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'It's for you Professor Harding, sir.'

'Thank you, Mrs. Harradson.'

'Shall I tell 'im there's an answer, sir?'

Harding opened the telegram, and shook his head. 'No, thank you, no reply.'

Having banged the front door upon the uniformed intruder, Mrs. Harradson with her violent gait re-entered the bedroom, from whence she had come, and almost on the instant there came the angry hum of the indignant vacuum.

It was a large, gaunt and very dark room in which they sat. It was lighted only by one window in the extreme corner, opening on to the central air-hole. Between the window and the front door was a shadowy dresser, and a minute water-closet nestled indelicately in the small hall, the first thing to confront the visitor. The room in which the Hardings sat was eccentrically withdrawn from the light of day, as though London had been Cadiz: had it not been for the electric light they could not have seen to eat. For more than half the year no more than a token daylight found its way through the corner window. 'The house was designed by an imbecile or an Eskimo,' Harding would say. 'Why do we stop here?' To which Essie would reply, 'That I have often wondered myself.' It was an incomplete cylinder, for its central air-hole was little more than a semi-circle, the back yard of another house completing it on one side. Opening off this cavernous chamber (dining-room, kitchen, 'store-room', all in one) were a bedroom and sitting-room. Both of these were, in the ordinary way, day-lit: but because of the tower-like design of the building, they had a somewhat eccentric shape.