"Let's go out," Gilbert said suddenly to Henry.

The nurse had arrived, and was busy in attendance on Mrs. Clutters. Magnolia, full of the antagonism which servants instinctively feel towards nurses, was maintaining a grievance in the kitchen. "Givin' 'er orders, as if she was some one!" she was mumbling to herself. "Too bossy, she is!..."

"It's no good trying to do any work to-day," Gilbert went on. "I ... I couldn't make up things with her ... up there!"

They told Magnolia that they would have their meals out, and that she need not trouble to cook anything for them, and they sent for the nurse and explained their circumstances to her. "That's all right," she said cheerfully, "I'll look after myself!"

They set off towards Hampstead, but after a while they found themselves returning to Bloomsbury. They could not keep away from the house.... They tried to eat a meal at the Vienna CafÉ, but they could not swallow the food, so they paid their bill and went away. They wandered into the British Museum, and tried to interest themselves in Egyptology....

"This female," said Gilbert, pointing to the mummy of the Priestess of Amen-Ra, "is supposed to bring frightful ill-luck to you if you squint at her. There was a fellow at Cambridge who was cracked about her ... used to come here in vac. and make love to her ... sit here for hours spooning with a corpse. I often wanted to smack his face for him!"

"Pose, I expect!" Henry replied. "I should have thought it was rather dull to get smitten on a woman who's as dead as this one is...."

They remembered Mrs. Clutters....

"Let's go back and see what's happened," Gilbert said, turning away from the case which held the Priestess....

Ninian met them in the hall. "She's dead," he said. "Her husband's in the kitchen. I found him in a lodging-house in Camden Town, and I should say he's a first-class rotter!"