And as he was walking abroad in the pleasant foggy sunshine of the West End streets, a plutocratic idler with nothing to do but yield to strange impulses, he saw on a motor-bus the placard of a financial daily paper bearing the line:  “The Latest Oil Coup.”  He immediately wanted to buy that paper.  As a London citizen he held the opinion that whenever he wanted a thing he ought to be able to buy it at the next corner.  Yet now he looked in every direction but could see no symptom of a newspaper shop anywhere.  The time was morning—­for the West End it was early morning—­and there were newsboys on the pavements, but by a curious anomaly they were selling evening and not morning newspapers.  Daringly he asked one of these infants for the financial daily; the infant sniggered and did no more.  Another directed him to a shop up an alley off the Edgware Road.  The shopman doubted the existence of any such financial daily as Mr. Prohack indicated, apparently attaching no importance to the fact that it was advertised on every motor-bus travelling along the Edgware Road, but he suggested that if it did exist, it might just conceivably be purchased at the main bookstall at Paddington Station.  Determined to obtain the paper at all costs, Mr. Prohack stopped a taxi-cab and drove to Paddington, squandering eighteenpence on the journey, and reflecting as he rolled forward upon the primitiveness of a so-called civilisation in which you could not buy a morning paper in the morning without spending the whole morning over the transaction—­and reflecting also upon the disturbing fact that after one full day of its practice, his scheme of scientific idleness had gone all to bits.  He got the paper, and read therein a very exciting account of Sir Paul Spinner’s deal in oil-lands.  The amount of Paul’s profit was not specified, but readers were given to understand that it was enormous and that Paul had successfully bled the greatest Oil Combine in the world.  The article, though discreet and vague in phraseology, was well worth a line on any placard.  It had cost Mr. Prohack the price of a complete Shakespere, but he did not call it dear.  He threw the paper away with a free optimistic gesture of delight.  Yes, he had wisely put his trust in old Paul and he was veritably a rich man—­one who could look down on mediocre fortunes of a hundred thousand pounds or so.  Civilisation was not so bad after all.

Then the original attraction which had drawn him out of the house resumed its pull....  Why did his subconscious feet take him in the direction of Manchester Square?  True, the Wallace Collection of pictures is to be found at Hertford House, Manchester Square, and Mr. Prohack had always been interested in pictures!  Well, if he did happen to find himself in Manchester Square he might perhaps glance at the exterior of the dwelling which his son desired to plant upon him and his wife desired him to be planted with....  It was there right enough.  It had not been spirited