“Good Lord!” said Bill, turning round with a start, “Cayley!”

If he was not so quick in thought as Antony, he was quick enough in action. Thought was not demanded now. To close the secret door safely but noiselessly, to make sure that the books were in the right places, to move away to another row of shelves so as to be discovered deep in Badminton or Baedeker or whomever the kind gods should send to his aid⁠—the difficulty was not to decide what to do, but to do all this in five seconds rather than in six.

“Ah, there you are,” said Cayley from the doorway.

“Hallo!” said Bill, in surprise, looking up from the fourth volume of The Life and Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge . “Have they finished?”

“Finished what?”