ft his table and sank into an arm-chair by the study fire, knocking
out his briar on a coal and carefully refilling and lighting that
invaluable collaborator. With his data presently arranged in better
mental order, he returned to the table and covered page after page with
facile reasoning. Then the drowsiness which he could not altogether
shake off crept upon him again, and staring at the words "Such societies
have existed in fiction, now we have one existing in fact," he dropped
into a doze--as the clock in the hall struck one.

When he awoke, with his chin on his breast, it was to observe, firstly,
that the MS. no longer lay on the pad, and, secondly, on looking up,
that a stranger sat in the arm-chair, opposite, reading it!

"Who----" began Sheard, starting to his feet.

Whereupon the stranger raised a white, protesting hand.

"Give me but one moment's grace, Mr. Sheard," he said quietly, "and I
will at once apologise and explain!"

"What do you mean?" rapped the journalist. "How dare you enter my house
in this way, and----" He broke off from sheer lack of words, for this
calm, scrupulously dressed intruder was something outside the zone of
things comprehensible.

In person he was slender, but of his height it was impossible to judge
accurately whilst he remained seated. He was perfectly attired in
evening-dress, and wore a heavy, fur-lined coat. A silk hat, by an
eminent hatter, stood upon Sheard's writing-table, a pair of gloves
beside it. A gold-mounted ebony walking-stick was propped against the
fireplace. But the notable and unusual characteristic of the man was his
face. Its beauty was literally amazing. Sheard, who had studied
black-and-white, told himself that here was an ideal head--that of
Apollo himself.

And this extraordinary man, with his absolutely flawless features
composed, and his large, luminous eyes half closed, lounged in Sheard's
study at half-past one in the early morning and toyed with an unfinished
manuscript--like some old and privileged friend who had dropped in for a
chat.

"Look here!" said the outraged pressman, stepping around the table as
the calm effrontery of the thing burst fully upon him. "Get out! _Now!_"

"Mr. Sheard," said the other, "if I apologise frankly and fully for my
intrusion, will you permit me to give my reasons for it?"

Sheard again found himself inarticulate. He was angrily conscious of a
vague disquiet. The visitor's suave courtesy under circumstances s