waiting until you
can find another case in which you are pitted against him."

"Sometimes," Peter Ruff said, "your intelligence surprises me!"

"I came to you," she continued, looking at him earnestly, "for two
reasons. The personal one I will not touch upon. The other was my love
of excitement. I have tried many things in life, as you know, Peter,
but I have seemed to carry always with me the heritage of weariness. I
thought that my position here would help me to fight against it."

"You have seen me bring a corpse to life," Peter Ruff reminded her, a
little aggrieved.

She smiled.

"It was a month ago," she reminded him.

"I can't do that sort of thing every day," he declared.

"Naturally," she answered; "but you have refused four cases within the
last five days."

Peter Ruff whistled softly to himself for several moments.

"Seen anything of our new neighbour in the flat above?" he asked, with
apparent irrelevance.

Miss Brown looked across at him with upraised eyebrows.

"I have been in the lift with him twice," she answered.

"Fancy his appearance?" Ruff asked, casually.

"Not in the least!" Violet answered. "I thought him a vulgar, offensive
person!"

Peter Ruff chuckled. He seemed immensely delighted.

"Mr. Vincent Cawdor he calls himself, I believe," he remarked.

"I have no idea," Miss Brown declared. The subject did not appeal to
her.

"His name is on a small copper plate just over the letter-box," Ruff
said. "Rather neat idea, by the bye. He calls himself a commission
agent, I believe."

Violet was suddenly interested. She realized, after all, that Mr.
Vincent Cawdor might be a person of some importance.

"What is a commission agent?" she asked.

Peter Ruff shook his head.

"It might mean anything," he declared. "Never trust any one who is not
a little more explicit as to his profession. I am afraid that this Mr.
Vincent Cawdor, for instance, is a bad lot."

"I am sure he is," Miss Brown declared.

"Looks after a pretty girl, coughs in the lift--all that sort of thing,
eh?" Peter Ruff asked.

She nodded.

"Disgusting!" she exclaimed, with emphasis.

Peter Ruff sighed, and glanced at the clock. The existence of Mr.
Vincent Cawdor seemed to pass out of his mind.

"It is nearly one o'clock," he said. "Where do you usually lunch,
Violet?"

"It depends upon my appetite," she answered, carelessly. "Most often at
an A B C."

"To-day," Peter Ruff said, "you will be extravagant--