Only the Prophet was solemn on this delicious afternoon.  People looked at him and thought that he must surely be the richest man of the town.  His face was so sad.

He wound across the whirlpool, where the green image postures to the human streams that riot below it.  He saw beneath their rooves of ostrich feathers the girls shake their long earrings above sweet violets and roses fainting with desire to be bought by country cousins.

“Where is eleven hundred Z, if you please?” he asked the Shaftesbury Avenue policeman.

“Jellybrand’s sir?  On the right between the cream shop and the engine warehouse, just opposite the place where they sell parrots, after that there patent medicine depot.”

The Prophet bowed, thinking of the blessings of knowledge.  In a moment he stood before the library and glanced at its dirty window.  He saw several letters lying against the glass.  One was addressed to “Miss Minerva Partridge.”  He stepped in, wondering what she was like.

Jellybrand’s Library was a small, square room containing a letter rack, a newspaper stand, a bookcase and a counter.  It was fitted up with letters, papers, books, and a big boy with a bulging head.  The last-named stood behind the counter, stroking his irregular profile with one hand, and throwing a box of J nibs into the air and catching it with the other.  Upon the Prophet’s entrance this youth obligingly dropped the nibs accidentally upon the floor, and arranged his sharp and anemic face in an expression of consumptive inquiry.  The Prophet approached the counter softly, and allowed the sable with which his coat was trimmed to rest against it.

“Did a boy messenger call here a few days ago with a note for Mr. Malkiel?” he asked.

The young librarian assumed an attitude of vital suspicion and the expression of a lynx.

“For Malkiel the Second, sir?” he replied in a piercing soprano voice.

“Yes,” said the Prophet.  “A boy messenger with four medals.  There was a crest on the envelope—­an elephant rampant surrounded by a swarm of bees.”

A dogged look of combined terror and resolution overspread the young librarian’s countenance.

“There’s been no elephant and no swarm of bees in here,” he said with trembling curtness.

“You are sure you would have remembered the circumstance if there had been?”

“Rather!  What do you think?  We don’t allow things of them sort in here, I can tell you.”

The Prophet drew out half a sovereign, upon which a ray of sunshine immediately fell as if in benediction.

“Does Mr. Malkiel—?

“Malkiel the Second,” interrupted the young librarian, whose pinkish eyes winked at the illumination of the gold.

“Malkiel the Second ever call here—­in person?”

“In person?” said the young librarian, very suspiciously.

“Exactly.”

“I don’t know about in person.  He calls here.”