nd and held between his fingers a card
already drawn to play. For a moment, it was suspended in the air. He
looked towards Norgate, and there was a new quality in his piercing gaze,
an instant return in his expression of the shadow which had swept the
broad good-humour from his face on his first appearance. The change came
and went like a flash. He finished playing the hand and scored his points
before he spoke. Then he turned to Norgate.

"Your gift of acquiring languages in a short space of time is most
extraordinary, my young friend! Since yesterday you have become able to
speak German, eh? Prodigious!"

Norgate smiled without embarrassment. The moment was a critical one,
portentous to an extent which no one at that table could possibly
have realised.

"I am afraid," he confessed, "that when I found that I had a fellow
traveller in my coupe I felt most ungracious and unsociable. I was in
a thoroughly bad temper and indisposed for conversation. The simplest
way to escape from it seemed to be to plead ignorance of any language
save my own."

Selingman chuckled audibly. The cloud had passed from his face. To all
appearance that momentary suspicion had been strangled.

"So you found me a bore!" he observed. "Then I must admit that your
manners were good, for when you found that I spoke English and that you
could not escape conversation, you allowed me to talk on about my
business, and you showed few signs of weariness. You should be a
diplomatist, Mr. Norgate."

"Mr. Norgate is, or rather he was," Mrs. Paston Benedek remarked. "He has
just left the Embassy at Berlin."

Selingman leaned back in his chair and thrust both hands into his
trousers pockets. He indulged in a few German expletives, bombastic and
thunderous, which relieved him so much that he was able to conclude his
speech in English.

"I am the densest blockhead in all Europe!" he announced emphatically.
"If I had realised your identity, I would willingly have left you alone.
No wonder you were feeling indisposed for idle conversation! Mr. Francis
Norgate, eh? A little affair at the Cafe de Berlin with a lady and a
hot-headed young princeling. Well, well! Young sir, you have become more
to me than an ordinary acquaintance. If I had known the cause of your
ill-humour, I would certainly have left you alone, but I would have
shaken you first by the hand."

The fourth at the table, who was an elderly lady of somewhat austere
appearance, produced a small