And when the three-quarters of an hour had expired Simon and the patrol unlocked the massive portal of Vault 39, and swung it open, fearful of what they might see within.  And Hugo, pale and feeble, but alive, staggered heavily forward, and put a hand on Simon’s shoulder.

‘Let us get away from this,’ he whispered, as if in profound mental agony.

Ignoring everything, he passed out of the impregnable Safe Deposit, with its flashing steel walls, on Simon’s obedient arm.

CHAPTER XIV

TEA

Arrived on the ground-floor, Simon managed to avoid the busy parts of the establishment, but he happened to choose a way to Hugo’s private lift which led past the service-door of the Hugo Grand Central Restaurant.  And Hugo, although apparently in a sort of torpor, noticed it.

‘Tea!’ he ejaculated.  ‘If I could have some at once!’

And he directed Simon into the restaurant, and so came plump upon one of the worst scenes in the entire place.  The first day of the great annual sale was closing in almost a riot, and there in the restaurant the primeval and savage instincts of the vast, angry crowd were naturally to be seen in their crudest form.  The famous walnut buffet, eighty feet in length, was besieged by an army of customers, chiefly women, who were competing for food in a manner which ignored even the rudiments of politeness.  It would be difficult to deny that several scores of well-dressed ladies, robbed of their self-possession and their lunch by delays and vexations and impositions in the departments, were actually fighting for food.  The girls behind the buffet remained nobly at their posts, but the situation had outgrown their experience.  Every now and then a crash of crockery or crystal was heard over the din of shrill voices, and occasionally a loud protest.  Away from the buffet, on the fine floor of the restaurant, a few waitresses hurried distracted and aimless between the tables at which sat irate and scandalized persons who firmly believed themselves to be dying of hunger.  A number of people were most obviously stealing food, not merely from the sideboards, but from their fellows.  At a table near to the corner in which Hugo, shocked by the spectacle, had fallen limp into a chair, was seated an old, fierce man, who looked like a retired Indian judge, and who had somehow secured a cup of tea all to himself.  A pretty young woman approached him, and deliberately snatched the cup from under his very nose—­and without spilling a drop.  The Indian judge sprang up, roared ‘Hussy!’ and knocked the table over with a prodigious racket, then proceeded to pick the table up again.

‘Is it like this everywhere?’ asked Hugo of Shawn.

And Shawn nodded.

‘I might have foreseen,’ Hugo murmured.

‘I’ll try to get you some tea, sir,’ Shawn said, with an attempt to be cheerful.

‘Don’t leave me,’ begged Hugo, like a sick child.  ‘Don’t leave me.’