Chapter 33: In the Presence.

The cursing gentleman and his two friends were awaiting us upon the pavement. I said a word of a kind to the long ‘un.

“Look here, my bald-headed friend, I don’t quite know who you are, or what you want, but I’ve seen enough of your little ways to know they’re funny; so if you take my advice you’ll make yourself scarce before there’s trouble.”

He held out his hands. Looking, on the dirty pavement of that shabby street, like a fish out of water.

“The Great Joss! The Great Joss! He is in there—give him back to us—then we go.”

I reflected. After all there was some reason in the creature. He was almost as much interested in Mr. Batters as I was. Considering how Mr. Batters had treated me I didn’t see why he shouldn’t learn what an object of interest he really was. It might occasion him agreeable surprise. The fellow was in such dead earnest. It beat me how he and his friends had got where they were. Reminding me of the flocks of migratory birds which one meets far out at sea. Goodness only knows by what instinct they pursue the objects of their search. I turned to Mr. Paine.

“This gentleman was high priest, or something of the kind, in the temple in which Mr. Batters was Number One God.”

“Number One God?”

“That’s about the size of it. He was a god when I first made his acquaintance. This gentleman’s own particular. Since he and his friends have come a good many thousand miles to get another peep at him, I don’t think there’ll be much harm in letting him have one if it’s to be got. So, so far as I’m concerned, right reverend sir, you can stop and see the fun.”

Mr. Paine stared. He didn’t understand. The look with which he regarded the foreign gentleman wasn’t friendly. The experience he had had of his peculiar methods was a trifle recent. Perhaps it rankled.

I turned my attention to the house in front of which the lot of us were standing, cabs and all.

“The question is, since no one seems inclined to open the door, how we are going to get in to enable us to pay our little morning call.”

Rudd practically suggested one way by hurling himself against the door as if he had been a battering ram. He might as well have tried his luck against a stone wall. As much impression would have been made. When I ran my stick over it, it sounded to me like a sheet of metal.