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place at the window and concentrated on the area immediately below. And it was at that moment, his eye ranging the north pavements, that he noted the movement of the thickset man wearing unseasonably heavy brown tweeds and a brown derby hat.
    He was clearly more than a spectator and seemed to have some official purpose down there, for he walked purposefully along the carriageway, head tilted, eyes scanning the facades instead of the carriageway, as though he was some kind of policeman or marshal, assuring himself that all was well among the tiers of patriots massed at the windows of the northside premises. There was no menace about him, only an unwavering watchfulness, and when the blaring bands and the cheering engulfed them all like a tumbling wall of masonry he still sauntered there, turned away from the oncoming procession. By then, however, Giles had all but forgotten him, his attention caught and held by the spectacle in spite of himself, as the royal entourage rolled by. It began with eight rosetted greys pulling the open carriage containing a little old woman under her white parasol, the splendidly mounted and richly caparisoned bevy of royalty in its immediate wake; then the glittering, jingling squadron of Horse Guards; and behind it rank upon rank of blue, scarlet, and gold, a thousand or more men with brown faces and martial step, their presence representing the flag at the ends of the earth.
    The moment was at hand and he was on the point of turning to call up to Romayne when, once again, the man in the brown derby caught his eye, insistently now for he had stopped sauntering and was standing squarely on the kerb, staring up at a window immediately above. It was the window where Soper and his girl were stationed. With a grunt of alarm, Giles saw the first of the leaflets flutter down, drifting idly and aimlessly, like birds dropping out of the sky, and in the same moment he saw the man below stiffen, gesticulate, and run swiftly round the angle of the building and out of Giles’s line of vision.
    There was really little but instinct to tell him the watcher had spotted something amiss up there and for a second or so he dithered, his eye roving the fringe of latecomers in search of Meadowes, the janitor, but as he hesitated more and more leaflets floated down, separating in flight so that they seemed to multiply out of all proportion to the number printed. Then, whipping round, he heard the scrape of a boot on the stairs and leaped for the landing, almost colliding with a thickset figure in the act of tackling the third flight.
    The man must have moved with extraordinary speed. Ten seconds or less had brought him this far but his step, notwithstanding his bulk, was as light as a boy’s. In a few strides he would be level with Romayne, staring over the stairwell. A moment later he would have Soper and his girl trapped with his back to the door.
    Giles shouted, “Run, Romayne, run !” and flung himself at the steps, grabbing the heavy material of the man’s trousers, then enlarging his hold on one brown boot, so that the man lurched and stumbled, falling heavily against the iron stairrail and half-turning, so that Giles caught a glimpse of a red face with heavy jowls, a large moustache of the kind made fashionable by Lord Kitchener, and eyes that glared at him with a baffled expression. He was so occupied with holding the man that he did not hear Romayne’s warning cry, or the rush of feet on the stairs heralding the frantic descent of Soper and Miriam, the girl still clutching a double handful of leaflets. He was aware, however, of Romayne darting past or over them and into the store room he had just left and almost at once, it seemed, her reappearance with a dust-sheet that billowed like a sail and all but enveloped him.
    Then, amid a rush of movement and a confused outcry, the man he was holding let go of the stair-rail and whirled his fists, aiming a blow capable, he would have said, of felling a