the past week had been piling itself up, like the heaped waters of flood and this afternoon was intense in its heat, its stillness and sultriness.  It had been sunless all day, and all day the blanket of clouds that beset the sky had been gathering themselves into blacker and more ill-omened density.  There would certainly be a thunderstorm before morning, and the approach of it made Mr. Taynton feel that he really had not the energy to walk.  By and by perhaps he might be tempted to go in quest of coolness along the sea front, or perhaps later in the evening he might, as he sometimes did, take a carriage up on to the downs, and come gently home to a late supper.  He would have time for that to-day, for according to arrangement his partner was to drop in about half past nine that evening.  If he got back at nine, supposing he went at all, he would have time to have some food before receiving him.

He sat in a pleasant parquetted room looking out into the small square garden at the back of his house in Montpellier Road.  Big awnings stretched from the window over the broad gravel path outside, and in spite of the excessive heat the room was full of dim coolness.  There was but little furniture in it, and it presented the strongest possible contrast to the appointments of his partner’s flat with its heavy decorations, its somewhat gross luxury.  A few water-colours hung on the white walls, a few Persian rugs strewed the floor, a big bookcase with china on the top filled one end of the room, his writing-table, a half dozen of Chippendale chairs, and the chintz-covered sofa where he now lay practically completed the inventory of the room.  Three or four bronzes, a Narcissus, a fifteenth-century Italian St. Francis, and a couple of Greek reproductions stood on the chimney-piece, but the whole room breathed an atmosphere of aesthetic asceticism.

Since lunch Mr. Taynton had glanced at the paper, and also looked up the trains from Lewes in order to assure himself that he need not expect his partner till half past nine, and since then, though his hands and his eyes had been idle, his mind had been very busy.  Yet for all its business, he had not arrived at much.  Morris, Godfrey Mills, and himself; he had placed these three figures in all sorts of positions in his mind, and yet every combination of them was somehow terrible and menacing.  Try as he would he could not construct a peaceful or secure arrangement of them.  In whatever way he grouped them there was danger.

The kitchen passage ran out at right angles to the room in which he sat, and formed one side of the garden.  The windows in it were high up, so that it did not overlook the flowerbeds, and on this torrid afternoon they were all fully open.  Suddenly from just inside came the fierce clanging peal of a bell, which made him start from his recumbent position.  It was the front-door bell, as he knew, and as it continued ringing as if a maniac’s grip was on the handle, he heard the steps of his servant running along the stone floor of the passage to see what imperative summons this was.  Then, as the front door was opened, the bell ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and the moment afterward he heard Morris’s voice shrill and commanding.