hat week. It wouldn't be decent.... Well,
then...." He paused dramatically. "What's happened to him since,
Durward?"

"How do you mean? What's happened to him since?" I asked.

"I mean just what I say. Something happened to him at the end of that
week. I can put my finger almost exactly on the day--the Thursday of
that week. What was it? That's one of the things I've come to ask you
about?"

"I don't know. I was ill," I said.

"No, but has nobody told you anything?"

"I haven't heard a word," I said.

His face fell. "I felt sure you'd help me?" he said.

"Tell me the rest and perhaps I can put things together," I suggested.

"The rest is really Semyonov. The queerest things have been happening.
Of course, the thing is to get rid of all one's English ideas, isn't it?
and that's so damned difficult. It's no use saying an English fellow
wouldn't do this or that. Of course he wouldn't.... Oh, they _are_
queer!"

He sighed, poor boy, with the difficulty of the whole affair.

"Giving them up in despair, Bohun, is as bad as thinking you understand
them completely. Just take what comes."

"Well, 'what came' was this. On that Thursday evening Markovitch was as
though he'd been struck in the face. You never saw such a change. Of
course we all noticed it. White and sickly, saying nothing to anybody.
Next morning, quite early, Semyonov came over and proposed lodging with
us.

"It absolutely took my breath away, but no one else seemed very
astonished. What on earth did he want to leave his comfortable flat and
come to us for? We were packed tight enough as it was. I never liked the
feller, but upon my word I simply hated him as he sat there, so quiet,
stroking his beard and smiling at us in his sarcastic way.

"To my amazement Markovitch seemed quite keen about it. Not only agreed,
but offered his own room as a bedroom. 'What about your inventions?'
some one asked him.

"'I've given them up,' he said, looking at us all just like a caged
animal--'for ever.'

"I would have offered to retire myself if I hadn't been so interested,
but this was all so curious that I was determined to see it out to the
end. And you'd told me to look after Markovitch. If ever he'd wanted
looking after it was now! I could see that Vera hated the idea of
Semyonov coming, but after Markovitch had spoken she never said a word.
So then it was all settled."

"What did Nina do?" I asked.

"Nina? She never said anything either. At the end sh