e been precious
beyond expression.

So it was that, as hour followed hour and the tale of them lengthened
into days, he fell into a temper of morbid brooding that was little
like the man, and instead of faring abroad and seeking what amusement
he might find in the most carefree city of the post-War world, shut
himself up in his rooms and moped, indifferent to all things but the
knocks at his door, the stridulation of the telephone bell that might
announce the arrival of the desired message.

And so it was that, when the telephone did ring--at last!--towards noon
of that third day, he fairly stumbled over himself in his haste to
reach the instrument. But the animation with which he answered the
professional voice at the other end of the wire faded very quickly, the
look of weariness returned, his accents voiced an indifference fairly
desolating.

"Yes?...Oh, yes...Very well...Yes, at once."

He returned to his view from the window, and was hating it with all his
heart when a stout knuckling on his door announced his callers.

They filed into the room with a cheerfulness of mien in striking
contrast to the weary courtesy with which Lanyard received them: Liane
Delorme first, then Monk, then Phinuit, rather bleached of colour and
wearing one arm in a sling; all very smart in clothes conspicuously new
and as costly as the Avenue afforded, striking figures of contentment
in prosperity.

"It is a pleasure indeed," Lanyard gravely acknowledged their several
salutations--"not, I must confess, altogether unexpected, but a
pleasure none the less."

"So you didn't think we'd be long spotting you in the good little old
town?" Phinuit enquired. "Had a notion you thought the best way to lose
us would be to put up at this well-known home of the highest prices."

"No," Lanyard replied. "I never thought to be rid of you without one
more meeting--"

"Then there's good in the old bean yet," Phinuit interrupted in wasted
irony.

"One cherishes that hope, monsieur....But the trail I left for you to
follow! I would be an ass indeed if I thought you would fail to find
it. When one borrows a rowboat at Plum Island Light without asking
permission--government property, too--and leaves it moored to a dock
on the Greenport waterfront; when one arrives in Greenport clothed in
shirt and trousers only, and has to bribe its pardonably suspicious
inhabitants with handfuls of British gold--which they are the more
loath to accept in view of