CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
1
Mrs. Waddington had once read a story in which a series of emotions including fear, horror, amazement, consternation and a sickly dismay were described as "chasing one another" across the face of a dastardly person at the moment of realisation that his villainy had been discovered past concealment: and it was with the expectation of watching a similar parade on the moon-like countenance of Ferris, the butler, that she pressed the bell outside the door of the apartment of Mr. Lancelot Biffen on the ninth floor.
She was disappointed. Ferris, as he appeared in the doorway in answer to her ring, lacked a little of his customary portentous dignity, but that was only because we authors, after a gruelling bout at the desk, are always apt to look a shade frazzled. The butler
