the exception of one bracelet, they had fled.

This was cowardly; it was even a little insulting, for the abruptness of their flight implied a suggestion of disgust - as if, say, they had turned their backs on a too salacious play.

It was Mrs. Victor Mactier who, as the astounded company rushed in tumult into the hall, next perceived the situation and had Mr. Levison violently prevented from dashing forth for the police. 'Stop him!' she commanded Mr. Lamar.

Mr. Lamar instantly and easily obeyed.

'The police,' she pointed out, are stupid. We must know exactly what to tell them.'

Mr. Levison, at that moment halfway down the hall on his way to his own front door and the police, was by her command encircled firmly in the arms of Mr. Lamar.

Mrs. Levison, standing on the first step of the staircase in the hall, to see better over the heads of the little group massed there, caught his wildly roving glance. For Mr. Levison was overwrought; in his perturbed consciousness it seemed that having been once assaulted and robbed by his servants he was again being assaulted and robbed by his guests. Even of his own wife he seemed to inquire: 'Are you in this?'

But Mrs. Levison stilled him with a

gesture. Just a moment,' she began, standing on the first step as on a platform. 'I think that we should first get together here and make out a statement, because, you know, there will be reporters.'

'Exactly,' agreed Mrs. Mactier. 'Are we going to give interviews, rewards, and things like that?'

'In short,' Mr. Lamar summed up in his normal voice, speaking easily over the head of Mr. Levison, upon whom he still kept a light precautionary hand, 'do we want publicity or do we not?'

The necessary silence of reflection was profound and, like that first silence now so many sad hours ago, it was broken by the strange eerie music that had like a fairy bugle preluded the beginning of the situation the delicate tinkling chime of the identitydisk of the late Earl of Streatham.

The effect of that sound upon the company was infuriating, maddening. They turned like a mob in miniature toward its source, a young girl in white, leaning lazily over the newel post.

'Great God!' called out a heavy voice from the ranks. 'Keep that damn thing still!'

But Mrs. Levison was in control.

'I take it,' quickly proceeded her bright assured voice, the voice of a capable chairwoman shepherding her committee, 'I take it that we do not.'

LONDON is a marvelous place. One can turn a sharp corner or pass under an arch, and in an instant find one's self in the country. Fine old trees are growing on well-kept lawns, the birds are twittering, the noise of the city is distant and forgotten; in an instant one has passed from the turmoil of the twentieth century into the calm of the eighteenth.

Another thing. London is a city of ghosts; the people one sees are not important, they are merely shadows: the actualities are the people one can see only with the help of a little imagination; it does not require much, the settings are so perfect.

Climb Ludgate Hill, for example, and as you approach St. Paul's, swing round to your left, make a turn or two and get lost, and you will stumble upon the Dean's Garden. It's a lovely spot. There, right in the heart of London, only a stone's throw from the great cathedral of which it is a part, is a quiet old-world garden, and facing it is a row of red-brick houses beautifully tempered with age. In the largest of these houses lives the Dean, in just such rural luxury as a prince of the Church should, who is the head of an immense and costly ecclesiastical establishment, the foundations of which go deep down into history. But Dean Inge the Gloomy Dean, as he is called is not, as might be thought, a 'rural dean'; I am quite sure, for I asked him the question one evening

I

when I sat next to him at a dinner, but in answer to my rather flippant question he merely looked sadly down his nose, seemingly heavily packed with a cold, and replied, 'No.' I was tempted to inquire whether a rural dean is the same thing as a common or garden dean, but jesting with a great dignitary of the Church of England is apt to prove a serious business, and I lost the best opportunity I ever had of discovering what a 'rural dean' is; I only know that they grow them in London, and probably in out-of-theway places.

Speaking of church dignitaries, I never make much progress with them - I never did. There is a legend in my family that at the age of four I was sent into a parlor to be blessed of a bishop, for I had ecclesiastical bringing-up. After the blessing I turned and, regarding the bishop doubtfully, remarked, 'I never liked bishops,' and then added as an afterthought, 'nor pliecemens.'

So early did I resent any form of authority, and this characteristic has lengthened and strengthened and thickened with years.

But Dean Inge is only one of the inhabitants of his house and garden: Dean Milman is just as real to me, although he died years ago. In life he wrote plays, and good ones too, rather to the scandal of the clergy, and finally when he settled down he devoted himself to the study of history rather than

to the duties of deaning - whatever they may be. I wish for his greatness' sake that I could summon the ghost of Dean Swift in this garden, but he put his money on the wrong horse, politically, and only became Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin, a very different matter. There was, of course, Dean Donne, but that was several centuries ago.

The story goes that a letter was once addressed to Mr. Smith, Number 1, London, and that it was delivered at Apsley House, at Hyde Park Corner, the town residence of the Duke of Wellington: that being, in the opinion of the Post Office, the beginning of things, the Number One of London. Now, were I commissioned to deliver a letter so addressed, I think I should look round for a residence in a corner of the circle - or, more properly, the oval surrounding St. Paul's Cathedral, and if finally I gave up looking for a corner in a circle I should ask to be directed to the Dean of St. Paul's, he certainly being Number One at this end of London. And having delivered my letter and being told, as I should be, that there was no answer, I should walk westward, loiteringly, looking for other equally charming backwaters, for one of the intoxicating joys of London is the unexpectedness of one's finds; and if I failed to stumble upon another Dean's Garden I might come upon another fine old house, also in its garden, the house of the Master of the Temple. Who the present Master is I do not know; but if the old Master were alive, Ainger, I should certainly go in and have a chat with him, for I had a pleasant correspondence years ago with him about Charles Lamb. Before E. V. Lucas came along with his learning, Canon Ainger was the accepted authority upon everything relating to the greatest of English essayists. And threading my way back

to the Strand I should certainly pause for a moment, on the other side of the Temple Church, at the grave of Oliver Goldsmith. He died in debt and was buried here, rather in a hurry one night, in order that his body might not be seized by his creditors, and the grave was not marked for some time, for the same reason. Poor Goldy! I am afraid John Filby, your tailor, from whom you had your famous bloom-colored suit, was among them. Every little court and alley in this part of London has its colony of ghosts, and wandering among them I should certainly, sooner or later, stumble upon Gough Square.

Gough Square is not too easy to find. I usually enter it by Wine Office Court

in which is located the Cheshire Cheese, that famous eating-place which became firmly identified with Dr. Johnson only after his death - because I like to pass, and frequently enter, the one quaint old tavern which remains exactly as most London taverns were a century or two ago, and because tradition says that Goldsmith lived in this court when he wrote The Vicar of Wakefield.

Reaching the top of this narrow channel, and turning sharply to the left, one faces the famous house, Number 17-the house in which Dr. Johnson lived for ten years, from 1748 to 1759, during which he compiled the greater part of the Dictionary, wrote innumerable Ramblers and The Vanity of Human Wishes; from which he dispatched his smashing letter to Lord Chesterfield, and to which he returned, 'unshaken as the monument,' after the failure of his play, Irene. This is the house, too, in which his wife died and in which, in all likelihood, he wrote Rasselas. It is not an amusing fiction, but I quite agree with the judgment of Christopher North that it is a noble performance, in design and in execution,' and that 'never were the expenses of a