He restrained himself till then, because, even to his impatience, it did not seem a good plan to arrive at The Walled House in the middle of lunch. It probably wasn’t a good plan to arrive there at all. What he ought to do was to let old Rimington go down. Quite doggedly he admitted this and went. Leeming Lane was one of those derelict bits of country round London which are being slowly pressed to death. One end of it was already raw and scarred from the erection of a dozen or so little pill-boxes with names like Mon Abri and Locarno. At the other, dark shrubberies and high walls looked down upon the old footpath of the lane. The Walled House stood alone. Its walls were high and reinforced by evergreens. It had a neglected and forbidding look. Tall stone pillars held between them an oak door with a bell at one side of it. Jim looked at the bell rather hard. It must have been years since its brass had winked in the sun, so dark and stained and discoloured was it.
