e his meal.'

Clayson slammed the door behind him. Haddo was left with Margaret, and
Arthur Burdon, Dr Porhoet, and Susie. He smiled quietly.

'By the way, are _you_ a lion-hunter?' asked Susie flippantly.

He turned on her his straight uncanny glance.

'I have no equal with big game. I have shot more lions than any man
alive. I think Jules Gerard, whom the French of the nineteenth century
called _Le Tueur de Lions_, may have been fit to compare with me, but I
can call to mind no other.'

This statement, made with the greatest calm, caused a moment of silence.
Margaret stared at him with amazement.

'You suffer from no false modesty,' said Arthur Burdon.

'False modesty is a sign of ill-breeding, from which my birth amply
protects me.'

Dr Porhoet looked up with a smile of irony.

'I wish Mr Haddo would take this opportunity to disclose to us the
mystery of his birth and family. I have a suspicion that, like the
immortal Cagliostro, he was born of unknown but noble parents, and
educated secretly in Eastern palaces.'

'In my origin I am more to be compared with Denis Zachaire or with
Raymond Lully. My ancestor, George Haddo, came to Scotland in the suite
of Anne of Denmark, and when James I, her consort, ascended the English
throne, he was granted the estates in Staffordshire which I still
possess. My family has formed alliances with the most noble blood of
England, and the Merestons, the Parnabys, the Hollingtons, have been
proud to give their daughters to my house.'

'Those are facts which can be verified in works of reference,' said
Arthur dryly.

'They can,' said Oliver.

'And the Eastern palaces in which your youth was spent, and the black
slaves who waited on you, and the bearded sheikhs who imparted to you
secret knowledge?' cried Dr Porhoet.

'I was educated at Eton, and I left Oxford in 1896.'

'Would you mind telling me at what college you were?' said Arthur.

'I was at the House.'

'Then you must have been there with Frank Hurrell.'

'Now assistant physician at St Luke's Hospital. He was one of my most
intimate friends.'

'I'll write and ask him about you.'

'I'm dying to know what you did with all the lions you slaughtered,' said
Susie Boyd.

The man's effrontery did not exasperate her as it obviously exasperated
Margaret and Arthur. He amused her, and she was anxious to make him talk.

'They decorate the floors of Skene, which is the name of my place in
Staffordshire.' He paused