Of a sudden, within a few paces of the laundry, Brother Copas halted to listen.
"You had better stop here for a moment," he said, and walked forward to the laundry door, the hasp of which he lifted after knocking sharply with his staff.

He threw the door open and looked in, surveying the scene with an angry disgust.
"Hallo! More abominations ?" exclaimed Brother Copas.
The quarrel had started in the forenoon over a dirty trick played by Brother Clerihew, the ex-butler.

(Brother Clerihew had a name for underhand practice; indeed, his inability to miss a chance of it had cost him situation after situation, and finally landed him in St.
Hospital.) This time he had played it upon poor old doddering Brother Ibbetson.

Finding Ibbetson in the porter's gateway, with charge of a lucrative-looking tourist and in search of the key of the Relique Room, he noted that the key, usually handed out by Porter Manby, hung on a hook just within the doorway; but old Ibbetson, being purblind, could not see it, or at all events could not recognise it, and Manby happened to be away at the brewhouse on some errand connected with the Wayfarers' Dole.

Brother Clerihew, who had left him there, sent Ibbetson off on a chase in the wrong direction, loitered around for a couple of minutes chatting about the weather, and then, with a remark that it was shameful to keep gentlefolks waiting so, looked casually in at the doorway.
"Why the key is here all the time!" he exclaimed.