far
happier man. There could be no question of dropping the business,
whatever its difficulties. I had a queer religious feeling that Ivery
and I had our fortunes intertwined, and that no will of mine could keep
us apart. I had faced him before the war and won; I had faced him again
and lost; the third time or the twentieth time we would reach a final
decision. The whole business had hitherto appeared to me a trifle
unreal, at any rate my own connection with it. I had been docilely
obeying orders, but my real self had been standing aside and watching
my doings with a certain aloofness. But that hour in the Tube station
had brought me into the serum, and I saw the affair not as Bullivant's
or even Blenkiron's, but as my own. Before I had been itching to get
back to the Front; now I wanted to get on to Ivery's trail, though it
should take me through the nether pit. Peter was right; fortitude was
the thing a man must possess if he would save his soul.

The hours passed, and, as I expected, there came no word from
Macgillivray. I had some dinner sent up to me at seven o'clock, and
about eight I was thinking of looking up Blenkiron. Just then came a
telephone call asking me to go round to Sir Walter Bullivant's house in
Queen Anne's Gate.

Ten minutes later I was ringing the bell, and the door was opened to me
by the same impassive butler who had admitted me on that famous night
three years before. Nothing had changed in the pleasant green-panelled
hall; the alcove was the same as when I had watched from it the
departure of the man who now called himself Ivery; the telephone book
lay in the very place from which I had snatched it in order to ring up
the First Sea Lord. And in the back room, where that night five anxious
officials had conferred, I found Sir Walter and Blenkiron.

Both looked worried, the American feverishly so. He walked up and down
the hearthrug, sucking an unlit black cigar.

'Say, Dick,' he said, this is a bad business. It wasn't no fault of
yours. You did fine. It was us--me and Sir Walter and Mr Macgillivray
that were the quitters.'

'Any news?' I asked.

'So far the cover's drawn blank,' Sir Walter replied. 'It was the
devil's own work that our friend looked your way today. You're pretty
certain he saw that you recognized him?'

'Absolutely. As sure as that he knew I recognized him in your hall
three years ago when he was swaggering as Lord Alloa.'

'No,' said Blenkiron dolefully, that little