that you've gone too
far by much. I insist that you remove your mask and tell me your
name."

"And if I refuse?" said the little man coolly.

"If you refuse--or if you persist in this insolent attitude,
sir!--I--I'll--"

"_What?_ In the name of brevity, make up your mind and give it a name,
man!"

"I'll thrash you within an inch of your life--here and now!" Shaynon
blustered.

"One moment," P. Sybarite pleaded with a graceful gesture. "Before
committing yourself to this mad enterprise, would you mind telling me
exactly how you spell that word _inch_? With a capital _I_ and a final
_e_--by any chance?"

XVII

IN A BALCONY

Bewilderment and consternation, working in the man, first struck him
dumb, aghast, and witless, then found expression in an involuntary
gasp that was more than half of wondering fear, the remainder rage
slipping its leash entirely:

"_What?_"

He advanced a pace with threatening mien.

Overshadowed though he was, P. Sybarite stood his ground with no least
hint of dismay. To the contrary, he was seen to stroke his lips
discreetly as if to erase a smile.

"The word in question," he said with exasperating suavity, "is the
common one of four letters, to-wit, _inch_; as ordinarily spelled
denoting the unit of lineal measurement--the twelfth part of a foot;
but lend it a capital _I_ and an ultimate _e_--my good fellow!--and it
stands, I fear too patiently, for the standard of your blackguardism."

Speechless, the younger Shaynon hesitated, lifting an uncertain hand
to his throat, as if to relieve a sense of strangulation.

"Or what if I were to suggest--delicately--that you're within an Inche
of the end of your rope?" the little man pursued, grimly playful.
"Give you an Inche and--what will you take, eh?"

With an inarticulate cry, Shaynon's fist shot out as if to strike his
persecutor down; but in mid-air P. Sybarite's slim, strong fingers
closed round and inflexibly stayed his enemy's wrist, with barely
perceptible effort swinging it down and slewing the man off poise, so
that perforce he staggered back against the stone of the window's deep
embrasure.

"Behave!" P. Sybarite counselled evenly. "Remember where you are--in a
lady's presence. Do you want to go sprawling from the sole of my foot
into the presence of more than one--or over this railing, to the
sidewalk, and become food for inch-worms?"

Releasing Shaynon, he stepped back warily, anticipating nothing less
than a