up another channel and
in imagination found him once again standing beside the girl with the
splendid eyes who called at Barraclough's flat two hours before.

"Wish she wasn't mixed up in this outfit," he said to himself. "A girl
like that! Perfectly ripping creature. By jing! put her alongside a
man after her own heart--some decent fellow with the pluck to stand up
against that wayward strain--and there might be a good deal of
happiness knocking around for the pair of them. I suppose that ass
Barraclough turned her down. Pretty hard to please. Wonder if he got
away all right. Ripping scent she used. Coty, I believe, something
Jacque Minot."

As a man will who is trying to revive the impression of a scent he
sniffed the air gently with his eyes shut, only to open them with an
expression of surprise. Surely it was no imagination but the odour of
Rose Jacque Minot, taint and exquisite, seemed to hang in the air.
Thin waves of it growing and diminishing in intensity were wafted
across his head almost as though directed from a spray.

"If that isn't the oddest thing," he gasped. "Now I wonder----"

The light flashed up for a second--just long enough to reveal the fact
that the room was empty.

"Damn funny," he said and sat up in bed puzzling. He remained thus for
several minutes but no solution to the mystery presented itself.
Moreover, the scent had gone from the air and nothing but the memory
remained.

"Suppose I can't have been fool enough to imagine it. Never heard of a
man being haunted by a perfume."

He lowered his head to the pillow feeling, for no explainable reason,
strangely disquieted, only to rise again almost instantly exclaiming:

"'Tany rate, this is no imagination."

For the reek of onions was in the air--gross and nauseous. You could
have cut it with a knife.

Probably Richard's most violent antipathy was for the smell of onions.
He abhorred it as the devil abhors virtue. With an exclamation of
disgust he disappeared beneath the bedclothes and stuffed the sheet
into his mouth. He lay thus for a long while before venturing to
emerge and sample the air. To his relief he found the detestable taint
had vanished and the atmosphere had recovered its original slightly
tomby flavour.

"That's a blessing any way," he said. "I suppose it's no use wondering
how it's done or why it's done. Better get to sleep and ask questions
in the morning."

And quite unexpectedly he found he was