in a position to lay before you are very scanty and
unsatisfactory."

Paul Harley nodded encouragingly.

"If this were not so," he explained, "you would have no occasion
to apply to me, Sir Charles. It is my business to look for facts.
Naturally, I do not expect my clients to supply them."

Sir Charles slowly nodded his head, and seemed in some measure to
recover confidence.

"Briefly, then," he said, "I believe my life is in danger."

"You mean that there is someone who desires your death?"

"I do."

"H'm," said Harley, replacing the tin in the cupboard and striking
a match. "Even if the facts are scanty, no doubt you have fairly
substantial grounds for such a suspicion?"

"I cannot say that they are substantial, Mr. Harley. They are rather
more circumstantial. Frankly, I have forced myself to come here, and now
that I have intruded upon your privacy, I realize my difficulties more
keenly than ever."

The expression of embarrassment upon the speaker's face had grown
intense; and now he paused, bending forward in his chair. He seemed in
his glance to appeal for patience on the part of his hearer, and Harley,
lighting his pipe, nodded in understanding fashion. He was the last man
in the world to jump to conclusions. He had learned by bitter experience
that lightly to dismiss such cases as this of Sir Charles as coming
within the province of delusion, was sometimes tantamount to refusing
aid to a man in deadly peril.

"You are naturally anxious for the particulars," Sir Charles presently
resumed. "They bear, I regret to say, a close resemblance to the
symptoms of a well-known form of hallucination. In short, with one
exception, they may practically all be classed under the head of
surveillance."

"Surveillance," said Paul Harley. "You mean that you are more or less
constantly followed?"

"I do."

"And what is your impression of this follower?"

"A very hazy one. To-night, as I came to your office, I have every
reason to believe that someone followed me in a taxicab."

"You came in a car?"

"I did."

"And a cab followed you the whole way?"

"Practically the whole way, except that as my chauffeur turned into
Chancery Lane, the cab stopped at the corner of Fleet Street."

"Your idea is that your pursuer followed on foot from this point?"

"Such was my impression."

"H'm, quite impossible. And is this sort of thing constant, Sir
Charles?"

"It has been for some time past."

"Anything else?"