s to be done? He hasn't got any enemies--that
sort of man never has, except himself. How can I get hold of the
girl? I suppose some people would set a detective to watch Rainham,
and so on; but that's not to be thought of, in this case." He
stopped close to Cleopatra's Needle, and frowned abstractedly over
the stone parapet, absently following the struggles of a boy who was
laboriously working a great, empty lighter across the wide,
smoke-coloured river at a narrow angle with the shore. An idea
suggested itself in flattering colours for a moment: he might pay a
visit to the little restaurant or club in Turk Street, the shady
place with a foreign name which he had forgotten. At the expense of
a little tact, he might very probably succeed in inducing some of
the careless, disreputable young artists who formed the
frequentation of the place to talk about Rainham's amours. It even
occurred to him that at a late hour Kitty herself might be seen
there, dancing a can-can with Rainham, or singing songs with a
riotous chorus. But in spite of this prospect, the notion was not
sufficiently attractive. He had not enjoyed his introduction to the
eccentric fraternity, on the occasion when he had been fired by
Lightmark's early enthusiasm about the place to request to take him
there to dine. He had felt, almost as much as the men to whom he was
introduced, that he had no business there, that he was an outsider;
he had even been snubbed. "And, after all," he said impatiently,
resuming his homeward direction, "though I've got enough evidence to
damn him twice over in the eyes of any man in the world, I suppose
it wouldn't be enough to convince a woman, if she believed in him. I
must get hold of Kitty--it's the only way to arrive at a certainty."

After much deliberation to the same effect, he determined, somewhat
reluctantly, that there was nothing for it but to endeavour to
enlist the sympathies of one of Rainham's more intimate friends. He
had recurred by this time to the unstable hypothesis that he was
acting primarily in Rainham's interest, that his real motive was to
arrive at the truth on the chance that it might be favourable to his
unadmitted rival. It only remained for him to select out of the
limited material at his disposal the man whom he should invite to
enter upon this alliance. And when he reached the gloomy library of
the eminently respectable club, where he was accustomed, before
dining, to study the evening papers and