tory landmarks. With this happy prospect before us, and having
slyly shaken off all other companions, we went unsuspectingly back to
the hotel, not dreaming of a _guet-apens_, as the French so expressively
say.

Peter doesn't live at our hotel, not being able to afford gorgeousness.
Marble-walled, gilded-ceilinged rotundas and restaurants are not for
humble secretaries, alas, even if they do look like banished princes! We
invited him, however (also Pat), to have tea with us in our own
sitting-room, and he accepted.

If we could, we should have sneaked in; but the magnificent
entrance-hall of our palatial hotel is not adapted to sneaking purposes.
I'll be hanged if there's a single trapdoor under a conveniently placed
Persian rug, or so much as a secret sliding panel, unless you count the
elevators as such! However, we were doing our best to look invisible _en
masse_, when up sprang Edward Caspian and crossed our path as we ought
to have expected the villain of the piece to do.

He was not alone. With him was a man, not young, yet not looking
middle-aged. He had a head rather like Shakespeare's, and eyes like
aquamarines with a light burning behind them.

"Jove!" I heard the Stormy Petrel mutter. "Camera-eyed Dick!"

I knew instantly that Caspian had been as good as his word, and had sent
for a detective. The name "Camera-eyed Dick" was too terribly
expressive, and so was the way Peter pronounced it, even though he spoke
under his breath--to himself, not to me. I felt that here was a man with
a fearsome specialty--a man called "camera-eyed," because his eyes
photographed on his brain stuff a permanent picture of every face he
saw. And Caspian had brought him here, no doubt at large expense, to
recognize the face of Peter Storm, alias Some One Else.

Oh, it was an awful moment, and made worse because I felt this stroke
was partly our fault. If we hadn't done everything we could to aggravate
Caspian and make him more jealous than ever of Storm, just as his
jealousy had been simmering down, probably he wouldn't have bothered to
carry out his old threat. I thought I should faint, I was so frightened
for Peter, and so sick at the idea of having him arrested or something.

"Is there anything I can do?" I stammered out, before I could stop
myself from making a bad _faux pas_ and showing that I suspected his
danger.

Peter (he and I were walking ahead, Jack and Patsey behind) didn't make
the faintest pretense of not und