Philip threw away the cigarette which he had been smoking, and, leaning
over the box, carefully selected another. He tapped it against the table
and lit it.

"Mr. Dane," he said coolly, "I shall always be grateful to you for your
visit this morning, for you have given me what is the most difficult
thing in the whole world to stumble up against--an excellent idea for a
new play. Apart from that, you seem, for so intelligent a man, to have
wasted a good deal of your time and to have come, what we should call in
English, a cropper. I will take you into my confidence so far as to admit
that I am not particularly anxious to disclose my private history, but if
ever the necessity should arise I shall do so without hesitation. Until
that time comes, you must forgive me if I choose to preserve a certain
reticence as to my antecedents."

Mr. Dane, in the moment's breathless silence which followed, acknowledged
to himself the perpetration of a rare mistake. He had selected Philip to
bear the brunt of his attack, believing him to be possessed of the weaker
nerve. Beatrice, who at the end of his last speech had sunk into a chair,
white and terrified, an easy victim, had rallied now, inspired by
Philip's composure.

"You deny, then, that you are Mr. Philip Romilly?" the detective asked.

"I never heard of the fellow in my life," Philip replied pleasantly, "but
don't go, Mr. Dane. You can't imagine how interesting this is to me. You
have sent me a most charming acquaintance," he added, bowing to Beatrice,
"and you have provided me with what I can assure you is almost
pathetically scarce in these days--a new and very dramatic idea. Take a
seat, won't you, and chat with us a little longer? Tell us how you came