‘It is not in the repertoire, sir,’ said Simon, after searching.

‘Not in the repertoire!  Impossible!’

‘No, sir.’

‘Ah well, then, let us have the Wedding March from “Lohengrin."’

‘With pleasure, sir.’

But Simon was unfortunate that morning.  The toilet completed, Hugo came towards him swinging the gold token, the bearer of which had the right to take whatever he chose from all the hundred and thirty-one departments of the stores in exchange for a simple receipt.

‘I will interview the burglar,’ said Hugo.  ’But just run down first and get me a pair of handcuffs.’

In ten minutes Simon returned crestfallen.

‘We do not keep handcuffs, sir,’ he stammered.

’Not—­keep—!  What nonsense!  First you tell me that “Fidelio” is not in the repertoire, and then you have the effrontery to add that we do not keep handcuffs.  Shawn, are you not aware that the fundamental principle of this establishment is that we keep everything?  If we received an order for a herd of white elephants—­’

’No doubt our arrangement with Jamrach’s would enable us to supply them, sir,’ Simon put in rapidly.  ’But handcuffs seem to be a monopoly of the State.’

’Evidently, Shawn, you are not familiar with the famous remark of Louis the Fourteenth.’

‘I am not, sir.’

‘He said, “L’etat, c’est moi.”  Show me the catalogue.’

Simon, bearing on his shoulders at that moment the sins of ten managers, scurried to bring an immense tome, bound in crimson leather, and inscribed in gold, ‘Hugo, General Catalogue.’  It contained nearly two thousand large quarto pages, and above six thousand illustrations.  Hugo turned solemnly to the exhaustive index, which alone occupied seventy pages of small type, and, running his finger down a column, he read out, Handbells, handbell-ringers, handbills, hand-embroidered sheets, handkerchiefs, handles, handsaws, hansoms, Hardemann’s beetle powder, hares, haricot beans....’

‘Lamentable!’ he ejaculated—­’lamentable!  You will tell Mr.—­Mr. Banbury this morning to procure some handcuffs, assorted sizes, at once, and to add them to the—­the—­Explorers’ Outfit Department.’

‘Precisely, sir.’

’In the meantime I shall have to ascend the dome, and face the burglar without this necessary of life.  Give me the revolver instead.’

CHAPTER VII

POSSIBLE ESCAPE OF SECRETS

The top of the dome was fashioned into a kind of belvedere, with a small circular gallery.  Hugo emerged at the head of the stairs, and saw no living thing; but at the sound of his footstep a man sprang nervously into view round the curve of the gallery, and fronted him.

Hugo, with his hands still on either rail of the staircase, took the top step, gazing the while at his burglar, first in wonder, and then with a capricious abandonment to what he considered the humour of the situation.  He thought of Albert Shawn’s account of the meeting between Francis Tudor and his visitor in Tudor’s flat on the previous night, and some fantastic impulse, due to the strain of Welsh blood in him, caused him to address the man as Tudor had addressed him: