It was on a gray Sunday that they entered London. In a four-wheeler, the roof of which groaned under a pyramid of baggage, they started out into the mighty silence of deserted streets. The _plunk! plunk!_ of the horse's shod hoofs crashed against the blank walls of the shuttered houses and reverberated ahead of them until sound dribbled away down the gorge of the all-embracing nothing. Gray, gray; heaven and earth and life were gray.
Lewis felt like crying, but Leighton came to the rescue. He was in high spirits.
"Boy, look out of the window. Is there anywhere in the world a youth spouting verse on a street corner?"
"Or an orator shooting himself to give point to an impassioned speech?"
"Or women shaking their bangles into the melting-pot for the cause of freedom?"
"I should say not. This is Sunday in London. Take off your hat. You are in the graveyard of all the emotions of the earth."
Up one flight of stairs, over a tobacconist's shop, Leighton raised and dropped the massive bronze knocker on a deep-set door. He saw Lewis's eyes fix on the ponderous knocker.
"Strong door to stand it, eh? They don't make 'em that way any more."
The door swung open. A man-servant in black bowed as Leighton entered.
"Glad to welcome you back, sir. I hope you are well, sir."
"Thanks, Nelton, I'm well as well. So is Master Lewis. Got his room ready? Show him the bath."
Lewis, looking upon Nelton, suddenly remembered a little room in the Sul Americano at Bahia. He felt sure that when Nelton opened his mouth it would be to say, "Will you be wearing the white flannels to-night, sir, or the dinner-jacket?"
By lunch-time Leighton's high spirits were on the decline, by four o'clock they had struck bottom. He kept walking to the windows, only to turn his back quickly on what he saw. At last he said:
"D'you know what a 'hundred to one shot' is?"
"Well," said Leighton, "watch me play one." He sat down, wrote a hurried note, and sent it out by Nelton. "The chances, my boy, are one hundred to one that the lady's out of town."
When Nelton came back with an answer, Leighton scarcely stopped to open it.
"Come on, boy," he called, and was off. By the time Lewis reached the street, his father was stepping into a cab. Lewis scrambled after him.