Fancy reappeared and announced herself ready.  ’Bias caught up his hat. . . .  Left to himself, Mr Rogers lay back in his chair and chuckled.  He did not care two straws for Mr Philp, or for what might happen to him.  His mind was off on quite another train of thought.

“I wonder what the woman’s game is?  ‘A hundred pound lyin’ idle’—­and Hocken around with the same tale this forenoon. . . .  Ten per cent, and at a moderate risk. . . .  She’s shrewd, too, by all accounts. . . .  Damme, if this isn’t a queer cross-runnin’ world!  A woman like that, if I’d had the luck to meet her a three-four year ago—­before this happened!” . . .  He eyed his palsied hand as it reached out, shaking, for the tea-cup.

“When we get to the door,” said ’Bias heavily, as he and Fancy turned out of the street into the narrow entry of Union Place, “you’re to step back and run away home.”

“No fear,” she assured him.  “I’m doin’ you a favour, an’ don’t you forget it.”

“But you can’t come inside with me.”

“That’s all right.  Nobody said as I wanted to, in my hearin’.  I can see all I want to see.  There’s a flight o’ steps runnin’ up close outside the window.”

She pointed it out and quite candidly indicated the point at which she proposed to perch herself.  “And there’s another window at the back,” she added:  “so’s you can see all that’s happenin’ inside.”

“Better fit you ran away home,” he repeated.

“You can’t make me,” retorted Fancy.  “Unless, o’ course, you choose to use force, here in broad daylight.  As a friend of mine said, only the other day,” she went on, snatching at a purple patch from ‘Pickerley,’ “the man as would lift his hand against a woman deserves whatever can be said of him.  Public opinion will condemn him in this life, and, in the next, worms are his portion.  So there!”

“I dunno what you’re talkin’ about,” said ’Bias, preoccupied with the thought of coming vengeance.

“Who’s meanin’ to lift his hand against a woman?”

“Well, mind you don’t, that’s all!”

She left him standing on the doorstep, and skipped away up the steps.  Having reached a point which commanded a view over the blinds of Mr Philp’s front window, she gave a glance into the room, and at once her arms and legs started to twitch as though in the opening movement of some barbaric war-dance.

’Bias, still inattentive, took no heed of these contortions.  After a moment’s pause he rapped sharply on the door with the knob of his walking-stick, then boldly lifted the latch and strode into the passage.

On his right the door of the front parlour stood ajar.  He thrust it wide open and entered.  And, as he entered, a female figure arose from a chair on the far side of the room.

“I—­I beg your pardon, ma’am!” stammered ’Bias, falling back a pace.

“Polly wants a kiss!” screamed a voice.  It did not seem to proceed from the lady. . . .  Somehow, too, it was strangely familiar. . . .  ’Bias stared wildly about him.