At eleven o’clock of the morning the status quo was still maintaining itself within the noble mansion at Manchester Square.  Mr. Prohack, washed, dressed, and amply fed, was pretending to be very busy with correspondence in his study, but he was in fact much more busy with Eve than with the correspondence.  She came in to him every few minutes, and each time needed more delicate handling.  After one visit Mr. Prohack had an idea.  He transferred the key from the inside to the outside of the door.  At the next visit Eve presented an ultimatum.  She said that Mr. Prohack must positively do something about his daughter.  Mr. Prohack replied that he would telephone to his solicitors:  a project which happily commended itself to Eve, though what his solicitors could do except charge a fee Mr. Prohack could not imagine.

“You wait here,” said he persuasively.

He then left the room and silently locked the door on Eve.  It was a monstrous act, but Mr. Prohack had slept too well and was too fully inspired by the instinct of initiative.  He hurried downstairs, ignoring Brool, who was contemplating the grandeur of the entrance hall, snatched his overcoat, hat, and umbrella from the seventeenth-century panelled cupboard in which these articles were kept, and slipped away into the Square, before Brool could even open the door for him.  As he fled he glanced up at the windows of his study, fearful lest Eve might have divined his purpose to abandon her and, catching sight of him in flight, might begin making noises on the locked door.  But Eve had not divined his purpose.

Mr. Prohack walked straight to Bruton Street, where Oswald Morfey’s Japanese flat was situated.  Mr. Prohack had never seen this flat, though his wife and daughter had been invited to it for tea—­and had returned therefrom with excited accounts of its exquisite uniqueness.  He had decided that his duty was to inform Ozzie of the mysterious disappearance of Sissie as quickly as possible; and, as Ozzie’s theatrical day was not supposed to begin until noon, he hoped to catch him before his departure to the beck and call of the mighty Asprey Chown.

The number in Bruton Street indicated a tall, thin house with four bell-pushes and four narrow brass-plates on its door-jamb.  The deceitful edifice looked at a distance just like its neighbours, but, as the array on the door-jamb showed, it had ceased to be what it seemed, the home of a respectable Victorian family in easy circumstances, and had become a Georgian warren for people who could reconcile themselves to a common staircase provided only they might engrave a sound West End address on their notepaper.  The front-door was open, disclosing the reassuring fact that the hall and staircase were at any rate carpeted.  Mr. Prohack rang the bell attached to Ozzie’s name, waited, rang again, waited, and then marched upstairs.  Perhaps Ozzie was shaving.  Not being accustomed to the organisation of tenements in fashionable quarters, Mr. Prohack was unaware that during certain hours of the day he was entitled to ring the housekeeper’s bell, on the opposite door-jamb, and to summon help from the basement.