chance.... That's enough, sir. Nonsense! I have something more
important to do than to listen to such twaddle."

He shut off with a crash and led us upstairs into a large airy
apartment which formed his study. On the great mahogany desk
seven or eight unopened telegrams were lying.

"Really," he said as he gathered them up, "I begin to think that
it would save my correspondents' money if I were to adopt a
telegraphic address. Possibly `Noah, Rotherfield,' would be the
most appropriate."

As usual when he made an obscure joke, he leaned against the
desk and bellowed in a paroxysm of laughter, his hands shaking
so that he could hardly open the envelopes.

"Noah! Noah!" he gasped, with a face of beetroot, while Lord
John and I smiled in sympathy and Summerlee, like a dyspeptic
goat, wagged his head in sardonic disagreement. Finally
Challenger, still rumbling and exploding, began to open his
telegrams. The three of us stood in the bow window and occupied
ourselves in admiring the magnificent view.

It was certainly worth looking at. The road in its gentle curves
had really brought us to a considerable elevation--seven hundred
feet, as we afterwards discovered. Challenger's house was on the
very edge of the hill, and from its southern face, in which was
the study window, one looked across the vast stretch of the
weald to where the gentle curves of the South Downs formed an
undulating horizon. In a cleft of the hills a haze of smoke