know Mary had arranged that Anne and I should sit together, but now
the chair reserved for me was on Mary's left. Her husband sat at her
right, and next him was Anne, deep in conversation with her further
neighbor, who, as I recognized with a queer feeling of apprehension, was
none other than Cassavetti himself!

Mary greeted me with a comical expression of dismay on her pretty little
face.

"I'm sorry, Maurice," she whispered. "Anne would sit there. She's very
angry. Where have you been, and why didn't you telephone? We gave you
ten minutes' grace, and then came on, all together. It wasn't what you
might call lively, for Jim had to sit bodkin between us, and Anne never
spoke a word the whole way!"

Jim said nothing, but looked up from his soup and favored me with a grin
and a wink. He evidently imagined the situation to be funny. I did not.

"I'll explain later, Mary," I said, and moved to the back of Anne's
chair.

"Will you forgive me, Miss Pendennis?" I said humbly. "I was detained at
the last moment by an accident. I rang you up, but failed to get an
answer."

She turned her head and looked up at me, with a charming smile, in which
I thought I detected a trace of contrition for her hasty condemnation of
me.

"An accident? You are hurt?" she asked impulsively.

"No, it happened to some one else; and it concerns you, Cassavetti," I
continued, addressing him, for, as I confessed that I was unhurt, Anne's
momentary flash of compunction passed, and her perverse mood reasserted
itself. With a slight shrug of her white shoulders she resumed her
dinner, and though she must have heard what I told Cassavetti, she
betrayed no sign of interest.

In as few words as possible I related the circumstances, suppressing
only any mention of the discovery of Anne's portrait in the alien's
possession, and our subsequent interview in my rooms. I remembered the
man's terror of Cassavetti--or Selinski--as he had called him, and his
evident conviction that he was in some way connected with the danger
that threatened "the gracious lady," who, alas, seemed determined to be
anything but gracious to me on this unlucky evening.

Cassavetti listened impassively. I watched his dark face intently, but
could learn nothing from it, not even whether he had expected the man,
or recognized him from my description.

"Without doubt one of my old pensioners," he said unconcernedly.
"Strange that I should have missed him, for I was in my rooms