the time, and he retracted them, with a
promptitude and good humor that disarmed me. Jim was a man with whom it
was impossible to quarrel. Still, I guessed he had not changed his
opinion of his wife's guest, though he appeared on excellent terms with
her.

As for Mary, she was different. She loved Anne,--they had been fast
friends ever since they were school-girls together at Neuilly,--and if
she did not fully understand her, at least she believed that her
coquetry, her capriciousness, were merely superficial, like the hard,
glittering quartz that enshrines and protects the pure gold,--and has to
be shattered before the gold can be won.

Mary, I knew, wished me well, though she was far too wise a little woman
to attempt any interference.

Yes, I would end my suspense to-night, I decided, as I wrestled with a
refractory tie.

Ting ... ting ... tr-r-r-ing! Two short rings and a long one. Not the
telephone this time, but the electric bell at the outer door of my
bachelor flat.

Who on earth could that be? Well, he'd have to wait.

As I flung the tie aside and seized another, I heard a queer scratching
noise outside, stealthy but distinct. I paused and listened, then
crossed swiftly and silently to the open door of the bedroom. Some one
had inserted a key in the Yale lock of the outer door, and was vainly
endeavoring to turn it.

I flung the door open and confronted an extraordinary figure,--an old
man, a foreigner evidently, of a type more frequently encountered in the
East End than Westminster.

"Well, my friend, what are you up to?" I demanded.

The man recoiled, bending his body and spreading his claw-like hands in
a servile obeisance, quaint and not ungraceful; while he quavered out
what was seemingly an explanation or apology in some jargon that was
quite unintelligible to me, though I can speak most European languages.
I judged it to be some Russian patois.

I caught one word, a name that I knew, and interrupted his flow of
eloquence.

"You want Mr. Cassavetti?" I asked in Russian. "Well, his rooms are on
the next floor."

I pointed upwards as I spoke, and the miserable looking old creature
understood the gesture at least, for, renewing his apologetic
protestations, he began to shuffle along the landing, supporting himself
by the hand-rail.

I knew my neighbor Cassavetti fairly well. He was supposed to be a
press-man, correspondent to half a dozen Continental papers, and gave
himself out as a Greek