Then it was that occurred to him the brilliant notion of making a clean
breast of it to the Dean. He had not the pleasure of the Dean's personal
acquaintance. The Dean was an abstraction; certainly much more abstract
than Priam Farll. He thought he could meet the Dean. A terrific
enterprise, but he must accomplish it! After all, a Dean--what was it?
Nothing but a man with a funny hat! And was not he himself Priam Farll,
the authentic Priam Farll, vastly greater than any Dean?

He told the valet to buy black gloves, and a silk hat, sized seven and a
quarter, and to bring up a copy of _Who's Who_. He hoped the valet would
be dilatory in executing these commands. But the valet seemed to fulfill
them by magic. Time flew so fast that (in a way of speaking) you could
hardly see the fingers as they whirled round the clock. And almost
before he knew where he was, two commissionaires were helping him into
an auto-cab, and the terrific enterprise had begun. The auto-cab would
easily have won the race for the Gordon Bennett Cup. It was of about two
hundred h.p., and it arrived in Dean's Yard in less time than a fluent
speaker would take to say Jack Robinson. The rapidity of the flight was
simply incredible.

"I'll keep you," Priam Farll was going to say, as he descended, but he
thought it would be more final to dismiss the machine; so he dismissed
it.

He rang the bell with frantic haste, lest he should run away ere he had
rung it. And then his heart went thumping, and the perspiration damped
the lovely lining of his new hat; and his legs trembled, literally!

He was in hell on the Dean's doorstep.