ponderous, shaggy-furred man who was waiting to help her into the huge, over-lavish, pulsing car.

"You take your time, don't you?" grumbled Judd, his breath vaporing into broken clouds in the raw December air. "Does that monkey-chattering maid of yours sleep all the time, or has she a case on with the butler? I've been tooting here for ten minutes."

His tone was snarling, and his thin lips were drawn away from gnarled teeth. Judd was one of those physical anomalies, a man of Falstaffian girth with sharp, peaked, predatory features. He pulled off his fur cap to readjust it before stepping into the car, showing a head wholly bald except for crinkly wisps of mixed red and gray hair at the sides and back. There was a deep crease at the back of his neck where the scant hair left off, and his deep-set, red-rimmed little watery-blue eyes were alert and suspicious.

Mrs. Treharne laughed so carelessly that it almost seemed as if she deliberately sought to intensify his irritation.

"Still in your villanous humor?" she asked him, a taunt in her tone. "I believe this is one of the days—they grow rather frequent—when you should be allowed—required, I should say—to ride alone."

"Well, that's easy enough to do," grumbled Judd in a voice curiously high-pitched for so vast a man. "See here, perhaps you are conceited enough to think—"

Very deliberately, and still smiling, Mrs. Treharne rose to leave the car. Judd looked blankly nonplussed.

"Oh, stop this infernal nonsense, Tony," he said in a tone tinged with alarm. Then his ruddy face expanded into a grin behind which there seemed to be little mirth. "D'ye know, I believe you would be cat enough to step out, before we start, and—"

"No names, if you please," Mrs. Treharne interrupted, choppily. "Decidedly I shall leave the car if you feel that it is impossible for you to behave yourself like a human being. I have ceased to extract enjoyment from your growling humors."

It was a tone she might have taken in addressing a menial. Obviously, however, it was the tone required for the proper subjugation of Judd. He exuded a falsetto laugh and patted her hand, at the same time motioning the chauffeur to start.

"I don't complain of your hellish moods, do I, Tony?" he asked her, still chuckling unpleasantly. "In fact, I believe I rather like the feel of your claws. All the 

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