The kid had a high, cracked voice, as if rusty from want of use.

Parkinson, the lost-property superintendent, looked at my belt buckle for a good long time, evidently annoyed that I should have struck lucky. Then he rose to his feet, saying: 'It is long past my booking-off time.'

He drew a line in the book and signed his initials against it.

'If the porter can be of any assistance you are free to consult him,' he went on, 'but I can spend no more time on the matter.' Parkinson walked to the wall where his waterproof hung on the same peg as a dinty bowler. He put them both on, and walked towards the umbrellas, looking at them all for a moment, quite spoiled for choice, before finally giving a heave on a bone-handled one. He said nothing to the porter but walked to the doorway where he opened the door and shook the brolly furiously for a while, making a good deal of racket about it. When at last the brolly was up and over his head, it was like the moment when a kite takes off, and he walked away fast under the rain. Then the telegraph bell began to ring. After four of the slow dings, I looked towards the porter who was still standing in the shadows, now with a pasteboard box under his arm. 'Will you answer that,' I said, 'now that the governor's gone home?' 'He's not gone home,' said the porter. 'Where's he gone then?' 'Institute.' That was rum. The superintendent had launched himself out into the rain with the look of a man at the start of a long walk. The bell was still ringing. 'But will you answer it?' He shook his head. 'Not passed to do it, mister.' 'But it could be a pressing matter' I said. 'Such as what?' he said. I couldn't think. We listened until the bell stopped, and then we were left with just the sound of the rain. There was one mighty crash from the goods yard outside, and the kid said: 'I have your magazines here, mister, if you'd like to step through.' There was a part of the counter that was hinged. I lifted it up, and walked towards the shelves, the lair of the lost- luggage porter.