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Now and then he walked out into the street, looked anxiously in all directions, and hurried back to keep up his pretence of shopping. From one of these sorties he did not return; he had dashed away into the dusk, and neither he nor the dark-faced boy nor the veiled lady were seen again by the expectant crowds that continued to throng the Scarrick establishment for days to come.
Greyes declared afterwards that she found herself sub-consciously repeating "The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold" under her breath, and she was generally believed. The newcomer, too, was stopped before he reached the counter, but not by Mr. Scarrick or his assistant.
"Who are they?" asked Georg quickly, straining his eyes to see what the other would gladly not have seen. "Wolves." "The outlook is not encouraging for us smaller businesses," said Mr. Scarrick to the artist and his sister, who had taken rooms over his suburban grocery store.
Almost at the same moment the bearded stranger stalked into the shop, and flung an order for a pound of dates and a tin of the best Smyrna halva across the counter. The most adventurous housewife in the locality had never heard of halva, but Mr. Scarrick was apparently able to produce the best Smyrna variety of it without a moment's hesitation.
"The wine and figs were not paid for yesterday," he said; "keep what is over of the money for our future purchases." "A very strange-looking boy?" said Mrs. Greyes interrogatively to the grocer as soon as his customer had left. "A foreigner, I believe," said Mr. Scarrick, with a shortness that was entirely out of keeping with his usually communicative manner.
"They have some excellent Jaffa oranges here." Then with a tinkling laugh she passed out of the shop. The man glared all round the shop, and then, fixing his eyes instinctively on the barrier of biscuit tins, demanded loudly of the grocer: "You have, perhaps, some good Jaffa oranges?" Every one expected an instant denial on the part of Mr. Scarrick of any such possession.
Scarrick had never had so little difficulty in persuading customers to embark on new experiences in grocery wares. Even those women whose purchases were of modest proportions dawdled over them as though they had brutal, drunken husbands to go home to.
Scarrick had quite recently presided at a lecture on Savonarola. Turning up the deep astrachan collar of his long coat, the stranger swept out of the shop, with the air, Miss Fritten afterwards described it, of a Satrap proroguing a Sanhedrim.
"We might be living in the Arabian Nights," said Miss Fritten, excitedly. "Hush! Listen," beseeched Mrs. Greyes. "Has the dark-faced boy, of whom I spoke yesterday, been here to-day?" asked the stranger. "We've had rather more people than usual in the shop to-day," said Mr. Scarrick, "but I can't recall a boy such as you describe." Mrs.
Scarrick; abruptly deserting a lady who was making insincere inquiries about the home life of the Bombay duck, he intercepted the newcomer on his way to the accustomed counter and informed him, amid a deathlike hush, that he had run out of quail seed. The boy looked nervously round the shop, and turned hesitatingly to go.
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