“And also I want the Cunard list of sailings, and the White Star, too.  There’s a Cunard boat from Liverpool on Monday, isn’t there?”

“I don’t think so, sir,” said Krupp, “but I’ll see.”

“I understood from Mr. Gibbs there was.  And I’m going to Liverpool by that early train to-morrow.”

“Sunday, sir?”

“Yes, I must be in Liverpool to-morrow night.”

Louis went across to the station to Faulkner’s.  He considered that he was doing very well.  And after all, why not go to America—­not on Monday, for he was quite aware that no boat left on Monday—­but in a few days, after he had received the whole sum that Thomas Batchgrew held for him.  He could quite plausibly depart on urgent business connected with new capitalistic projects.  He could quite plausibly remain in America as long as convenient.  America beckoned to him.  He remembered all the appetizing accounts that he had ever heard from American commercial travellers of Broadway and Fifth Avenue—­incredible streets.  In America he might treble, quadruple, his already vast capital.  The romance of the idea intoxicated him.

IV

When he got back from Faulkner’s with a parcel (which he threw to the cloak-room attendant to keep) he felt startlingly hungry, and, despite the early hour, he ordered a steak in the grill-room; and not a steak merely, but all the accoutrements of a steak, with beverages to match.  And to be on the safe side he paid for the meal at once, with a cheque for ten pounds, receiving the change in gold and silver, and thus increasing his available cash to about thirty pounds.  Then in the lounge, with Cuban cigar-smoke in his eyes, and Krupp discoursing to him of all conceivable Atlantic liners, he wrote a letter to Thomas Batchgrew and marked it “Very urgent”—­which was simple prudence on his part, for he had drawn a cheque for ten pounds on a non-existent bank-balance.  At last, as Mr. Gibbs had not arrived, he said he should stroll up to the Majestic.  He had not yet engaged a room; he seemed to hesitate before that decisive act....

Then it was that, in the corridor immediately outside the lounge, he encountered Jim Horrocleave.  The look in Jim Horrocleave’s ferocious eye shocked him.  Louis had almost forgotten his employer, and the sudden spectacle of him was disconcerting.

“Hello, Fores!” said Horrocleave very sardonically, with no other greeting.  “I thought ye were too ill to move.”  No word of sympathy in the matter of the accident!  Simply the tone of an employer somehow aggrieved!

“I’m out to-day for the first time.  Had to come down here on a matter—­”

Horrocleave spoke lower, and even more sardonically.  “I hear ye’re off to America.”

Louis looked through the fretted partition at the figure of Krupp alone in the lounge.  And Horrocleave also looked at Krupp.  And Krupp looked back with his enigmatic gaze, perhaps scornful, perhaps indifferent, perhaps secretly appreciative—­but in any case profoundly foreign and aloof and sinister.