d makes most people afraid of them. But when a hand like that takes
them by the throat"--he held up his right hand as he spoke, with the
thick uncouth fingers and massive thumb arched menacingly in a powerful
muscular tension--"when THAT tightens round their neck, and they feel
that the grip means business--my God! what good are they?"

He laughed contemptuously, and slapped the relaxed palm on the desk with
a noise which made his sister start. Apparently the diversion recalled
something to her mind.

"There was a man in here asking about you today," she remarked, in a
casual fashion. "Said he was an old friend of yours."

"Oh, yes, everybody's my 'old friend' now," he observed with beaming
indifference. "I'm already getting heaps of invitations to dinners and
dances and all that. One fellow insisted on booking me for Easter
for some salmon fishing he's got way down in Cumberland. I told him I
couldn't come, but he put my name down all the same. Says his wife will
write to remind me. Damn his wife! Semple tells me that when our squeeze
really begins and they realize the desperate kind of trap they're in,
they'll simply shower attentions of that sort on me. He says the
social pressure they can command, for a game of this kind, is something
tremendous. But I'm not to be taken in by it for a single pennyworth,
d'ye see? I dine with nobody! I fish and shoot and go yachting with
nobody! Julia and Alfred and our own home in Ovington Square--that'll
be good enough for me. By the way--you haven't been out to see us yet.
We're all settled now. You must come at once--why not with me, now?"

Louisa paid no heed to this suggestion. She had been rummaging among
some loose papers on the top of the desk, and she stepped round now to
lift the lid and search about for something inside.

"He left a card for you," she said, as she groped among the desk's
contents. "I don't know what I did with it. He wrote something on it."

"Oh, damn him, and his card too," Thorpe protested easily. "I don't want
to see either of them."

"He said he knew you in Mexico. He said you'd had dealings together. He
seemed to act as if you'd want to see him--but I didn't know. I didn't
tell him your address."

Thorpe had listened to these apathetic sentences without much interest,
but the sum of their message appeared suddenly to catch his attention.
He sat upright, and after a moment's frowning brown study, looked
sharply up at his sister.

"What was h