after Oliver Hilditch's almost too cordial greeting. The woman
laid her fingers upon her guest's coat-sleeve. The trio crossed
the little hall almost in silence.

Dinner was served in a small white Georgian dining-room, with
every appurtenance of almost Sybaritic luxury. The only light in
the room was thrown upon the table by two purple-shaded electric
lamps, and the servants who waited seemed to pass backwards and
forwards like shadows in some mysterious twilight--even the faces
of the three diners themselves were out of the little pool of
light until they leaned forward. The dinner was chosen with
taste and restraint, the wines were not only costly but rare. A
watchful butler, attended now and then by a trim parlour-maid,
superintended the service. Only once, when she ordered a bowl of
flowers removed from the table, did their mistress address either
of them. Conversation after the first few amenities speedily
became almost a monologue. One man talked whilst the others
listened, and the man who talked was Oliver Hilditch. He
possessed the rare gift of imparting colour and actuality in a
few phrases to the strange places of which he spoke, of bringing
the very thrill of strange happenings into the shadowy room. It
seemed that there was scarcely a country of the world which he
had not visited, a country, that is to say, where men congregate,
for he admitted from the first that he was a city worshipper,
that the empty places possessed no charm for him.

"I am not even a sportsman," he confessed once, half
apologetically, in reply to a question from his guest. "I have
passed down the great rivers of the world without a thought of
salmon, and I have driven through the forest lands and across the