t as it is. Let Saturday settle it. I must be off.
Breakfast here next Sunday."

But the late loud scenes had whipped up the almost naked nerves of the
Secretary. He was one of those men who are conscientious even in crime.

"I must protest, President, that the thing is irregular," he said. "It
is a fundamental rule of our society that all plans shall be debated in
full council. Of course, I fully appreciate your forethought when in the
actual presence of a traitor--"

"Secretary," said the President seriously, "if you'd take your head home
and boil it for a turnip it might be useful. I can't say. But it might."

The Secretary reared back in a kind of equine anger.

"I really fail to understand--" he began in high offense.

"That's it, that's it," said the President, nodding a great many times.
"That's where you fail right enough. You fail to understand. Why, you
dancing donkey," he roared, rising, "you didn't want to be overheard by
a spy, didn't you? How do you know you aren't overheard now?"

And with these words he shouldered his way out of the room, shaking with
incomprehensible scorn.

Four of the men left behind gaped after him without any apparent
glimmering of his meaning. Syme alone had even a glimmering, and such
as it was it froze him to the bone. If the last words of the President
meant anything, they meant that he had not after all passed unsuspected.
They meant that while Sunday could not denounce him like Gogol, he still
could not trust him like the others.

The other four got to their feet grumbling more or less, and betook
themselves elsewhere to find lunch, for it was already well past midday.
The Professor went last, very slowly and painfully. Syme sat long after
the rest had gone, revolving his strange position. He had escaped a
thunderbolt, but he was still under a cloud. At last he rose and made
his way out of the hotel into Leicester Square. The bright, cold day had
grown increasingly colder, and when he came out into the street he
was surprised by a few flakes of snow. While he still carried the
sword-stick and the rest of Gregory's portable luggage, he had thrown
the cloak down and left it somewhere, perhaps on the steam-tug, perhaps
on the balcony. Hoping, therefore, that the snow-shower might be slight,
he stepped back out of the street for a moment and stood up under the
doorway of a small and greasy hair-dresser's shop, the front window of
which was empty, except for a sickly wax l