take it, sir, until I have earned it.'

'Now,' said Darco, 'who do you subbose you are? If you want to stob
here, you will do as you are dold to do. I am Cheorge Dargo. I do not
sbeak to beobles dwice.'

'Oh, very well, sir,' said Paul, and went on writing from dictation.

'Now,'said Darco, 'you haf got all the attresses at the foot of the
ledders. Attress an envelope for each ledder, and leave them all oben
for my signature. I am going to zleep for half an hour.'

He plunged into an armchair, closed his eyes, and in a minute he was
snoring regularly and deeply. Paul performed his task, and sat idle for
a time. At the end of the stipulated half-hour Darco ceased to snore,
opened his eyes, yawned and stretched as if he longed to fall in pieces,
and instantly fell to work again. He made Paul read aloud the whole
afternoon's correspondence, signed each sheet in a hand of clerk-like
precision, but with a great deal more than clerk-like character in it,
saw all the letters and envelopes stamped, rang the bell, and sent his
correspondence to the post.

'Ant now,' he said, 'I haf got to pekin my day's work.' Paul stared a
little, but made no answer. 'You had petter gome with me,' said Darco.
'It will help you to learn your business.'

Paul assisted his employer into the big fur coat, assumed his own and
the shabby cap Pauer had given him, and went out at Darco's heels. A
closed brougham waited in the street. They entered and were driven away.

It was nearing six o'clock by this time, and as they were driven
downhill they came into a stratum of cold yellow fog, through which the
gas-lamps stared with a bleared and drunken look. The vehicle rumbled
along for some three-quarters of an hour, and pulled up in a shabby
side-way strewn with cabbage-leaves and all manner of decaying vegetable
offal Darco rolled out of the brougham, and plunged with a waddling
swiftness into a narrow, ill-lit passage which smelt of escaping gas.
Paul followed, and in half a minute found himself for the first time
within the walls of a theatre and on the stage. The darkened auditorium
loomed beyond the solitary T-bracket like a great sepulchre. A hundred
people, more or less, were gathered on the stage.

'Act dwo!' roared Darco at the moment of his entrance. 'Glear for Act
dwo.' People began to dribble into the outlying darkness. 'Do you hear?'
he stormed, clapping his hands together. 'Glear for Act dwo. Look here,
ladies and chentlemen, I am C