“I won’t accept a penny,” said Priam.  “And I can’t help you in any way.  I’m afraid I must go now.  I’m late as it is.”

His cold resistless fury drove him forward, and, without the slightest regard for the amenities of clubs, he left the table, Mr. Oxford, becoming more and more the dealer, rose and followed him, even directed him to the gigantic cloak-room, murmuring the while soft persuasions and pacifications in Priam’s ear.

“There may be an action in the courts,” said Mr. Oxford in the grand entrance hall, “and your testimony would be indispensable to me.”

“I can have nothing to do with it.  Good-day!”

The giant at the door could scarce open the gigantic portal quickly enough for him.  He fled—­fled, surrounded by nightmare visions of horrible publicity in a law-court.  Unthinkable tortures!  He damned Mr. Oxford to the nethermost places, and swore that he would not lift a finger to save Mr. Oxford from penal servitude for life.

Money-getting

He stood on the kerb of the monument, talking to himself savagely.  At any rate he was safely outside the monument, with its pullulating population of midgets creeping over its carpets and lounging insignificant on its couches.  He could not remember clearly what had occurred since the moment of his getting up from the table; he could not remember seeing anything or anyone on his way out; but he could remember the persuasive, deferential voice of Mr. Oxford following him persistently as far as the giant’s door.  In recollection that club was like an abode of black magic to him; it seemed so hideously alive in its deadness, and its doings were so absurd and mysterious.  “Silence, silence!” commanded the white papers in one vast chamber, and, in another, babel existed!  And then that terrible mute dining-room, with the high, unscalable mantelpieces that no midget could ever reach!  He kept uttering the most dreadful judgments on the club and on Mr. Oxford, in quite audible tones, oblivious of the street.  He was aroused by a rather scared man saluting him.  It was Mr. Oxford’s chauffeur, waiting patiently till his master should be ready to re-enter the wheeled salon.  The chauffeur apparently thought him either demented or inebriated, but his sole duty was to salute, and he did nothing else.

Quite forgetting that this chauffeur was a fellow-creature, Priam immediately turned upon his heel, and hurried down the street.  At the corner of the street was a large bank, and Priam, acquiring the reckless courage of the soldier in battle, entered the bank.  He had never been in a London bank before.  At first it reminded him of the club, with the addition of an enormous placard giving the day of the month as a mystical number—­14—­and other placards displaying solitary letters of the alphabet.  Then he saw that it was a huge menagerie in which highly trained young men of assorted sizes and years were confined in stout cages of wire and mahogany.  He stamped straight to a cage with a hole in it, and threw down the cheque for five hundred pounds—­defiantly.