CHAPTER 16I don’t know what made me happen to glance up at the door at that moment. Perhaps my subconscious had heard something I wasn’t conscious of. Yet why not, unless he’d crept in with the most extraordinary care, I can’t imagine. It was the smaller-than-life-size figure of Mr. Pepperday. How long he’d been standing there I had no idea, except that it must have been some little time. He looked very severe, anyway, as if the sight of an old darkey and a white lady laughing about the Judge’s trousers was undignified if not downright disreputable.
He screwed his spectacles into their niche on his beaked nose.
“I’ve come to inquire about a certain article,” he said in his high prim treble—deciding, I suppose, that ignoring the whole scene he’d run in on was the better course for a man o
