So saying, Mr. Barker, left once more alone in the sitting-room, paced slowly twice round the table, looked at himself in the glass, twisted his heavy moustache into shape, and smoothed his hair.  Then he took his hat and went out.  There was a cab at the door of the club, and in a minute more he was spinning along Fifth Avenue, in the direction of his father’s house.

The machinery was wound up, and he had nothing more to do.  To-morrow morning Claudius would pass a bad quarter of an hour with Mr. Screw, and in the afternoon Barker would call upon him and offer such consolation as was in his power; and when he had called on Claudius, he would call on the Countess Margaret and tell her what sad sceptics these legal people were, everlastingly pestering peaceable citizens in the hope of extracting from them a few miserable dollars.  And he would tell her how sorry he was that Claudius should be annoyed, and how he, Barker, would see him through—­that is, he hoped so; for, he would add, of course, such men as Mr. Screw and his own father would not make so much trouble if they did not at least think they had some cause for anxiety; and so forth, and so on.  And he would leave the Countess with a most decided impression that there was something wrong about Claudius.  Oh yes! something not quite clear about his antecedents, you know.  Of course it would come right in the end—­no doubt of that; oh dear, no.

It was a happy night for Mr. Barker; but Claudius slept ill.  He had an evil dream.

CHAPTER XII

When Mr. Screw called at Claudius’s hotel the next day, the Doctor had gone out.  Mr. Screw said he would wait, and sat down with a book to pass the time, for he was fond of reading in his leisure moments, few as they were.  Claudius had left the house early in the morning, and had gone to find the spot where his uncle had been buried—­no easy matter, in the vast cemetery where the dead men lie in hundreds of thousands, in stately avenues and imposing squares, in houses grand and humble, high and low, but all closed and silent with the grandeur of a great waiting.  Claudius was not sentimental in this pilgrimage; it was with him a matter of course, a duty which he performed naturally for the satisfaction of his conscience.  He could not have told any other reason, though, if he had been called upon to analyse the feeling which impels most men to do the same thing, under the same circumstances, he would have replied that a scientific explanation of the fact could only be found in the ancient practices of “ancestor worship,” of which some trace remains unto this day.  But he would have added that it was a proper mark of reverence and respect for the dead, and that man naturally inclines to fulfil such obligations, unless deterred by indolence or the fear of ridicule.  At any rate, he went alone; and it was late in the afternoon before he came back.