THE PROPHET OF BERKELEY SQUARE

By Robert Hichens




CHAPTER I

MRS. MERILLIA IS CARRIED TO BED

The great telescope of the Prophet was carefully adjusted upon its
lofty, brass-bound stand in the bow window of Number One Thousand
Berkeley Square. It pointed towards the remarkably bright stars which
twinkled in the December sky over frosty London, those guardian stars
which always seemed to the Prophet to watch with peculiar solicitude
over the most respectable neighbourhood in which he resided. The
polestar had its eye even now upon the mansion of an adjacent
ex-premier, the belt of Orion was not oblivious of a belted earl's cosy
red-brick home just opposite, and the house of a certain famous actor
and actress close by had been taken by the Great Bear under its special
protection.

The Prophet's butler, Mr. Ferdinand--that bulky and veracious
gentleman--threw open the latticed windows of the drawing-room and
let the cold air rush blithely in. Then he made up the fire carefully,
placed a copy of Mr. Malkiel's _Almanac_, bound in dull pink and silver
brocade by Miss Clorinda Dolbrett of the Cromwell Road, upon a
small tulip-wood table near the telescope, patted a sofa cushion
affectionately on the head, glanced around with the meditative eye of