"Safer to look at that on the pavement, sir!"
"I was trying to find the Queen's Glasshouse Chapel, Officer," said he. "Have you ever heard of it?" (In Bursley, members of the town council always flattered members of the force by addressing them as "Officer"; and Edward Henry knew exactly the effective intonation.)
"It _was there_, sir," said the policeman, less disdainful, pointing to a narrow hoarding behind which could be seen the back walls of high buildings in Shaftesbury Avenue. "They've just finished pulling it down."
"Thank you," said Edward Henry quietly, with a superb and successful effort to keep as much colour in his face as if the policeman had not dealt him a dizzying blow.
He then walked towards the hoarding, but could scarcely feel the ground under his feet. From a wide aperture in the palisades a cartful of earth was emerging; it creaked and shook as it was dragged by a labouring horse over loose planks into the roadway; a whip-cracking carter hovered on its flank. Edward Henry approached the aperture and gazed within. An elegant young man stood solitary inside the hoarding and stared at a razed expanse of land in whose furthest corner some navvies were digging a hole....
But what did this sinister destructive activity mean? Nobody was entitled to interfere with property on which he, Alderman Machin, held an unexpired option! But was it the site? He perused the plan again with more care. Yes, there could be no doubt that it was the site. His eye roved round, and he admitted the justice of the boast that an electric sign displayed at the southern front corner of the theatre would be visible from Piccadilly Circus, lower Regent Street, Shaftesbury Avenue, etc. He then observed a large noticeboard, raised on posts above the hoardings, and read the following:
_Site of the First New Thought Church to be opened next Spring. Subscriptions invited. Rollo Wrissell, Senior Trustee. Ralph Alloyd, Architect. Dicks and Pato, Builders._
The name of Rollo Wrissell seemed familiar to him, and after a few moments' searching he recalled that Rollo Wrissell was one of the trustees and executors of the late Lord Woldo, the other being the widow, and the mother of the new Lord Woldo. In addition to the lettering, the notice-board held a graphic representation of the First New Thought Church as it would be when completed.