'You aren't losing much time. By the way, as you're going to New
York you might as well use my flat.'

'It's awfully good of you.'

'Not a bit. You would be doing me a favour. I had to leave at a
moment's notice, and I want to know what's been happening to the
place. I left some Japanese prints there, and my favourite
nightmare is that someone has broken in and sneaked them. Write
down the address--Forty-blank East Twenty-seventh Street. I'll
send you the key to Brown's to-night with those letters.'

Bill walked up the Strand, glowing with energy. He made his way to
Cockspur Street to buy his ticket for New York. This done, he set
out to Brown's to arrange with the committee the details of his
departure.

He reached Brown's at twenty minutes past two and left it again at
twenty-three minutes past; for, directly he entered, the hall
porter had handed him a telephone message. The telephone
attendants at London clubs are masters of suggestive brevity. The
one in the basement of Brown's had written on Bill's slip of paper
the words: '1 p.m. Will Lord Dawlish as soon as possible call upon
Mr Gerald Nichols at his office?' To this was appended a message
consisting of two words: 'Good news.'

It was stimulating. The probability was that all Jerry Nichols
wanted to tell him was that he had received stable information
about some horse or had been given a box for the Empire, but for