r. When the Exchange
answers tell them to put you on to O,017 Gerrard."

Littimer obeyed mechanically, but though he rang and rang again no answer
came. With a snarling curse Henson dragged himself out of bed and crossed
the room, with limbs that shook under him.

He twirled the handle round passionately.

"You always were a fool," he growled, "and you always will be."

Still no reply came. Henson whirled angrily, but he could elicit no
response. He kicked the instrument over and danced round it impotently.
Littimer had never seen him in such a raging fury before. The language of
the man was an outrage, filthy, revolting, profane. No yelling, drunken
Hooligan could have been more fluent, more luridly diffuse.

"Go on," Littimer said, bitterly. "I like to hear you. I like to hear the
smug, plausible Pharisee, the friend of the good and pious, going on like
this. I'd give fifty years of my life to have just a handful of your
future constituents here for a moment."

Henson paused suddenly and requested that Littimer should help him into
bed.

"I can afford to speak freely before you," he said. "Say a word against
me and I'll crush you. Put out a hand to injure me and I'll wipe you off
the face of the earth. It's absolutely imperative that I should send an
important telephone message to London at once, and here the machine has
broken down and no chance of its being repaired for a day or two. Curse
the telephone."

He lay back on his bed utterly exhausted by his fit of passion. One of
the white bandages about his throat had started, and a little thin stream
of blood trickled down his chest. Littimer waited for the next move. He
watched the crimson fluid trickle over Henson's sleeping-jacket. He could
have watched the big scoundrel bleeding to death with the greatest
possible pleasure.

"What was Van Sneck doing here?"

The voice came clear and sharp from the bed. Littimer responded to it as
a cowed hound does to a sudden yet not quite unexpected lash from a
huntsman's whip. His manliness was of small account where Henson was
concerned. For years he had come to heel like this. Yet the question
startled him and took him entirely by surprise.

"He was looking for the lost Rembrandt."

But Littimer's surprise was as nothing to Henson's amazement. He lay flat
on his back so that his face could not be seen. From the expression of it
he had obtained a totally unexpected reply to his question. He was so
amazed that he