eated.

A little spot of colour burned in her cheeks. She looked away hastily.

"The lady with whom you are going to dine on Sunday night, for one,"
she reminded him.

There was a moment's silence. Jacob was perplexed.

"Are you going to be there?" he enquired.

"Yes!"

He glanced at his watch.

"We may as well go together, then," he suggested.

They walked up the stairs to the street, and he handed her into his
car, which was waiting. On their way to Russell Square she was
unusually silent. At the top of Shaftesbury Avenue she turned to him
abruptly.

"Perhaps you had better not come, after all," she said. "I will make
your excuses to Grace."

"I can take care of myself," Jacob replied.

Her eyes mocked him.

"You are quite sure?"

"Perfectly."

She shrugged her shoulders and made no other remark until they drew up
in front of the house in Russell Square. When he would have assisted
her to alight, she hesitated once more.

"Listen," she said, speaking with a curious jerkiness. "You were quite
right about Hartwell and Mason. They are adventurers--and they are
both waiting for you inside. They want your money very badly. We all
want it. Now don't you think you had better postpone your lesson?"

Jacob smiled confidently.

"What I have is yours for the asking," he declared. "It will be theirs
only if they can take it."

She suffered him to follow her into the house.

CHAPTER XIII

It must have been, Jacob decided, about half an hour later when his
senses readjusted themselves to his existing environment. He was in
what had apparently been the kitchen, situated in the basement of the
house, seated in a fairly comfortable chair to which he was tied by
cords. Hartwell and Mason were watching him with the air of uneasy
conspirators. Sybil, perfectly composed, was lounging in a wicker
chair a little way off, smoking a cigarette. The black man who he had
been told was the leader of the newest Jazz band, come to give the
young lady some hints as to music, had disappeared. From the distant
sound of the gramophone, he gathered that Grace Powers was engaged
upstairs with a pupil.

"Feeling all right again, eh?" Mason asked anxiously.

"Perfectly, thank you," Jacob answered. "By the bye, what happened?"

"You--er--had a sort of faint," Mason began--

"Don't start that junk," Hartwell intervened. "You were doped by the
nigger and carried down here. We want some money from you, Pratt."

"Does