The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton

l section of its treasures. He lunched off some fruit and tea and bread and butter out in the gardens, wandering about afterwards among the flower-beds and paying especial and delighted a

With beating heart he turned to a stationer's shop, bought

EAR

with me. I don't know what it is. Perhaps in a few days I shall find out. I shall se

our hu

ED B

he savings-bank, no situation, and a wife and son to support. The position was serious enough, yet never for a moment could he regard it without a new elasticity of spirit and a certain reckless optimism, the source o

e moonlight. For the first time in life he had come face to face with a condition of which he had had no previous experience-the condition of intellectual pessimism. He was depressed because in this new and more spontaneous world, so full of undreamed-of beauties, so exquisitely stimulating to his new powers of a

ses as Messrs. Waddington & Forbes. He made his way instead to the offices of a firm who were quite at the

eclared, "for any one who has been in the employm

into the arms of Mr. Lynn,

mmendation of yours to these people! I have taken a house in Connaught Place-a real ni

on answered. "I am glad you

r. He looked at him curiously. He was an observant

?" he asked, in a puzzled manner. "

nal falsehood which rose to his lip

chuck those people, Waddington & Forbes. They're wrong 'uns-won't do you

he office. He ran into the junior

ung man who's just gone o

partner sho

" he replied. "He came

ed with interest. "Well, I

Miller sho

ular thieves, the people he was with. By the bye, didn't

at first he cracked it up like a real hustler. He got me so fixed that I had practically made up my mind and was ready to sign any reasonable agreement. Then he suddenly seemed to turn round. He looked me straight in the

circumstances, it is scarcely to be wondered at that he is out of em

, "if it was through my affair that he got the sack. Could

Mr. Miller promised

with the first gleam of light among the flower-beds of the Park, sniffing with joy at the late hyacinths, revelling in the cool, sweet softness of the unpolluted air. Then he listened to the awakening, to the birth of the day. He heard it from the bridges, from London Bridge and Westminster Bridge, over which thundered the great vans fresh from the country, on their way to Covent Garden. He stood in front of the Mansion House and watched the thin, black stream of the earliest corners grow into a surging, black-coated torrent. There were things which made him sorry and there were things which made him glad. On the whole, however, his isolated contemplation of what for so long he had taken as a matter of course depressed him. Life was unutterably and intensely

not wearing well. It showed signs of exposure to the weather. The young man himself was thin and pale. It was not for Mr. Waddington to appreciate the

, coming to a standstill and

sir?" Burton r

on all r

indeed, tha

dington

look like it!

, s

ou be getting on at all?"

led quite

I was getting on all right because I am contented and

ened his mouth an

nipper after business. I expected you'd be after me for a partnership before long, and I expect I'd have had to give it you. And then y

ood for us for them to kno

large amount of easy good-humor

he declared. "What was it? Did you

man shoo

"By the bye, you owe me four days'

trousers pocket. "I can't afford it, for things are going badly with me. H

just here. I see that you have been into Idlemay House. I wonder whether you would lend me the keys? I wil

at his late employee

exclaimed. "What the mischief

on s

room where the old Egyptian died has

tated. Then he turn

that," he said. "Come alo

icately avoided the subject of its being still unlet. The little chamber on the right of the hall was as dark as ever. Burton felt his heart beat

he remarked. "Dashed

ut and fumigating b

ing exactly as Burton had left it. Then he li

e who shall eat of the brown fruit of this tree, shall see

muttered. "What's

rton suggested softly.

n," Mr. Waddington

had taken up the sheet of paper and w

re is any one who could tell us

ll right," Mr. Waddingt

en very slowly he tiptoed his way from the door and hurried stealthily from the house. From some bills which he had been study