The next day was a miserable one, rain sluicing down relentlessly. Dex generally spent such afternoons at his club, amid the cozy warmth and camaraderie of his fellows; today, though, he visited a nicknackatory and then caught a hackney to Old Burlington Street.
He ran up the steps under a deluge of rain and rapped imperatively on the door. Two footmen helped unload his purchases from the hackney and carry them into the entrance hall. Dex surreptitiously levitated most of the raindrops away from men and boxes.
“Is Blake in? And young Phillip?” he asked, once everything was indoors and the door had been closed against the cold and the wet.
Blake and Phillip appeared almost before he’d finished uttering the words.
“Mister Dex!”
“Hello, young Flip.” Dex flourished dramatically at the mou
