seat at your table?" he remarked urbanely.
"I am afraid we are going to have trouble over there directly," he
added, sinking his voice as he nodded in the direction of the distant
alcove table. "We may have to act promptly. Nobody else seems to have
noticed anything. We can watch him from behind this pillar without his
seeing us."

Colwyn nodded in return with a quick comprehension of all the other's
speech implied, and pushed a chair towards his visitor, who sat down and
resumed his watch of the young man at the alcove table. Colwyn bestowed
a swift glance on his companion which took in everything. The tall man
in glasses looked too human for a lawyer, too intelligent for a
schoolmaster, and too well-dressed for an ordinary medical man. Colwyn,
versed in judging men swiftly from externals, noting the urbane,
somewhat pompous face, the authoritative, professional pose, the
well-shaped, plump white hands, and the general air of well-being and
prosperity which exuded from the whole man, placed him as a successful
practitioner in the more lucrative path of medicine--probably a
fashionable Harley Street specialist.

Colwyn returned to his scrutiny of the young man at the alcove table,
and he and his companion studied him intently for some time in silence.
But the young man, for the moment, was comparatively quiet, gazing
moodily through the open window over the waters of the North Sea, an
untasted sole in front of him, and an impassive waiter pouring out his
coffee as though the spectacle of a young man sticking a knife into the
table-cloth was a commonplace occurrence at the Grand Hotel, and all in
the day's doings. When the waiter had finished pouring out the coffee
and noiselessly departed, the young man tasted it with an indifferent
air, pushed it from him, and resumed his former occupation of staring
out of the window.

"He seems quiet enough now," observed Colwyn, turning to his companion.
"What do you think is the matter with him--shell-shock?"

"I would not care to hazard a definite opinion on so cursory an
observation," returned the other, in a dry, reticent, ultra-professional
manner. "But I will go so far as to say that I do not think it is a case
of shell-shock. If it is what I suspect, that first attack was the
precursor of another, possibly a worse attack. Ha! it is commencing.
Look at his thumb--that is the danger signal!"

Colwyn looked across the room again. The young man was still sitting in
the sam