sive
background. Their small round dining-table, with its rare cut glass,
its perfect appointments, its bowls of pink roses, was like a spot
of wonderful colour in the great room. Two men servants stood at the
sideboard a few yards away, a triumph of negativeness. The butler, who
had been absent for a moment, stood now silently waiting behind his
master's place. Hamel was oppressed, during those few minutes of
waiting, by a curious sense of unreality, as though he were taking
part in some strange tableau. There was something unreal about his
surroundings and his own presence there; something unreal in the
atmosphere, charged as it seemed to be with some omen of impending
happenings; something unreal in that whispered warning, those few
hoarsely uttered words which had stolen to his hearing across the
clusters of drooping roses; the absurd babble of the woman, who sat
there with tragic things under the powder with which her face was
daubed.

"Koto must learn to sit upon his tail--like that. No, not another grape
till he sits up. There, then!"

She was leaning forward with a grape between her teeth, towards the tiny
animal who was trying in vain to balance his absurdly shaped little body
upon the tablecloth. Hamel, without looking around, knew quite well what
was happening. Soon he heard the click of the chair. Mr. Fentolin was
back in his place. His skin seemed paler and more parchment-like than
ever. His eyes glittered.

"It seems," he announced quietly, as he raised his wine-glass to his
lips with the air of one needing support, "that we entertained an angel
unawares here. This Mr. Dunster is lost for the second time. A very
important personage he turns out to be."

"You mean the American whom Gerald brought home after the accident?"
Mrs. Fentolin asked carelessly.

Mr. Fentolin replied. "He insisted upon continuing his journey before he
was strong enough. I warned him of what might happen. He has evidently
been take ill somewhere. It seems that he was on his way to The Hague."

"Do you mean that he has disappeared altogether this time?" Hamel asked.

Mr. Fentolin shook his head.

"No, he has found his way to The Hague safely enough. He is lying there
at a hotel in the city, but he is unconscious. There is some talk about
his having been robbed on the way. At any rate, they are tracing his
movements backwards. We are to be honoured with a visit from one of
Scotland Yard's detectives, to reconstruct his journe