"Send her up immediately."

"Certainly, sir."

Miss Warburton was the fourth angel--an angel with another
spick-and-span blouse, and the light of devotion in her eyes and the
sound of it in her purling voice.

"Good morning," the gruff brute started. "Did I hear the telephone-bell
just now?"

"Yes, sir. Doy and Doy have telephoned to say that Mr. Charles Prohack
has just been in to see them, and they've referred him to you,
and--and--"

"And what? And what? And what?" (A machine-gun.)

"They said he was extremely unpleasant."

Instinctively Mr. Prohack threw away shame. Mimi was his minion. He
treated her as an Oriental tyrant might treat the mute guardian of the
seraglio, and told her everything,--that Charlie had forestalled them in
the matter of the drains of the noble mansion, that Charlie had
determined to destroy Doy and Doy, that he, Mr. Prohack, was caught in a
trap, that there was the devil to pay, and that the finest lies that
ingenuity could invent would have to be uttered. He abandoned all
pretence of honesty and uprightness. Mimi showed no surprise whatever,
nor was she apparently in the least shocked. She seemed to regard the
affair as a quite ordinary part of the day's routine. Her insensitive