my watch,
wondering what could have happened to make Ivor fail in keeping his
promise to be prompt on the hour of twelve.

Of course, a hundred harmless things might have kept him, but I thought
only of the worst, and was working myself up to a frenzy when at last I
heard the gate-bell. I had been in the house no more than twelve or
fourteen minutes, but it seemed an hour, and I gave a sob of relief as I
rushed out, down the garden path, to let my visitor in.

Fumbling a little at the lock, always a little difficult if one were in
a hurry, I asked myself what if, as Marianne had suggested, it were not
Ivor Dundas, but someone else--Raoul, perhaps--or the man who had been
in her mind: Godensky.

But it was Ivor.

"What news?" I questioned him, my voice sounding queer and far away in
my own ears.

"I don't know whether you'll call it news or not, though plenty of
things have happened. I'm awfully sorry to be late--"

I wouldn't let him finish, standing there, but took him by the arm and
drew him into the garden, pushing the gate shut behind him as I did so.
Yet I forgot to lock it, and naturally it did not occur to Ivor that it
ought to be fastened.

Once inside, in the garden, I was going to make him begin again, as I
had told Marianne I would. But suddenly I bethought myself that he might
have been followed; that there might be watchers behind that high wall,
watchers who would try to be listeners too, and whose ears would be very
different from old Henri's. "Come into the house," I said, in a low
voice, "before you begin to tell anything." Then, when we were inside, I
could not even wait for him to go on of his own accord and in his own
way.

"The treaty?" I asked. "Have you got hold of it?"

"Unfortunately, no."

"But you've heard of it? Oh, _say_ you've heard something!"

"If I haven't, it isn't because I've sat down and waited for news to
come. I went back to the Gare du Nord after you left me, to try and get
on the track of the men who travelled with me in the train to Dover. But
I was sent off on the wrong scent, and wasted a lot of time, worse
luck--I'll tell you about it later, if you care to hear details. Then,
when that game was up, I did what I wish I'd done at first, found out
and consulted a private detective, said to be one of the best in
Paris--"

"You told your story--_my_ story--to a detective?" I gasped.

"No. Certainly not. I said I'd lost something of value, given me by a
lady whose