Trasmere through the door which led from his study-dining-room to the basement of the house. This done he would go out. Walters had watched him from one of the upper windows scores of times walking slowly down the street, an unfurled umbrella on one hand, a black bag in another. At eight-thirty to the minute he was back in the house. He invariably dined out. Walters would bring him a cup of black coffee, and at ten o'clock would retire to his own room, which was separated from the main building by a heavy door which Mr. Trasmere invariably locked.

    Once in the early days of his service Walters had expostulated.

    "Suppose there is a fire, sir," he complained.

    "You can get through your bath-room window on to the kitchen, and if you can't drop to the ground from there you deserve to be burnt to death," snarled the old man. "If you don't like the job, you needn't stay. Those are the rules of my establishment, and there are no others."

    So, night after night, Walters had gone to his room and Mr. Trasmere had shuffled after him in his slippered feet, had banged and locked the door upon him and had left Walters to solitude.

    This procedure was only altered when the old man was taken ill one night and was unable to reach the door. Thereafter a key was hung in a small glass-fronted case, in very much the same way as fire-keys are hung. In the event of his illness, or of any other unexpected happening, Walters could secure the key and answer the bell above his bed-head. That necessity had not arisen.

    Every morning the valet found the door unlocked. At what hour old Jesse came he could not discover, but he guessed that his employer stopped on his way to bed in the morning to perform this service.

    Walters was never allowed an evening off. Two days a week he was given twenty-four hours' leave of absence, but he had to be in the house by ten.

    "And if you are a minute later, don't come back," said Jesse Trasmere.

    As the old man's valet Walters had exceptional opportunities for discovering something more about his master than Mr. Trasmere would care to have known. He was for a very particular reason anxious to know what the basement contained. Once he had met a man who had been engaged in the building of the house, and learnt that there was a room below, built of concrete; but though he had, with the greatest care and discretion, searched for keys which might, during the daily absence of his employer, reveal the secret of this underground room, he had never succeeded in laying his hand upon them. Mr. Trasmere had apparently only one key, a master-key, which he wore round his neck at night, and in the same inaccessible position in his clothing during the daytime, and Walters' search had been in vain, until one morning, when taking Mr. Trasmere his shaving-water, the servant found him suffering from one of those fainting fits which periodically overcame him. There was a cake of soap handy, and Walters was a resourceful man...

    Mr. Trasmere looked up from his plate and fixed his servant with his grey-blue eyes.

    "Has anybody called this morning?"

    "No, sir."

    "Have any letters come?"

    "Only a few. They are on your desk, sir."

    Mr. Trasmere grunted.

    "Did you put the notice in the paper that I was leaving town for two or three days?" he asked.

    "Yes, sir," said Walters.

    Jesse Trasmere grunted again.

    "A man is coming from China; I don't want to see him," he explained. He was oddly communicative at moments to his servant, but Walters, who knew his master extremely well, did not make the mistake of asking questions. "No, I don't want to see him." The old man chewed a toothpick reflectively, and his unattractive face bore an expression of distaste. "He was a partner of mine, twenty, thirty years ago, a card-playing, gambling, drinking man, who gave himself airs because—well, never mind what he gave himself airs about," he said impatiently, as though he anticipated a question which he should have known never would have been put to him. "He was that kind of man."

    He stared at the fireless grate with its red brick walls and its microscopic radiator and clicked his lips.

    "If he comes, he is not to be admitted. If he asks questions, you're not to answer.