He was in the middle of a somewhat jumbled consideration about "Knowledge
of Hebrew--tenor voice--courage and imagination--unworldly," and so
forth, when a knock at the door announced Mrs. Mawle who came to inform
him that dinner was ready. She stood there, a motherly and pleasant
figure in black, and she addressed him in the third person. "If Mr.
Spinrobin will please to come down," she said, "Mr. Skale is waiting. Mr.
Skale is always _quite_ punctual." She always spoke thus, in the third
person; she never used the personal pronoun if it could be avoided. She
preferred the name direct, it seemed. And as Spinrobin passed her on the
way out, she observed further, looking straight into his eyes as she said
it: "and should Mr. Spinrobin have need of anything, _that_," indicating
it, "is the bell that rings in the housekeeper's room. Mrs. Mawle can see
it wag, though she can't hear it. Day or night," she added with a faint
curtsey, "and no trouble at all, just as with the other gentlemen--"

So there had been other gentlemen, other secretaries! He thanked her with
a nod and a smile, and hurried pattering downstairs in a neat blue suit,
black silk socks and a pair of bright new pumps, Mr. Skale having told
him not to dress. The phrase "day or night," meanwhile, struck him as
significant and peculiar. He remembered it later. At the moment he merely
noted that it added one more to the puzzling items that caused his
bewilderment.


V

Before he had gone very far, however, there came another--crowningly
perplexing. For he was halfway down the darkened passage, making for the
hall that glimmered beyond like the mouth of a cave, when, without the
smallest warning, he became suddenly conscious that something attractive