview could
be. Our exquisite friend handed in what looked like a paper or a card
and said:

"At once. Take a cab."

A heavy, deep voice from inside said:

"Right you are."

And with a click we were in the blackness again, and striding after the
striding stranger through a labyrinth of London lanes, the lights just
helping us. It was only five o'clock, but winter and the fog had made it
like midnight.

"This is really an extraordinary walk for the patent-leather boots," I
repeated.

"I don't know," said Basil humbly. "It leads to Berkeley Square."

As I tramped on I strained my eyes through the dusky atmosphere and
tried to make out the direction described. For some ten minutes I
wondered and doubted; at the end of that I saw that my friend was right.
We were coming to the great dreary spaces of fashionable London--more
dreary, one must admit, even than the dreary plebeian spaces.

"This is very extraordinary!" said Basil Grant, as we turned into
Berkeley Square.

"What is extraordinary?" I asked. "I thought you said it was quite
natural."

"I do not wonder," answered Basil, "at his walking through nasty
streets; I do not wonder at his going to Berkeley Square. But I do
wonder at his going to the house of a very good man."

"What very good man?" I asked with exasperation.

"The operation of time is a singular one," he said with his
imperturbable irrelevancy. "It is not a true statement of the case to
say that I have forgotten my career when I was a judge and a public man.
I remember it all vividly, but it is like remembering some novel. But
fifteen years ago I knew this square as well as Lord Rosebery does, and
a confounded long sight better