Page:Edgar Jepson--the four philanthropists.djvu/82

76 you amuse yourself with a book while I go and arrange about them?"

She cast an eager eye on my book-shelves, and said, "I should like to."

I went round to the chambers in which I practise, and which I share with Harris, a barrister of the same standing as myself, and I instructed Wicks, our clerk, a youth of an astonishing savoir faire, to take a cab to the Harleyford Road, tell the landlady to send in a bill for her rent to Morton and bring back the trunks. I gave him leave to bully the landlady into hysterics, for I could not see that she deserved any consideration after her inhumanity to Angel, and I was sure that Wicks would see to it that she repented from the bottom of her heart. I saw him depart on his mission, simmering with joyful anticipation. Then I went into Fleet Street to buy the evening papers, and the first thing that caught my eye on the placards was,

I bought the sheet and two others of the same kidney, and came down Mitre Court into the Temple. I am afraid that my hand shook and my mouth was rather dry as I unfolded the newspaper—a thousand possibilities sprang into my mind. Chelubai, or I, might have dropped something near