[Pg 28]

“Cassavetti!” I exclaimed with, I am sure, an excellent assumption of surprise.

“You’ve guessed it first time; though his name’s Vladimir Selinski. If you see him between now and Monday, when you must start, I advise you not to mention your destination to him, unless you’ve already done so. He was at the Savage Club dinner to-night, wasn’t he?”

One of Southbourne’s foibles was to pose as a kind of “Sherlock Holmes,” but I was not in the least impressed by this pretension to omniscience. He was a member of the club, and ought to have been at the dinner himself. If he had looked down the list of guests he must have seen “Miss Anne Pendennis” among the names, and yet I believed he had not the slightest suspicion that she was the original of that portrait!

“I saw him there,” I said, “but I told him nothing of my movements; though we are on fairly good terms. Do you think I’m quite a fool, Lord Southbourne?”

He looked amused, and blew another ring before he answered, enigmatically: “David said in his haste ‘all men are liars.’ If he’d said at his leisure ‘all men are fools,—when there’s a woman in the case’—he’d have been nearer the mark!”

“What do you mean?” I demanded, hotly enough.

“Well, I also dined at the Cecil to-night, though not [Pg 29]with the ‘Savages,’ and I happened to hear that you and Cassavetti—we’ll call him that—were looking daggers at each other, and that the lady, who was remarkably handsome, appeared to enjoy the situation! Who is she, Wynn? Do I know her?”

[Pg 29]

I watched him closely, but his face betrayed nothing.

“I think your informant must have been a—journalist, Lord Southbourne,” I said very quietly. “And we seem to have strayed pretty considerably from the point. I came here to take your instructions, and if I’m to start at nine on Monday I shall not see you again.”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“All right; we’ll get to business. Here’s the new code; get it off by heart between now and Monday, and destroy the copy. It’s safer. Here’s your passport, duly viséd, and a cheque. That’s all, I think. I don’t need to teach you your work. But I don’t want you to meet with such a fate as Carson’s; so I expect you to be warned by his example. And you are not to make 

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