Chapter SeventeenThat same evening Frank Abbott dropped in on Miss Maud Silver at her flat at Montague Mansions. Whatever happened in the outer world, here time stood still. But not in any sluggish, lotus-eating manner—‘Oh dear, no,’ as Miss Silver herself might have said. He found in her a constant stimulus to thought, and whilst her idiosyncrasies were a continual entertainment, he did actually and in sober truth revere the little woman who, beginning her working life in what she herself termed the private side of the scholastic profession, was now a much sought-after enquiry agent.
Where time had been halted was on the threshold of this room. The furniture inherited from more than one great-aunt was of the type strangely popular in the sixties of the previous century. The chairs, with
