I put the question to Benjamin when we met at the luncheon-table before setting forth for the distant suburb in which Miserrimus Dexter lived. My old friend disapproved of the contemplated expedition as strongly as ever. He was unusually grave and unusually sparing of his words when he answered me.
"I am no listener," he said. "But some people have voices which insist on being heard. Mr. Dexter is one of them."
"Does that mean that you heard him?" I asked.
"The door couldn't muffle him, and the wall couldn't muffle him," Benjamin rejoined. "I heard him--and I thought it infamous. There!"
"I may want you to do more than hear him this time," I ventured to say. "I may want you to make notes of our conversation while Mr. Dexter is speaking to me. You used to write down what my father said, when he was dictating his letters to you. Have you got one of your little note-books to spare?"
Benjamin looked up from his plate with an aspect of stern surprise.
"It's one thing," he said, "to write under the dictation of a great merchant, conducting a vast correspondence by which thousands of pounds change hands in due course of post. And it's another thing to take down the gibberish of a maundering mad monster who ought to be kept in a cage. Your good father, Valeria, would never have asked me to do that."
"Forgive me, Benjamin; I must really ask you to do it. You may be of the greatest possible use to me. Come, give way this once, dear, for my sake."
Benjamin looked down again at his plate, with a rueful resignation which told me that I had carried my point.
"I have been tied to her apron-string all my life," I heard him grumble to himself; "and it's too late in the day to get loose from her how." He looked up again at me. "I thought I had retired from business," he said; "but it seems I must turn clerk again. Well? What is the new stroke of work that's expected from me this time?"
The cab was announced to be waiting for us at the gate as he asked the question. I rose and took his arm, and gave him a grateful kiss on his rosy old cheek.
"Only two things," I said. "Sit down behind Mr. Dexter's chair, so that he can't see you. But take care to place yourself, at the same time, so that you can see me."