Ha! And how do you propose--Will you assume a disguise ?" "Hardly a disguise! I'll change my clothes, of course." "Of course," repeated the great man, with a sort of absent-minded loftiness.

He turned his big head slowly, and over his shoulder gave a haughty oblique stare to the ponderous marble timepiece with the sly, feeble tick.

The gilt hands had taken the opportunity to steal through no less than five and twenty minutes behind his back.
The Assistant Commissioner, who could not see them, grew a little nervous in the interval.

But the great man presented to him a calm and undismayed face.
"Very well," he said, and paused, as if in deliberate contempt of the official clock.

"But what first put you in motion in this direction ?" "I have been always of opinion," began the Assistant Commissioner.
"Ah.