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should worry about strangling you, Stephen, if I wanted to? As, of course, I might. But it’s getting late. You know, Stephen, you brood too much; I’ve always said so. You keep your troubles to yourself and brood over them. Why not have a good frank talk with one of your clerks—that fellow Rackstraw, say? But you always were a secretive fellow. Perhaps it’s as well, perhaps it’s as well. And you haven’t got a wife. Now, can you hang me or can’t you?” The door shut behind his son, but he went on still aloud. “The wizards were burned, they went to be burned, they hurried. Is there a need still? Must the wizard be an outcast like the saint? Or am I only tired? I want another child. And I want the Graal.”
    He lay back in his chair, contemplating remote possibilities and the passage of the days immediately before him.

Chapter Three
    THE ARCHDEACON IN THE CITY
    The inquest was held on the Monday, with the formal result of a verdict of “Murder by a person or persons unknown,” and the psychological result of emphasizing the states of mind of the three chief sufferers within themselves. The world certified itself as being, to Lionel more fantastic, to Mornington more despicable, to Stephen Persimmons more harassing. To the young girl who lived in the waiting-room and was interrogated by the coroner, it became, on the contrary, more exciting and delightful than ever; although she had no information to give—having, on her own account, been engaged all the while so closely indexing letter-books that she had not observed anyone enter or depart by the passage at the side of her office.
    On the Tuesday, however, being, perhaps naturally, more watchful, she remarked towards the end of the day, three, or rather four, visitors. The offices shut at six, and about half-past four the elder Mr. Persimmons, giving her an amiable smile, passed heavily along the corridor and up to his son’s room. At about a quarter past five Barbara Rackstraw, with Adrian, shone in the entrance—as she did normally some three or four times a year—and also disappeared up the stairs. And somewhere between the two a polite, chubby, and gaitered clergyman hovered at the door of the waiting-room and asked her tentatively if Mr. Mornington were in. Him she committed to the care of a passing office-boy, and returned to her indexing.
    Gregory Persimmons, a little to his son’s surprise and greatly to his relief, appeared to have shaken off the mood of tantalizing amusement which had possessed him on the previous Friday. He discussed various financial points in the balance sheet as if he were concerned only with ordinary business concerns. He congratulated his son on the result of the inquest as likely to close the whole matter except in what he thought the unlikely result of the police discovering the murderer; and when he brought up the subject of Intensive Mastery he did it with no suggestion that anything but the most normal hesitation had ever held Stephen back from enthusiastic acceptance. In the sudden relief from mental neuralgia thus granted him, Stephen found himself promising to have the book out before Christmas—it was then early summer—and even going so far as to promise estimates during the next week and discuss the price at which it might reasonably appear. Towards the end of an hour’s conversation Gregory said, “By the way, I saw Tumulty yesterday, and he asked me to make sure that he was in time to cut a paragraph out of his book. He sent Rackstraw a postcard, but perhaps I might just make sure it got here all right. May I go along, Stephen?”
    â€œDo,” Stephen said. “I’ll sign these letters and be ready by the time you’re back.” And, as his father went out with a nod, he thought to himself: “He couldn’t possibly want to go into that office again if he’d really killed a man there. It’s just his way of pulling