‘Nobody uses this side entrance. We can go straight up the back stairs to my room,’ said Hutchins tensely fiddling with a key-ring in the moonlight. ‘Ah, here it is. Quick, let’s get inside.’

They disappeared. In a moment, light flashed from the window of Hutchins’s room. It was dimmed at once, evidently by the drawing of the curtains. About twenty minutes later it was extinguished. Charles sat quietly and sardonically smoking. There was something about the whole sordid little episode that made him feel slightly sorry for Hutchins, sorry in a superior way that flattered his self-esteem. A social climber can ill afford an Achilles’ heel, and this particular weakness on Hutchins’s part would probably be disastrous to him sooner or later, especially in view of the profession he had chosen. Charles sat on, in the moonlight, smoking, and sinking deeper and deeper into the fatal condition of hubris.

He even felt rather sorry for Hutchins. If the man had his difficulties, it was rather a shame to add to them. And he had been adding to them. While waiting for Mrs. Braceweight in the main street of the local shopping centre, he had been unable to resist slipping into the Post Office and sending him a telegram: ARRIVING FRIDAY LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU MERDE. The thought of Hutchins slitting open the yellow envelope and reading so perplexing a message had amused him richly. The following day, finding that Walter was going for a day’s excursion to visit a friend at Winchester, he had enlisted the boy’s help, and got him to send another telegram to Hutchins, giving only the telephone number of Mr. Braceweight’s house so that the message would be dictated. They had timed it to arrive when the family was at lunch, and no doubt the housekeeper had copied it on to a piece of paper and taken it to Hutchins at the table. THANKS FOR SYMPATHY WILL DISCUSS MATTERS ON FRIDAY MERDE. It was Friday evening now, and he rocked with laughter at the thought that June Veeber had probably arrived that day. He could imagine Hutchins asking her crossly why she had sent him two telegrams and signed herself Merde.

Warm, stagnant and dreamlike, the days went by. Nothing interrupted the calm: even the one major drawback of his job, the lack of personal freedom, was an advantage in his eyes. He could never be far away, but must be ready at need during most of the twenty-four hours. This feature of the job had caused so many of Mr. Braceweight’s chauffeurs to become discontented and leave him, that he had been compelled to counter-balance it by the bribe of an unusually high wage. Charles enjoyed the high wage without any hankering for more freedom; he never wanted to go farther than the village pub on his evening out, and he could always leave word with the housekeeper that his em­ployers could find him there.