people’s faces.  She did not grudge him his gains, nor was it her business if, as they alleged, in introducing Mr. Constant to her vacant rooms, his idea was not merely to benefit his landlady.  He had done her an uncommon good turn, queer as was the lodger thus introduced.  His own apostleship to the sons of toil gave Mrs. Drabdump no twinges of perplexity.  Tom Mortlake had been a compositor; and apostleship was obviously a profession better paid and of a higher social status.  Tom Mortlake—­the hero of a hundred strikes—­set up in print on a poster, was unmistakably superior to Tom Mortlake setting up other men’s names at a case.  Still, the work was not all beer and skittles, and Mrs. Drabdump felt that Tom’s latest job was not enviable.

She shook his door as she passed it on her way back to the kitchen, but there was no response.  The street door was only a few feet off down the passage, and a glance at it dispelled the last hope that Tom had abandoned the journey.  The door was unbolted and unchained, and the only security was the latch-key lock.  Mrs. Drabdump felt a whit uneasy, though, to give her her due, she never suffered as much as most good housewives do from criminals who never come.  Not quite opposite, but still only a few doors off, on the other side of the street, lived the celebrated ex-detective Grodman, and, illogically enough, his presence in the street gave Mrs. Drabdump a curious sense of security, as of a believer living under the shadow of the fane.  That any human being of ill odour should consciously come within a mile of the scent of so famous a sleuth-hound seemed to her highly improbable.  Grodman had retired (with a competence) and was only a sleeping dog now; still, even criminals would have sense enough to let him lie.

So Mrs. Drabdump did not really feel that there had been any danger, especially as a second glance at the street door showed that Mortlake had been thoughtful enough to slip the loop that held back the bolt of the big lock.  She allowed herself another throb of sympathy for the labour leader whirling on his dreary way towards Devonport Dockyard.  Not that he had told her anything of his journey, beyond the town; but she knew Devonport had a Dockyard because Jessie Dymond—­Tom’s sweetheart—­once mentioned that her aunt lived near there, and it lay on the surface that Tom had gone to help the dockers, who were imitating their London brethren.  Mrs. Drabdump did not need to be told things to be aware of them.  She went back to prepare Mr. Constant’s superfine tea, vaguely wondering why people were so discontented nowadays.  But when she brought up the tea and the toast and the eggs to Mr. Constant’s sitting-room (which adjoined his bedroom, though without communicating with it), Mr. Constant was not sitting in it.  She lit the gas, and laid the cloth; then she returned to the landing and beat at the bedroom door with an imperative palm.  Silence alone answered her.  She called him by name and told him the