elf? She told me last night things about
_you_."

"About me. What things?"

"Never mind."

"But I do," she stopped and he stopped.

"I mind very much. What things did she tell you?"

"Nothing much, only that you worried the life out of her, and that
though I was bad you were worse."

Venetia sniffed. She was just turning to resume her way to the train
when she stopped dead like a pointer.

"That's them," she said, in a hard, tense whisper.

Jones looked.

A veiled lady accompanied by a bearded man, with a folded umbrella under
his arm and following a porter laden with wraps and small luggage, were
making their way through the crowd towards the train.

The veil did not hide her from him. He knew at once it was she.

It was then that Venetia's effect upon him acted as the contents of the
white-paper acts when emptied into the tumbler that holds the
blue-paper-half of the seidlitz powder.

Venetia saw his face.

"Don't make a scene," she cried.

That was the stirring of the spoon.

He rushed up to the bearded man and caught him by the arm. The bearded
one turned sharply and pushed him away. He was a big man; he looked a
powerful man. Dressed up as a conquering hero he would have played the
part to perfection, the sort of man women adore for their "power" and
manliness. He had a cigarette between his thick, red, bearded lips.

Jones wasn't much to look at, but he had practised at odd times at Joe
Hennessy's, otherwise known as Ike Snidebaum, of Spring Garden Street,
Philadelphia, and he had the fighting pluck of a badger.

He struck out, missed, got a drum sounder in on the left ribs, right
under the uplifted umbrella arm and the raised umbrella--and then--swift
as light got in an upper cut on the whiskers under the left side of the
jaw.

The umbrella man sat down, as men sit when chairs are pulled from under
them, then, shouting for help--that was the humorous and pitiable part
of it--scrambled on to his feet instantly to be downed again.

Then he lay on his back with arms out, pretending to be mortally
injured.

The whole affair lasted only fifteen seconds.

You can fancy the scene.

Jones looked round. Venetia and the criminal, having seen the
display--and at the National Sporting Club you often pay five pounds to
see worse--were moving away together through the throng, the floored one
with arms still out, was murmuring: "Brandee--brandee," into the ear of
a kneeling porter, and a station po