Hugo, as the supreme head of Hugo’s, had organized his establishment in such a manner as to leave no regular duties for himself, conformably to the maxim that a well-managed business is a business which runs smoothly and efficiently when the manager is not managing, and to that other maxim that the highest aim of the competent manager should be to make himself unnecessary.  Hence he was perfectly at liberty to be wayward and freakish in his activities from time to time.  And this happened to be one of his wayward and freakish mornings.  There were, however, few young women in the common room to behold his aberration, for the hour was within two minutes of nine, and at nine o’clock the latest of the legionaries was supposed to be at her post.  Three girls who were being hastily served with glasses of milk by a pink-aproned waitress politely feigned not to see him.  Then another girl ran in, and she, too, had to pretend that the spectacle of Hugo pasting posters on mirrors was one of the most ordinary in life.  Hugo glanced at this last comer in the mirror, and sighed a secret disappointment.

The interview with Louis Ravengar had left him less perturbed than might be imagined—­at any rate, as regards Ravengar’s own share in what had occurred and what was to occur.  He was inclined to leave Ravengar out of the account, and to put the greater part of his hysterical appeals and threats down to the effect of a sleepless and highly unusual night.  That Ravengar was absolutely sincere in his desire to marry Camilla he did not doubt, and he fully shared the frenzied man’s determination that Camilla should not marry Francis Tudor.  But beyond this Hugo did not go.  He certainly did not go so far as to believe that Camilla had ever formally engaged herself to Ravengar.  He thought it just possible that Ravengar might have committed a crime, or several crimes, and that Camilla might have knowledge of them, but the question whether Ravengar was or was not a criminal appeared to him to be a little off the point.

The unique point was his own prospects with Camilla.  It may be said that he felt capable of shielding her from forty Ravengars.

He had torn prudence to shreds, and stamped on it, that morning, and had gone down boldly and directly to Department 42 at a quarter to nine, in order to meet Camilla.  And she had not then arrived.  He had then conceived the idea of, and the excuse for, a visit to the common room, through which every assistant was obliged to pass on her way to the receipt of custom.  In the whole history of Hugo’s a poster had never before been known to be posted on a mirror, which is utterly the wrong place for a poster, but Hugo had chosen the mirror as the field of his labours solely that he might surreptitiously observe every soul that entered the room.

The clock on the mantelpiece struck nine, and the last assistant had fled, and Hugo was left alone with the pink-aproned waitress, who was collecting glasses on a tray.