ing for luncheon. There was no sign of Louis. When
I returned, Ashley leaned forward to me from the other side of the
desk.

"Mr. Delora wishes you to step up, sir," he said.

I was a little surprised, but I moved promptly to the lift.

"On the third floor, isn't it?" I asked.

"Exactly, sir," Ashley answered. "Shall I send a page with you?"

I shook my head.

"I can find it all right," I said.

My knock at the door was answered by a dark-faced valet. He ushered me
into a large and very handsome sitting-room. Felicia and Delora were
standing talking together near the mantelpiece. They both ceased at my
entrance, but I had an instinctive feeling that I had been the subject
of their conversation. Felicia greeted me timidly. There were signs of
tears in her face, and I felt that by some means or other this man had
been able to reassert his influence over her. Delora himself was a
changed being. He was dressed with the almost painful exactness of the
French man of fashion. His slight black imperial was trimmed to a
point, his moustache upturned with a distinctly foreign air. He wore a
wonderful pin in his carefully arranged tie, and a tiny piece of red
ribbon in his button-hole. The manicurist whom I had met in the
passage had evidently just left him, for as I entered he was regarding
his nails thoughtfully. He did not offer me his hand. He stared at me
instead with a certain restrained insolence.

"I should be glad to know, Captain Rotherby," he said calmly, "to what
I owe this intrusion?"

"I am sorry that you look upon it in that light, sir," I answered. "My
visit, as a matter of fact, was intended for your niece."

She took a step towards me, but Delora's outstretched arm barred her
progress.

"My niece is very much honored," he answered, "but her friends and her
acquaintances are mine. You were so good as to render me some service
on our arrival at Charing Cross a few days ago, but you have since
then presumed upon that service to an unwarrantable extent."

"I am sorry that you should think so," I answered.

"I did not know," Delora continued, "that the young men of your
country had time enough to spare to devote themselves to other
people's business in the way that you have done. I came to this
country upon a peculiar and complicated mission, intrusted to me by my
own government. The chief condition of success was that it should be
performed in secrecy. You were only a chance acquaintance, and how on