ut she was still more nearly composed than any other
person in the room. Tavernake and Pritchard were masters of the
situation. Pritchard leaned toward the mirror and straightened his tie.

"I am afraid," he said looking down at Walter Crease's groaning figure,
"that our hosts are scarcely in fit condition to take leave of us. Never
mind, Mrs. Gardner, we excuse ourselves to you. I cannot pretend to be
sorry that my friend's somewhat impetuous entrance has disturbed your
plans for the evening, but I do hope that you will realize now the
fatuousness of such methods in these days. Good-night! It is time we
finished our stroll together, Tavernake."

They moved towards the door--there was no one to stop them. Only the
professor tried to say a few words.

"My dear Mr. Pritchard--my dear Pritchard, if you will allow me to call
you so," he exclaimed, "let me beg of you, before you leave us, not to
take this trifling adventure too seriously! I can assure you that it was
simply an attempt to coerce you, not in the least an affair to be taken
seriously!"

Pritchard smiled.

"Professor," he said, "and you, Walter Crease, and you, Jimmy Post, if
you're able to listen, listen to me. You have played the part of
children to-night. So surely as men and women exist who live as you do,
so surely must the law wait upon their heels. You cannot cheat justice.
It is as inexorable as Time itself. When you try these little tricks,
you simply give another turn to the wheel, add another danger to life.
You had better learn to look upon me as necessary, all of you, for I am
certainly inevitable."

They passed backwards through the door, then they went down the silent
hall and out into the street. Even as they did so, the clock struck a
quarter to two.

"My friend Tavernake," Pritchard declared, lighting a cigarette with
steady fingers, "you are a man. Come into the club with me while I bathe
my forehead. After all, we'll have that drink together before we say
goodnight."

CHAPTER XX. A PLEASANT REUNION

Tavernake awoke some hours later with a puzzled sense of having lost
his own identity, of having taken up another man's life, stepped into
another man's shoes. From the day of his first arrival in London, a raw
country youth, till the night when he had spoken to Beatrice on the roof
of Blenheim House, nothing that could properly be called an adventure
had ever happened to him. He had never for a moment felt the want of it;
he h