For three days past Hugo had bought whole pages of every daily paper in London, in order to break gently to the public the tremendous fact that his annual sale would commence on New Year’s Day, and the still more tremendous fact that it would close on the third of January.  There are only three genuine annual sales in the Metropolis.  One is Hugo’s, another happens in Tottenham Court Road, and the third—­but why disclose the situation of the third, since all persons from Putney to Peckham Rise who are worthy to know it, know it?  Hugo’s was naturally the greatest, the largest, the most exciting, the most marvellous, the most powerful in its appeal to the most powerful of human instincts—­the instinct to get half a crown’s worth of value for two shillings.  In earlier years Hugo had made his annual sale prodigious and incredible, with no thought of profit, merely for the pleasure of the affair.  But he found that the more he offered to the public the more he received from them, and that it was practically impossible to lose money by giving things away.  This is, of course, a fundamental axiom of commerce.  And now Hugo’s annual sale was to be more astonishing than ever; some said that he meant at any cost to efface the memory of those discreditable incidents before mentioned.  Decidedly, many of the advertised bargains were remarkable in the highest degree.  There was, for example, the ’fine silvered fox-stole, with real brush at each end,’ at a guinea.  Every woman who can tell a silvered fox-stole from a cock’s-feather boa is aware that a silvered fox-stole simply cannot be sold for a guinea.  Yet Hugo had announced that he would sell two thousand of them at that price, not to mention muffs to match at the same figure.  And there was the famous ‘Incroyable’ corset, white coutille, with wide belted band round hips, double belt to buckle at sides, cut low—­’ Enough!  Further indiscretions of description are not necessary to show that eighteen and nine is the lowest price at which a reasonable creature could hope to obtain the ‘Incroyable’ corset.  But Hugo’s price was twelve and eleven.  And the whole-page advertisements were a solid blazing mass of such jewels.

The young and pretty girl who had known that she would ‘do it’ hastened with assured steps, and as quickly as the jostling multitudes would allow, to the fur department.  She was in pursuit of one of the silvered fox-stoles with real brush at each end.  She had her husband’s permission—­nay, his command—­to purchase a silvered fox-stole at a guinea—­if she could.  On the way to her goal she encountered by chance Simon Shawn, and it occurred that a temporary block compelled her to halt before him.  The two gazed at each other, and Simon looked away, flushing.  It was plain that, though acquainted, they were not on speaking terms.  The fact was, that their silence covered a domestic drama—­a drama which had arisen as the consequence of a great human truth—­namely, that even detectives will marry.