CHAPTER VMr. Parker was a bachelor, and occupied a Georgian but inconvenient flat at No. 12a Great Ormond Street, for which he paid a pound a week. His exertions in the cause of civilisation were rewarded, not by the gift of diamonds, rings from empresses or munificent cheques from grateful Prime Ministers, but by a modest, though sufficient, salary, drawn from the pockets of the British taxpayer. He awoke, after a long day of arduous and inconclusive labour, to the smell of burnt porridge. Through his bedroom window, hygienically open top and bottom, a raw fog was rolling slowly in, and the sight of a pair of winter pants, flung hastily over a chair the previous night, fretted him with a sense of the sordid absurdity of the human form. The telephone bell rang, and he crawled wretchedly ou
