body would want to intrude. My humanity was pleased to discover
he had so much kick left in him, but I was not comforted in the least. It
occurred to me that if Mr. Powell had the same sort of temper . . .
However, I didn't give myself time to think and scuttled across the space
at the foot of the stairs into the passage where I'd been told to try.
And I tried the first door I came to, right away, without any hanging
back, because coming loudly from the hall above an amazed and scandalized
voice wanted to know what sort of game I was up to down there. "Don't
you know there's no admittance that way?" it roared. But if there was
anything more I shut it out of my hearing by means of a door marked
_Private_ on the outside. It let me into a six-feet wide strip between a
long counter and the wall, taken off a spacious, vaulted room with a
grated window and a glazed door giving daylight to the further end. The
first thing I saw right in front of me were three middle-aged men having
a sort of romp together round about another fellow with a thin, long neck
and sloping shoulders who stood up at a desk writing on a large sheet of
paper and taking no notice except that he grinned quietly to himself.
They turned very sour at once when they saw me. I heard one of them
mutter 'Hullo! What have we here?'

"'I want to see Mr. Powell, please,' I said, very civil but firm; I would
let nothing scare me away now. This was the Shipping Office right
enough. It was after 3 o'clock and the business seemed over for the day
with them. The long-necked fellow went on with his writing steadily. I
observed that he was no longer grinning. The three others tossed their
heads all together towards the far end of the room where a fifth man had
been looking on at their antics from a high stool. I walked up to him as
boldly as if he had been the devil himself. With one foot raised up and
resting on the cross-bar of his seat he never stopped swinging the other
which was well clear of the stone floor. He had unbuttoned the top of
his waistcoat and he wore his tall hat very far at the back of his head.
He had a full unwrinkled face and such clear-shining eyes that his grey
beard looked quite false on him, stuck on for a disguise. You said just
now he resembled Socrates--didn't you? I don't know about that. This
Socrates was a wise man, I believe?"

"He was," assented Marlow. "And a true friend of youth. He lectured
them in a peculiarly exa