The ferryman opened his door, and invited her genially to his telephone. He had been sitting at his table, surrounded by the snakes that for him took the place of a family. On the table was a bowl of milk from which a large bull-snake, in a gay Turkey-carpet design, was drinking. A yellow and black python lay coiled in several figures of eight in the armchair, and an intelligent-looking small dust-coloured snake with a broad nose and an active tongue leaned out of the ferryman's breast pocket.
"Aren't they beautiful?" he said, with shy and paternal pride, as Sarah Brown tried to find a place on which the python would like to be tickled or scratched. Somehow the python has a barren figure, from a caresser's point of view. The ferryman went on: "There is something about the grip and spring in a snake's body that makes me feel giddy with pleasure. Snakes to me, you know, are just a drug, sold by the yard instead of in bottles. My brain is getting every day colder and quieter, and all through loving snakes so."
Sarah Brown rang up Richard's office, and the over-refined voice of a young gentleman clerk answered her.
Mr. Higgins had left particular word that if any one wanted him they were to be told that he had--er--gone to his True Love.
But any minor business matter connected with magic could be attended to in his absence. Mr. Higgins spending so much of his time on the battlefield at present, a good deal of the routine work had to be done in any case by the speaker, his confidential clerk.
Passports to America? Perfectly simple. The office had simply to issue blank sheets treated in a certain way, and every official to whom the sheet should be presented would read upon it what he would want. But Mr. Higgins would have to affix his mark and seal. Mr. Higgins would be in the office sometime to-night, probably within the hour.
"Two," said Sarah Brown. "One for my friend and one for me. A dog doesn't need one, does he--a British dog? I will book the berths to-morrow. I can pawn my--or rather, I can sell my War Loan."
As she hung up the receiver, the ferryman asked: "Are you having a party up at the Shop, in the superintendent's absence?"
"Not intentionally," replied Sarah Brown. "Why?"