an: dignity
without aggressiveness, completeness without ostentation. He had a
spare, not ungraceful body, a plain, dark face, a humorous mouth, steady
eyes: a man easily forgotten or overlooked unless he willed it
otherwise.

"My name is Ember," he said quietly. "If you'll permit me--my card." He
offered a slip of pasteboard engraved with the name of Martin Ember.
"And I'll sit down, because I want to talk to you for a few minutes."

Accordingly he sat down. Whitaker glanced at the card, and questioningly
back at Mr. Ember's face.

"I don't know you, but ... What are we to talk about, please?"

The man smiled, not unpleasingly.

"Mrs. Whitaker," he said.

Whitaker stared, frowned, and jumped at a conclusion.

"You represent Mrs. Whitaker?"

Mr. Ember shook his head. "I'm no lawyer, thank God! But I happen to
know a good deal it would be to your advantage to know; so I've taken
this liberty."

"Mrs. Whitaker didn't send you to me? Then how--? What the deuce--!"

"I happened to have a seat near your box at the theatre to-night," Mr.
Ember explained coolly. "From--what I saw there, I inferred that you
must be--yourself. Afterwards I got hold of Max, confirmed my suspicion,
and extracted your address from him."

"I see," said Whitaker, slowly--not comprehending the main issue at all.
"But I'm not known here by the name of Whitaker."

"So I discovered," said Ember, with his quiet, engaging smile. "If I
hadn't remembered that you sometimes registered as Hugh Morten--as, for
instance, at the Commercial House six years ago--"

"You were there!"

"A considerable time after the event--yes." The man nodded, his eyes
glimmering.

Whitaker shot a quick glance round the room, and was relieved to find
they were not within earshot of any of the other occupied tables.

"Who the devil are you?" he demanded bluntly.

"I was," said the other slowly, "once, a private detective. Now--I'm a
person of no particular employment, of independent means, with a
penchant--you're at liberty to assume--for poking my nose into other
people's business."

"Oh...."

A word, "blackmail," leapt into Whitaker's consciousness, and served to
harden the hostility in his attitude.

"Mrs. George Pettit once employed me to find her sister, Miss Mary
Ladislas, who had run away with a chauffeur named Morton," pursued the
man, evenly. "That was about the time--shortly after--the death of
Thurlow Ladislas; say, two months after the so-called