“You’ll find your old seat just as comfortable as it used to be, Sir. Them big logs warms the whole place.”

On the servant’s departure Wolf went over at once to the table by the window. How well he recalled the thrill he used to get from the asters and lobelias, down there in that round flowerbed, so dark and bare today!

There was a book, lying with others upon the table, that caught his attention at once. He picked it up. The particular pencil-marking in the corner of the flyleaf indicated to him that it had come into Urquhart’s possession through the agency of Mr. Malakite. The volume had no connection at all with the rambling chronicles and scandalous County-Trials out of which Urquhart’s History was being framed. It was the kind of book the debased purpose of which is simply and solely to play upon the morbid erotic nerves of unbalanced sensuality. The Malakite shop had, it appeared, inexhaustible resources of this nature, distinct altogether from any merely bawdy local folklore.